Writers' Corner

[Aierdome]

Hm, a lot of interesting stuff had showed up of a recent.

Never heard of the OC/TW division before. Interesting. I think I fall mostly on TW side of the divide, crafting characters to fit in with the story, changing them as I see fit and spending ridiculous amounts of time on world-building rather than character-building.

So here's another thing to consider: are you really sure your character would "never do that"? There are so very many reasons/excuses I can think of for seemingly OOC behavior, but I'll use Minna's own example of Onni from the (fairly) recent pages. When he showed up, people were saying, "Minna wouldn't have Onni act so OOC!" After page 451, they stopped saying it, because she demonstrated that it was a struggle for him to act so OOC.

I would say the better statement would be "character would never do that unless X". You can always push a character to become a horrid person doing terrible things, and you can always put them thorugh a redemption arc that would make them do a lot of good things, it's just that, like Róisín pointed out, you have to show the passage where the character changes to accomodate for a new thing they would now do. It also gets the audience used to the "new" version of the character. Makes it change with them, in a way.

Tew way that I've personally found works best for worldbuilding is: take some other author setting, find a barely elaborated upon locale/historical reference and then build the story there. Goal is that the constraints imposed on you by the existing universe should make it easier to work on the elements that your plot/characters actually need. Once you got those necessary setting details, you can start separating your "extended universe" for the originals author's.

Literally how a lot of my stories had started.    Although usually after a while of world-building the original element I started with goes away or is so buried under the rest that (hopefully) it would take a clue from me to figure it out.

Then again, sometimes I design a world I think is original only to realize that I unwittingly took inspiration from things that I like. And I'm not talking small things, like name of the character looking kinda similar if you squint - I mean huge elephants in the room that I should've noticed much earlier. For an example, the thing I'm currently building has, among others, two gods, one of which is a bird-themed mischievious deity of magic and future-sight who has blue as his colour, and the other a crazy berserker war-god with "KILLKILLKILL" mentality and red colour motif. It took me three weeks to realize that their description is virtually identical to that of two gods from W40K, my second favourite fandom I'm spending way too much time thinking about.

Ever happened to you?

[LooNEY_DAC]

Then again, sometimes I design a world I think is original only to realize that I unwittingly took inspiration from things that I like. And I'm not talking small things, like name of the character looking kinda similar if you squint - I mean huge elephants in the room that I should've noticed much earlier. For an example, the thing I'm currently building has, among others, two gods, one of which is a bird-themed mischievious deity of magic and future-sight who has blue as his colour, and the other a crazy berserker war-god with "KILLKILLKILL" mentality and red colour motif. It took me three weeks to realize that their description is virtually identical to that of two gods from W40K, my second favourite fandom I'm spending way too much time thinking about.

Ever happened to you?

Yes, and sometimes I come up with something, let it lie a bit, and someone comes up with something eerily similar in the meantime, meaning no one will believe I came up with my idea myself. As an example, in 1998 or so, I came up with a setting that has many similarities to the 'Verse from Firefly. Do I think Joss Whedon broke into my computer and took notes? No. Can I publish the stories featuring that setting? Not without a major rewrite. *Sigh*

[Róisín]

Yeah, know that one. It's weird to find your neglected ideas in someone else's bestseller.

[Lazy8]

Yes, and sometimes I come up with something, let it lie a bit, and someone comes up with something eerily similar in the meantime, meaning no one will believe I came up with my idea myself. As an example, in 1998 or so, I came up with a setting that has many similarities to the 'Verse from Firefly. Do I think Joss Whedon broke into my computer and took notes? No. Can I publish the stories featuring that setting? Not without a major rewrite. *Sigh*

Reminds me of that time I wrote this one fanfic, finished posting it and then watched Mad Max: Fury Road several weeks after. "Wait a minute..."

Though in that case it was a lot of weird parallel plot points I noticed rather than setting.

[Unwary]

Reminds me of that time I wrote this one fanfic, finished posting it and then watched Mad Max: Fury Road several weeks after. "Wait a minute..."

Though in that case it was a lot of weird parallel plot points I noticed rather than setting.

I'm in a weird position in regards to that, as I don't watch many modern movies, but am active on the internet and talk to people who do. So I have subliminal exposure to all different elements on them. It makes me really watch what I write, and also lead to a bunch of people either telling em to watchrelated movies, or telling me Not to watch related movies. It's weird at times.

Thanks also for the feedback on my idea about the OCC/TW spectrum, I'm trying to figure out if there might be a class of author I don't really cover in that, and if there isn't, whether the spectrum is too general.

[princeofdoom]

@Unwary: As someone who grew up making stories and writing, I think it's more that there are traditional writers who come in two general groups (those who focus on plot and make characters to fit, and those who make characters, have a vague idea for plot and then see what the characters do). The latter are more likely to be drawn to rping in general and oc rp in specific.

I say this because I am very centered on characters over plot even in my traditional writing. Often, if I have characters that are well rounded and I find that a plot idea just won't work with those characters, I scrap or modify the plot before even trying to change the cast I have.

So that might be another group?

[Laufey]

princeofdoom: I know this might not be exactly related but I was really strongly reminded of the three writer types...

[Mélusine]

princeofdoom: I know this might not be exactly related but I was really strongly reminded of the three writer types...

... Gardener. Definitively ^^

[Laufey]

... Gardener. Definitively ^^

Same here, or at least for most part. I have to say though that the most recent NaNo project was one big crocodile wrestling show from start to the end, fun but indeed exhausting. You don't only "negotiate" random, cool subplots into submission, you also have to make them somehow make logical sense when they're all put together...

[Unwary]

... I have no idea. I'm the person who wrestles the crocodiles into fertilizer for my garden outside my new building...

[John Candlebury]

Architect for sure. Don't really define anything until I known how the story should go.

I do tweak the setting for my characters but ultimately its plot>people

[Róisín]

I'm still getting my head around fiction writing. As I may have mentioned earlier, before I got mixed up with you mad lot and started writing (gasp!) fanfic, most of what I'd ever had published apart from work stuff was poetry and science fiction, which in the short stories at least, tends to have more to do with ideas than with characters.

Looking at how my current stories are shaping up, I think my writing style is a combination, in that I have a very clear idea of the nature of the characters, and my method seems to be to place the character in a situation and see what happens. Given the sort of person he is, and given the events that have shaped his life and his nature, what will the character do in this situation? Followed by examining how, in the long run, the character will be changed by the situation, and how (or if) his later actions will be affected by these changes.

[princeofdoom]

I plant my garden with crocodile attracting plants (or plants that attract things the crocodiles like?), and then wrestle those crocs that show up and hope my garden isn't demolished like a badly designed building. 

[Asterales]

Okay, interesting.

*scratches head*
I guess I am an architect, despite the strange way the actual masonry works for me? Hmmm.
Might be why I never get anywhere in terms of just pushing the story out. I mean, I am ridiculously obsessed with detail.

Spoiler: show

I want everything to be planned out, even things that are likely never even mentioned in the story itself, just so I have a better grasp on what the characters have to deal with.

For example, what is the yarn for this and that cloth made of? What are its characteristics? If there is a percentage of this or that much metal thread in it, how heavy would a garment made of x meters of this cloth be? How costly in terms of money and time would it be? Who could likely still afford it? ... Alright, having established that, how heavy exactly might ceremonial clothing with x layers of this cloth and x layers of that other cloth, plus the headdress, become? How would they move in it? ... BTW, is the weigh distribution of the headdress okay? They are not gonna get bald because of it, right, right?!

Yes, I think, I can see a definite problem there...

Give me at least, oh, um, another twenty years for this story?  >_>

[Laufey]

For example, what is the yarn for this and that cloth made of? What are its characteristics? If there is a percentage of this or that much metal thread in it, how heavy would a garment made of x meters of this cloth be? How costly in terms of money and time would it be? Who could likely still afford it?

That's not a bad quality to have at all, actually, even if it does hinder the writing process. Knowing your facts and how things work can be crucial for creating something believable. A friend of mine once made me read a hilariously bad novel that was set in supposed Heian era Japan, and it had a scene where a noblewoman screamed something akin to "I - can't - STAND - this - anymore!" and dashed out of the room.

Except that a Heian era noblewoman would not just suddenly dash anywhere at all. The sheer amount of silk they wore, their long hair, and especially the long "trousers" that dragged behind would have made her trip and stumble, not to mention how heavy her clothes would have been. As memory serves she was even going to attend a formal ceremony, which would have meant she would have been wearing way MORE than just a 12-layer junihitoe. The mental images were hilarious though, I'll give the author that (and I'm not even getting to how scandalous the situation would have been already, having a woman sit in the same room with men, not behind a screen even, with her face in full view of everyone... maybe her gathering up her silks and tottering out of the room screaming dramatically would have been the least of her misbehaving).