A Thread for Writers to talk about Writing

[0111narwhalz]

9 hours ago, KSK said:

I thought that too but I think it's just a bit repetitious. 0111narwhalz - the opening paragraph might flow a bit better if you took out a couple of 'the sled's? The rest of the chapter was great! 

Thanks. I made greater use of pronouns. It should flow a little better now.

I felt all inspired last night and wrote up a little short story. What do you bunch think?

 

[steuben]

Quote

Bobory raised an eyebrow at Jebediah’s choice.

A nice piece of shorthand ruined by kernel physiology. Any suggestions?

[0111narwhalz]

20 minutes ago, steuben said:

A nice piece of shorthand ruined by kernel physiology. Any suggestions?

Do like @CatastrophicFailure do:

Quote

...raised an eye...bulge...

 

[TheEpicSquared]

I was wondering if anyone could give me any tips on the story I'm writing (KSP Megastructures)? Thanks  

 

Edited November 17, 2016 by TheEpicSquared

[steuben]

looking for direction or general critique?

[UnusualAttitude]

1 hour ago, steuben said:

A nice piece of shorthand ruined by kernel physiology. Any suggestions?

I've been called on this sort of thing before and my solution so far has been... to not care. Expressions such as "raise eyebrows" and "being bit on the nose by something"  are often used figuratively anyway. 

It all depends on whether you want to draw attention to the kerbal nature of your universe (Cat's "eye... bulge" does this), or whether you just want to make your point and get on with your story. 

[KSK]

4 minutes ago, UnusualAttitude said:

I've been called on this sort of thing before and my solution so far has been... to not care. Expressions such as "raise eyebrows" and "being bit on the nose by something"  are often used figuratively anyway. 

It all depends on whether you want to draw attention to the kerbal nature of your universe (Cat's "eye... bulge" does this), or whether you just want to make your point and get on with your story. 

That's my solution too. My kerbals have noses, eyebrows, ears and all the rest of it. Also eyelids.

 

[0111narwhalz]

I have a dilemma.

I'm going to start a new story. Now, I know what you're all thinking ("Guy can't even get an update a month on the two he has already. Now he wants to start another?!"), but I need to write this. And here's the dilemma: I don't know where to put it. It has kerbals in, so it's going in the Fanworks subforum. But I'm not sure if it constitutes a mission report or not. It is a report of a mission, but it's a mission I haven't done, nor do I plan to do it. However, "mission report" does describe the style of the story. I'm at a loss.

[DarkOwl57]

1 minute ago, 0111narwhalz said:

I have a dilemma.

I'm going to start a new story. Now, I know what you're all thinking ("Guy can't even get an update a month on the two he has already. Now he wants to start another?!"), but I need to write this. And here's the dilemma: I don't know where to put it. It has kerbals in, so it's going in the Fanworks subforum. But I'm not sure if it constitutes a mission report or not. It is a report of a mission, but it's a mission I haven't done, nor do I plan to do it. However, "mission report" does describe the style of the story. I'm at a loss.

I put all my war stories in the 'Mission reports' area, and there's no issues. I think it might be okay (I have no plan to do the missions outlined in the story either  ) but if you still have question, you could ask a moderator or something.

On 11/3/2016 at 10:13 AM, Kuzzter said:

The ones that are NOT a straight-up mission report, e.g. stories putting Kerbals in interstellar ships for some kind of Ender's Game shoot-em-up--well, those don't interest me too much either.

*Whistles and hides Battle of Kerbin*

[Kid the Squid]

It could be good enough to be a movie

[KSK]

14 minutes ago, 0111narwhalz said:

I have a dilemma.

I'm going to start a new story. Now, I know what you're all thinking ("Guy can't even get an update a month on the two he has already. Now he wants to start another?!"), but I need to write this. And here's the dilemma: I don't know where to put it. It has kerbals in, so it's going in the Fanworks subforum. But I'm not sure if it constitutes a mission report or not. It is a report of a mission, but it's a mission I haven't done, nor do I plan to do it. However, "mission report" does describe the style of the story. I'm at a loss.

Strictly speaking it sounds as though it should go in the general Fanworks subforum. There's plenty of after-action-report style stories in there so it fits. With that said, I reckon you'll probably get more views if you bung it in the Mission Reports forum and if it's written in a mission report sort of style I doubt anyone would complain.

Worst case scenario, somebody decides to moan about it and the mods shift it over to general Fanworks.

[0111narwhalz]

Yeah, that makes sense. Thanks, @DarkOwl57 and @KSK.

Expect to see a new shiny in the MR sometime...soon. I have to write a chapter and think of a title yet.

[DarkOwl57]

Just now, 0111narwhalz said:

Yeah, that makes sense. Thanks, @DarkOwl57 and @KSK.

Expect to see a new shiny in the MR sometime...soon. I have to write a chapter and think of a title yet.

Good luck

[TheEpicSquared]

@steuben Just general critique. You know, writing style, any improvements, that kind of thing.  

[KSK]

Hey folks.

Found a new kerbal name generator for anyone who needs one.

 

[UnusualAttitude]

On 11/19/2016 at 10:35 PM, KSK said:

Hey folks.

Found a new kerbal name generator for anyone who needs one.

Very useful. Still only male names, unfortunately. 

On the other hand, I noticed that you can use the tool to mix Kerbal prefixes and Viking/Mongol/Celtic endings. How cool is that? 

I now want to write the saga of Thompskar and Billy-Bobgardr, fearless raiders of the monasteries of Northern England...

Or the history of Jebchu-Khan and how he carved a mighty Empire at the head of his army of horse-archers...

[CatastrophicFailure]

4 hours ago, UnusualAttitude said:

On the other hand, I noticed that you can use the tool to mix Kerbal prefixes and Viking/Mongol/Celtic endings. How cool is that? 

You can????? This will be... most useful.... 

[The solid fuel chemist]

Hi guys, first time posting on this thread and if you haven't noticed my title yet I am considering starting my own story. My idea so far is heavily inspired by the sci-fi 2312 but with a bit more action. Screenshots will be pretty much impossible as the story frequently would include things that can't be done in KSP (disassembling gilly, for instance) I plan on updating twice a week. So can you guys please just give me a reality check?

[DarkOwl57]

1 hour ago, The solid fuel chemist said:

Hi guys, first time posting on this thread and if you haven't noticed my title yet I am considering starting my own story. My idea so far is heavily inspired by the sci-fi 2312 but with a bit more action. Screenshots will be pretty much impossible as the story frequently would include things that can't be done in KSP (disassembling gilly, for instance) I plan on updating twice a week. So can you guys please just give me a reality check?

Sounds good *Thumbs up*

[steuben]

6 hours ago, The solid fuel chemist said:

Hi guys, first time posting on this thread and if you haven't noticed my title yet I am considering starting my own story. My idea so far is heavily inspired by the sci-fi 2312 but with a bit more action. Screenshots will be pretty much impossible as the story frequently would include things that can't be done in KSP (disassembling gilly, for instance) I plan on updating twice a week. So can you guys please just give me a reality check?

Maybe not so much a reality check as a san check. *rolls die* ... right I've got to use the ones with a positive number of sides. Anyways, I'm guessing 2312 by Robinson, not sure how it will translate into the Kerbal-verse but I guess it will depend on what themes you take.

You will need to do some heavy up front lifting for this one. Tvtropes and webcomics might be a good overview. You can skip over the graphics stuff, but the rest should be looked at. The general parent So you want to... is a good set of references as well.

Now for the heavy lifting part. Since you want to do a twice a week update you will have to do some a lot of planning.
0. Figure out your elevator pitch.
1. Figure out your setting, characters, etc.
1.i. figure out how hard on the Kerb-Moh scale of hardness you will be.
2. Figure out your plot.
3. Figure out how many chapters you want.
4. Figure out how big each chapter will be.
4.i. Know how big a chapter you can write.
4.ii. Know how long it takes you to write it
5. write a summary of each chapter.

Notes: 
- the order of steps 1 and 2 can be swapped
- you may cycle between steps 3 and 4 a couple of times

Additional comments
1. always keep a buffer
2. you can warm-up and develop your characters, settings, background colour with little vignettes.  My "Tales From the Swan", taged "cygnustales",  are an example. They are little bits of omake story and scene from the 'verse of video work that I'm slowly building.
3. don't set the number of chapters or the size of the chapters in stone. As you go along you may realize that it might be better to split this chapter into two, or I need more space to finish this one up.
4. If you plan it all out you are less likely to have plot holes and fridge logic moments, and will be able to put in decent amounts of foreshadowing, call backs, Chekhov weaponry, and a couple of red herrings

[The solid fuel chemist]

I don't plan on having any direct references to the characters or plot of the original book. I plan on realesing on Sunday and Thursday so I can make progress on the Thursday chapter over the weekend

 

EDIT: I may steal terminator though 

Edited November 21, 2016 by The solid fuel chemist

[Cydonian Monk]

This is more of a tool question than a mechanics question: Does anybody here use Scrivener? If so, have you found an easy way to cut/paste from Scrivener to the Forum such that it will keep your page formatting while stripping the typeface/font-size/weight settings from the text? Every time I press that "Remove Formatting" prompt it seems to really play havoc with the paragraph breaks, and not pressing it results in occasionally strange fonts and/or sizes.

Thus far I've been pasting everything into an OS-X TextEdit document first to strip the rich-text parts of the formatting, and that works, but it's an obviously inefficient step in the workflow.

 

Edit: To partially answer my own question, it would appear "Smart Copy/Paste" is part of the problem. That's useful though, so I'll just stick with my two-step process.

Edited November 28, 2016 by Cydonian Monk

[Mjp1050]

Hello all,

I recently started a Mission Report about my entry into the Elcano Challenge, and I would appreciate some feedback on it. This is my first time writing any sort of fiction at all; I'm completely new to this, and I didn't really mean to begin a full-fledged story, it just sort of happened.

 

[KSK]

3 hours ago, Mjp1050 said:

Hello all,

I recently started a Mission Report about my entry into the Elcano Challenge, and I would appreciate some feedback on it. This is my first time writing any sort of fiction at all; I'm completely new to this, and I didn't really mean to begin a full-fledged story, it just sort of happened.

I know that feeling.

I'm liking it so far. Light hearted but nicely written, I'm enjoying your version of Wernher - my apologies, Wherner - and I laughed at:

"We could even come across the "clouds" that are sung about in the myths of old."

Looking forward to seeing where this one goes. Around the World in Eighty Days, kerbal style!

[Mjp1050]

7 hours ago, KSK said:

I know that feeling.

I'm liking it so far. Light hearted but nicely written, I'm enjoying your version of Wernher - my apologies, Wherner - and I laughed at:

"We could even come across the "clouds" that are sung about in the myths of old."

Looking forward to seeing where this one goes. Around the World in Eighty Days, kerbal style!

I've been misspelling Wernher's name the whole time? Oops...

I'm glad you're enjoying it, though.