A Thread for Writers to talk about Writing

[Generalstarwars333]

I have a story that I'm writing that I wanted to get some feedback on. It is kind of big and is already posted, but nobody's really said anything about it. Should I include a link to it or just copy and paste it into here?

[KSK]

A link would be cleaner in my opinion and would keep this thread free for feedback and discussion only.

[Generalstarwars333]

K. here's the link: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/135914-The-Story-of-the-Laythean-Conflict-%28WIP%29

[CalculusWarrior]

Depends: Is it a 'Smart' AI, like, say, Cortana, or C3PO, or is it a 'Dumb' AI. Can it engage in conversation? Or is it just a more powerful version of today's computers? If it's a smart one, then probably just use she or he; if it's a dumb one, the you can use it.

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Exactly, depending on the type of AI, I'd say make a judgement call based on that. If it can engage in conversation, I feel it's perfectly fine to give it a gender. You can always refer to a more 'computer-like' AI as 'it'.

As for your story, GeneralStarWars, I quite like it; it has great descriptions of the events taking place! Is there background on the two sides? I personally like knowing the reasons each side is participating in conflicts. Also, adding a bit more whitespace may make it easier to read.

Edited October 11, 2015 by CalculusWarrior

[0111narwhalz]

Generalstarwars333, I might suggest some formatting changes. Line breaks between paragraphs really help readability, as does size 2 text. Also, keep your tenses consistent. I noticed a bit of switching between present and past tense in the narration.

Also, squirrels.

[Generalstarwars333]

Exactly, depending on the type of AI, I'd say make a judgement call based on that. If it can engage in conversation, I feel it's perfectly fine to give it a gender. You can always refer to a more 'computer-like' AI as 'it'.

As for your story, GeneralStarWars, I quite like it; it has great descriptions of the events taking place! Is there background on the two sides? I personally like knowing the reasons each side is participating in conflicts. Also, adding a bit more whitespace may make it easier to read.

Generalstarwars333, I might suggest some formatting changes. Line breaks between paragraphs really help readability, as does size 2 text. Also, keep your tenses consistent. I noticed a bit of switching between present and past tense in the narration.

Also, squirrels.

Okay first: OMG Calculus Warrior is talking to me I'm a huge fan of the whole Kold war thing. Okay, now that that moment of fanboying(is that the right word?) is over, Thanks! Coming from you, that means a lot. I think I'll have lore and stuff in a separate Google doc and separate from the main comment in the thread. And I will go try to see where I can break it up into paragraphs better as soon as I'm done typing this.

Second: 0111narwhalz, I will try to break it up some more, and I will probably go check and decide on a tense, probably present. Thanks for telling me that, or I probably would've never noticed that! Also, I will try to make it size 2, but this was originally typed on a google doc in English class when I was bored and my essay partner wasn't done with theirs and I didn't want to peer-edit my own essay myself. So, I'm not sure how I will convert it to size 2, but I will try. The squirrels part was when a classmate and friend of mine who has the ksp demo whom I'd shared the doc with was on it as I was typing the part about the bombers, and he replaced the rockets with,"squirrels, millions of them really." and then continued to try to sneak in squirrels in place of, say, bullets or CIWS. Then today for some reason I was seized with the desire to add in squirrels to the editing reason as much as possible.

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Okay, how's this? http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/135914-The-Story-of-the-Laythean-Conflict-%28WIP%29

[KSK]

Pretty good story and it looks a lot better now with the extra paragraph breaks. Putting lines of dialogue in their own paragraphs would help too:

Onboard the KSS Illustrious’ bridge* “Kaptain! We have finished our transfer burn and our due to have our laythe encounter in about two weeks!â€Â, the Helmsman says. “Very good. Alert me if anything bad happens.â€Â, replys the Kaptain.

vs

Onboard the KSS Illustrious’ bridge.

“Kaptain! We have finished our transfer burn and our due to have our laythe encounter in about two weeks!â€Â, the Helmsman says.

“Very good. Alert me if anything bad happens.â€Â, replys the Kaptain."

A couple of other thoughts. You might want to delete the part where you're talking directly to your readers:

* To make a long and very boring story that I wouldn’t be able to write about and would probably make me not want to write this anymore short, nothing bad happened except this huge run-on sentence. Basically I timewarped until we were close to where the actual exciting stuff starts.

It breaks the immersion. More generally, most of your action sequences are good but you have a tendency to go a bit passive which then slows the pace down. For example:

"The dropships coast into the atmosphere from above. Their hulls are lit by the fires of reentry, and the roaring of reentry fills the ears of the troops within." reads like a after-action summary of the battle rather than a description of the battle in progress. You could try re-wording it a little:

"The dropships coast into the atmosphere from above, their hulls lit by the fires of reentry. The roar of superheated air against hull fills the ears of the troops within."

Or something like that anyway - you'll have your own ideas about how best to reword it! Probably easiest to do this sort of editing once you've sorted your tenses out as 0111narwhalz suggests. In general, beware of surplus "it"s or "are"s - rather than telling your readers that something is happening, just describe the thing that's happening.

Hope this helps!

KSK

[Generalstarwars333]

Thank you so much for the feed back! I'll definitely take that into account! And can I say how honored I feel from people like you and Calculus Warrior giving me feedback on my story considering you guys have some of the biggest and most well known stories on the forums!

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Okay, I think I got everything, though I haven't noticed any change in the tenses that I've missed. If you could maybe point some out to me, that'd be great! http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/135914-The-Story-of-the-Laythean-Conflict-%28WIP%29

[HippieGold]

So, does anyone else here have problems with making their stories TOO big? For instance, I've been writing Storm in the Stars for two years now, and still haven't finished what I plan on being the first part of a three part series. Of course that's mostly due to horrible procrastination, but then there's also things like world building, a library of characters to deal with, and just getting characters from point A to point B without wasting a whole bunch of time. Does anyone have any advice when it comes to this? Sometimes I find myself looking at the enormity of the story I want to tell in front of me and thinking to myself, "God, that'll take forever. Maybe I'll just go do something else instead". And then of course that means it takes even longer for me to crank out chapters.

Also, some general critique on my AAR would be cool as well

[KSK]

So, does anyone else here have problems with making their stories TOO big? For instance, I've been writing Storm in the Stars for two years now, and still haven't finished what I plan on being the first part of a three part series. Of course that's mostly due to horrible procrastination, but then there's also things like world building, a library of characters to deal with, and just getting characters from point A to point B without wasting a whole bunch of time. Does anyone have any advice when it comes to this? Sometimes I find myself looking at the enormity of the story I want to tell in front of me and thinking to myself, "God, that'll take forever. Maybe I'll just go do something else instead". And then of course that means it takes even longer for me to crank out chapters.

Also, some general critique on my AAR would be cool as well

The latest chapter of Storm in the Stars looks like an excellent opportunity to re-read it and maybe offer some comments after that! Although I will say that I've been enjoying it so far.

As for the size of story problem, all I can say is "I feel your pain". I've been writing First Flight for about 2 1/2 years now and I'm about at the end of Part 3. I have one chapter that I'm working on, there's a couple of shortish ones planned after that which will help set the scene for Part 4 and then there's the grand finale. Part 4 is only loosely plotted at the moment and is going to take a lot of work figuring out how to get the characters from Point A to Point B as you so eloquently put it. I actually find that the hardest part of writing in general.

Originally I'd figured to get everything wrapped up in around 120,000-130,000 words split over three parts. Suffice to say that estimate is long past and receding into the distance.

So yeah, no concrete advice I'm afraid but I definitely know where you're coming from.

[Mister Dilsby]

Originally I'd figured to get everything wrapped up in around 120,000-130,000 words split over three parts. Suffice to say that estimate is long past and receding into the distance.

A good-sized novel is typically in the 70,000 to 150,000 word range. But the first draft of that novel might be twice the word count; so much of the work of writing is in subtracting, tightening up, and quite often making a hard call to drop an entire plot line or character. This doesn't happen in 'emergent' writing--most of us who write here are essentially publishing our first drafts (I know I am!) So I am not surprised at all to see this sort of word count for First Flight and other works with novel-sized scope. I don't see how you could tell the story otherwise

[Generalstarwars333]

Yeah, I definitely agree with you on the first draft part. I just write by the seat off my pants, and screw​ the four square writing planning stuff...

[CatastrophicFailure]

I second both notions above. There's nothing quite like the feeling of putting out a new chapter, seeing it get a bunch of views, then realizing "crap I forgot to include that crucial plot point!" So now you need a couple of paragraphs in the next one to explain what should have been a single sentence. Which need four paragraphs in the next one...

That leads to one of the hardest parts in writing, at least for me: FINISHING anything. If you spend more time thinking rather than writing the succinct quickly becomes the grandiose. Based just on chapter numbers, where I am in my second story was about the halfway point in my first, but now I'd guess it's less than a third. And the genre savvy all know committing to a sequel typically obligates a trilogy, so.....

*********

on another note, what are some thoughts on referring to female Kerbals now? Like, Kerblettes? Kerbellles? Girbles? Kerwen? I've just tried to avoid it so far.

[Mister Dilsby]

on another note, what are some thoughts on referring to female Kerbals now? Like, Kerblettes? Kerbellles? Girbles? Kerwen? I've just tried to avoid it so far.

I tend not to; I use the term 'gentlekerbs' to apply to both males and females, and pretty much just call them all 'kerbals'. The exception is when I use a language that has gender, like French; thus Clauselle Kerman is 'une kerbelle' and a hypothetical Claude Kerman would be 'un kerbal'. Come to think of it this might not even be canon for me, I probably only used it in a post and not in the comic itself.

[KSK]

I second both notions above. There's nothing quite like the feeling of putting out a new chapter, seeing it get a bunch of views, then realizing "crap I forgot to include that crucial plot point!" So now you need a couple of paragraphs in the next one to explain what should have been a single sentence. Which need four paragraphs in the next one...

That leads to one of the hardest parts in writing, at least for me: FINISHING anything. If you spend more time thinking rather than writing the succinct quickly becomes the grandiose. Based just on chapter numbers, where I am in my second story was about the halfway point in my first, but now I'd guess it's less than a third. And the genre savvy all know committing to a sequel typically obligates a trilogy, so.....

*********

on another note, what are some thoughts on referring to female Kerbals now? Like, Kerblettes? Kerbellles? Girbles? Kerwen? I've just tried to avoid it so far.

I duck the issue and use the general phrase 'Good Kerbals' where we might say 'Ladies and Gentlemen'.

[Generalstarwars333]

Hmmm...never really thought about that. Dialogue has never been my strong point. It always feels awkward and uncomfortable. Probably has something to do with me not really being the best when it comes to people in real life. I can drone on and on about something at great length, but not really at starting conversations or, God forbid, small talk...

[HippieGold]

on another note, what are some thoughts on referring to female Kerbals now? Like, Kerblettes? Kerbellles? Girbles? Kerwen? I've just tried to avoid it so far.

To be honest, I just refer to female kerbals as 'women' and males as 'men'. Maybe that doesn't make much sense since I think those words derive from the word human, but it makes things a bit less silly. Similarly I'll use the words 'people' and 'person' to refer to kerbals. Usually the only thing I'll do is place the words 'Kerbal' and 'Kerbality' where I'd normal place the words 'human' and 'humanity'.

Speaking of which. In chapter 44 of Shadows of the Kraken, this comes up around the 8th line:

That didn't make them bad people, it just made them...human.

May want to fix that

[CatastrophicFailure]

You will also notice, that's the only place the word appears. Done for emotional/dramatic effect.

And, of course, as a nod to this famous scene:

But nice catch

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

...]

on another note, what are some thoughts on referring to female Kerbals now? Like, Kerblettes? Kerbellles? Girbles? Kerwen? I've just tried to avoid it so far.

Well, personally, I use kerb as a non-gender specific pronoun, like "man" in man-hours, manned spacecraft.

[Mister Dilsby]

And, of course, as a nod to this famous scene:

That's one of Kenlie's favorites also

[SaturnianBlue]

Kuzzter or anyone, do you have any suggestions or ways to help The Asteroid Sentinels get back up on it's feet? I've been struggling for a bit to post anything there after all.

[Mister Dilsby]

Kuzzter or anyone, do you have any suggestions or ways to help The Asteroid Sentinels get back up on it's feet? I've been struggling for a bit to post anything there after all.

I noticed you made some changes in focus and narrative in you last update. Why don't you talk a bit about what you changed, what motivated you to do it, and what you think works and doesn't work in the comic right now? I think you (and others reading the thread) would get more out of a discussion than a bunch of open-ended suggestions.

[0111narwhalz]

New shiny!

Since I'm suffering a bit of writer's block on Kerbal Future​, I decided to write a new thing. For now, I'm calling it Warped Space unless and until I get some advice on it. I might keep it anyways. So, some feedback on the prologue and title would be nice. It's a story about the creation of the kraken drive, and what that did to the space program, in case anyone was wondering.

Edited October 21, 2015 by 0111narwhalz

[Ten Key]

So, does anyone else here have problems with making their stories TOO big?

Yes.

Farlight's "prologue" section is an intro and six chapters. It looks like the next section is going to be in the neighborhood of 15 chapters, of which only four are finished. And because of the nature of "live writing" on a forum like this, I find myself in a situation where I really need to have all of those chapters fleshed out before I post any of them.

There are days when I sit down at the computer and think to myself, "What have I done?"

Every so often I have the opportunity to go hiking up in the mountains, and that first mile is always the hardest. Your muscles burn, you sweat buckets and, try as you might, you just can't get enough air. "Why am I doing this?" follows you every step of the way. But eventually, your body comes to the conclusion that it probably isn't going to die, and breathless exhaustion gives way to stunning views and a wonderful sense of accomplishment. No matter how many times I hit the trails, that first mile is always terrible. But I always survive it.

Writing (or any other creative endeavor) works in a similar manner, with the added caveat that the trail is too long to be completed in a single outing. So there will be many "first miles" over the course of the journey, and, no matter how much you write, this is something that never, ever goes away.

But it is survivable. The more you overcome it, the less terrifying it becomes when it happens. "God, that'll take forever" becomes "I've been here before, I can get through this." I'm afraid there's nothing for it but to throw yourself at the trail over and over-- those first miles will always be exhausting, but over time they will become less daunting.

On another note, what are some thoughts on referring to female Kerbals now? Like, Kerblettes? Kerbellles? Girbles? Kerwen? I've just tried to avoid it so far.

The word "Kerbals" stands in for "Humans" well enough-- beyond that I use the regular words to denote gender where appropriate. "Male/Female", "Guys/Gals", "Lady", "Boys/Girls" all work just fine. "Man", "Woman" and "Gentleman" are a little more problematic as they derive from "Human", but "Kerman" is close enough to make those words sound like natural fits. I did use "gentlekerbs" once (twice?), but the speaker was sort of hamming it up for the audience. I use "Gentlemen" in formal speech.

And I totally stole "kerblet" from KSK for referring to children.

It doesn't seem strange to me to use the same gendered words for both humans and kerbals-- we use those same words for our pets, and sometimes even for our otherwise genderless machines. Where I get myself into trouble is when I'm trying to mask the gender of a character-- dodging pronouns and gendered descriptors gets really awkward, really fast.

[SaturnianBlue]

I noticed you made some changes in focus and narrative in you last update. Why don't you talk a bit about what you changed, what motivated you to do it, and what you think works and doesn't work in the comic right now? I think you (and others reading the thread) would get more out of a discussion than a bunch of open-ended suggestions.

I've done that, but activity and feedback is still not present, which isn't very fun.