|
TheGreekOwl: are you by any chance ESL? Some of your sentences are constructed oddly. Your general style is stiff and formal and kind of clunky. Your dialogue is stilted, unnatural and doesn't flow. Your characters declaim lines, they do not speak from the heart. And you've got a huge loving mess of fantasy words and concepts that obscures information. I know you're using Greek, not a conlang, but I think the principles of using a conlang apply here, too: use sparingly, for flavour or when a translation would be inadequate. You've got way too many weird, unfamiliar words here. TheGreekOwl posted:Because I want to. Let's rephrase: what can you do with gryphons that you can't do with humans, that is key to the story you're trying to tell?
|
#
?
Apr 5, 2015 16:15
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 14, 2024 01:58 |
|
|
chthonic bell posted:TheGreekOwl: are you by any chance ESL? Some of your sentences are constructed oddly. Your general style is stiff and formal and kind of clunky. If we dont count Pontic Greek, then yes, English is my second language, my first one being Modern Greek. I should mention that a lot of what I write is first written in Modern Greek, then translated into English. For the second part, thats a good point, I shouldnt expect everybody to understand Greek phrases, however rudrimentry, without providing context atleast. As for the flow or the naturality of it... thats going to be tricky. chthonic bell posted:Let's rephrase: what can you do with gryphons that you can't do with humans, that is key to the story you're trying to tell? Beyond physical characteristics (gryphon fly, etc), its simply for the purposes of the plot. They are hunting somebody, its unlike anything they have seen, it goes from there. You can ignore this for the purpose of the dialogue if you want to, but I can elaborate further.
|
|
#
?
Apr 5, 2015 16:46
|
|
|
TheGreekOwl posted:If we dont count Pontic Greek, then yes, English is my second language, my first one being Modern Greek. I should mention that a lot of what I write is first written in Modern Greek, then translated into English. Stop doing that and write it in English from the start. That should eliminate at least some issues with your writing, I think - including some very odd turns of phrase and clunky syntax. Translation adds a layer of complexity most writers can't handle, it requires a skillset that's different from just straight-up writing poo poo. TheGreekOwl posted:For the second part, thats a good point, I shouldnt expect everybody to understand Greek phrases, however rudrimentry, without providing context atleast. As for the flow or the naturality of it... thats going to be tricky. Read what you write aloud and see how it flows. If it flows like cement, well, scrap it and rewrite it. Keep doing this until you've got something that you can get your tongue around. It might take a while. You might want to start reading poetry to develop an ear for rhythm, flow and general linguistic aesthetics. TheGreekOwl posted:Beyond physical characteristics (gryphon fly, etc), its simply for the purposes of the plot. They are hunting somebody, its unlike anything they have seen, it goes from there. You can ignore this for the purpose of the dialogue if you want to, but I can elaborate further. Okay, that's fair and all I wanted to know. I think you'd benefit a lot from reading Limyaael's Fantasy Rants. There's a lot of them, so i picked out some that look like they might be relevant to your concept, some that deal with areas you seem to be struggling with and some that are just good articles most speculative fiction authors should pay attention to. I included a lot of the ones on world-building because that is, hands down, the hardest part of speculative fiction. Building Fantasy Worlds Planning & World-Building Casual World-Building World-Building Through Writing World-Building Through Layering Alien Species & Worlds Avoiding Gimmick Worlds Non-Human-Centric Worlds Creating Languages, Part 4: World-Building Reluctant Heroes Army Rant Death & Weapons
|
|
#
?
Apr 5, 2015 17:31
|
|
|
chthonic bell posted:Stop doing that and write it in English from the start. That should eliminate at least some issues with your writing, I think - including some very odd turns of phrase and clunky syntax. Translation adds a layer of complexity most writers can't handle, it requires a skillset that's different from just straight-up writing poo poo. To be honest, I have tried to do both, I just find myself more comfortable and easier to simply translate it from Greek to English. I just trust myself with doing that. I'm going to give it a try again if thats the case, to see if the syntax is corrected. chthonic bell posted:Read what you write aloud and see how it flows. If it flows like cement, well, scrap it and rewrite it. Keep doing this until you've got something that you can get your tongue around. It might take a while. You might want to start reading poetry to develop an ear for rhythm, flow and general linguistic aesthetics. This is good, I will try this with both langauges. chthonic bell posted:I think you'd benefit a lot from reading Limyaael's Fantasy Rants. There's a lot of them, so i picked out some that look like they might be relevant to your concept, some that deal with areas you seem to be struggling with and some that are just good articles most speculative fiction authors should pay attention to. I included a lot of the ones on world-building because that is, hands down, the hardest part of speculative fiction. . AH yiss, Limyaael is good. Thanks for sharing her, but I've pretty much read all of her stuff, through its good to have a few reminders. For the world, I already have a hefty backlog of notes and worldbuilds to support the conflict, there is no problem there. The problem is how I tell it of course, through writing, which she elaborates very well. Since this is military fiction in a fantasy setting, the army and the weapons artifcle is pretty much "How to organised warfare 101" All of theseare a good reminder, except the Reluctant Heroes ones, I am a bit puzzled as to why you included that one a bit.
|
|
#
?
Apr 5, 2015 20:53
|
|
|
I seemed to recall your gryphon commander fell into that archetype, but clearly I recalled wrong! My bad.
|
|
#
?
Apr 5, 2015 21:37
|
|
|
I always wondered what kind of crap Limyaael was reading where she regularly ran into some of the problems she rants about. It reminds me of something an ex of mine (an electrician) said about why there's a rule in safety manual about not installing an electrical outlet inside a swimming pool: "It's only in there because someone was that goddamned stupid."
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2015 04:56
|
|
|
Stuporstar posted:I always wondered what kind of crap Limyaael was reading where she regularly ran into some of the problems she rants about. It reminds me of something an ex of mine (an electrician) said about why there's a rule in safety manual about not installing an electrical outlet inside a swimming pool: "It's only in there because someone was that goddamned stupid." She does occasionally point specific books/authors out. She is not fond of authors like Jordan or Goodkind at all. I would imagine some of Lackey's books would also hit up the checklist pretty hard, not to mention easy targets like Meyer. It's been a while but I'm pretty sure she got a few share of twilight rants. Unfortunately in a lot of genre fiction, the things she points out are more common then not. Limyaael's book reviews are pretty good too and I'd highly recommend them. Found some great books like Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell that way and she also covers stuff like biographies and non-genre fiction as well.
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2015 07:34
|
|
|
Stuporstar posted:I always wondered what kind of crap Limyaael was reading where she regularly ran into some of the problems she rants about. It reminds me of something an ex of mine (an electrician) said about why there's a rule in safety manual about not installing an electrical outlet inside a swimming pool: "It's only in there because someone was that goddamned stupid." I was just reading one and at the start she mentions she was a freshman English teacher. The poor woman.
|
|
#
?
Apr 6, 2015 21:25
|
|
|
http://pastebin.com/6D3v81b5 Its me again, I sat on this for a few days or so, revising it wherever I could, trying to make it sound more natural, as well as making it shorter. That goes for the syntax and naturality of the language. Of the terms I introduce and throw around I have elaborated on previous chapters. I am not one to throw the viewer in a sea of unknowable words and letting him drown on it. There's some context in the previous page if anybody wants to get the background of this btw.
|
|
#
?
Apr 8, 2015 22:20
|
|
|
TheGreekOwl posted:http://pastebin.com/6D3v81b5 I don't want to be overly harsh but this language doesn't sound natural at all. It sounds almost like something deliberately heightened, like an argument between two Homeric gods or something. Like: 'Polytechnous: Shut it Varnaskhia, you’re a tumor treading on my wings, a unbeliever pretending to be goddess bestowing us from ignorance' Tumours don't tread. There are grammar issues here, like a missing comma before the name and a missing article before 'goddess'. You don't bestow something from someone. Your English here on the forums is way more natural and fluent than this stuff.
|
|
#
?
Apr 8, 2015 22:29
|
|
|
HopperUK posted:Tumours don't tread. Let me tell you about an uncle I had.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2015 04:48
|
|
|
This is supposed to be a comic right? Forgetting about the quality of the dialogue, which others have touched on, what about the sheer quantity? Is a good comic comprised of dozens of pages of two characters sitting in a tent talking? I feel like conversations in comics normally consist of a few pithy sentences that serve to move the action forward. The medium just isn't suited to extended dialogue. newtestleper fucked around with this message at 05:43 on Apr 9, 2015 |
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2015 05:18
|
|
|
There's bits like "the beings of others unable to understand, let alone his own self" - What are the 'beings of others'? Their personalities, identities, struggles? There's a lot of places where the wording gets in the way of comprehension. It's not necessarily grammatically incorrect, but it's elaborate in a way that makes the ideas you're trying to convey difficult. The more complex an idea you're putting out there, the more plainly you'll need to describe it. I'll say that I do like the ideas at play here, even if I can't necessarily get a clear handle on the way they're talking about it. And I kind of like the way that it definitely feels translated. As a historian I've read a lot of translated works, and where your style works, I get that sort of feeling from it. Unfortunately, there's a lot of places where it doesn't work. I could pull out specific lines, but I don't think that would necessarily help, since the problem is that you need a better ear for what works smoothly in English. (Believe me, I get that writing in another language is really hard.) The best I could suggest would be to read some more English books. I don't know whether more complex books would help (since the dialogue here is more complex) or more straightforward books would (since that would help you get a sense of how to convey things clearly). The idea of warrior animals puts me in the mind of the Redwall books, and I remember reading them as a young teen, so the language is probably pretty easy, if you want to try reading one or two of those and seeing if that helps. That said, I've got to agree with newtestleper that this doesn't feel like comic dialogue. Like I said, it feels more like a play, where the dialogue and acting are going to be doing the most work. What's going to be going on in the background while they're doing all this talking? Just shots of the two of them going back and forth?
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2015 16:01
|
|
|
I thought it seemed very playlike, too. In the context of a grand stage play I actually kind of like the tone of it.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2015 18:45
|
|
|
The thing that your comments made me concious a bit was that visualizing the enviroment and the dialogue seperately, first writing dialogue as if its being spoken in a vaccum, without the enviroment as if its two philosophers talking, after which I try to inject it into the actual enviroment with two living beings talking and reacting externally to the world. I mean even theater isnt just two people in a vaccum talking, there's ussually props or something around them to interact with. In which case, first I am going to have less seperation between dialogue and the enviroment first. This I believe will also help people understand how I'm going to make the comic. If the characters are more active with their enviroment, through the only thing I can do is post storyboards as of now (like this http://i.imgur.com/HMAki7e.jpg) Djeser posted:The best I could suggest would be to read some more English books. I don't know whether more complex books would help (since the dialogue here is more complex) or more straightforward books would (since that would help you get a sense of how to convey things clearly). The idea of warrior animals puts me in the mind of the Redwall books, and I remember reading them as a young teen, so the language is probably pretty easy, if you want to try reading one or two of those and seeing if that helps. I tried to check out Redwall and... yeah, I dont think this fits the 'angry authoritative rhetoric' style I'm trying to go for (think Heinlein+Ayn Rand). Not just in terms of story (my animals are political and social animals first, and they dont live in such an morally absolutist setting) but I think the dialogue is meant for a teen and under audiance. I'm not sure if I want to make it that simple without going barebones. I am in the middle of checking out some English Authors if anything, so I believe I can learn from that.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2015 20:38
|
|
|
I was suggesting it mainly because I remembered reading it and enjoying it, and because I figured getting a look at simpler prose could help you get a better ear for how to make things clear. When it comes to comics, I definitely think you should approach it with the images first. Writing only prose is one thing, but comics are primarily visual with writing to complement the images. You could still make an extended dialogue scene interesting, but as you're planning out a scene like that, you'll have to keep in mind a balance between dialogue and action and having the two work together for greater meaning, and all that.
|
|
#
?
Apr 9, 2015 20:46
|
|
|
It was jarring but the speech did sort of convey a subtle bit of primitive unstructured communication across species/cultures? Like if two philosophers of different languages had to learn to communicate with each other in a cave over a week by explaining lofty concepts; they'd perhaps be able to convey a portion of the intended meaning while the unintelligible part came across vague. Reminded me of a TNG episode where aliens spoke in something like contextual references to their history. It didn't seem very intentional though.
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2015 06:34
|
|
|
Do you have any panels mocked up or anything to give us a better idea of the kind of space / aesthetic you're working with? It sort of sounds like you are focusing on worldbuilding through exposition and dialogue at the expense of the visual component, which is kind of the entire point of a comic book. Worldbuilding can be great for creating organic plot elements, establishing the feel you want to convey, etc., but I've also seen a lot of people that spend months or years doing nothing but worldbuilding and almost invariably nothing approaching a finished product ever materializes from it. There are definitely comics / graphic novels out there with dense text (From Hell is a pretty good example), but it's probably not something you should be shooting for without a very good reason. I also have to agree that your English in this thread feels far more casual and natural. There are minor grammatical errors here and there, but if you hadn't mentioned that you weren't a native speaker, I doubt I would have even noticed them. I guess you are trying to create a certain tone / style by translating it, but I think you are underestimating how difficult it is to translate prose. It's not just a matter of plugging in the corresponding words. The results you are getting right now are going to sound very stilted and unnatural to any native English speaker, and not in an "Oh, it just sounds archaic" way. edit: Whoops, missed that storyboard you posted. Still kind of hard to visualize since those panels have like three lines of dialogue total. I would definitely caution against using Ayn Rand as a source of stylistic inspiration, though - not only is her prose absolute dogshit, but it's also kind of infamously bloated and long-winded. Which doesn't mean that it can't be distilled - just something to be aware of. The first thing that actually sprung to mind was Bioshock, a video game that parodies Rand's philosophy and manages to establish that same kind of tone with a much better economy of words. I'm probably a giant nerd for even using that as a point of reference, but it might be legitimately useful to track down the game's script (are they called scripts? I dunno) for a look at how another medium - specifically another visual medium - approached the same source material. Grizzled Patriarch fucked around with this message at 08:16 on Apr 10, 2015 |
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2015 07:41
|
|
|
Neukoln19 posted:I'd like to improve as a writer but I'm not in a big hurry. Why not?
|
|
#
?
Apr 10, 2015 07:55
|
|
|
http://pastebin.com/TnUCMZea Right, after this, I believe its time for me to take a break, sit on this for a week or two before looking back at it. I cant, for one, focus too much one one particular scene, as with most writers I get blind and used to some things that may be blatantly wrong once viewed with a clean mind, and for two, I can't simply keep on posting in this thread everytime I make even a marginal revision on this. Anyways, so, I tried to slash some of the dialogue down, I read it outloud, I drunk some alchohol, I revised, I did a few things, ate a hamburger, I slapped on the a (rewritten) ending to the scene (which, btw, I would like to hear your thoughts on). I am going to take bigger breaks between posting here. I think it should be nessecery to also accompany it with visuals, even sketches or storyboards if I need to bring out more concerns to you guys. Somebody said that I should bring this too the guys in the webcomics thread in that case. I think I will, but only if it has to do with the visuals first, the dialogue second (say how the dialogue should conform to the visuals), while here its more for getting a good story first, before churning it out with some pretty pictures. Grizzled Patriarch posted:edit: Whoops, missed that storyboard you posted. Still kind of hard to visualize since those panels have like three lines of dialogue total. I would definitely caution against using Ayn Rand as a source of stylistic inspiration, though - not only is her prose absolute dogshit, but it's also kind of infamously bloated and long-winded. I should have elaborated there. Dont worry, I'm not going to follow her on any of her authoritative rhetoric, I just find the way and the anger she used sometimes as fascinating. Same with Heinlein, and more to a degree, Gustav Hasford. (I will try to post accompany more visuals in this case too, and provide the dialogue alongside with them) Anyways, a big thanks to everybody that has helped me in this thread, I truly needed it.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2015 02:07
|
|
|
Let's look at very basic English errors you are making.quote:
Much of what I bolded is basic lack of subject-verb agreement. I didn't even bother touching the extremely awkward turns of phrase that are not explicitly wrong. The worst part of all this is that I basically have no idea what is going on at all. I'm imagining two gryphons trying to post on each other's Facebook walls so that their friends can see how smart they are, but they are throwing half of their words into a thesaurus and pasting in a synonym without knowing what it actually means.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2015 04:25
|
|
|
TheGreekOwl, the best advice is to just shelf this project. The entire premise sounds uninteresting, the language is stilted enough to be unreadable, and there's no way all this dialogue can make a good webcomic; there would be no room for the art, just Read more books (fantasy or otherwise) in English, preferably that tell a story rather than existing to deliver a Message. If you actually want to share this where people will read it, you need to improve the very basics of language structure first, and you do that by reading. A lot.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2015 04:59
|
|
|
TheGreekOwl posted:http://pastebin.com/TnUCMZea I cannot detect any parts of a story in your link. I read two gryphons arguing at each other from different levels.
|
|
#
?
Apr 11, 2015 05:07
|
|
|
I used to love creative writing in school and always had an ambition to write, but as the years have passed it never really happened. Do you guys have advice of starting out? Or is it really just a trial and error process? (inter-mixed with feedback from peers) I have seriously not written anything besides academic papers in a long time and I am unsure of how to proceed. I did note the OP's suggestions on reading widely and I am certainly guilty of falling into a genre trap. Thanks in advance.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2015 12:31
|
|
|
marmaduke1979 posted:I used to love creative writing in school and always had an ambition to write, but as the years have passed it never really happened. Do you guys have advice of starting out? Or is it really just a trial and error process? (inter-mixed with feedback from peers) You could try Thunderdome! I find the combination of a weekly prompt and a strict deadline helped me get going.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2015 12:35
|
|
|
HopperUK posted:You could try Thunderdome! I find the combination of a weekly prompt and a strict deadline helped me get going. Thanks, I will check it out.
|
|
#
?
Apr 17, 2015 00:35
|
|
|
I've just re-started fictional writing after a couple months of work, and I would really appreciate it if I could get some feedback on general style. http://pastebin.com/KkajNNx0 is a quickie example I wrote up- I think my character voices and general dialog are my weakest skill, but I'd love some help honing in on what I should be focusing on improving.
|
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2015 10:28
|
|
|
Omi no Kami posted:I've just re-started fictional writing after a couple months of work, and I would really appreciate it if I could get some feedback on general style. http://pastebin.com/KkajNNx0 is a quickie example I wrote up- I think my character voices and general dialog are my weakest skill, but I'd love some help honing in on what I should be focusing on improving. This is pretty purple. Lots of unnecessary wordiness. Tone the language down and try to express more through strong actions. Right off the bat, you should generally introduce the character before you tell us about their alabaster skin (and unless you're writing a bodice-ripping sort of romance, maybe avoid ostentatious adjectives for skin). It's weird to read about skin before learning about who it's attached to. And like, you've got three people in this room, but I have no idea where they are in relation to each other. The assistant is speaking from some shadowy corner, the servant literally just materializes. You describe Victor's sweat as "unnoticed" twice. You use mostly said-bookisms. Which is stuff like, "blah blah blah," she sighed. Or, "Bluurgh," he queried. Basically, it's using any word other than "said" when attributing dialog to a character. With that in mind, you used "mused" twice when attributing dialog, which in a short snippet like this, feels repetitive. You have a few pesky habits, but practice and critique should sort that out. May I suggest you come on over to the Thunderdome, which will provide both. The next prompt will probably be out on Monday or Tuesday, depending on how fast the current round is judged.
|
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2015 11:23
|
|
|
Thanks for the feedback! With the weird focus on the skin and grime I was trying to go for the verbal equivalent of a close shot that pans back, but I think simplicity will help a lot. I ended up checking the thunderdome minutes after they closed the current one, so I'll probably kick in for the next. ^^ The said-bookisms, as you call them, are a horrible habit of mine. I've never gotten the hang of making long sequences of dialog flow, so I tend to fill them with excessive commentary and/or unnecessary detail about the speakers as they go. Omi no Kami fucked around with this message at 11:54 on Apr 18, 2015 |
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2015 11:52
|
|
|
The cursor isn't a camera, Battuta said pithily.
|
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2015 15:53
|
|
|
Omi no Kami posted:The said-bookisms, as you call them, are a horrible habit of mine. I've never gotten the hang of making long sequences of dialog flow, so I tend to fill them with excessive commentary and/or unnecessary detail about the speakers as they go. Here's a quick fix: dont do that.
|
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2015 16:05
|
|
|
if your characters are doing something idly, say it before the dialogue and if it needs to change, only then bring it up. if your characters are throwing their hands all over the place when they talk, you don't need to do that unless your character is zizek or something. in which case you can say what he does beforehand, or after the first dialogue sentence or whatever. but really, most people don't do stuff when they talk, or they do something half-assed that can be stated beforehand.
|
|
#
?
Apr 18, 2015 19:56
|
|
|
please look past the fact that i literally failed to bold my title tia and at least one typo what a disaster take the moon fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Apr 19, 2015 |
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2015 18:45
|
|
|
im not going to care about that dude
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2015 19:00
|
|
|
chill judging is best judging
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2015 19:15
|
|
|
I had a dream last night that I was gonna forget to sub. I don't wanna fail with a complete entry on my harddrive. Now it's time to change gears to long form again. Does anyone have a rec for a style guide? I'm out of love with Strunk & White.
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2015 19:35
|
|
|
I found Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace by Joseph Williams to be useful.
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2015 20:22
|
|
|
RedTonic posted:I had a dream last night that I was gonna forget to sub. I don't wanna fail with a complete entry on my harddrive. Steven Pinker of all people wrote a style guide. It's pretty good, apparently.
|
|
#
?
Apr 19, 2015 21:05
|
|
|
Megazver posted:Steven Pinker of all people wrote a style guide. It's pretty good, apparently. Ooh. Something to look forward to, depending on how people here judge on the following issues. You may remember me as that person whom nobody likes in CC, or if I'm fortunate you don't remember me at all. It's been recently suggested to me that I don't know how to have fun, and that has caused me to take a bit of a review of my hobbies and entertainments, in the process discarding some of them, at least temporarily. But you know where this is going. For a couple of days I've intermittently sat looking at my currect writing project. Quite gloomily I must say... I think it wouldn't come as a surprise to anyone if I said that I've almost never had fun writing it. But frankly, over the years I've formed the impression that you aren't really supposed to have fun while writing, and it's never struck me as strange for an unpaying hobby which nobody cares about, until now that other hobbies have been leaving my repertoire, mostly due to the fact that I would spend a significant portion of time staring at a blank page or screen or procrastinating, painfully, while attempting to do these hobbies. The situation is exacerbated by my having other activities to compare writing to, such as programming, which is for me mostly productive and engaging. These are not pleasant thoughts to have, since I, like probably most people here, have aspired to writerhood since a very young age. So, noticing that a little earlier in this thread one poster suggested to another to drop their premise, maybe the problem is my current story. Mind you, I've never had any luck with works of such size (aiming for a novel). And maybe my fun-deficiency goes deeper than that, into my premises and plots. But it's best to provide an illustration. My current premise/plot: A man wakes up in a forest, with only a laptop computer in his possession. Almost immediately he meets a young woman who announces that he's the messiah of her cult, and he's destined to save the world. Also straightaway they discover that the computer has a wireless connection to the fabric of reality, and the man can potentially "hack" the world, if he knew the right commands. The pair, together with a few other people, travel, overcoming some obstacles, to the leader of J's (which I'll call the woman here) cult. On the way R (the man) learns the codes for the world in an ancient sanctuary*. The leader of the cult sends J and R on a quest to the Source Tower, which contains the source code for the world, which R could modify, to save the world from the dark lord C (all the letters are less embarrassing than the actual names) who's also hacking the world. (*I'm almost to here in the first draft.) Right after this plotdump, in a scuttle with some of C's goons, R gets knocked out, and awakes in a detention facility where he's been kept sedated as a dangerous criminal, with all of the previous story revealed as a dream. Unfortunately, he's not given much time to do anything with this revelation, sedated again, and sent back into the dream. That's enough of that, I think. Some other elements worth mentioning: during the rest of the story R loses consciousness several more times, and during each period finds himself coming to in a different situation, such as where R is an artificial intelligence that scientists are testing in a simulated reality. In addition, the narrator is at least supposed to be an active force in the story, guiding, misleading, or just mocking R from time to time. I reckon the wall of text is tall enough. Appreciate input on all accounts.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2015 07:56
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 14, 2024 01:58 |
|
|
supermikhail posted:You may remember me as that person whom nobody likes in CC, or if I'm fortunate you don't remember me at all. Dude, don't do this, you're bringing up old, irrelevant garbage and causing undue prejudice as well as making yourself a magnet for negative attention -- any praise your idea would otherwise receive will be negated, and your criticism will be unduly harsh as a result. Anyhow, your idea's intriguing, but the main character ("R") doesn't seem to have much agency -- same problem I have in my stories. Give him a reason other than "he woke up and a chick jumps out and screams 'HAIL TO THE CYBER-MESSIAH!'" and "poo poo just keeps happening to him man, I don't know what the deal is!" You need to give him a clear story arc, and what you have currently are a series of vignettes that seems to rely on its gimmick than any substance. If you're embarrassed by your character's names, why did you name them that? If you like the names, use the names and to hell with opinion. If you don't, why use them? Don't be ashamed of your work -- hell, one of the main characters in my novel is named Darkside Black for Chrissakes, and another's named Pepper Zesty, your stuff can't be worse than that. Finally, don't post ideas, post your work. Everyone has ideas, not many people make them reality. Put pen to paper, fingers to keyboard, and write.
|
|
#
?
Apr 20, 2015 16:14
|
|
