10369 réponses à ce sujet

[Maria13]

Mine aren't... Yet

[Leeaire]

soignee wrote...
BINGO. I love battle scenes for this reason. I just wrote one and now not sure if people will read it or just scroll by, I'm told it's not on the top list of Things To Read in a DA fanfic.

Herr Uhl wrote...
I read it, but it isn't essential.
It's like sprinkles, multi flavored sprinkles at that.

This is kinda surprising, you fight all the time in the game....hmm i can imagine if its just random battling but if the battlescene is done really well with key character details then yeah it will be a productive read. Like in this one im writing, I'm messing around with the sounds of war seeing if I can get a certain effect I want for the reader to come out.

Now I'm curious, what do people want when reading a DA fan fic?

[Raonar]

Leeaire wrote...

soignee wrote...
BINGO. I love battle scenes for this reason. I just wrote one and now not sure if people will read it or just scroll by, I'm told it's not on the top list of Things To Read in a DA fanfic.

Herr Uhl wrote...
I read it, but it isn't essential.
It's like sprinkles, multi flavored sprinkles at that.

This is kinda surprising, you fight all the time in the game....hmm i can imagine if its just random battling but if the battlescene is done really well with key character details then yeah it will be a productive read. Like in this one im writing, I'm messing around with the sounds of war seeing if I can get a certain effect I want for the reader to come out.

Now I'm curious, what do people want when reading a DA fan fic?

Well, I try ot focus on suspense and arrange the events in my own fic in such a way as to only reveal odd things at the very end of each chapter. Like say, almost dying trying to keep your brother alive for a day and then, in the last few lines of the last paragraph, you stab that brother in the gut, ony to explain why two chapter later.

And, of course, witty one-liners are a must

EDIT

This goes in addition to the mandatory exploration of the psychology of the characters.

Modifié par Raonar, 03 juillet 2010 - 02:21 .

[Sialater]

soignee wrote...

Leeaire wrote...

Writing battle scenes are fun...kinda like writing love scenes without all the head shaking as you realize how rotten you really are.

BINGO. I love battle scenes for this reason. I just wrote one and now not sure if people will read it or just scroll by, I'm told it's not on the top list of Things To Read in a DA fanfic.

Raonar wrote...

Still,
I only managed to read the first chapter of Missa's tale (I did enjoy
it btw), so I may not be the best person to comment. But if you want
suspense, you could always skip ahead of a certain event and, later, do a
retcon of what led to that situation, for instance.

Either way,
keep up the good work.

Thanks! The first four chapters really make or break readers of "eh, do I want to read this" as it's origin specific and doesn't include the companions, but is important as I really needed to show where Missa came from and what she is.

That would really be dumb to skip a lot of the time. Especially since I just posted Moira's and Zevran's swordfight-as-sex over on ff.net.

[Herr Uhl]

Leeaire wrote...

soignee wrote...
BINGO. I love battle scenes for this reason. I just wrote one and now not sure if people will read it or just scroll by, I'm told it's not on the top list of Things To Read in a DA fanfic.

Herr Uhl wrote...
I read it, but it isn't essential.
It's like sprinkles, multi flavored sprinkles at that.

This is kinda surprising, you fight all the time in the game....hmm i can imagine if its just random battling but if the battlescene is done really well with key character details then yeah it will be a productive read. Like in this one im writing, I'm messing around with the sounds of war seeing if I can get a certain effect I want for the reader to come out.

Now I'm curious, what do people want when reading a DA fan fic?

It isn't about DA fics, I'm just weird like that in general when reading. Though I enjoy reading battle scenes more than sex scenes, which also makes me weird around here.

[Maria13]

As a reader, I would want to explore the great characters in the game and take them further, into new situations, personal interactions and futures. In my fan-fic that's what I'm trying to do.

[LupusYondergirl]

Maria13 wrote...

As a reader, I would want to explore the great characters in the game and take them further, into new situations, personal interactions and futures. In my fan-fic that's what I'm trying to do.

I'm the same way.  I so rarely write battle scenes, and every time I do it's because someone's doing something phenominally stupid/crazy in the middle of a fight.

[Gilgamesh1138]

LOL! I am trying to get better at writing battle scenes. Hehe.

[soignee]

I just wrote 3000 words on a very Anora sympathetic story posted it on the biggest Alistair-is-AWSUM community on the internets.

SHIELD ME, QUICK.

On other news, dinner then more DDW. Need a break from staring at Word.

[Corker]

As a reader: CORRECT PUNCTUATION.

I am so serious. It doesn't have to be 100% Strunk and White but if *every* conversation is punctuated

"Blah blah blah." He said

I just cannot get through it.

[MireliA]

I want to write more battle scenes but so far its not come up. I've written one or two, but a small group of people and darkspawn or a duel one on one is so different to a large area pitched battle. That would take some planning.

[Gilgamesh1138]

ROFL! I hear you Corker, I avoid that "Blah, blah, blah," she/he said like the plague. Drives loop the sodding loop. I beta for some one who likes to do that, so I am forever taking it out.

[LupusYondergirl]

I worry I fall into that trap. After I write I go through and try to remove as much of that as I can, but it's tough since so much of my fic is just long stretches of dialogue.



I had a professor once who told us to avoid just replacing the word "said" with something else since our mind will filter out something neutral like that but stuff like "pondered," "opined," "exclaimed" etc stand out too much. I don't think I entirely agree with that, though.

[MireliA]

I do the 'he said' thing all the time but if your get into the flow of the dialogue, you can always go back and change it afterwards. I would never dare publish anything without tweaking it first a lot! And if there's only two people talking, the dialogue can sometimes speak for itself.

[Gilgamesh1138]

I beta for you MireliaA and I don't notice you use the "he said" thing a lot (you were not who I was referring to, LOL. My non English speaker does it.). Like I said, I avoid it like the plague.



Battle scenes, I haven't done a full scale massive one yet. *runs and hides*

[Sialater]

I actually stick it next to an action. ie: His eyebrows rose. "What do you mean, you don't have it?"

[SurelyForth]

I usually put actions with dialogue, or describe their expression or tone. But there is also the punctuation thing that Corker is pointing to, which I struggled with when I first started writing my story. It didn't feel right until I realized that:

"He seems somewhat alive," Anders cocked his head and poked the unconscious man again.

flows better than:

"He seems somewhat alive." Anders cocked his head and poked the unconscious man again.

Also, does anyone know why uploading a chapter from Word into the ff.net Document Manager results in spaces between words randomly disappearing? It's driving me bonkers.

Modifié par SurelyForth, 03 juillet 2010 - 07:04 .

[LupusYondergirl]

I honestly hate the upload feature on ff. It seems to randomly reformat and always removes horizontal rules. (although it is nicer to open document format than word). I'll upload, and then just copy/paste from the word document into the edit window every time. Never had a problem doing that, and it only adds a few seconds to how long uploading takes.

[Corker]

I wasn't clear.  I have no problem with: 
"Dialogue," he said. 

That's how it's supposed to be.  Also fine is:
Some action goes here.  "And then there is dialogue." 

Also:
"I like dialogue."  He smirked and looked away.

Or even:
"I like dialogue."  He said it with a smile.

But
"Dialogue."  He said. 

No. That just ain't right.  And I see it a lot.

Other grammar and punctuation ticks I can overlook, because they happen once or twice a page at most. But there's usually a lot of dialogue going on.  It really behooves an author to print out the rules for punctuating dialogue and keep them handy. 

[Sialater]

Ah, yes, the wrongly capitalized letter.



*shudder* Hope I catch all those.

[Sandtigress]

I would so much rather write action or introspection... Dialogue always feels SO awkward and unbelievable. Or I forget to write in anything other than the dialogue and then have to go back and add actions, facial expressions, emotions, etc. so that it's not two people just talking at each other.



Dialogue is the bane of my writing existence, I swear.

[SurelyForth]

Sandtigress wrote...

I would so much rather write action or introspection... Dialogue always feels SO awkward and unbelievable. Or I forget to write in anything other than the dialogue and then have to go back and add actions, facial expressions, emotions, etc. so that it's not two people just talking at each other.

Dialogue is the bane of my writing existence, I swear.

I was terrified of writing dialogue when I started my story, not so much the actual spoken words but the descriptive bits. I ended up mostly using back and forth banters for a few chapters until I was comfortable with describing expressions and everything else. I still fall back on that, especially if I write anything for Loghain. It's hard enough for me to just get his voice even close to being right.

[Gilgamesh1138]

I put mine with action too! But yeah I got what you meant corker. He said, then a period. It is horrible.



I have to admit I loves me the dialogue.

[Sandtigress]

I mostly get caught up in how awkward it feels and put so much effort into making it not awkward anymore that I forget about the other stuff and have to go back and add it. Or else I can imagine the dialogue but not what people are doing while they're talking, which is a lot more rare but does occasionally happen.



Exposition I could go on and on with. I like that. Dialogue takes me sooooo long to make it feel believable, never mind getting someone's voice too. Need more practice!