A Thread for Writers to talk about Writing

[Andem]

3 hours ago, Just Jim said:

Let's switch over to a different topic for a moment...

Have any of you ever gotten a chapter finished, but then got really stuck thinking of a good name for the title?  

Nearly every time. I usually write the chapter, then spend another thirty minutes to an hour working on the Title, Revising, Music (When applicable), and the ending tidbit.

[Mister Dilsby]

Ehh, chapter titles don't bother me too much actually. I really don't put too much thought into them, I just go with the first thing that comes to mind and works OK. I probably spend more time coming up with new thread titles.

[KSK]

Likewise, chapter titles aren't usually too much of a problem for me. Quite often, a title and a handful of bullet points is all I'll have of a chapter before sitting down to actually write it. I also tend to scribble down ideas (including titles) as and when they occur so, for example, I already know what the final chapter and epilogue for First Flight will be called.

For what it's worth, some inspirations for chapter titles have been:

• Music and song titles:  Echoes of Time was inspired by M83s 'Echoes of Mine'
• Attempts (probably failed ones ) at misdirection:  One Small Step was indeed about a giant leap for Kerbalkind - but nothing to do with the impending Mun landing.
• Quotes and snippets from other works. According to Gene Krantz's Failure is not an Option, so far as the flight controllers were concerned, Apollo 8 was the big flight - the one for the ages - and not Apollo 11. A Voyage for the Ages seemed like a splendid title for the first chapter of my Apollo 8 equivalent flight. The Days the World Stood Still, is a fairly obvious lift too.

Edited August 24, 2016 by KSK

[Omegagoldfish]

Honestly, I can get good ideas, but that's about it. Actually writing things other than concentrated horror is pretty much impossible for me.

 

And deep beneath our sins, the Old One watches with hate, preparing to emerge and judge us for our failings. We may sleep however, perchance to dream of our failure...

Edited August 26, 2016 by Omegagoldfish

[KSK]

Just finished A.L. Kennedy's On Writing. A present to my wife originally, who sadly can't read it - her day job involves huge amounts of reading, so her eyes don't let her read much for pleasure these days. Audiobooks have turned out to be a godsend. So I thought I'd give the book a go myself - and I really enjoyed it. It's fair to say that Kennedy's writing is a fair way outside the genres I normally read but that didn't actually matter too much. 

Anyhow, the reason I mention this is because On Writing was tremendously cheering (and funny too, which helps.) Most of it I found I could relate to, even coming from pretty much the opposite end of the writing spectrum (first time writer vs well established, published author.) Hugely encouraging to find that being a published writer doesn't automatically make the actual writing any easier and that the struggles of a professional author were very much recognisable to a neophyte scribbler.

TL: DR.   Don't get discouraged! This is a craft we're learning, like any craft it takes time to master, and even the masters still have to work at it!

 

Edit:  Let me put this another way. Reading this book was like that moment from Jurassic Park. "This is a Unix system writing - I know this stuff!"

Edited August 28, 2016 by KSK

[Andem]

To switch gears again, to what extent do you guys usually tweak mods or the game to better fit your stories? I've been screwing around with texture replacer to make custom suits, and I've started experimenting with kopernicus. Where do you guys draw the limit of personal alteration?

[0111narwhalz]

43 minutes ago, Andem said:

To switch gears again, to what extent do you guys usually tweak mods or the game to better fit your stories? I've been screwing around with texture replacer to make custom suits, and I've started experimenting with kopernicus. Where do you guys draw the limit of personal alteration?

My stories aren't mission reports, but I'm pretty sure that line is yours to draw and yours alone.

[Mister Dilsby]

5 hours ago, Andem said:

To switch gears again, to what extent do you guys usually tweak mods or the game to better fit your stories? I've been screwing around with texture replacer to make custom suits, and I've started experimenting with kopernicus. Where do you guys draw the limit of personal alteration?

A very good question, there are quite a few stories including mine existing somewhere on the slider bar between "factual mission report" and "completely made-up story". 

For appearance mods, the sky-box's the limit EVE, Scatterer, Texture Replacer for uniforms, I also use a decal mod called NEBULA. None of this affects gameplay in the least so you can use them all and still be doing a completely factual misson reports. Same with Kopernicus; unless you're using it to mis-represent physics (for example, your story takes place on Laythe but the Laythe in your game has no gravity because you want your story to be about magical jetpacking space fairies) you can still do a completely factual report using Kopernicus. 

But your question isn't really about what mods to use, it's how far we're willing to go to "cheat" in the interest of storytelling. Everyone will have a different set of personal guidelines, of course. For me, the Kerbfleet missions are with very few exceptions flown honestly without ALT-F12, part config editing, Hyperedit, etc. The one time I can recall using Hyperedit on a Fleet mission was when I needed a ship to launch from KSC2, and I edited it to the pad there.

One major bit of "cheating" I do for storyline purposes is to tweak Texture Replacer so that any character can remove their helmet in vacuum. I do this for shots of "pressurized" bridges and other compartments inside big ships. This doesn't affect gameplay at all, of course. 

In the past, before the update made gameplay on a 800-part ship somewhat bearable, I shot many interior scenes on a "sound stage" version of the Intrepid, hyperedited to wherever it needed to be to get the crew facial reactions I needed... in a lazy orbit around Minmus for happy moments, and suborbital/exploding over Eve whenever I needed a look of abject terror.

Non-Kerbfleet ships can and do get cheated all over the place. The Kerbulans aren't even always in the same savefile as the main Kerbfleet misison. I hyperedit them wherever they need to be, and take them out when I don't want them to be seen in mapviews. 

What's important for me, and the reasoning behind all of the above, is that I want to (1) fly real missions that readers know I executed using the same set of rules they're using. Whatever other shenanigans are going on in it, the Jool Odyssey story is an honest-to-goodness attempt at the Jool-5 Challenge. (2) within the boundaries of (1), embellish as needed to tell an entertaining story. 

[Andem]

@Kuzzter Thanks! So far, all of my missions have been executed legit, and (barring bugs), I've kept reverting disabled (keeping quicksaves though!). I always find it hard to intentionally fail a mission or intentionally kill a kerbal for the sake of the story. Even making the selene probe burn up in kerbin's atmosphere made me cringe a little bit. In fact, the last chapter with the haywire booster wasn't staged, and, in the heat of the moment, I just added a little bit of flair to it. I dunno. I have a feeling that I'll have to do it eventually, and I've already decided that a Kerbal dying means a Kerbal dying, no reverting from that.

[UnusualAttitude]

14 hours ago, Andem said:

To switch gears again, to what extent do you guys usually tweak mods or the game to better fit your stories?

Interesting question, and for my part, there is no simple answer.

I started The Camwise Logs because, A: I wanted to show off some of my RSS missions as a report in an unusual format and B: because a couple of my Kerbals crash-landed on the Moon and this put them in an interesting and potentially dramatic situation that I thought had the makings of a good story. Up until the moment Cam's lander tipped, I certainly wasn't imagining that I'd end up writing a novel-length work about him. One of those fateful moments, I suppose. 

A few people said they liked the reports and the character, so I kept on playing through the save and writing his story. But to do this for any length of time, I really needed an end-goal to aim for, or I was pretty sure I would lose interest in writing it eventually. A story needs a beginning (check), an ending (sort of check, I think) and a middle (things are a bit complicated in that department). So as it stands, I suppose I am now attempting to write - at my own humble level - a genuine hard sci-fi novel about the Fermi Paradox (an endless source of absolutely fascinating and ultimately futile speculation but I'm reading far too much Alastair Reynolds at the moment) where the actual missions are designed, flown and illustrated in KSP.

RSS/RO allows you to design and fly your own proof-of-concept space missions. Because The Logs have the ambitious goal of eventually reaching the outer Sol system, I will be obliged to introduce some advanced near-future technology either via mods or my own hacks. But I have no problem with that if my characters can provide plausible explanations for these developments.

Some (very few) of my characters have died / will die scripted deaths that are essential to the plot. Others might kick the bucket if I screw up. There is some wiggle-room for nasty surprises.

It's really hard juggling with all these different factors: writing a good story, actually being able to design the missions I write into the story, having fun actually playing the game... I'm sure the process is sometimes painful for some of us (I'm thinking of @Kuzzter, @Just Jim and @Cydonian Monk in particular). But it's immensely rewarding when it works. I almost feel like a good sci-fi author who has taken his research a little too seriously. 

Edited August 30, 2016 by UnusualAttitude

[SaturnianBlue]

15 hours ago, Andem said:

To switch gears again, to what extent do you guys usually tweak mods or the game to better fit your stories? I've been screwing around with texture replacer to make custom suits, and I've started experimenting with kopernicus. Where do you guys draw the limit of personal alteration?

With The Asteroid Sentinels the first parts I generally only really used tool and visual mods, but I've ended up adding more mods as I went along, weather it be for making my "sets" and spacecraft look nicer. I've used Kerbinside at times as well. Outside of the game I also alter things quite a bit outside the game too. For example Jeb near the asteroid or almost all of the "room" scenes ("War Room" style set, Morts office, RDF vault, etc.) are shot at the Runway and many on a different save. Vessel mover I once used for a rocket launch scene, for example. Hyper edit was used a lot, but this was more the fact that I didn't have the craft in space already (and assembly/launch of these would take long times, and for places that are unlikely to be used for more than a few episodes, I ended up with lots of hyper edit.

 

Also, I'd like some feedback on my newest episode of The Asteroid Sentinels, and if it might be telling more than showing. I also wonder how relatable my characters are.

[Ten Key]

On 8/17/2016 at 1:25 PM, Andem said:

So, just a very general question, but how do you guys portray someone who has truly gone mad?

I've always seen madness as something of a feedback loop caused by isolation. We are social creatures-- we define right and wrong based on our interactions with those around us. When something traumatic happens, we rely on our friends to help set us right again. But if the trauma is too great, or too prolonged, it may cause our friends to pull away. . .or perhaps be pushed away. And as time passes that cycle accelerates and soon there is no one left. . .there is no social anchor. And then a person's sense of right and wrong can drift away from the rest of society. They end up playing with a completely different deck of cards. Of all the endings presented in Mass Effect 3, I found the Control ending the most terrifying.

If a person is reduced to a brain in a jar, how long would it take before they forget what pain feels like? Hunger? Love?

 

On 8/23/2016 at 0:26 PM, KSK said:

Yeah me too. It's the one scene that felt badly out of place. I get why it was in there, as a clear cut signal that Anakin Has Turned to the Dark Side, but it was a lazy way of doing it.

Yes. . .but, perhaps, no.

I watched those movies one time each. Never again. But fishing through my somewhat hazy memory banks, I'm left with the impression that perhaps the scene itself wasn't the problem. Perhaps those movies had but one job. . .to provide a plausible set up for that scene. And they failed utterly. 

Madness as an isolation loop. . .I believe that scene could have worked, had the people involved been honest with themselves about where they were going right from the beginning. 

 

On 8/23/2016 at 3:32 PM, Just Jim said:

Let's switch over to a different topic for a moment...

Have any of you ever gotten a chapter finished, but then got really stuck thinking of a good name for the title?  

I actually tend to have the opposite problem. My writing process is slow enough to where the chapter names exist long before the chapter does, and then sometimes the writing drifts away from the chapter title. No! That can't go there, it doesn't fit the theme of the chapter! 

 

17 hours ago, Andem said:

To switch gears again, to what extent do you guys usually tweak mods or the game to better fit your stories? I've been screwing around with texture replacer to make custom suits, and I've started experimenting with kopernicus. Where do you guys draw the limit of personal alteration?

I've never "tweaked" the mod I'm using, but I have had to subvert it for my own ends. The mod can been seen as a series of progressive challenges, and the tech tree is laid out in such a way that it provides you exactly what you need and no more. I'm pretty far up the tech tree now and the only parts I have that provide oxygen reserves are the command modules themselves. I've built a few ridiculous machines that the mod never intended in order to side step its checks and balances.

[Ten Key]

3 hours ago, SaturnianBlue said:

Also, I'd like some feedback on my newest episode of The Asteroid Sentinels, and if it might be telling more than showing.

Now this. . .this is how you "show" a character.  

 

[CatastrophicFailure]

23 hours ago, Andem said:

To switch gears again, to what extent do you guys usually tweak mods or the game to better fit your stories? I've been screwing around with texture replacer to make custom suits, and I've started experimenting with kopernicus. Where do you guys draw the limit of personal alteration?

Flags. Flags. And more flags. Including the one I continually forget to actually use. 

My game has gone eerily where the story needed it to go. Poor Yuri really did up & disappear.  Dibella's de-orbit engine really did fail (RealFuels bug). Several of my Mün landers really did vanish (game thought they weren't landed and deleted them when I switched focus). And most recently...

Spoiler

I swear, something just reached out and grabbed my rover. It was creeping slowly towards the edge, still a good ways away, I look away for just one second, and explosions! Then nothing but bits and pieces falling into the Mohole. But it couldn't have actually hit anything!

So the, er, "choreography" has been surprisingly limited. 

[CatastrophicFailure]

Throwing this up (pun intended) in case anyone else finds it useful. Apparently there's a difference between an em dash, an en dash, and a hyphen. And they're all used completely differently. 

English. SMH. 

 

Aaaaaand I forgot the garpaflarping link, too...

http://www.thepunctuationguide.com/em-dash.html

Edited September 1, 2016 by CatastrophicFailure

[0111narwhalz]

2 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Throwing this up (pun intended) in case anyone else finds it useful. Apparently there's a difference between an em dash, an en dash, and a hyphen. And they're all used completely differently. 

English. SMH. 

You must use a tiny horizontal line of precisely this length here, that length there, and this length here. Arbitrary rules are arbitrary.

[Ten Key]

15 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Throwing this up (pun intended) in case anyone else finds it useful. Apparently there's a difference between an em dash, an en dash, and a hyphen. And they're all used completely differently. 

The em dash is so named because it's roughly the same length as an "M", and the en dash is about the length of an "n".

I love dashed sentences-- it's a great way to add emphasis without cutting off a thought and starting a new sentence. When I used Microsoft Word it would auto convert two hyphens into an em dash; these days I just use a double hyphen and call it a day.

The semicolon is where I tend to trip up. It seems that the "em dash" is used to add emphasis, whereas the semicolon is used to tie two related ideas together that could stand on their own as separate sentences. But the semicolon has always looked weird to me, so I always end up using a dash. 

[Mister Dilsby]

13 hours ago, 0111narwhalz said:

You must use a tiny horizontal line of precisely this length here, that length there, and this length here. Arbitrary rules are arbitrary.

Looking at @0111narwhalz location now and trying to determine if the uncertainty is at level '4n+head' or level '4m+head'. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Andem]

On 8/31/2016 at 9:51 PM, CatastrophicFailure said:

Throwing this up (pun intended) in case anyone else finds it useful. Apparently there's a difference between an em dash, an en dash, and a hyphen. And they're all used completely differently. 

English. SMH. 

 

Aaaaaand I forgot the garpaflarping link, too...

http://www.thepunctuationguide.com/em-dash.html

*Cringe*

[adsii1970]

On 9/1/2016 at 1:29 PM, Ten Key said:

The em dash is so named because it's roughly the same length as an "M", and the en dash is about the length of an "n".

I love dashed sentences-- it's a great way to add emphasis without cutting off a thought and starting a new sentence. When I used Microsoft Word it would auto convert two hyphens into an em dash; these days I just use a double hyphen and call it a day.

The semicolon is where I tend to trip up. It seems that the "em dash" is used to add emphasis, whereas the semicolon is used to tie two related ideas together that could stand on their own as separate sentences. But the semicolon has always looked weird to me, so I always end up using a dash. 

As someone that writes and researches for a living, think of a semicolon as a sigh; it does join two thoughts or related ideas together. A hyphen -- when used correctly -- really brings out the emphasis you're trying to place.

(highly exaggerated examples, I know)...

[KSK]

I normally have to rein myself in when using dashes - they do tend to be my sentence-joiners of choice and tend to get overused.

And on a different note, I have no idea what I ate last night but I'm telling you - there was some good stuff in there somewhere judging by the bizarro dreams. Turns out that it's possible to translate shark speak - but that each shark speaks a different dialect and the only way to figure that out is to count the number of tail-flicks per minute.

Yeah.

Anyhow the rest of that oddity gave me an idea for a story - I'm guessing novella length or thereabouts. The most unsettling part of the whole experience was waking up at 5:30 with the distinct feeling that my subconscious was deliberately holding the dream for me and yelling at me to get my sorry keister to a keyboard and transcribe it all before it got dropped.

So yeah, in the unlikely event that anyone ever asks me That Question, my answer will be something along the lines of "I get all my best ideas at 5:30 in the morning after dreaming about shark linguistics.' Whereupon they will most likely either send for the burly gentlemen with the backwards fitting overcoats, or phone the pretension police.

 

Sorry - just wanted to share that.

 

 

 

Edited September 3, 2016 by KSK

[UnusualAttitude]

On 03/09/2016 at 11:37 PM, CatastrophicFailure said:

<some morse code>

Spoiler

 

On 03/09/2016 at 11:31 PM, KSK said:

"I get all my best ideas at 5:30 in the morning after dreaming about shark linguistics.'

How very exotic. I feel rather mundane in comparison. My latest Good Idea^TM for The Logs came to me during today's lunch break whilst sitting on the pavement waiting for a guy to cook my pizza.

I'd been desperately struggling to think of something cool for the next mission for such a long time, and it hit me out of the blue so suddenly that I half expected the Vogons to come down and demolish Earth three minutes later.

[KSK]

On 04/09/2016 at 9:15 PM, UnusualAttitude said:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

How very exotic. I feel rather mundane in comparison. My latest Good Idea^TM for The Logs came to me during today's lunch break whilst sitting on the pavement waiting for a guy to cook my pizza.

I'd been desperately struggling to think of something cool for the next mission for such a long time, and it hit me out of the blue so suddenly that I half expected the Vogons to come down and demolish Earth three minutes later.

Heh - good thing you weren't visited by a poetic muse then.  Glad you found that idea though - and I hope the pizza was worth it by comparison.

I dreamed up (literally) another idea a while back. No idea why it happens but I'm not complaining. Not going to bore you with it though, mainly because I think it might have legs for another longer project, tentatively titled The Diamond Crown. To be worked on properly after I'm done with First Flight - if I let myself get distracted from a project for too long, that doesn't tend to bode well for finishing it.

14 hours ago, Andem said:

<some morse code>

Indeed. Time to knock off the Morse, folks? Before it drives us (and the mods) dotty?

[Andem]

24 minutes ago, KSK said:

Heh - good thing you weren't visited by a poetic muse then.  Glad you found that idea though - and I hope the pizza was worth it by comparison.

I dreamed up (literally) another idea a while back. No idea why it happens but I'm not complaining. Not going to bore you with it though, mainly because I think it might have legs for another longer project, tentatively titled The Diamond Crown. To be worked on properly after I'm done with First Flight - if I let myself get distracted from a project for too long, that doesn't tend to bode well for finishing it.

it's funny, most of my ideas come to me while fixing and debugging a kraken attack every other half-hour. 

Time to start cutting back on the mods, I guess.

Edited September 5, 2016 by Andem

[Deddly]

Hello everyone! I understand you're just having fun, but please don't forget guideline 2.4b:

 

Users must attempt to use proper grammar and spelling in all messages. Txt-speak, 1337-speak and other exclusionary forms of speech are prohibited;

 

If you have to use morse code, please don't forget to include a translation