"Are we qualified for this?" - Fixing Ready Player One

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Creative Convention > "Are we qualified for this?" - Fixing Ready Player One

«‹›15 »

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Here, I will be nice and give you a real quick paragraph example of how it could open

The sky above the tomb was the color of neon, ever-changing and never the same shade twice. The grinning maw of the face carved into the black stone mountain was either welcoming me, or mocking my arrogance in coming. I do not know how many people stepped through those ebony fangs into the dungeon below, but I know that no one had ever returned from it. If they had, the quest would already be over, the prize already won. Standing here, before the first of Anorak's challenges, I was faced with two possibilities. Either I, somehow, had found the missing piece of a puzzle that had gone unsolved for years, or, more likely, I was simply next in the long line of victims who never made it a step further. Of course, I was not afraid of dying here. I couldn't die here after all. I was afraid of something worse. Game over. Which meant being forever disconnected from the OASIS.

# ? Apr 18, 2018 23:00

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Jun 2, 2024 12:19

Darth Walrus: Feb 13, 2012

Think I might have a go at an opening. Not to do better, per se, but to do different. I�m not sure why the curation process matters, or why people are being put off by it - everything we do will be available in plain text on a public forum for anyone to read, and if we want to pull the bits we�ve done together into a single story, there�s nothing stopping us from making an index post with a bunch of links.

Just write poo poo out, and don�t worry about any sort of judging process or external quality-control that might erase what you�ve already put out on a public forum, and if someone does start with some heinous poo poo, just report �em and move on. The mods will edit that out. Write, get feedback, grow as a writer, have fun.

# ? Apr 18, 2018 23:00

Mrenda: Mar 14, 2012

Mel Mudkiper posted:

Here, I will be nice and give you a real quick paragraph example of how it could open

The sky above the tomb was the color of neon, ever-changing and never the same shade twice. The grinning maw of the face carved into the black stone mountain was either welcoming me, or mocking my arrogance in coming. I do not know how many people stepped through those ebony fangs into the dungeon below, but I know that no one had ever returned from it. If they had, the quest would already be over, the prize already won. Standing here, before the first of Anorak's challenges, I was faced with two possibilities. Either I, somehow, had found the missing piece of a puzzle that had gone unsolved for years, or, more likely, I was simply next in the long line of victims who never made it a step further. Of course, I was not afraid of dying here. I couldn't die here after all. I was afraid of something worse. Game over. Which meant being forever disconnected from the OASIS.

I'm not a fan of how wrought this is, even if it's writing about a momentous event. I imagine it'd be hard to carry on throughout the story without it getting tired, but at the very least it sets the stakes for itself, has a style and says a lot with little. That's a lot more than the original piece had and any objection I have to it is personal preference rather than me recoiling from blandness.

# ? Apr 18, 2018 23:05

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Mrenda posted:

I'm not a fan of how wrought this is, even if it's writing about a momentous event. I imagine it'd be hard to carry on throughout the story without it getting tired, but at the very least it sets the stakes for itself, has a style and says a lot with little. That's a lot more than the original piece had and any objection I have to it is personal preference rather than me recoiling from blandness.

Oh totally. I legit wrote it in two minutes just to give an example of what I meant by slowly leading you in. I imagine if I were actually trying to fit the tone I would probably cut the melodrama down a bit.

# ? Apr 18, 2018 23:08

nine-gear crow: Aug 10, 2013

Mel Mudkiper posted:

What are you even mod of anyways

You might right now? RGD. :getin:

# ? Apr 18, 2018 23:16

Mrenda: Mar 14, 2012

Mel Mudkiper posted:

Oh totally. I legit wrote it in two minutes just to give an example of what I meant by slowly leading you in. I imagine if I were actually trying to fit the tone I would probably cut the melodrama down a bit.

The point wasn't criting your writing. More showing that it's possible to have a style and legitimate grievances with that style, such is your piece, compared to something that almost universally reads as bland and uninvolved, as is the original. There's decisions you need to make with you writing about how you're saying what. Once you've reached that point arguing for or against your voice is one thing, but when it's not gotten to the point of involving the reader it's not worth the debate. And the big thing is once that voice is found a lot of authors never leave it. It becomes theirs, with nudges and touches adding flair or reducing flourishes, but often it is them forever more.

Writing is hard, chitoryu. Enter thunderdome.

# ? Apr 18, 2018 23:16

fridge corn: Apr 2, 2003; NO MERCY, ONLY PAIN

chitoryu12 posted:

That's literally the lyrics of the song, which is playing in-universe. It's not a reference, it's happening.

Lmao I can't believe this thread is even real

# ? Apr 18, 2018 23:32

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

I actually found Mel's contribution of a quick excerpt a much better way of expressing what kind of writing you guys are looking for. I agree that it's really overwrought, but I've got a better grasp on what's being suggested.

For me, I figure out writing best when I have something to bounce off of. Telling me something like "Add interiority" when I look at my text and see where I already had interiority doesn't really help me understand what to grasp for as much as seeing a tangible example of something different that I can think about.

# ? Apr 18, 2018 23:35

Stuporstar: May 5, 2008; Where do fists come from?

chitoryu12 posted:

I'm referencing one of the most famous early cyberpunk novels in a quasi-cyberpunk book that's structured around 80s references. This isn't hard.

The other dude's multicolored sky opening was better because it actually set up a vivid image of the world, the false world of more primary concern to the character, than yours did.

quote:

Because more detail about Wade's daily life in the stacks is coming in the next chapter. This is following the same rough structure where it opens with a quasi-flashback to 5 years ago to the Hunt beginning, with the second chapter returning to the main story of 2095 after the basics of the Hunt have been established.

If you don't need the details about the character's daily life until later, don't bring them in until later. As a few people have already said, if his life in the OASIS is more important to him, start the story inside it.

quote:

Not only is that not how the text is meant to be read, I preemptively answered the question about that paragraph when I posted the sample: it's showing the irrelevancy of the details of Halliday's death to Wade at the time by putting them on the same dramatic level as the weather that day.

If someone reads something wrong, that's on you as the writer. Your aim, when you get misread like that, is to figure out how to correct that impression by making your intentions clearer in your draft. This is why explaining what you meant is discouraged vs. shutting up, redrafting, and reposting your work because that's where you need to be doing your speaking here. Asking for clarification, of why someone thought what they did, is fine, but don't do it like this. Take a long break before responding to criticism that goads you.

quote:

The virtual classroom isn't meant to be a satirical image.

Maybe it should be. A little self-awareness can only make this lovely story world better, like Paul Verhoven did to Starship Troopers.

quote:

One of the worst parts of the original is that it assumes the readers are idiots who need to have every single detail about OASIS, the current state of the world, and a full biography of Wade Watts and James Halliday explained in multiple chapter-long info dumps occasionally interrupted by a few sentences of story.

The solution is not to go the total opposite though, explaining nothing. What you're doing right now is fanfic, which leans heavily on the original to make sense. If you're out to write a better novel than RPO, you have to pretend you're starting with a reader from scratch. The trick is to balance small bits of exposition with relevant details. How are you going to do that?

How about you first decide who your narrator is telling the story to. You've already started with first person, and you need to think about why beyond "but that's how Earnest Cline chose to tell it" because he loving sucks. It's not too late to change at this point because good first person is hard compared to limited third. A first person narrator has to have a distinctive voice, filled with opinions and musings and a bit of bullshit artistry, otherwise it falls flat. Who would Wade be telling this story to? Is he writing it for posterity or to entertain his grandkids or what? Is he telling it as someone wiser after the fact? That decision is going to affect not only the tone you tell it in, but how much your fictional audience is expected to know. Choosing an audience that isn't already inside that world means he has to make concessions to them, therefore giving you a reason to furnish the actual reader with details they need. On the other hand, telling it in third person means you can tell the reader exactly what they need to know when they need to know it without all the literary acrobatics, which is why it's the preferred POV for genre writers and learning ones too. Amatuerish first person suuuuuucks.

quote:

After your last "contributions" to the thread, your reading of the text is so bad that I'm pretty sure it's intentional.

If your thread is going to survive in CC, you need to get better at taking people's criticism even when it's not delivered nicely. BoTL may be "the most ignored user the Book Barn" but he actually took the time to look at what you'd written and give you criticism and all you did was whinge and backtalk, which does not go down well here. I'm trying to be helpful by saying stop that. People are only going to want to honestly help you if you keep your cool.

# ? Apr 19, 2018 04:19

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

I've done another draft of this, trying to tweak it some more. I'm still not really sure on an in media res intro, but I'm trying to flesh out the details and Wade's feelings here.

quote:

I was 6 months old when my dad was shot trying to rob a liquor store, 10 years old when my mom rotted with a needle in her arm, 14 years old when the world got hosed up, and 18 years old when I got a chance to unfuck it.

For that whole time, I lived in the stacks. Rusty corrugated steel broken up every 15 vertical feet by a window. As little time as possible was spent in them, though. When I could get away with it, I was in Paris. I was in an Egyptian tomb circa 1320 BCE. I was in a vaguely near future Detroit that had come and gone 90 years ago. I was in a place that never existed, but existed more the older I got.

The exact date�s easy to find, though, if you Google it. December 2nd, 2090. According to weather.com, Oklahoma City was cloudy that day with a high of 39 degrees Fahrenheit and a low of 27 degrees. At the moment his heart made its final beat, the wind was 6 miles per hour and blowing northwest. Brain cells begin to die after 4 to 6 minutes without blood flow, so I suppose the humidity was around 24% when James Halliday ceased to exist. Give or take.

What I remember is that I was 14 years old when the virtual school day was interrupted by a window that appeared in front of every avatar. I think it might have been my US History (Basic) class, but a lot of these OASIS teachers look interchangeable so my memory is a bit fuzzy then. I knew that everybody meant everybody because even my teacher was left dead in his tracks.

The window was black at first, with the title bar along the top simply reading �Anorak�s Invitation�. We had all gotten emails from Anorak before, but you had a choice when and where you listened. Now, the world was frozen until the message was over.

The first sound we all heard in our headphones was a distorted screech, beating a riff that eventually burned its way into the head of 10 billion people. I had just enough time for my eyebrows to raise before a quick rap of percussion, and then a soprano voice.

�I�m all dressed up and nowhere to go�.�

An image faded in. It looked like some kind of gymnasium, packed wall to wall with young men and women gyrating and grinding to the beat. It was grainy and blurry, like an old recording, not like OASIS graphics. Bright colors, massive belts over bared waists, and even more massive hair. Hoop earrings so big you could fly a Space Shuttle through them. And up on the stage was a band of eight, none even trying to match outfits, all fronted by a redheaded man with an impish grin and a white wife beater.

A live band especially was a downtown extravagance, something an IOI suit would have. A confused golden warmth spread through my chest, one that never existed when I was younger. I knew of the basic components of rock, virtually unchanged for a hundred years. Guitar, bass, drum, keyboard, software. But this was real. Fingers pressing frets and keys, wooden sticks coming down on Mylar, and mallets ringing notes from wooden bars.

Text appeared in the corner of the screen:

Oingo Boingo
Dead Man�s Party
Back To School Motion Picture Soundtrack
MCA Records, Orion Pictures
1985

The camera swung over and finally settled on one figure in the crowd, swinging his arms wildly and spastically by himself. In a crowd of young men and women, he was double their age. Rather than the product-crafted bouffants surrounding him, his hair was wild and unkempt. Horn-rimmed glasses, ratty old jeans, and a faded Space Invaders T-shirt rounded out a very out-of-place package.

I noticed my head was nodding to the beat of century-old music, and it looked like the crazy man was enjoying it as well because he started to lip sync to the words. For a minute, the camera swung around the space and cut in tune with the music. But rather than focusing on the band, it focused on the middle-aged man dancing like a lunatic in the crowd. Nobody else paid a bit of attention to him, but they still maintained a wide enough berth that his flailing arms didn�t touch them. The space was not a natural one. It was constructed for him.

He sang one more phrase, �Walking with a dead man, dead man, dead man,� and swept his hand. Only he was left, standing in a silent void, his lip curled.

Something faded into the background. He was now standing in front of a polished wooden box, and behind him a wooden lectern carved like an angel, and behind that a stained glass window depicting some sort of religious scene (I�m not too familiar with my Bible, so I can�t say what it was). The world�s cheesiest organ provided a soundtrack. It took me a bit to recognize exactly what this room was; Mom�s service was held in the crematorium, since that was cheaper.

The camera cut again. Inside the casket lay the corpse of the oldest man I had ever seen, a skeleton with a fragile layer of tissue paper stretched over. A few wispy gray hairs had been neatly combed into place, and a pair of silver coins laid down over his eyes. As it cut to the crowd of mourners in the pews, I couldn�t help but notice that they shared the hairstyles and makeup of the people who were just dancing, even though they traded their party clothes for suits and dresses.

Looking up from the casket, the man snapped his fingers. A weathered scroll appeared in his hands, rolling all the way to the floor. Clearing his throat, he began to read:

�I, James Donovan Halliday, being of sound mind and disposing memory, do hereby make, publish, and declare this instrument to be my last will and testament, hereby revoking any and all wills and codicils by me at any time heretofore made.��

I hope I can do something this self-serving when I die.

Halliday shrugged and tossed the scroll over his shoulder, landing on Halliday�s bony hands in the casket. �That will, uh, take far too long� he continued. Without his script, he spoke as if unfamiliar with the language, grasping for each word. �If you are watching this, I am dead. This video is triggered to be sent to every OASIS user upon the moment of brain death in my body.� I heard gasping and murmuring from the rest of my class. I�m sure a few of them said something a lot more profane, but the censorship plugin would have caught it first.

The funeral parlor turned to dust, replaced by a bank vault door that Halliday stood in front of. As he spoke, the door swung open to reveal a glittering pile of gold bullion.

�I have no children and no wife to accept my inheritance. My personal fortune consists of five hundred billion dollars, in addition to a controlling share of stock in Gregarious Simulation Systems. This has been placed in escrow until a condition is met.�

As the scene once more turned to dust, Halliday went with it. Almost instantly taking his place was a wizened old man in a green hooded robe, like an old fantasy wizard stereotype. Anorak the Great. The bank vault was now a cavernous treasure hoard, stacked to the ceiling with coins, jewels, swords, and�video game consoles.

Anorak spread his hands wide, and three keys appeared between them. One copper, one milky green jade, and one transparent crystal. His voice boomed, a version of Halliday�s morphed into a grizzled old man; somehow, the hesitant and stilted speech felt more appropriate in the voice of such an elderly figure. Flaming subtitles appeared on screen as he spoke:

Three hidden keys open three secret gates
Wherein the errant will be tested for worthy traits
And those with the skill to survive these straits
Will reach The End where the prize awaits

�I have created a Hunt. An...Easter Egg Hunt, if you will. Many video games have had these, and now OASIS does as well. Whosoever finds the keys and completes the challenges within shall be awarded with my entire estate.�

My chest felt tight. I think I nearly fell out of my chair. I know I missed the next sentence, since I had to watch the video another time before I remembered it.

�If you visit my personal website, you�ll find my journal. All of the clues you need to compete are in there.� Anorak stepped into the treasure hoard and grasped the massive wooden doors on either side of him. �Let the hunt for Halliday�s Easter Egg begin.� As the doors slammed shut, the browser window disappeared. Nobody moved a muscle.

It was like a light clicked on, illuminating a thousand years of want on Earth. It was a feeling only held by the most religious, a feeling that God had personally granted you salvation.

The teacher stuttered a hasty �Class is canceled� and disappeared from the room. Another browser window popped up in front of every single student, myself included, as we traveled to Halliday�s website. For so many years, it displayed nothing but a simple 3D animation of Anorak stirring potions and reading spellbooks in his study. But now it was simply labeled �SCOREBOARD� along the top. Ten places were visible, all empty. And at the bottom was an icon of a leather-bound journal. The first clue.

Clicking the journal for the first time, I was overwhelmed. Not merely by the possibility of wealth, but by the journal itself. Anorak�s Almanac opened with an entry from June 15th, 1979. The 7-year-old Halliday briefly mentioned how his mother encouraged him to start keeping a journal to keep all his thoughts in one place because of how many he has, and then immediately began rambling off the page about playing Space Invaders until my eyes glazed over.

I flipped through the journal and found over a thousand pages of the same. The dating grew sparser until it was nothing but pages and pages of Halliday�s stream of consciousness. Opinions on movies, music, and video games (surprisingly little about literature from what I skimmed through). Opinions on the world, from complaints about politics to chortling about religion to bizarre diatribes on the importance of masturbation.

I tried to find some sense of understanding, some sort of clue. But it all looked the same to me. Forum posts sprouted overnight to try and find anything, but it all seemed fruitless. Methods like arranging the first word of every entry, or ordering movies by release date. Not a single conclusion felt like it had any merit. Every supposed hidden message had someone point out that the decoder had violated their own rules for decoding and thus the clue was fake.

Slowly, over a month, it faded. Some said it couldn�t be done, that it was a joke from a sad 122-year-old man to put the world on edge one last time. I�d say that �reality set in�, but that�s not quite true. It�s more like the status quo set in, the slow and meandering pace of history where it took a decade to realize anything changed. The stacks kids remain the stacks kids, and then they�re the same nothing as everyone else. The escape hatch was a patch of wall painted to look like a door.

So one day I closed the journal for good and forgot about it.

# ? Apr 19, 2018 05:03

BravestOfTheLamps: Oct 12, 2012; by FactsAreUseless; Lipstick Apathy

Surely there are more interesting future deaths than that. Maybe his father died trying to smuggle fresh fruit into the country. He was buried alive under it.

BravestOfTheLamps fucked around with this message at 06:47 on Apr 19, 2018

# ? Apr 19, 2018 06:38

Samizdata: May 14, 2007

chitoryu12 posted:

I've done another draft of this, trying to tweak it some more. I'm still not really sure on an in media res intro, but I'm trying to flesh out the details and Wade's feelings here.

I like it. And I think keeping the family deaths as they are is a good idea, as they help establish Wade is just someone. Unlike the hero of Armada.

# ? Apr 19, 2018 06:48

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

chitoryu12 posted:

I was 6 months old when my dad was shot trying to rob a liquor store, 10 years old when my mom rotted with a needle in her arm, 14 years old when the world got hosed up, and 18 years old when I got a chance to unfuck it.

For that whole time, I lived in the stacks. Rusty corrugated steel broken up every 15 vertical feet by a window. As little time as possible was spent in them, though. When I could get away with it, I was in Paris. I was in an Egyptian tomb circa 1320 BCE. I was in a vaguely near future Detroit that had come and gone 90 years ago. I was in a place that never existed, but existed more the older I got.

The exact date�s easy to find, though, if you Google it. December 2nd, 2090. According to weather.com, Oklahoma City was cloudy that day with a high of 39 degrees Fahrenheit and a low of 27 degrees. At the moment his heart made its final beat, the wind was 6 miles per hour and blowing northwest. Brain cells begin to die after 4 to 6 minutes without blood flow, so I suppose the humidity was around 24% when James Halliday ceased to exist. Give or take.

What I remember is that I was 14 years old when the virtual school day was interrupted by a window that appeared in front of every avatar. I think it might have been my US History (Basic) class, but a lot of these OASIS teachers look interchangeable so my memory is a bit fuzzy then. I knew that everybody meant everybody because even my teacher was left dead in his tracks.

In the first four paragraphs you have the protagonist exist in THREE different places rapid fire. He is in the stacks, then he is the OASIS, and then he is the classroom. This is really jarring because all three places are extremely distinct, and the reader is not given any real context to know what they are like. You never provide any experience of these places that helps the reader visualize the setting. You just say what they are like briefly and move on.

Think about the stacks. You could spend pages just in the stacks. Do the stacks sway in the wind? Does the swaying make the protagonist feel ill? Has he gotten used to it? Does the stack every sway so much he is briefly terrified it is going to fall and kill him? What does the stack smell like? Does all the metal closely packed together make the summers unbearably hot? Has he done anything to personalize his place in the Stacks?

The underlined passage is also an extremely out of place transition. There is nothing in the previous two paragraphs that at all establishes the switch in setting and narrative that takes place in the third.

Finally, the opening line establishes the character poorly. Why would he talk so lovely about his parents? If your mother died in front of you slowly from addiction would you tell people "she rotted away with a needle in her arm?" He is so devoid of any sense of lingering affection for his parents that he comes off more like a total edgelord than a human being. Even if he has unresolved anger towards his mother, his recollections of her should be conflicted by that anger, not wholly dismissive of her.

EDIT: The entire excerpt is three chapters of information in approximately one or two pages. You are tossing information at the reader like you are being timed. Absolutely none of the elements of your world are given a chance to settle in and become real for the reader.

Hell, I know exactly what your world is like and even I find myself getting lost in the deluge of details.

Mel Mudkiper fucked around with this message at 12:40 on Apr 19, 2018

# ? Apr 19, 2018 12:31

BravestOfTheLamps: Oct 12, 2012; by FactsAreUseless; Lipstick Apathy

Mel Mudkiper posted:

Finally, the opening line establishes the character poorly. Why would he talk so lovely about his parents? If your mother died in front of you slowly from addiction would you tell people "she rotted away with a needle in her arm?" He is so devoid of any sense of lingering affection for his parents that he comes off more like a total edgelord than a human being. Even if he has unresolved anger towards his mother, his recollections of her should be conflicted by that anger, not wholly dismissive of her.

And remember, this is with the intention to make the character more likable.

# ? Apr 19, 2018 12:38

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

And remember, this is with the intention to make the character more likable.

Yeah, this version of Wade is supremely unsympathetic

EDIT: As stupor said, 1st person narrative works under two pretenses. We are either lead to believe the protagonist is explaining the story after it happened, or that we are experiencing the events as they happen from within the protagonists mind.

If its the first, which it feels like it is, Wade should be narrating the story from a place of growth, looking back on who he was as an older and wiser person. If he has gone through his experience and is still talking like that about his mom and the world, it sounds like he hasn't grown at all.

EDIT2: One more thing. This is exactly why BotL and others kept telling you, when you pitched the project, that you need to think about your prose before worrying about what ethnicity to make your secondary characters. You came into this project with the pretense that a story is all about what happens. However, you are coming to discover the primary thing of interest for a reader is how the story is told. The most interesting world and narrative will never be read if the reader cannot find pleasure simply in the experience of reading your prose.

Prose is the lifeblood of fiction. Literally everything else in a story is secondary to how the story is told. Your prose comes off as sloppy and thoughtless, and it doesn't matter how good your ideas are if you explain them with a total lack of refinement and nuance.

Here's my advice. Spend today as your vision of Wade. Become a method actor. Go through your daily experiences in the perspective of this person as you envision them. How does Wade eat breakfast? Does wade listen to music when he commutes? How does Wade react when he gets stuck behind a red light because the car in front of him went too slowly through the intersection. For a 1st person perspective to work as a literary device, the person whose mind you are inhabiting must be plausible AS A PERSON. If you cannot spend a whole day as this person without feeling exhausted, or finding it tedious, your readers will also find it exhausting and tedious. If there are massive gaps where you are not sure how Wade would react to daily life, it means your vision of Wade is fundamentally incomplete.

Before you write another word of this story, you have to have CREATED Wade. Otherwise, you are simply tossing ornaments on a dead tree.

Mel Mudkiper fucked around with this message at 13:31 on Apr 19, 2018

# ? Apr 19, 2018 12:41

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Here, since Chi keeps saying he wants examples, I typed about a model about what came to mind.

A few caveats

1. I am not a writer, and do not claim to be a writer. This is not me trying to show off.
2. I am not saying this is what good writing looks like, or that it has to look like this. This is merely an example of slowly pulling the reader in.
3. I am still not convinced this project is even a good idea.

quote:

I watched my mother slowly die, and I watched the world die with her. Is it any surprise I sought OASIS?

I know the criticisms, what they usually say about us, the missing generation. Usually it comes from the old ones, the ones who were alive to still remember a time when the world was green. They call us irresponsible, lazy, apathetic. �These damned kids these days, they spend all their time in something that isn�t even real. Can�t they see they are wasting their lives?� I have to roll my eyes at it of course. Who are they to speak of waste? I saw the world they were given, and I saw the world they left for us.

Is the OASIS better than reality? I don�t know. Is the OASIS better than this reality? Absolutely. There is no living in this world anymore, the only hope is escape. And they didn�t even give us that. When I read the old stories, every time I see the year 2090 I hear about starships and space stations and alien life. I read about a humanity better than it was before, searching the stars and spreading life to dead worlds. But, as it turned out, there were no ships. Hell, you were lucky to even have a car. And the only dead world we found was our own.

The only one out of that entire generation worth a drat was James Halliday. He saw what was happening. He saw where we were going. He couldn�t build a rocket, but he built the next best thing. He built us a new world. He built us OASIS.

Everyone got a lifetime subscription, free of charge. All you needed was a headset, any old headset will do. I heard of guys digging century old things called Rifts out of their grand-grandfather�s belongings and being able to log in no problem. I never would have been able to afford a headset myself, but luckily I didn�t have to. It was too hard to physically commute the children of the stacks every day to school. Much easier, and cheaper, just to send us an official Department of Education OASIS module. Open the box, put it on, and enter a better world.

And what a better world it was. My home of Oklahoma City was an endless monochrome. Yellow upon yellow upon yellow. The OASIS had a pallet limited only by your imagination. Everything gleamed with the light of potential. In the real world, the only sounds you heard were the shrill sounds of metal shifting against metal, or of a couple fighting, or loving, or hell, both. But pop in those earphones, and man, oh, man. Every song ever recorded was literally at the snap of your fingertips. You could live a thousand years and still have new songs to hear, new things to see. The OASIS was as vast as human imagination. And, as it turned out, our imagination was infinite.

# ? Apr 19, 2018 15:42

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

Mel Mudkiper posted:

Here, since Chi keeps saying he wants examples, I typed about a model about what came to mind.

A few caveats

1. I am not a writer, and do not claim to be a writer. This is not me trying to show off.
2. I am not saying this is what good writing looks like, or that it has to look like this. This is merely an example of slowly pulling the reader in.
3. I am still not convinced this project is even a good idea.

That's actually really helpful for me. One of the early discussions about this project included figuring out how to order the beginning, and it ended up sticking with the same basic structure instead of putting everything about Wade at the start. I'm totally fine with rearranging that.

I'm basically going to swap Chapters 1 and 2 in the outline, so instead we're working on the establishment of Wade and the universe now instead of in the next chapter.

# ? Apr 19, 2018 15:54

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

chitoryu12 posted:

That's actually really helpful for me. One of the early discussions about this project included figuring out how to order the beginning, and it ended up sticking with the same basic structure instead of putting everything about Wade at the start. I'm totally fine with rearranging that.

I'm basically going to swap Chapters 1 and 2 in the outline, so instead we're working on the establishment of Wade and the universe now instead of in the next chapter.

The problem is not the structure or the outline

The problem is prose

Switching around broken pieces doesn't fix the machine.

# ? Apr 19, 2018 16:30

Clipperton: Dec 20, 2011; Grimey Drawer

Mel Mudkiper posted:

Prose is the lifeblood of fiction. Literally everything else in a story is secondary to how the story is told.

this is not even true. outside of a vanishingly small group of lit-fic dead-enders, everyone who reads fiction values story first, with prose a distant second if it's a consideration at all.

cf: meyer, brown, rowling, hawkins, good old ernest cline. also every other blockbuster novel going back decades. virtually all of the aforementioned dead-enders agrees that their prose is dogshit. but guess what

# ? Apr 19, 2018 16:33

fridge corn: Apr 2, 2003; NO MERCY, ONLY PAIN

Clipperton posted:

this is not even true. outside of a vanishingly small group of lit-fic dead-enders, everyone who reads fiction values story first, with prose a distant second if it's a consideration at all.

cf: meyer, brown, rowling, hawkins, good old ernest cline. also every other blockbuster novel going back decades. virtually all of the aforementioned dead-enders agrees that their prose is dogshit. but guess what

their books are garbage

# ? Apr 19, 2018 16:39

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Clipperton posted:

this is not even true. outside of a vanishingly small group of lit-fic dead-enders, everyone who reads fiction values story first, with prose a distant second if it's a consideration at all.

cf: meyer, brown, rowling, hawkins, good old ernest cline. also every other blockbuster novel going back decades. virtually all of the aforementioned dead-enders agrees that their prose is dogshit. but guess what

A. Rowling is a considerably better writer than everyone else on that list.

B. Most of the writers you listed are not bad as much as they are unchallenging. Dan Brown doesn't write interesting or complex prose, but he has a style that essentially nullifies itself. Its elegant in its ability to be wholly unchallenging. You dont have to think when you read him, which is the point. The only indefensibly bad writer on there is probably Meyer, and she is only successful in a relatively limited way.

C. Lit-fic dead enders lol. Your attempt at a populist refutation of quality is adorable in its ignorance.

# ? Apr 19, 2018 16:42

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

Clipperton posted:

this is not even true. outside of a vanishingly small group of lit-fic dead-enders, everyone who reads fiction values story first, with prose a distant second if it's a consideration at all.

cf: meyer, brown, rowling, hawkins, good old ernest cline. also every other blockbuster novel going back decades. virtually all of the aforementioned dead-enders agrees that their prose is dogshit. but guess what

Show me on the doll where Hemingway touched you.

# ? Apr 19, 2018 16:46

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Imagine being so mad at being told you should try to be a good writer that you make a post that bad

# ? Apr 19, 2018 16:47

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

The biggest literary smash success of the last few years was 50 Shades of Grey, a book whose "plot" was probably not crucial to its success, and which, whatever its possible merits, will certainly not artistically outlive Anais Nin's prose

# ? Apr 19, 2018 16:50

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

Mel Mudkiper posted:

B. Most of the writers you listed are not bad as much as they are unchallenging. Dan Brown doesn't write interesting or complex prose, but he has a style that essentially nullifies itself. Its elegant in its ability to be wholly unchallenging. You dont have to think when you read him, which is the point. The only indefensibly bad writer on there is probably Meyer, and she is only successful in a relatively limited way.

Renowned author Dan Brown is a bad writer.

# ? Apr 19, 2018 16:52

feedmyleg: Dec 25, 2004

Right, but chitoryu12 isn't trying to write a popular book with bad prose. Cline already did that. They're trying to write a limited-audience book with good structure and good prose. So not only is the criticism valid because it's warranted, it's also valid because it's aligned with the goals of the project.

e: Okay, I lied. I'm still going to contribute to this thread in some capacity.

feedmyleg fucked around with this message at 16:57 on Apr 19, 2018

# ? Apr 19, 2018 16:53

Clipperton: Dec 20, 2011; Grimey Drawer

Mel Mudkiper posted:

The only indefensibly bad writer on there is probably Meyer, and she is only successful in a relatively limited way

a million books in two years is not exactly "limited". meanwhile, in the land of good prose:

the guardian talks about man booker nominees posted:

According book sales monitor Nielsen BookScan, Smith�s novel Autumn is the commercial winner so far among the six titles shortlisted for the UK�s most prestigious prize for fiction with almost 50,000 copies sold. From the US, Paul Auster�s 4321 comes in second with nearly 15,000 sales. Saunders�s Lincoln in the Bardo, debut British novelist Fiona Mozley�s Elmet, and British/Pakistani Mohsin Hamid�s Exit West have all sold about 10,000 copies each. History of Wolves, by the American first-timer Emily Fridlund, has sold the least, with a figure of 3,410 copies.

quote:

C. Lit-fic dead enders lol. Your attempt at a populist refutation of quality is adorable in its ignorance.

i think twilight is a terrible book, but the vast majority of people who actually read books do not agree with me. which is my point: you can't be prescriptive about how "style is paramount" or w/e when that point of view is demonstrably in the minority. (not even a minority, really, more like a rounding error.)

# ? Apr 19, 2018 16:57

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Sham bam bamina! posted:

Renowned author Dan Brown is a bad writer.

I mean, I look at Dan Brown and writers similar to him like I look at the films of Roger Corman. They are cheap, thoughtless, and devoid of significance, but you have to admire the efficiency with which they were made. He writes sentences that you are not supposed to ever read twice, because if you do, they fall apart. They are simply there to be easy to read and lead you to the next cliffhanger.

I am using bad in this case to suggest incompetence more than inelegance. Dan Brown is a bad writer in terms of the fact his prose would be annihilated by comparison to pretty much any writer of merit. However, he is simply writing draft screenplays for housewives and grandparents and for that market his writing pretty much serves the purpose.

# ? Apr 19, 2018 16:58

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

Clipperton posted:

i think twilight is a terrible book, but the vast majority of people who actually read books do not agree with me. which is my point: you can't be prescriptive about how "style is paramount" or w/e when that point of view is demonstrably in the minority. (not even a minority, really, more like a rounding error.)

Mel was wrong with that "will never be read" bit, but his actual point was that for chitoryu12 to write a good book, he has to write a good book. That is the goal here, not a place on the NYT list.

# ? Apr 19, 2018 17:03

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Clipperton posted:

a million books in two years is not exactly "limited". meanwhile, in the land of good prose

A. You do realize you listed global sales of a book against the UK sales of a book. The global sales of those books are going to be lower, but you are deliberately skewing the data to your advantage.
B. Almost all books only sell a few thousand a week, literary or no. Its how Handbook for Mortals managed to cheat its way into the bestseller list in the first place.
C. Literary Fiction is more than the Man Booker Prize nominees

# ? Apr 19, 2018 17:04

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Clipperton posted:

a million books in two years is not exactly "limited". meanwhile, in the land of good prose:

i think twilight is a terrible book, but the vast majority of people who actually read books do not agree with me. which is my point: you can't be prescriptive about how "style is paramount" or w/e when that point of view is demonstrably in the minority. (not even a minority, really, more like a rounding error.)

People have been pumping out detective novels for over a hundred years with great commercial success, but how many of those people are still remembered even 10 or 20 years later? If you want to look into the big scary world of Literature, think about the resale value of a book and what that tells us

# ? Apr 19, 2018 17:06

fridge corn: Apr 2, 2003; NO MERCY, ONLY PAIN

Is this guy trying to argue that commercial success is indicative of quality or is it that quality is pointless because it doesn't ensure commercial success???

Either way lol

# ? Apr 19, 2018 17:09

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Ras Het posted:

People have been pumping out detective novels for over a hundred years with great commercial success, but how many of those people are still remembered even 10 or 20 years later? If you want to look into the big scary world of Literature, think about the resale value of a book and what that tells us

Hell, look at which books break double digits on the NYT bestsellers list

Usually the general tripe novels, unless they are one of the big names like Grisham, et al., have two or three big weeks and fall off. Celeste Ng's new book has been on the list for half a year now. The Goldfinch was on the bestsellers list for a loving year.

Mel Mudkiper fucked around with this message at 17:13 on Apr 19, 2018

# ? Apr 19, 2018 17:10

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

I would also argue that this

Clipperton posted:

this is not even true. outside of a vanishingly small group of lit-fic dead-enders, everyone who reads fiction values story first, with prose a distant second if it's a consideration at all.

is fundamentally wrong in assuming that people read Twilight because they valued its story. They read it because it was popular and had a premise that was appealing at a glance. All that poo poo you see on the shelf at Wal-Mart is there because of passive consumption, not because people are seeking it out for any merit of its own.

# ? Apr 19, 2018 17:11

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

fridge corn posted:

Is this guy trying to argue that commercial success is indicative of quality or is it that quality is pointless because it doesn't ensure commercial success???

Either way lol

He's not; he's just tilting at a windmill. If anyone said that commercial success was indicative of quality, it was Mel (saying that nobody bothers to read badly written books), which is how this started.

# ? Apr 19, 2018 17:21

Clipperton: Dec 20, 2011; Grimey Drawer

Sham bam bamina! posted:

Mel was wrong with that "will never be read" bit, but his actual point was that for chitoryu12 to write a good book, he has to write a good book. That is the goal here, not a place on the NYT list.

the thing is, "a good book must have good prose" (which for the record I personally agree with) is not a position shared by actual readers

Mel Mudkiper posted:

A. You do realize you listed global sales of a book against the UK sales of a book. The global sales of those books are going to be lower, but you are deliberately skewing the data to your advantage.
B. Almost all books only sell a few thousand a week, literary or no. Its how Handbook for Mortals managed to cheat its way into the bestseller list in the first place.
C. Literary Fiction is more than the Man Booker Prize nominees

i can't see where the guardian article mentions it's only uk sales, but whatever, feel free to pick different books and skew them right back if you want. see if you get a different result. you mentioned the goldfinch, as of 2014 that had 1.5 million sales. dan brown still blows it out of the water - and that assumes that everyone who bought tartt's book did it purely for the prose

Mel Mudkiper posted:

draft screenplays for housewives and grandparents and for that market his writing pretty much serves the purpose.

classism sexism and ageism all in one sentence, well done

fridge corn posted:

Is this guy trying to argue that commercial success is indicative of quality or is it that quality is pointless because it doesn't ensure commercial success???

Either way lol

my idea of what constitutes quality in a book is probably much the same as yours. what i am arguing is that most (ie the unthinkably vast majority) of readers do not share this idea of what quality is

Sham bam bamina! posted:

They read it because it was popular and had a premise that was appealing at a glance. All that poo poo you see on the shelf at Wal-Mart is there because of passive consumption, not because people are seeking it out for any merit of its own.

don't see too many george saunders tattoos out there

e: VVV i find dan brown's books actively unpleasant to read. but guess what VVV

Clipperton fucked around with this message at 17:26 on Apr 19, 2018

# ? Apr 19, 2018 17:24

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Sham bam bamina! posted:

He's not; he's just tilting at a windmill. If anyone said that commercial success was indicative of quality, it was Mel (saying that nobody bothers to read badly written books), which is how this started.

I didn't say no one reads badly written books. I said no one will care how good your ideas are if the book is unpleasant to read.

# ? Apr 19, 2018 17:25

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Clipperton posted:

don't see too many george saunders tattoos out there

Intriguing, the tattoo index of literary quality. An exciting new premise.

Clipperton posted:

e: VVV i find dan brown's books actively unpleasant to read. but guess what VVV

Did you finish it?

# ? Apr 19, 2018 17:26

Ras Het: May 23, 2007; when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child - but now I am a man.

Mel Mudkiper posted:

Intriguing, the tattoo index of literary quality. An exciting new premise.

Works for me because it proves that The Simpsons is the most important work of art of the last 50 years

# ? Apr 19, 2018 17:28

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Jun 2, 2024 12:19

Sham bam bamina!: Nov 6, 2012; ƨtupid cat

Mel Mudkiper posted:

I didn't say no one reads badly written books. I said no one will care how good your ideas are if the book is unpleasant to read.

Mel Mudkiper posted:

The most interesting world and narrative will never be read if the reader cannot find pleasure simply in the experience of reading your prose.

# ? Apr 19, 2018 17:31

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Creative Convention > "Are we qualified for this?" - Fixing Ready Player One

«‹›15 »