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Post by zoom »

Thanks for your critique. hard to read? /
Could be the tense I tried to use..and the next time i'll make the whole thing shorter. THe difficulty I faced was that I did not know all of the words how to express it properly. THerefore it doesn't sound right and I realize I wanted to pack too much into my post, neglecting paragraphs , structure and the point as well as coherence- almost everything... Sorry for that.
So shorter sentences would be easier, like Zyx pointed out.
Bad timed. Yes there was a climax. It is not very logical to have the mage looking at a fire when in the post before it almost went out.
mmh. there is a time difference when you are scrying on someone. A few minutes at least.
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Post by beowuuf »

As I said, while I don't know if it is a good device, definitely shifting for a second at a moment of tension to somehting else adds a few more moments before resolution. Maybe it's the TV addict in me, since alot of two parters in TV shows, etc, will usualyl have the cold open on something else to let everyone else get back to speed after a tense finale

In general shorter (around a paragraph) is better but since yours was an interlude then not a problem.

And lol, that's the sort of creative attidue I like...time delay in scrying, exactly. Or the fact you are dialling back a few moments in time so that his final moments equate back to their last moments. Who knows
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Post by Sophia »

Only if it's a yellow submarine... :P
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Post by beowuuf »

<.<
>.>

Might be...to match you non-christmas shirt!

Oh, I like Gambit'as blown away Lemming too....took me a few seconds to twig!
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Post by Ameena »

Yeah but it's just...I mean, grr this is really awkward to explain...umm...if, say, a character's been going one way in their development and through coincidence rather than effort it happens that one person has mainly been posting for them, then someone else might post and conflict with stuff that happened earlier. Oh I don't know. I would say "ooh surprise, Gambit is moaning at me again" but I really would rather not get myself bollocked off the forum or anything so umm well I dunno how this thing is going now. I didn't get online yesterday. Probably I should rename that character then, since Ameena is me and no-one else. Call her "Shesseara".
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Post by beowuuf »

The idea is that you could still write for her, no problem, and we have a plot thread, and also you can pedantically request someone alter their post a little if you like and see how it goes.

Just like when you are writing with Rachel I guess, she has to passively refer to your charatcer, surely and occasionally manoever them and use them? As long as no one tries to put throughts into thier head, might still work.

Your call, I reckon you should go with the flow and see what happens, see how flexible you can how, and how flexible everyone else is. At worst you let the charatcer go and she becomes 'Fred'

Oh, if no one else posts soon (like sometime tonight) I'm going to post a long bit, and no one wants that, surely! *Fingers itchy to tie everything together* Come on people, let's get back to that glade before someone gets an eye out with an arrow
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Post by Ameena »

It's different when I'm writing with "Rachel" (seems weird to call her that now as we use MSN now and she's Tanya there lol) - we have a story that we're planning out (well it's her story really but I'm helping), as we decide what we want to happen in each upcoming scene. If it involves characters only I play, I write it. If it's her characters, she writes it. If it's both (ie, a conversation or something), we use our forum and take it in turns to post as each character speaks/reacts.
What I was sort of doing in this story was playing the one character and have her react to stuff as it happens. Since there's so many people (currently) present, it's unlikely there's gonna be a post where someoen specifically speaks to her and thus you must wait for me to post in order to continue. But it could still happen. Like I said, just change her name and carry on. I'll probably post something at some point but this thing works both ways - I don't like people writing for my characters but likewise I feel intrusive if I make someone else's character do something (thus I never do it).
Pardon me, Gambit, if I've used a different way of writing for about the past eight years or so and am thus used to that. If that makes me selfish and unflexible (or whatever it was) then so be it.
If I can be arsed I'll carry on posting to this story thing but I dunno. As far as I was concerned, as long as I wasn't directly interfering with what other people wanted to do then there was no harm in it. Apparently not. Oh well.
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Post by Sophia »

I could post another cynical remark about how this isn't working, but that's not constructive, so I will post something worthwhile and constructive instead. :)

In theory, I'm mostly on Ameena's side on this one-- unless you are dealing with a well-established character, to consistently model the persona of a character requires that only one person be responsible for most of the input of that one particular character. That being said, since "character ownership" wasn't in the original plan, it doesn't seem to mesh with the original idea.

The problem, to me, though, is that the original idea has two seemingly contradictory objectives-- the goal is to be creative, and to write a good story, but also to be flexible, because anything anyone posts can change the direction of the story. To write a creative and interesting story, there needs to be foreshadowing, there need to be consistent threads, and there needs to be some thinking ahead. The problem is, any such things are all for naught when someone comes along and torpedoes it all with their own crazy ideas-- which may or may mesh with what you've already thought of. Thus, putting the mental effort into thinking anything ahead is discourgaged, because it might not work out anyway. The problem there, being, of course-- if everyone realizes there's no point in trying to plan ahead for anything, because it's never going to work as intended, then nobody will put any thought into it, and the story will quickly become very inconsistent, random, and unreadable. :(
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Post by Ameena »

Ahh that's something - yeah I think I'd been thinking of that but not in those words so I never managed to make it coherent. Technically we can't really do anything major as this story is just being made up as it goes along. So you might have a character do something with the intent of having something else happen later as a result (or whatever), but someone else might post something which totally messes that up and makes it impossible - as Sophia said, people would then be discouraged from forming any real ideas since everything has to be more spur-of-the-moment, based on what's just been posted.
Also, what about characters becoming incapacitaded or killed? What if someone dies whom you had plans for?
Posting a story a bit at a time like this is a good idea...I'm just not entirely sure the current structure/rules of it is the best way to go about things.
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Post by zoom »

incapacitated CHARACTERS could get interesting.

(ghostlike-they can see others, the others cannot see her-like a guardian angel) get into a fit of fever/rage ,(being poisoned and having a hallucination-[without help I would not have been able to spell it, ever. straange wooord]-describing what the character sees, what he wants to do etc. why runs she amok??In her point of view. Or child memories.weakness. etc.

Death is sth. I am not sure how to cope with that, really.. :shock:
maybe the others should revive her!

[quote ameena]
what if someone dies whom you had plans for[/quote]
let a hamster explode nearby...

well, I would like to just try out ameena's idea.
input anyone?

as for progress:
Go beo, go!! :D
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Post by Ameena »

By "incapacitated" I meant paralysed, turned to stone, frozen, knocked out, killed, having a limb chopped off...basically anything which prevents them from acting or doing something they'd previously have been able to do.
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Post by Sophia »

Exactly-- it doesn't pay to plan any sort of a future for a character when the next post could create chaos for them, and completely alter their circumstances.

Either that, or you would have to invoke some magic deus-ex-machina "reset button" to restore things to the way they were, but too many of those and it starts to lose any sense of direction.
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Post by beowuuf »

Zyx has started laying out a non-dictatorial road map of the plot considerations - what has happened, with speculation on what might be, on what is ambuguous (Ok, I started adding those). Is this enough, in ths embrionic stage, for people to feel it is regulated while being flexible for newcomers?

Why do characters themselves have to be machinations of the plot. In real life everyone is the hero or villain of their own piece, everything means somethign right up to the point where something bad happens, they die etc. Life goes on. Can this be a plus point, someone has crafted a charatcer, and the story obviously flows for a hero to do a task -bang- he is killed in a minor fight by a stray arrow. Is it now tragedy later when the plot flows and we find this character needed to be alive? Is it a nice 'real life' feel that a character suddenly losing an arm jsut needs to deal with it, when this wasn't how they (and the writer) imagined it would be? Can't they be a better developed character if this happens, in a way in a more real settign than a single author deciding it is an interesting charatcer development thing to happen.

I'm not sayign I disagree with Sophia, I'd just like to actually put it to the test with some of the most creative people I've met so far. *shrug* Submarine or sinking ship, as long as we take this damn thing out to sea and don't just complain about it while sitting aroudn a table with the blueprints, I'll be happy. It's alreayd been fun (and scary) just to see people's reactions and initial ideas

Ameena, I'll leave your character name the same for tonight, can change it over the weekend to the one you mentioned if you feel the same, but do hope you'll keep batting the plot ball about at least.
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Post by Zyx »

Both of you, Sophia and Ameena, seem to expect an extreme scenario where anything could happen to anybody, no matter the story, and any chracter could do anything, no matter their personnality. You put little trust into our team of writers!

I think we can do just fine if we take the time to respect the characters and the story. The more the world and characters fill out, the less they belong to the free will of any writer: they become alive and use their creators as channels to accomplish their destiny...

Thus, what must be avoided is a 90° or 180° twist at each new paragraph. It is necessary to build upon the previous posts and complete the descriptions made by others to achieve something.

So as I see it, the real problem is to make sure that none of us will act regardless of the context (current scene, profile of characters, background, time and space, current knowledge of the plot).

Gathering and summarizing the info would help, I thought. (see plot considerations).
And some arbitrator is needed in case the coherence is violated.
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Post by zoom »

(edit: just now seen beo's and Zyx's posts!)
I see.(edti:ameena and sophia)
How about a dungeon master. The one who controls the weather, when someone is killed /how fast he is turned to stone
what she can do and whether she can do something.
Basically what each character can and cannot do.
(on the other hand this is let someone other take control over your character.)

It would be wise to post sth. like my character intents/wants to ... instead of : this happens now.

A dm pushes gets the story further; a subtle force(or not so subtle!) what's happening (wind changes, sun sets, xy gets hungry...time story chances)

If we would let only and only one person here have full final control over everything, things could be ok, as long as you had a fair chance don't you think?
just like in a real rpg..

maybe it would even work. We could alternate the dm job!

Again without a dm, the story could be the opposite of fluid.
How about some add. rules???!
?Just 4 sentences per post.
?master posts every other turn.
?No double posts.
?No hijacking of characters.
?no senseless killing
?thoughts are in italics
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Post by beowuuf »

This isn't an RPG thread zooom, so there should be no dungeon masters and player charatcers! Every author controls the weather, charatcrs, plot etc as the see fit, and in return they respect the charatcers and growing ideas of the other authors.

If you want an arbritrator, let's go with the person who started this thread : ) First arbitrary decision, I mean arbitrated decision, no nitpicking rules. Creating a story as you can see is hassle enoguh without inventing arbitrary word counts, DMs, no double posting rules, etc.
Grammar convesions could be an idea though...

Right, I now hand over arbitor control though for a little bit. I've just posted a section that was WAY larger than I thought it was. It might be messy, confused, way too much, not what people want. If so edit it heavily or delete it. Or it might be a little kick start to get minds going. Either way it is certainly more than I would ever post aain, or would expect is healthy in normal posting. I still think a paragraph is a good rule of thumb, with people able to feel free to go over that if they feel it helps their section.
Anyway, grammar and questions you can post here, Gambit, cows and the mods have the power to edit heavily or delete my post. I seriously need sleep (been social all night, but thought better post some story element if no one else has) and I have a new housemate to get to know tomorrow.

So see you all at the flip side of this weekend!
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Post by Trantor »

Once again, I agree with Zyx and Beo. The fun in this story comes from not knowing what happens next. If you are planning ahead too much and concentrate mainly on one character and his/her future and then get angry if anything unwanted happens to that character, this once again turns into an RPG. The same would happen with a DM, so I am strongly against using one.

As I see it, the fun lies in being creative and flexible. This means that you have to react to the ideas of the other writers. If something happens in the storyline or to a character you had different ideas for, then so be it - adapt and turn your thoughts in a new direction! As Beo said, this adds some kind of unpredictability and randomness that is nothing else but realistic. People need to have trust in the other writers to come up with something interesting. As long as we all respect the plot and character motivations that have been established, this may work. What we must avoid is someone claiming complete ownership over one character or someone being angry at the development in the story and torpedoing the storyline or another writer because of that.

In order to keep this as coherent as possible, Zyx created a thread to summarize the plot so far and to describe characters and situations. We should all look there to keep this thing coherent.

I think we all know that this won't become a first-class fantasy novel; this is not what this is supposed to be. It is supposed to be a joint effort of several creative people working together. The fun lies in reacting to the thoughts and ideas of other people, not in writing a great story on his/her own. At least, that is my point of view on this.
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Post by Gambit37 »

I certainly don't want to heavily edit or delete your post Beo -- it's very interesting and you set up a lot of dynamics, questions and potential answers. There is a little confusion though about some of the characters and exactly who is who compared to preivous posts - you may need to add some clarity about that. Or maybe I'm just a bit thick.

I certainly agree that a moderator of the story is a good idea and yes, really it should be Beo as this is his baby. The Christmas Story was mine and so I moderated it. Same goes for anyone starting something similar.
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Post by beowuuf »

No, this is possible...late to bed and long section = bad writing (another reason for paragraph at a time, easier to quickly edit!) Won't be around much longer but can tweak specifics if you yell just now.

The way I saw it, zyx described a tribal guide (with a bow) who was originally looking at the group, and at least one bearded man who was standing guard/keeping watch with that guide. There could be more. They must be protecting an inportant tribal person.

Sallow man/ghost/wraith are all the same reference to the originally hooded coughing figure.

I ignored your character as I'm interested in exactly who she could be...

Oh, and am I right in thinking that Ameena (if she still will be) hasn't removed her hood either, so while female might not be a woman, and therefore this isa great mislead right now? Maybe even one Yexx doens't realise?

Edit: Oops, I see, bearded man is the melodious voiced one inside the group. As I pictured it there were people other than the tribal guide, probably bodyguards, standing watch along with him. I think zyx spotted this was what I meant by 'guards' which was why the guide with the bow came out with the sallow guy. He seems to not actually be threatening him at arrow point, and also the sallow man was a bit angrier before the break. So yeah, a few minor tweaks needed for consistency at least.
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Post by Ameena »

Seeing as this isn't an RPG and we're not allowed to "play" characters, I don't want anyone else to be "playing" Ameena so that's why I'd like her name changed, that's all. It's a personal thingy of "Ameena is me, she's mine so no-one else can have her" kind of thing.
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Post by beowuuf »

All in favour of a change to a name like 'Somena' to preserve gambit's 'meaner than what?' joke?
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Post by Zyx »

Or Weymena! :)
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Post by beowuuf »

Or wagamama (the easiest resteraunt chain to type in an sms)!
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Post by Gambit37 »

I like 'Somena' -- if there's no objections, I'll edit the relevant posts.

I edited your long post a little Beo, just to make it easy to read and I changed one reference of 'wraith like man' to 'sallow man' as it seemed like a new character and was confusing.
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Post by beowuuf »

Yeah, I hated using the same phrase over and over again. I think he should get named soon so that there will be no confusion again (I would have done it but that would have meant I had to go on even longer)

Oh, I was also thinkng of stickying the threads, so nice one gambit.
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Post by beowuuf »

Ok, I feel like an addict waiting for his next fix - can a few more people post to the story thread *twitch* I wanna know what happens next! *twitch*
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Post by Sophia »

"Somena" sounds like what you'd get if you crossed me with Ameena. :P :shock:
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Post by Ameena »

I was thinking last night after I'd logged to go to bed, of maybe "Mormina", then it's a bit like "More meaner than what?" ;). And plus it still manages to look nothing like "Ameena" :).
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Post by beowuuf »

Mormina is too on the nose and looks like a joke set up though, doenst it? : )
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Post by zoom »

Or make it Mormina-A Suleynarsan the desert princess
edit: she has a slightly different tounge, so the joke makes sense.
Last edited by zoom on Sun Jan 15, 2006 9:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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