A Thread for Writers to talk about Writing

[Guest]

2 hours ago, adsii1970 said:

Exactly - after all, in my fan-fic, I've done something no one else has done as far as I know - Jebediah is under investigation and may be heading to a courts-martial. 

Ehhh, pretty sure that's been done

[adsii1970]

4 minutes ago, TotallyNotHuman_ said:

Right and wrong. They can open it fine, no problem. However, if you use fonts that are otherwise unavailable on the computer with Open/LibreOffice (such as a Linux system, where the fonts are all FOSS) and without a substitute (IIRC, Liberation Serif substitutes Times New Roman), they will be SNAFU. The same is true vice versa.

[Edited by adsii1970]

Within Microsoft Office, you can choose to embed the font in the document (if you are using non-standard fonts). It increases the size of the file significantly, however. As long as you use the standard font set (Times New Roman, Arial, etc...) then there are no problems. I have over 5,000 fonts; I have about 300 installed at any one time because I do a lot of graphics editing for people who want certain fonts (including a Disney font). But again, the key is 1) knowing who you are sending the file to, and, 2) sticking with the default standard fonts.

[TotallyNotHuman]

Whoa. TIL! Thanks, @adsii1970!

[adsii1970]

Just now, TotallyNotHuman_ said:

Whoa. TIL! Thanks, @adsii1970!

Ok, new cyberspeak definition I am not accustomed to... "TIL?"

[ccoel]

Just now, adsii1970 said:

Ok, new cyberspeak definition I am not accustomed to... "TIL?"

Til?

[adsii1970]

Yes... "til"? In the context it was used in, what does it mean? I've not seen that one...

[ccoel]

me either.

[TotallyNotHuman]

Today I Learned. It's a carry-over from Reddit.

[ccoel]

hmm

[KSK]

And digressing briefly back to the topic of feedback , I've added this small plea to the Fanworks Library thread. No idea how many folks will read it, let alone take heed but I figured it was worth a go.

[0111narwhalz]

7 hours ago, KSK said:

Spoiler

One thing that might have helped is a little more description of the Drive finally punking out.

 

Spoiler

I plan to address that in the next chapter with the rocket's postmortem.

I'm not sure how the crowd would be able to discern what the Drive's failure mode was, except by the lack of a fragment hovering in space (that is to say, the Drive did not break free, but rather ate itself). And Jeb didn't even notice the massive explosion of the first stage (and part of the second), except that the alarm went off. It would be implausible for him to hear the failure. Do you have any ideas as to how I could make this reasonable?

 

[Just Jim]

9 minutes ago, 0111narwhalz said:

  Hide contents

I plan to address that in the next chapter with the rocket's postmortem.

I'm not sure how the crowd would be able to discern what the Drive's failure mode was, except by the lack of a fragment hovering in space (that is to say, the Drive did not break free, but rather ate itself). And Jeb didn't even notice the massive explosion of the first stage (and part of the second), except that the alarm went off. It would be implausible for him to hear the failure. Do you have any ideas as to how I could make this reasonable?

 

Spoiler

Maybe instead of explosion it could be an implosion, and no huge bang, just a weird, quick sort of sucking "Thhhmmmmmpppp".... sound???

 

1 hour ago, Kuzzter said:

Ehhh, pretty sure that's been done

Oh wait... I have to go back and do some re-reading!!!

[0111narwhalz]

1 minute ago, Just Jim said:

Spoiler

Maybe instead of explosion it could be an implosion, and no huge bang, just a weird, quick sort of sucking "Thhhmmmmmpppp".... sound???

 

Spoiler

The Drive doesn't break physics that much. It's just a spring pushing on a plate in a particular way that doesn't let the plate push back. Most catastrophic failure modes look like a turbine ingesting shrapnel, because the spring pushed too hard and shredded the plate (and everything else inside the casing).

 

[Just Jim]

Just now, 0111narwhalz said:

  Hide contents

The Drive doesn't break physics that much. It's just a spring pushing on a plate in a particular way that doesn't let the plate push back. Most catastrophic failure modes look like a turbine ingesting shrapnel, because the spring pushed too hard and shredded the plate (and everything else inside the casing).

 

Gotcha.... 

[KSK]

2 hours ago, Kuzzter said:

Ehhh, pretty sure that's been done

But was it for mutiny or barratry...?

 

[KSK]

2 hours ago, 0111narwhalz said:

  Hide contents

I plan to address that in the next chapter with the rocket's postmortem.

I'm not sure how the crowd would be able to discern what the Drive's failure mode was, except by the lack of a fragment hovering in space (that is to say, the Drive did not break free, but rather ate itself). And Jeb didn't even notice the massive explosion of the first stage (and part of the second), except that the alarm went off. It would be implausible for him to hear the failure. Do you have any ideas as to how I could make this reasonable?

 

Spoiler

Yeah - that's pretty much what I was thinking of for spotting the Drive's failure mode. As for the failure - I'm not so sure that Jeb wouldn't hear it. Not hearing the monoprop tank go seems legit over the general noise coming from the booster and being too focused on his instruments / not having a capsule window pointing at the explosion could explain why he doesn't see the booster go up. The Drive though? At that point he's basically at a standstill in mid air. It's probably pretty quiet and he's a lot closer to the Drive than he was the booster. Maybe close enough to hear a faint, ominous twang of overstressed metal, just before the few remaining unlit warning lights on his instrument panel light up at once.

 

Edited May 5, 2017 by KSK

[Guest]

2 hours ago, KSK said:

But was it for mutiny or barratry...?

 

Yes... along with multiple counts of grand theft spacecraft, contributing to the delinquency of an enzin, passing counterfeit mission patches, failure to signal a gravity turn... just going from memory here, good time that was.  

[0111narwhalz]

33 minutes ago, KSK said:

  Hide contents

Not hearing the monoprop tank go seems legit over the general noise coming from the booster and being too focused on his instruments / not having a capsule window pointing at the explosion could explain why he doesn't see the booster go up. 

 

Spoiler

That's the thing, though. There was no noise. He wasn't even sure whether the main engines were on. The gel damped that all away.

Maybe I could throw a chunk of drive debris into the gel. That'd probably get his attention, and it might even be vigorous enough to push through a little bit of the gel.

 

[Just Jim]

3 hours ago, Kuzzter said:

Yes... along with multiple counts of grand theft spacecraft, contributing to the delinquency of an enzin, passing counterfeit mission patches, failure to signal a gravity turn... just going from memory here, good time that was.  

Oh man... I totally forgot... d'oh!!!  Spend too long obsessed with my own story, I'm forgetting everyone elses...

[Ten Key]

11 hours ago, KSK said:

Feedback is an invaluable tool for improvement but its an awful tool for showing you how to progress. At the end of the day, its your story and your vision for that story that counts. Ask a group of people where you should be going next and you'll likely get n different opinions, all of them different and most of them flatly contradictory. Which isn't much help at all. Or, put another way, stories are rarely written by committee.

This is true to a large degree, but I think there's something to be said for spitballing. Sometimes when I'm stuck the "throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks" approach is a good way to get things moving again-- you never know when something random is going to bounce off your brain in just the right way to spark off a new idea or subplot.

 

11 hours ago, KSK said:

It can also be very difficult to offer comments on how to improve a work as opposed to just making it different. I've faced that particular conundrum as the person giving and receiving feedback on writing.

Seconding this. Beyond a certain point I cannot tell you how you should write something. . .I can only tell you how I would write something. And that will not necessarily be an improvement. 

 

9 hours ago, DarkOwl57 said:

I love how everyone's helping the people besides me XD

The following isn't directed at you specifically Owl, but there are a number of reasons I might skip past a request for feedback, and this seems like a good excuse to talk about some of them.

First and foremost, I may simply not have the time. Putting together of list of suggestions that is coherent, concise and helpful is fairly time consuming and, depending on what else I've got going on, I may simply not be able to set aside enough time to put together anything useful. There are several talented writers who provide feedback here, but not enough to where we don't all occasionally get busy at the same time.

Sometimes there just isn't enough for me to work with. Three to five paragraphs? Sure, I might be able to offer a point or two on sentence structure, or maybe pacing, but storytelling? Writing? No. Unless the writing is very tight, 3-5 paragraphs isn't enough for me to be able to tell where you're going. And if the writing is that tight. . .trust me, you do not need or want my help.  

Sometimes the story just isn't in my wheelhouse. I do not do horror, nor am I a big fan of "whodunits". I have written war stories in the past, and I find Kerbal Space Program to be a poor vehicle for those kinds of tales. War can be an element of stories in the KSP setting, but not a main focus. . .I just cannot wrap my brain around the idea of it. So to, the milieu of KSP is so firmly rooted in the "Space Race" era that I have a hard time with "far future" stories that focus on warp drives and interstellar travel. I'm not saying it's not possible to write any of those things well, but rather that it's unlikely I'd have anything useful to say on the matter.

Sometimes the story includes pictures of places in the game I haven't been yet. A big part of KSP for me is the "I wonder what's over there. . .", and the first time I visit a new place, I want it to be a new place. So far I've managed to claw my way to Kerbin's moons, Moho, Eve and Gilly. We choose to go to Duna, not because it is easy, but because I really want to read Kuzzter's schtuff! Demum perveniemus. . .

Sometimes the writer's English is just a complete train wreck. The unfortunate reality is that I have no way of knowing who is a native English speaker and who is not. . .and making assumptions in that regard sounds like a great way to get my head ripped off. If your story reads like it was machine translated from another language, I'm going to keep walking. 

Sometimes it feels like there's too much of an age gap. I am nearly 40, and I have more than a few gray hairs in my head. I have lived through wild triumphs and ridiculous failures. I have lost family after long illnesses and have had friends taken from me with no warning at all. I have done good. I have screwed up. I have been in a fairly serious car accident. I have fallen bassackwards into a great job. I have been "escorted from the building". I have hired people. I have had to fire people who hadn't done anything wrong. I've had to put up with people who should have been fired but couldn't be. And I can think of at least three occasions where I should have died but didn't. All of that, all of it, has become a story telling tool, a well of experience I can draw on when I'm writing. Sometimes I will read something, and for whatever reason it just rings false to me. People don't talk like that. They don't act like that. And maybe. . .maybe it's just a mechanical issue that could be smoothed over. It happens to everyone. But maybe the writer is just very young, and due to the absolutely necessary rules on this forum, I cannot ask. And if it is an age issue, there's nothing for it but time. Survive long enough and you'll have some stories to tell too.  

Finally, sometimes if I offer commentary on too many stories at once, I start feeling like a Big Jerk. I know first hand that writing is a very personal process, and I try very hard to be helpful and polite. But sometimes due to time constraints I have to choose between being terse and not posting at all. If I do too much of that, I wind up feeling like a self-important gas bag and have to take a break for a while. 

 

7 hours ago, adsii1970 said:

Also, you could use note cards or a notebook to outline each chapter you're planning. This way, you have an idea of where you want to go before you actually go and use the library computer. This saves me (as I do this) valuable time instead of doing the ceiling tile stare as you try to figure out which thing you want to write about next.  With the next chapter I post, I will include a picture of the note cards I've used for that chapter - if you're interested - but mainly for you to see it doesn't have to be anything formal.

My desktop is littered with notepad files for this very reason. 

 

6 hours ago, adsii1970 said:

There is at least one document formats (RTF =Rich Text Format) that I know of that seems to be universal.

All my stuff is in the RTF format. The file size is a bit larger than it needs to be, but I find the near universal compatibility to be worth the cost.

A word of warning. . .be careful opening RTF files from unknown sources. RTF files can be a vector for malware. 

 

1 hour ago, Kuzzter said:

Yes... along with multiple counts of grand theft spacecraft, contributing to the delinquency of an enzin, passing counterfeit mission patches, failure to signal a gravity turn... just going from memory here, good time that was.  

Failure to signal a gravity turn. . .now that is priceless. 

[CatastrophicFailure]

14 minutes ago, Ten Key said:

This is true to a large degree, but I think there's something to be said for spitballing. Sometimes when I'm stuck the "throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks" approach is a good way to get things moving again-- you never know when something random is going to bounce off your brain in just the right way to spark off a new idea or subplot.

This. It can also be incredibly helpful (despite the unhygienic metaphor) to con cajole convince someone to respect to lob spitballs at you. If nothing else, you'll be entertained. Possibly damp.

 

19 minutes ago, Ten Key said:

Finally, sometimes if I offer commentary on too many stories at once, I start feeling like a Big Jerk. I know first hand that writing is a very personal process, and I try very hard to be helpful and polite. But sometimes due to time constraints I have to choose between being terse and not posting at all. If I do too much of that, I wind up feeling like a self-important gas bag and have to take a break for a while. 

 

Also worth noting here that sometimes the greatest courtesy you can do a person is telling them what they don't exactly want to hear.  

[Just Jim]

8 hours ago, Ten Key said:

Finally, sometimes if I offer commentary on too many stories at once, I start feeling like a Big Jerk. I know first hand that writing is a very personal process, and I try very hard to be helpful and polite. 

I would say this is my biggest thing as well. I try my best to read every story posted, but I feel like if I chime in on every one i read, I'm just going to seem like a big know-it-all. Plus I'm not a teacher, or any kind of writing scholar, so I feel a little weird and under-qualified to be critiquing other people.

8 hours ago, Ten Key said:

This is true to a large degree, but I think there's something to be said for spitballing. Sometimes when I'm stuck the "throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks" approach is a good way to get things moving again-- you never know when something random is going to bounce off your brain in just the right way to spark off a new idea or subplot.

I have a really good friend on the forum who is also a writer, and we're constantly throwing ideas back and forth privately about both our stories. You're right, it really helps if you're stuck to just start chucking ideas out and see what they turn into... 

 

20 hours ago, adsii1970 said:

Also, you could use note cards or a notebook to outline each chapter you're planning. This way, you have an idea of where you want to go before you actually go and use the library computer. This saves me (as I do this) valuable time instead of doing the ceiling tile stare as you try to figure out which thing you want to write about next.  With the next chapter I post, I will include a picture of the note cards I've used for that chapter - if you're interested - but mainly for you to see it doesn't have to be anything formal

I have a huge loose-leaf notebook crammed full of Emiko stuff... 

[steuben]

Inside the forth wall:
"The First Interregnum ended like super-saturated solution after a seed crystal is inserted. That seed was a kerbal called Reinhardt Kerman. His genius allowed the creation and development of the first FTL drives. His drive and ambition lead to construction of the Cygnus-class starships. His dedication lead to him being lost with the first of the Cygnus ships."

Outside the forth wall, that kerbal was a narcissistic psychopathic polymath genius. Who may have stolen some of the work on the Goo that allowed the drive to be developed. I'm still not sure how he survived without him being involved a tragic accident with an airlock... with him on the black side. And the ship wasn't lost... he stole it. I can't say I'm happy that plot thread turned into one big caper.

Here's the problem I have, constructing the industrial history of the Cygnus project, from conception to first launch.

Period -1 - The program is suffering from post-tech tree malaise, like most players it sometimes seems.

Period 0.1 - Dr. R figures out a FTL drive based on the Goo
Period 0.2 - Dr. R starts the Cygnus project

Period 1 - initial mining and fab modules are lifted from Kerbin to ... somewhere. Münar orbit and surface probably.

Period 2 - first orbital yard... somewhere and fuel mining plant on Minmus.

Period 3 - first Cygnus-class orbital yard. 

Period 4 - time passes

Period 5 - first Cygnus-class launch

The first orbital yard is basically a bootstrapping orbital manufacturing facility. The bulk of the construction of modules for the other stations and space yards are built there. Specialty modules and equipment will still be lifted off Kerbin. At least until during later in period 4 then most of the specialty stuff will be lifted from the Mün.

I'm trying to figure out where that somewhere should be, and if I'm missing any details in the flow, or if there is anything I should keep in mind. The setting is about a 4.5 on the Moh's Scale of Kerbal hardness.

 

 

 

[KSK]

On 5/9/2017 at 7:35 PM, steuben said:

Inside the forth wall:
"The First Interregnum ended like super-saturated solution after a seed crystal is inserted. That seed was a kerbal called Reinhardt Kerman. His genius allowed the creation and development of the first FTL drives. His drive and ambition lead to construction of the Cygnus-class starships. His dedication lead to him being lost with the first of the Cygnus ships."

Outside the forth wall, that kerbal was a narcissistic psychopathic polymath genius. Who may have stolen some of the work on the Goo that allowed the drive to be developed. I'm still not sure how he survived without him being involved a tragic accident with an airlock... with him on the black side. And the ship wasn't lost... he stole it. I can't say I'm happy that plot thread turned into one big caper.

Here's the problem I have, constructing the industrial history of the Cygnus project, from conception to first launch.

Period -1 - The program is suffering from post-tech tree malaise, like most players it sometimes seems.

Period 0.1 - Dr. R figures out a FTL drive based on the Goo
Period 0.2 - Dr. R starts the Cygnus project

Period 1 - initial mining and fab modules are lifted from Kerbin to ... somewhere. Münar orbit and surface probably.

Period 2 - first orbital yard... somewhere and fuel mining plant on Minmus.

Period 3 - first Cygnus-class orbital yard. 

Period 4 - time passes

Period 5 - first Cygnus-class launch

The first orbital yard is basically a bootstrapping orbital manufacturing facility. The bulk of the construction of modules for the other stations and space yards are built there. Specialty modules and equipment will still be lifted off Kerbin. At least until during later in period 4 then most of the specialty stuff will be lifted from the Mün.

I'm trying to figure out where that somewhere should be, and if I'm missing any details in the flow, or if there is anything I should keep in mind. The setting is about a 4.5 on the Moh's Scale of Kerbal hardness.

Hmmm. If it's a bootstrapping facility it would make sense (to me at any rate) to put it in orbit around Kerbin whilst you're still lifting stuff from Kerbin. It's easier to move stuff downhill from the Mun than uphill to the Mun - or Minmus for that matter.

[KSK]

On 4/28/2017 at 0:09 PM, Just Jim said:

Oh, Ouch!!!  lmao

OK, back on-topic.... I never did comment back on NaNoWriMo .

The reason I found it so astounding is I put in context of writing Emiko Station. Lately my chapters average 2,500 - 3,000 words... more or less. Which means to complete the NaNoWriMo, I'd have to write a chapter a day for 18-20 days. And right now I'm lucky if I write more than one chapter in 18-20 days... lol.

It's really impressive, and I'm not sure I could maintain that pace...so again... massive respect to anyone that can!  

Skipping back a couple of comments here - I thought this might be of interest...

From Wikipedia:

Quote

 

Worm was first published as an online serial with two to three chapters released every week. Beginning online publishing in June 2011 and continuing until November 2013,[6][10] it maintains a very high level of readership which peaked at over 80,000 unique visitors in June 2015,[11] nearly two years after it had been completed.

The story was written at a rate of up to 11,000 words per day,[4][8] comparable to a traditional book being published every month.[4][12] It followed a strict publication schedule,[4][5] with new chapters released every Tuesday and Saturday, and bonus chapters on Thursdays as rewards for donations.

 

11,000 words!

Per day!

Apologies - my head just asploded. Especially as the end product is pretty darn readable. Or it is so far at any rate.