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POPULAR: Simple Questions, Simple Answers

Yeah, I think asking people to go through and edit the database for stories would open an entire can of worms I am not willing to do. I think you are just going to have to roll with what you currently have and hope for the best. I put 23k from Galactic into advanced and received no warning as to the length would prevent me from posting, so that shouldn't be an issue I feel, but can check if you would like.
 
If your story has an index post (or table of contents or w/e), then you can just link things there in the correct order and post the "intermixed" chapters out of order with a production notice / Author's Notes. However from what I've heard from other people, revisions deep enough to add or reorder content across several chapters are best released as a new / different version rather than editing an existing thread - I mean, even in the best case scenario, there's to deal with reviews, responses and replies to your story suddenly becoming out of order or just retconned of sorts.
 
I'm unlikely to alter the plot substantially through these edited/new chapters, thus why I'm hesitant to create a new topic.

I do have plans to rewrite the entire first season, which could probably justify starting a new thread (several are done already, but I want to release then en masse), but then I run into the problem of views. Call me a cynic, but newcomers will probably completely ignore a topic with 50 chapters and minimal views. I keep telling myself that the views aren't what's important to me, but the fact that I'm stuck on this idea makes me think otherwise.

As it stands, I'll likely just squish two chapters together. Keeps everything orderly, if a little less neat.
 
Unfortunately what little I'd cut wouldn't match up with what I'd want to include. There's one chapter I'm looking at dropping (Great Escape), but at least two, possibly more elsewhere.
 
This one comes back to the hoary old question of accents. Now, a bit of context: one of my main characters has a naturally strong regional accent that's carries a generally low status. When talking to others he hides it, only really slipping into his accent when he's angry/upset etc. In the past I did experiment with his speech pebble-dashed with some phonetically accented words - since he doesn't use his accent much in the story I hoped it would be unobtrusive. It didn't really work, though.

I do want to find a way to make it work - to try and find a good consistent method that doesn't continually poke the reader in the eye. So I'm considering sparingly using dialect words instead. The idea is that the meaning of the word would be inferred from context, or the line of dialogue would be deliberately slightly difficult to understand (As it would be heard through another character's point of view). Anyone have any thoughts on this one?
 
Without knowledge of what kind of accent you want to use, I can't give a whole lot of advice, but a slight peppering of phonetic spelling mixed with some dialect terms is a good way to go. You said you wanted to make it slightly more difficult to parse, so the only thing I can really think of is running the dialogue by someone who's not familiar with the fic to see if they can still make out what he's saying.
 
So here's a bit of a tricky one for me. In my fantasy world, there is a very powerful artifact created by the ancient gods that has laid dormant for thousands of years, waiting for its purpose to be fulfilled. The artifact is a sword, destined to be held by a great hero, to be used in times of darkness and strife. Part of the legend is as follows:

"He who holds the sword will deliver the world into a new Eden."

Yet there is no Garden of Eden in this world's mythology. I've considered changing it to 'he who holds the sword will deliver the world into paradise', but I'm not sure if it has that same impact. Paradise can have a range, but the Garden of Eden sits at the top of that range. Golden age might work as well, but again I feel like it lacks the impact.

I'm not sure what to do!
 
Does Garden of Eden have to be a biblical thing? Can you not include such a place in that culture's religion? Greek mythology had Elysium as their paradise in the afterlife, and there is something similar in Norse mythology The majority of religions have some of the same basic ideas built into them, so I don't think it would be too much of a stretch to pick and choose certain aspects for your world. I think you could make Paradise work though if you maybe change some of the words around?
 
It doesn't have to be a biblical thing, but most people would probably interpret it that way. If you were to ask your common every day man what the first thing that pops into his head at the mention of Eden, I'd be willing to bet a majority of them would either reference the bible or god first, and paradise second or even third.

Perhaps I could just find another way to word the legend to avoid referencing it entirely, but I really like the sentence I crafted there. :(
 
It doesn't have to be a biblical thing, but most people would probably interpret it that way. If you were to ask your common every day man what the first thing that pops into his head at the mention of Eden, I'd be willing to bet a majority of them would either reference the bible or god first, and paradise second or even third.
Yes, but if you have some mention of a different religion elsewhere, people would make the connection between it. People would automatically assume the majority religion in your world is some form of Christianity anyway unless you explicitly state otherwise.

I think if you like the sentence enough, just roll with it, and see what happens when someone picks up on it. Sometimes you have to edit things further down the line rather than straight away.
 
I don't think people will get the idea that the majority religion in my world is some equivalent to an Abrahamic religion, as there are at least three deities, possibly a fourth depending on how you look at it. Perhaps it's something I'll have to look at before building more around it, as I haven't put a metric ton of thought into it yet.

Anyways, I guess I'll worry about it as things progress. I think this is kinda what kills progress for me, worrying the small details as much as I do.
 
It's an inevitable consequence that fantasy worlds are going to deprive you of some phrases (I really wanted to use "smiled like a tiger", but there's not really an elegant way to pokéfy that one). In this context I don't think you're going to be able to get away with using Eden and not connoting the Abrahamic religions - which for the majority of your readership will probably mean Christianity, in all honesty.

If you don't find some way to explain what role Eden plays in this invented religion then it's probably going to look out of place. I suppose the key themes of Eden are beginnings, freshness, innocence, and the marring of what was pristine ... none of which is necessarily Abrahamic until the story of the Tree of Knowledge comes into it
 
Actually, that does make me think, I'd been toying with a sort of paradise-like realm set within the sky, where the pantheon of gods are said to reside. Currently in my notes I have it named simply "golden realm", perhaps I could get away with naming it Eden or something.
 
You could say Paradise with a capital P. Then it's a proper noun and not just some vague idea.
 
Here's the deal; these are the issues that have been haunting me in terms of writing the most

1. When i want to spend some time on a specific story, but occasions that are just around corner plead me to work on stories that relate to them more:

Let me put it this way; with the month of October less than a week away, a month that holds my Birthday and Halloween within it, i feel the need to work on two specific stories for the sake of keeping with the Halloween spirit; An original Fantasy novel about dragons and magical creatures that i'm writing and a fanfiction related to a cartoon about Magical creatures living in the modern world that i like. These seemed like the most logical choices to use to satisfy both of my desires to write and to keep to the Halloween spirit. But, a good strong part of me wants to continue with another fanfiction story that I'm writing, one that is associated with a TV show (or rather a reboot of a TV show) that I associate with Kingdoms, armies, monarchies, politics, warfare and conquests, none of which are related to Halloween in anyway, I might add. Now, I might be able to get away with mixing Royalty-related things with the Birthday theme, since Royals can really throw a birthday party, as I've heard. But, Monarchies just don't mix well with the Halloween vibe very much, if at all. I mean, I could just barely get away with applying that sort of thing to Thanksgiving or Easter (what with the latter's connection to Passover and the story of Exodus and all), and I could definitely make this work with with the Winter Holiday season (Christmas has a few stories that mix well with the Royalty theme and Hanukkah's story does the same too), but Halloween, no dice.

2. When i just can't put a sentence together that sounds like something someone would actually say

3. When i'm ready to write one story, because i'm in that particular mood, but am far from the point of the story that i would have like to have been.

4. Comparing Fan fiction to original stories


Feel free to ask what i mean about any one of these
 
Hey, what do you guys do about terms referring to live creatures in Pokémon. Like how Golf has Birdie, Eagle and Albatross, would you change them to, say, Flier, Braviary and Talonflame? I know bird was American slang for "good", so would you instead change the word entirely to some other form of slang?
 
It can be a nice touch, but sometimes it can be overdone and doesn't flow very well. If you just try and do straight substitutions with expressions, and don't consider the meaning, for example, it could come across as dumb. Besides which, it's not necessarily inappropriate to use animal nouns even if you don't include non-pokémon animals in a story. Logically it would still be useful for people to refer to snakes, birds and fish; to refer to huntail, goldeen, magikarp and skrelp with one noun, for example.
 
Oh my, I'm posting here for once... So! Let's see. I'd gotten a lot of mixed reviews about how I started Survival Project. For anyone who hasn't read it, I started with an action scene, or more specifically, a chase/fighting scene. I'm not sure if it was the POV character's pessimistic writing style that made it seem melodramatic, but at any rate, it was said to be dark for the sake of being dark, even though other readers claimed that it introduced the characters in a way that made sense once they got to know the characters more.

I was wondering what other people's thoughts were on starting stories with a 'bang', so to speak -- whether it's with action, character death, some other tragedy, etc. My other stories ended up starting with infodumps, so yeah. Any advice in general with opening chapters would be appreciated. I do plan to release SP's sequel soon, but I'm wondering if I kind of fell into the same trap as I did for the original. Without spoiling: the difference between the two openings is that SP's serves to kickstart the plot straightaway, whereas the sequel's opening is used less for plot and more to cause several different kinds of conflict between the characters, which complicates how the plot unfolds once it's introduced thoroughly/properly.
 
Oh my, I'm posting here for once... So! Let's see. I'd gotten a lot of mixed reviews about how I started Survival Project. For anyone who hasn't read it, I started with an action scene, or more specifically, a chase/fighting scene. I'm not sure if it was the POV character's pessimistic writing style that made it seem melodramatic, but at any rate, it was said to be dark for the sake of being dark, even though other readers claimed that it introduced the characters in a way that made sense once they got to know the characters more.

I was wondering what other people's thoughts were on starting stories with a 'bang', so to speak -- whether it's with action, character death, some other tragedy, etc. My other stories ended up starting with infodumps, so yeah. Any advice in general with opening chapters would be appreciated. I do plan to release SP's sequel soon, but I'm wondering if I kind of fell into the same trap as I did for the original. Without spoiling: the difference between the two openings is that SP's serves to kickstart the plot straightaway, whereas the sequel's opening is used less for plot and more to cause several different kinds of conflict between the characters, which complicates how the plot unfolds once it's introduced thoroughly/properly.

I feel like it all depends on what kind of a story you are setting up. If it is a story where the action is a main focus, then by all means, start with a bang! If it's more slice-of-life and centered around gradual, interpersonal development, then give it a calmer beginning. The introduction should reflect the story as a whole; it should tell the reader what to expect in future chapters. It should grip their attention either way, so a bland compilation of info will not work for the majority of readers. Just think of what's to come, and write from there!
 
Please note: The thread is from 2 years ago.
Please take the age of this thread into consideration in writing your reply. Depending on what exactly you wanted to say, you may want to consider if it would be better to post a new thread instead.
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