A Thread for Writers to talk about Writing

[CatastrophicFailure]

My entire kerbalverse started out as a bad Super Bowl joke, with the whitesuit crew I happened to have on the way to the Mün at the time.  So initially I went back to that save for new names. Then things shifted, and I had to start picking through Russian names. And now things are really getting complicated, so I’m picking names from whatever source is handy (online Kerbal namers are a great tool) and occasionally tailoring them specifically to need. A nod to @KSK‘s observation, too, I added a throwback to the original three to give the story some grounding and connection to those limited bits we all know. 

[Just Jim]

1 hour ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

My entire kerbalverse started out as a bad Super Bowl joke, with the whitesuit crew I happened to have on the way to the Mün at the time

In a lot of ways mine really got going because of football as well... Go back again to my second chapter, where I decided this writing stuff was fun, and maybe I'd keep going. While I don't think it was the Superbowl, this scene and screenshot of Harfield proposing to Jandolin was inspired from one of those true life surprise proposals at a football game, in front of 70,000 or whatever people... 

Edited January 24, 2018 by Just Jim

[UnusualAttitude]

5 hours ago, Alpha 360 said:

To start a new "sub-topic" on this thread, do people prefer to use one or more of the original 4 as their main character(s)? Or do they start over and pick the coolest name in the astronaut complex hiring list and use them as their main character?

The latter.

"The Bill Logs" and "The Bob Papers" just would not have cut it.

[CSE]

On 13/01/2018 at 7:19 AM, CatastrophicFailure said:

Now with ol’ Jeb, I seem to be the outlier. I killed the poor guy off before my story even started.

It works well for me; that's one of my favourite scenes in the whole epic, where you get the sense of people's loss, the sense that he was the kind of kerb who the whole program would truly miss, without having to fill in details that might or might not have struck the right tone for every reader. This is where easy perfection can survive, on the fringes of the story. It's when you take centre stage that you have to choose between less perfect or less real.

[Ten Key]

On 1/12/2018 at 1:21 PM, Just Jim said:

One thing about characters, and filling out details, I should mention, is I find it quite helpful to base some of my characters on some of my own favorites, both fictional and real.

For instance, Emiko was inspired by River Tam, from Firefly and mostly from the movie Serenity.

I'm late to the party here, but given the odd and random things we're apt to use when developing our own characters, I thought you all would appreciate this story.  

There's a little booklet that came with the Serenity soundtrack CD , and it has some anecdotes from the folks that did the music. Apparently, somewhere along the line, one of them (I think it was David Newman himself, but I don't remember) was driving down the road and passed by a yard sale. The people running it had suffered through a flood of one sort or another, and a lot of the stuff on offer was in bad shape. Sitting in the middle of all of the junk was a piano that had been absolutely ruined by water damage.

Something about that broken piano just spoke to him, and Mr. Newman bought it and took it back to his studio. In his mind, it was the perfect embodiment of River Tam, and he ended up using it as part of her theme in the movie. 

You can hear it playing in that video you linked Jim, starting right around the 16 second mark.  

[Just Jim]

On 1/28/2018 at 6:48 PM, Ten Key said:

I'm late to the party here, but given the odd and random things we're apt to use when developing our own characters, I thought you all would appreciate this story.  

There's a little booklet that came with the Serenity soundtrack CD , and it has some anecdotes from the folks that did the music. Apparently, somewhere along the line, one of them (I think it was David Newman himself, but I don't remember) was driving down the road and passed by a yard sale. The people running it had suffered through a flood of one sort or another, and a lot of the stuff on offer was in bad shape. Sitting in the middle of all of the junk was a piano that had been absolutely ruined by water damage.

Something about that broken piano just spoke to him, and Mr. Newman bought it and took it back to his studio. In his mind, it was the perfect embodiment of River Tam, and he ended up using it as part of her theme in the movie. 

You can hear it playing in that video you linked Jim, starting right around the 16 second mark.  

Oh wow! I did not know that story... but I know that piano! It haunted me all thru-out the movie! And it is a perfect metaphor for River, so to speak. She was so beautiful, but so very broken... 

Cool story, thank you!

 

 

Edited January 31, 2018 by Just Jim

[adsii1970]

On 1/24/2018 at 4:23 PM, UnusualAttitude said:

The latter.

"The Bill Logs" and "The Bob Papers" just would not have cut it.

At the time I began Kerny's Journal, It seemed that everyone except @Just Jim had at least one of the "original four" in their story as a main character. What I wanted to do was to focus on an emerging character who would have a hard time admitting he has become "one of the gang". But I also wanted to do something else which was different: I wanted him to tell his own story. And for inspiration, I have pulled from a variety of sources when it comes to his personality. But in spite of all his achievements and all the accolades he's given, he still sees the original four as being as close to deities as one can imagine. Which, if you've followed the story, he has a difficult time when serving on the Board of Inquiry investigating Jebediah's conduct and role in the death of another Kerman.

Kerny happened to be the next Kerbal in the roster when I began the project...

[Alpha 360]

I'm just wondering, do some writers here like to jump between Kerbals using third person, or go the complicated route of using multiple first person accounts. And other options include third person limited, or third person without moving from the main character, or third person omniscient. 

Anyway, 

Happy Explosions!

[steuben]

obligatory reference post. POV (warning here be TV Tropes)

works history:

I don't think I've written something in the first person.  Just remembered I have done some stuff in the first person here.

The second person I know I've never done.

As for the third persons... I tend to work with the Limited/Subjective. I think I may done a couple of Objective/Dramatic.

I have used multiple thirds once, that I can immediately recall. Not in the KSP 'verse through, over here "Olwen's Travels".

I haven't played with the omniscient ones... it feels like it would be a lot of work to write and write well.

 

Holding with the basic third person POVs is a bit of laziness on my part. They're simple and easy to keep track of. I just strap the camera and the mic to the shoulder of the character and away I go. A lot of the stuff that I've read on the craft would poke at people who shifted viewpoints without warning... even within the same paragraph.  

 

Edited March 2, 2018 by steuben

[Just Jim]

1 hour ago, Alpha 360 said:

I'm just wondering, do some writers here like to jump between Kerbals using third person, or go the complicated route of using multiple first person accounts. And other options include third person limited, or third person without moving from the main character, or third person omniscient. 

I'm not even sure what some of this is, sorry... lol... 

I tried writing strictly first person, and found I don't like it. It just feels... awkward. I think I'm writing third person, but jumping from one to another main character(s), depending on how the story is moving along. I'm not sure how to define it... I just write what feels right... if that makes any sense.

 

 

[adsii1970]

1 hour ago, Alpha 360 said:

I'm just wondering, do some writers here like to jump between Kerbals using third person, or go the complicated route of using multiple first person accounts. And other options include third person limited, or third person without moving from the main character, or third person omniscient. 

Anyway, 

Happy Explosions!

There are hybrid forms as well. For the most part, Kerny's Journal is written in the first person. When I began the project there wasn't too many people playing around with it and I wanted to be different.

1 minute ago, Just Jim said:

I'm not even sure what some of this is, sorry... lol... 

I tried writing strictly first person, and found I don't like it. It just feels... awkward. I think I'm writing third person, but jumping from one to another main character(s), depending on how the story is moving along. I'm not sure how to define it... I just write what feels right... if that makes any sense.

 

 

First person is the eye-witness account, and you have the insight of knowing what the main character is thinking.

Third person is a form of storytelling in which a narrator relates all the action of their work using a third-person pronoun such as "he" or "she." Think of Tom Clancy, or even Michael Creighton...

Multiple first person accounts best describes when an author jumps back and forth between characters and allows you access to their thoughts, their points of view, and rely on the first person pronouns to tell the story. This is more common now, especially in movies, than it was in the past. It can be very tricky to work with. You literally have to give the reader clues about whose head they are in...

Third person omniscient is a style of writing narrative in third person in which a narrator knows the feelings and thoughts of every character in the story.

 

 

 

[Cydonian Monk]

On 2/5/2018 at 7:42 PM, adsii1970 said:

Multiple first person accounts best describes when an author jumps back and forth between characters and allows you access to their thoughts, their points of view, and rely on the first person pronouns to tell the story. This is more common now, especially in movies, than it was in the past. It can be very tricky to work with.

I first encountered this in one of William Gibson’s novels (I think it was “Count Zero”) and I hated it. Completely unlike anything else I had read before and went against everything we were taught was “correct”. It took the style established in “Neuromancer” and splintered it. Even worse, works such as “Count Zero”, “Mona Lisa Overdrive”, and Stephenson’s “Snow Crash” have very distinct threads that don’t converge until late in the story (and in MLO’s case, I’m not convinced they ever really converge). As someone who reads mostly in down-time, and sometimes reads multiple books at a time, it was difficult to keep all of it straight in my mind.

It wasn’t until I walked face-first into some little fantasy novel written by George Martin that I felt this style worked. Or maybe “Game of Thrones” is just better structured than the cyberpunk books I’d first encountered multi-POV in. KSR also used it expertly in the Mars trilogy, though I can only say such in retrospect as the multi-POV style (including 3rd-person omniscient and even demigod-bacterial-POV) was the reason I stopped reading “Red Mars” to begin with.

My early distaste for the multi-first-person-POV is one of the many reasons I’ve experimented with it, with mixed results.

I’m still not particularly a fan of it, as I find it results in stories that diverge to infinity with threads attached to characters that may never cross paths again - see later “A Song of Ice and Fire” books as the textbook example. I think that’s half the reason Martin kills off so many of his characters - if they’re dead he doesn’t feel compelled into continuing their particular threads. (If only they’d stay dead.....)

 

[Alpha 360]

On ‎2‎/‎5‎/‎2018 at 6:42 PM, adsii1970 said:

Multiple first person accounts best describes when an author jumps back and forth between characters and allows you access to their thoughts, their points of view, and rely on the first person pronouns to tell the story. This is more common now, especially in movies, than it was in the past. It can be very tricky to work with. You literally have to give the reader clues about whose head they are in...

There was a brilliant book which used this. It was called Wonder, written by Raquel Jaramillo. It was so good that they made a movie out of it which had a 300 million dollar gross revenue. If you want an inspiring read, read it. It's amazing

[Just Jim]

On 2/5/2018 at 8:42 PM, adsii1970 said:

There are hybrid forms as well. For the most part, Kerny's Journal is written in the first person. When I began the project there wasn't too many people playing around with it and I wanted to be different.

First person is the eye-witness account, and you have the insight of knowing what the main character is thinking.

Third person is a form of storytelling in which a narrator relates all the action of their work using a third-person pronoun such as "he" or "she." Think of Tom Clancy, or even Michael Creighton...

Multiple first person accounts best describes when an author jumps back and forth between characters and allows you access to their thoughts, their points of view, and rely on the first person pronouns to tell the story. This is more common now, especially in movies, than it was in the past. It can be very tricky to work with. You literally have to give the reader clues about whose head they are in...

Third person omniscient is a style of writing narrative in third person in which a narrator knows the feelings and thoughts of every character in the story.

OK... so if I understand this right, I'm a sort of mix between Third person and Third person omniscient, with occasional First person naratives...

So I'm a hybrid???  lol...  

 

[adsii1970]

48 minutes ago, Just Jim said:

OK... so if I understand this right, I'm a sort of mix between Third person and Third person omniscient, with occasional First person naratives...

So I'm a hybrid???  lol...  

 

Yup, but it could be worse... this could be a website about you...

Spoiler

http://www.ufosightingsdaily.com/2013/08/human-alien-hybrid-aborted-shocking.html

But if you think about it, your main character, Emiko, does have telepathic abilities... Problem solved.

Edited February 7, 2018 by adsii1970

[SiriusRocketry]

I'm fleshing out a new KSP story...early stages, but I'm hopeful. Will publish a first draft for review in a few days

[KSK]

So I figured this looked like a fun couple of hours:

Quote

Discovering New Worlds Through Writing: A Creative Writing Workshop

For those of us who are not astronauts, there is still a way for us to think about setting foot on new moons and new planets for the first time: through writing! Join science fiction author Oliver Langmead and award-winning writer Ruth EJ Booth for a workshop where you will be given prompts to write and read aloud short excerpts, considering the trials and triumphs of explorers as they set foot on Mars and beyond. It will be an afternoon of getting creative, thinking about new technologies and unforeseen hurdles that might help or hinder humanity as we explore the universe outside our own small planet.

Edinburgh Science Festival event just in case anyone else on this thread lives in Edinburgh or a reasonable distance therefrom  Sad to say that I don't know either of the actual authors running the workshop but the subject matter could be tailor made for KSP fanfic writers!

Edited February 12, 2018 by KSK

[selfish_meme]

Despite his personal convictions, I found Orson Scott Cards How to write Science Fiction and Fantasy a great book for helping to distill the ideas that I want to write. I am trying my hand at a quite ambitious screenplay currently, I have less qualms about shooting the scenes than I do about writing an entertaining story! Also I am trying to do it in a positive way that encompasses everything that is as officially canon as possible in KSP, like an origin story.

Has anybody else enjoyed the screenplay style of writing? coincidentally one of my favorite book adaptions of a screenplay was The Abyss by OSC's as well.

Edited February 12, 2018 by selfish_meme

[steuben]

I started a screenplay adaptation of an author of preference`s book. As I think about it, it probably could have been done as stage play as well.

I`ve read books on screen play writing as well as a few scripts... I should really post my library. That section survived the recent trimming that I had to do at the behest of the missus and one of the kids.

What I have found is, what I`ve gleaned from the screen writing books and the book writing books have been complementary. First because what makes a good story is common across all medium. Second the direction on pacing, scene blocking, speech, details, etc. from one helps in the other.

[DarkOwl57]

So I've had an idea... A really weird, really dumb idea.

On discord a few days ago, this guy found a photo editor, and he used a flag I had made as one example. The flag was looking dirty, like it was a mural in a war-zone. And it got me thinking. And thinking.. And thinking.. Hey, I thought. I could make this work! This was combined with another cool feature. On Saturday (The flag thingy was Friday night), me, my mom, and my sister watched Top Gun, because my coach said that with my leather jacket (Oh yeah, I got a leather jacket), I looked like Tom Cruise and all I needed was a Kawasaki Ninja. So, then my story really kicked off. A country split by war, torn in half by the great river that once joined the nation together. Sounds cool to me, so I'm going to write on it. (Also, #RIPTheFinalStand).

The only problem is how to write this. So, in order to do this, I"m going to do something....... Controversial. So a while ago, y'all mentioned how multiple first-person authors gets funky? Weeeeeeeeelllllll..... uuuhhhhh...... That got me thinking some more.. The story's going to be told from 3 (As of now) points of view.

1) Anastasia (Anna): Was going to be the next President or Vice President of the National States of Owlia, until a party-gone-wrong leads her to flee the only place she's ever known. She goes to River City, and inadvertently the center of the largest civil war known to the world.

2) Ryan: Born and raised in River City as a child, Ryan was unable to get out of the city before the seiges from both armies began. Fighting for no army, Ryan and his band of fighters remain unaligned, fighting only for themselves and their survival.

3) Jedden (Callsign: "Mustang"): A Captain in the National States of Owlia Air Force, Jedden is the definition of cocky. A great pilot, Jedden has never backed down from a challenge... which is probably why he's been demoted twice (Once for buzzing the tower and once for attempting to go out with a General's daughter).

Thoughts?

 

[SiriusRocketry]

Sounds pretty interesting! Are you going to run the story alongside Life at the Top, @DarkOwl57?

[DarkOwl57]

5 minutes ago, SiriusRocketry said:

Sounds pretty interesting! Are you going to run the story alongside Life at the Top, @DarkOwl57?

Well, I don't know. The plan is for me to type it up in a word doc, and then maybe upload it to a google doc instead of the forums. The major thing I think could create problems would be 1) Time constraints and 2) Actual content of the story; I'm not sure how the mods would react to some of the stuff I'm thinking about writing in. All depends, though. At least with the doc you can see it live without having to worry about upload times and editing later- you'd see it as it happens!

[steuben]

You've got the characters, what's the plot? Just a elevator pitch would do.

Ask for content, what of the darker and edgier themes/tropes are you thinking of?

[DarkOwl57]

So in the story, there is a nation. In that nation, there is a massive river going through the middle of it. This river is the sort of border for the two differing sides in this civil war. The West, the National States of Owlia, is based in Angel City (My version of IRL Los Angeles). This is where the main characters are from. Then, there's the United States of Owlia, which is the break-away faction. Up to the north, there's the Northern Territories, who just want to stay neutral and will do whatever it takes to protect themselves (See: District 13 from The Hunger Games). What I'm thinking for the plot:

Anna is at a party in Angel City when a wild gunman (Gunkerbal?) comes into the palace. A few people die (Not sure who yet- it's either the brother, a parent, or both), and Anna runs away in fear. She hops on a bus, and acciddentally ends up in the heart of the fighting: River City, the city that's split in 2 (Again, by the massive river). It's all still a work in progress, but I think that with some work it could maybe turn into something. 

[Just Jim]

10 minutes ago, DarkOwl57 said:

So in the story, there is a nation. In that nation, there is a massive river going through the middle of it. This river is the sort of border for the two differing sides in this civil war. The West, the National States of Owlia, is based in Angel City (My version of IRL Los Angeles). This is where the main characters are from. Then, there's the United States of Owlia, which is the break-away faction. Up to the north, there's the Northern Territories, who just want to stay neutral and will do whatever it takes to protect themselves (See: District 13 from The Hunger Games). What I'm thinking for the plot:

Anna is at a party in Angel City when a wild gunman (Gunkerbal?) comes into the palace. A few people die (Not sure who yet- it's either the brother, a parent, or both), and Anna runs away in fear. She hops on a bus, and acciddentally ends up in the heart of the fighting: River City, the city that's split in 2 (Again, by the massive river). It's all still a work in progress, but I think that with some work it could maybe turn into something. 

OK... my turn. I'll be honest, I see both good, and not so good.

Not so good, first. The terms National States of Owlia and United States of Owlia... too real life... I'm afraid United States especially might cause problems down the road.

Now... what I really, really like is the idea of River City itself... a city divided by a civil war. Not a country, or nation... but an actual city, split in half... talk about a gritty way of playing on the "Brother vs. Brother" idea... this is good!

If it were me, I would forget about the nations, and focus more on just this... a city torn in half... friend vs. friend, brother vs. brother... neighbors now shooting back and forth across narrower parts of the river...

And don't even get me started on... bridges....  

I think it could really work!