9962 réponses à ce sujet

[Icyflare]

I agree. Keeping track of all the main events and plot elements you introduce is a good idea. Certainly makes it easier to figure out which sub-plots you need to solve. And advice is advice. It's at your own discretion to use it or not.

Modifié par Icyflare, 24 septembre 2012 - 08:05 .

[Mr.BlazenGlazen]

So in my new chapter, I wrote like a 2000+ word monologue for my villain, and made him even creepier than before.

Chapter 14: Life signs fading

Please tell me what you think!

[Spiritwolf1]

Chapter 14? Did you redo it, cause I could have sworn I read chapter 14

[Mr.BlazenGlazen]

Spiritwolf1 wrote...

Chapter 14? Did you redo it, cause I could have sworn I read chapter 14

It's chapter 14. 

Call of the hound pt 2 was called chapter 14 on ff.net because I made a prologue, and it counted that as a chapter

[Spiritwolf1]

Cool, I gave it a look

[Spiritwolf1]

12 hours, hope I didnt kill the fun

[AustereLemur799]

*tentatively peeks out from the shadows in a distant corner of the room*

I'm still here.

I'm guessing that everyone is at school/college/uni/work - or sleeping. Either that or they're busy getting on with their writing. I wish I could 'borrow' some of their productive energy to kick my own backside into gear  

[Spiritwolf1]

*Packages some creativity in a big box and wraps it with a pick wrapping and a big red bow. Hands it to Austere*

Modifié par Spiritwolf1, 25 septembre 2012 - 03:16 .

[lillitheris]

I’m sort of here. I’ve no time to write due to a short work crunch, and since the Liara thread has gone annoying, I’m not on the forums much.

To be somewhat topical, I’m thinking about including a little steam into the next chapter. The original idea was fairly PG.

Modifié par lillitheris, 25 septembre 2012 - 03:26 .

[hot_heart]

I'm still around. Just been busy with work, and Borderlands 2, and my social life returned from the dead, recently.

Also, I'm slowly chipping away at a massive section of action (Miranda vs. Cerberus vs. Reapers and then Miranda vs. Kai Leng. All in one), which is pretty tricky to write as it turns out...

[Spiritwolf1]

Was looking for inspiration and like usual I go back to favorite shows and episode. Just finished watching Beer Bad from season 4 of Buffy the Vampire slayer, god I love Joss Whedon and season four is one of may favorites with episodes like Beer Bad, Fear Itself, and Hush.

Any one have anything else they do for inspiration when writing

Modifié par Spiritwolf1, 25 septembre 2012 - 03:39 .

[AustereLemur799]

Spiritwolf1 wrote...

*Packages some creativity in a big box and wraps it with a pick wrapping and a big red bow. Hands it to Austere*

Aww, thank you. I hope you weren't just lending this creativity to me - because by 'borrow', I actually meant 'steal' .

I'm seriously beginning to wonder whether I've bitten off way more than I can chew. I have a little personal rule about the number of new characters introduced in a chapter, and I've found myself suddenly introducing so much that it's giving me a headache to write it and coordinate. Especially since I'm writing under the assumption that the reader has no prior knowledge of ME (a really stupid idea in hindsight - Monday morning quarterback and all that ).

At this rate, I think heads will explode. I've already explored turians and Spectres before; but now there's C-Sec, quarians, lots of new characters - and I've sort of thrown Wrex and krogan into the mix even though I was trying to keep him back until later to save myself some hassle. I want to cry now. I've spent two weeks on this (this week will be my third). My brain is sore .

I like pretty much all the ME characters, but I fear that writing them - even my favourites - won't provide any relief or fun; just more stress and brain-pain.

[hot_heart]

I've not seen your fic, but are you writing a version of the ME1 story? If so, I would advise trying to structure it so you only need to know so much as you went.

Or, in any case, try and use a shorthand description and then build on that later, if need be.

[AustereLemur799]

hot_heart wrote...

I've not seen your fic, but are you writing a version of the ME1 story? If so, I would advise trying to structure it so you only need to know so much as you went.

Or, in any case, try and use a shorthand description and then build on that later, if need be.

Indeed. I've tried to adopt the approach that the reader learns as the protagonist learns. But, yeah; it's really hard to avoid falling into the trap and making everything sound really info-dumpy and boring.

Now that I think about it; there are certainly things I can shave off and put to one side, leaving them for a later chapter.

Modifié par AustereLemur799, 25 septembre 2012 - 03:56 .

[lillitheris]

I have the Codex and Dramatis Personae to alleviate that problem to a degree, if you want to peek. Outside that, there really are only two general approaches:

1. Don’t introduce specific persons, just C-Sec Guy #1 and so on.

2. Have known people do everything in the small galaxy style.

I am not a huge fan of either approach—but especially the latter—so I have a whole bunch of OCs along with a whole bunch of established characters who appear very early on in the story.

The D.P. does have to be split by chapter and I can only include details about the character known at that point, but it works fairly well, I think.

[AustereLemur799]

@ lilitheris

That was an issue I had way back - not knowing what OCs (original characters) actually meant. I thought they were original, as in Bioware's original characters; I didn't realise that they were original as in the writer has devised them.

I do have established characters, then, appearing to take on small roles e.g. Harkin and Chellick. The only unnamed ones I have in this chapter are a human crew member from a ship that Tali arrives in on the Citadel, as well as a turian C-Sec officer who tells Tali to leave the Presidium. I guess I'm giving established characters little cameos now (rather than giving the jobs to unnamed, faceless people) because I know that they will have more appearances throughout the course of the trilogy.

EDIT: the D.P. is a good idea, but as you say; it could potentially provide spoilers so you have to hold off naming people by name. But what would you do if someone's identity remained anonymous at the beginning of a chapter, but was then revealed at the end? Or do you just have the D.P. as a point of reference when looking back?

For instance I don't name Benezia by name at the beginning. Obviously the readers will know that the Matriarch is Benezia, but the relative who I originally wrote the story for doesn't - just as we didn't know her identity until Councillor Tevos tells us. I'm trying to write everything from scratch - which includes having to describe lore from the ground up, as well as explain characters' backstories etc.

In short: it's all one big massive headache

Modifié par AustereLemur799, 25 septembre 2012 - 05:21 .

[lillitheris]

AustereLemur799 wrote...

@ lilitheris

That was an issue I had way back - not knowing what OCs (original characters) actually meant. I thought they were original, as in Bioware's original characters; I didn't realise that they were original as in the writer has devised them.

I do have established characters, then, appearing to take on small roles e.g. Harkin and Chellick. The only unnamed ones I have in this chapter are a human crew member from a ship that Tali arrives in on the Citadel, as well as a turian C-Sec officer who tells Tali to leave the Presidium. I guess I'm giving established characters little cameos now (rather than giving the jobs to unnamed, faceless people) because I know that they will have more appearances throughout the course of the trilogy.

That sounds good; you only need ensure that you don’t unnecessarily shove characters into situations just to avoid a side role character.

EDIT: the D.P. is a good idea, but as you say; it could potentially provide spoilers so you have to hold off naming people by name. But what would you do if someone's identity remained anonymous at the beginning of a chapter, but was then revealed at the end? Or do you just have the D.P. as a point of reference when looking back?

The latter, mostly. The D.P. is separate from the chapters, itself split into chapters, and only names characters the first time they appear—and it’s obvious it’s that character—so that it can be read without spoiling subsequent chapters. I think there are one or two appearances where the person isn’t named until a later point. I expect people to mostly use it as a reference later, or to refresh their memory about e.g. who Matriarch Lidanya Te Aras is if they don’t recall her from the game.

I'm trying to write everything from scratch - which includes having to describe lore from the ground up, as well as explain characters' backstories etc.

In short: it's all one big massive headache

It sounds it, but it’s interesting to see (eventually?) how you handle the exposition.

Modifié par lillitheris, 25 septembre 2012 - 07:32 .

[Obsidian Gryphon]

I popped in at usual time. No one said anything, I said nothing. Physics you know. Reaction = reaction. :lol: yes =yes. no=no. duuuuh me ...

Day in, day oit, it's the usual stuff. Such that, sometimes my brains went mush; I can't remember which day it is.

So now, writing next chapter that has lots of zings, zangs, ouchies, aarrrghhh, ahhhh and so forth. Not a nice topic. My story is literally filled with OCs. Most of the time, I feel Shep & Liara are just there as anchor with the chars from ME as guest stars. Half the meat goes to the OCs. The other half are just babble and bobble on events.  

And it's raining now, early morning rain. Lovely way to wake up. Temptation on high to snuggle back into nest and zzzzZZZZzzzz zz.

[AustereLemur799]

And now I feel really bad that no one was on here when you did come on .

It's not that you're hated and unloved; it's just that people are busy courting their creativity that I still can't seem to find.

I guess forcing yourself to do something is the wrong way to go about it. With creativity, it's better that it comes to you. It's taking its sweet time though.

[Obsidian Gryphon]

Eh?   I was saying I bounce if there's something to bounce. Most of the time I've nothing to say. I don't even go in to the Liara thread so often now, they're going too fast and the topics aren't in my alley or I'm losing interest. *shrug*

Creativity. If not music or vids or GW2, I'll go to the ME3 MP which is frankly, mindless shooting 100% of the time. It's numbing but still sometimes, I get something interesting. The thing about the devs is that I absolutely hate the number of loops the game has to go through before a player lands in the game lobby.

Sign in to Origin...several .secs go by....logged in
Game starts...hit Esc...hit spacebar. Several seconds go by as it loads updated stats of war assets.
Hit MP option .... several secs go by as cloud syncs with local data....
Toon selection...choose toon....choose game....several secs go by as game searches for a lobby...well, frack, I get better response time with the old Unreal Tournament. You hear that, BW, you can't even beat an old classic MP.

If you want to buy something from the store...you can wait for eternity and still get crap and more crap if you are willing to try your luck. I don't use real money to buy, which is a good thing. The one sensible thing the devs did was to leave the option to buy consumables which are always used most of the time.


Compare this to GW 2 ...

Start game. Log in, Hit Play! A few secs go by,
Toon selection comes up. Choose toon. Play! Several secs go by and welcome to Tyria, youre're free to roam the world as you will.

Anyways, 3/4 done with the next chapter...

[AustereLemur799]

You too? lilitheris left yesterday. So now I've got no one to have my back in the Liara thread... Actually I just killed the thread after a long-winded rambling about Ardat-Yakshi - that was before I could speculate about Prothean manipulation. Hmm, the intrigue...
Anyways, that's really off-topic (I have a habit of doing that).

You're 3/4 done? So close to the end... Keep at it. I actually hate coming to the end of a chapter. You're supposed to feel relieved to see the finish line in sight, but it's all about tying up loose ends, making sure everything flows together, fixing up little gaps that I couldn't be bothered to fill earlier... It's almost as hard has starting the chapter itself.

Good luck!

Modifié par AustereLemur799, 26 septembre 2012 - 12:05 .

[Spiritwolf1]

For me its not chapters I hate ending. I'm coming close to ending my first story ever and Im feeling a little sad and perhap procrastinating because of that.

[lillitheris]

…You have entered…The Twilight Zone!

…

Yes, the Liara thread’s gotten a little juvenile for my taste. Down to very few readable threads here on the forums

Modifié par lillitheris, 26 septembre 2012 - 03:58 .

[Spiritwolf1]

I only come here, I found the other thread s abit unbearable.

[Mr.BlazenGlazen]

Spiritwolf1 wrote...

Cool, I gave it a look

Thank you.