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Writers' Workshop General Chat Thread

Greek playwrites, Shakespeare, the Arthurian romances, the troubadours ... Dante, of course. In the world that Shakespeare was writing, audiences would have been more suspicious of innovation in storytelling, pretty much the opposite to the usual attitude of today

And let's not forget there's also a big argument for the Aeneid being basically a fanfic of the Homeric epics.
 
Greek playwrites, Shakespeare, the Arthurian romances, the troubadours ... Dante, of course. In the world that Shakespeare was writing, audiences would have been more suspicious of innovation in storytelling, pretty much the opposite to the usual attitude of today

And let's not forget there's also a big argument for the Aeneid being basically a fanfic of the Homeric epics.

Oh that definitely is! And with reason

iirc Virgil was commissioned to write it and it's basically propaganda for the Roman Empire. The Trojan war was THE big myth/lore and by referring back to it, making allusion to it, etc, as well as writing the Aeneid in the trend of the Homeric epics, a certain prestige was gained. There's a reason it's still so relevant today, it's this enormous tradition of myth building on myth and empire on empire.

The Arthur romances for example refer back again to the Roman Empire to give it prestige

And I can probably talk about this endlessly as this is pretty much my field of expertise XD

Aside from that yes, emulation was seen as the way too go, there was no such thing as an 'original' work. I think that didn't even really come into play until the novel had become an established form (which I think is another interesting topic, cause when I quickly peeked into the thread about the importance of world building and whether it should come second to character/plot, I noticed most of the replies were written really from the perspective of the novel as we know it nowadays)
 
Slightly random question, what do you guys suppose a lapras' skin/whatever is like? One's just been bitten by a ninetales in my story, but I suddenly realised I really didn't know what sort of body surface it would have and therefore how effective such an attack would be. So, yeah, what does anyone think?
 
Slightly random question, what do you guys suppose a lapras' skin/whatever is like? One's just been bitten by a ninetales in my story, but I suddenly realised I really didn't know what sort of body surface it would have and therefore how effective such an attack would be. So, yeah, what does anyone think?

Depends what kind of creature you envision Lapras to be. Is it a reptile, mammal, amphibian? That'll give you the answer.

For my part, off the top of my head I'd probably make it a reptile. Small, fine scales, extremely smooth. Not especially tough in itself, but possibly a good layer of blubber would guard against really serious damage
 
One thing that comes to mind about Lapras' skin is that it might be similar to sharks'. Shark skin is known to be very hydrodynamic, so much that swim suits are made based on their skin. If Lapras want to escape predators (Gyararados for example), they need to be good AND fast swimmers. That or other fish species with the same properties.
 
I imagine them to be giraffe turtles, so whatever kind of skin a turtle would have would be my choice.
 
Okay, thanks all, that's sorted that one out. So going on from that, to what extent would you say you base the pokemon in your stories on actual animals, and research stuff to suit? When it makes sense, of course.

In my case, probably most of my main cast are some sort of fox, so I've ended up reading up on a couple of them, mostly just red foxes, for a bunch of eeveelutions and a ninetales. Though I did decide due to coming from a very cold country, I should base my umbreon protagonist on an arctic fox instead, so her fur turns white in the winter.

And special mention to vaporeon for being a pain, and not just being possible to base on one animal. Sure, red fox but blue, but then one ends up having to consider various aquatic adaptations, so one ends up reading about otters as well, for the sake of basically nothing more than paws and fur. And that's not even mentioning the generic fish characteristics. Also, is vaporeon meant to have gills or not? I was never quite sure on that point.

Edit: Bulbagarden is now telling me, immediately after posting, that I'm offline. Reassuring...
 
Okay, thanks all, that's sorted that one out. So going on from that, to what extent would you say you base the pokemon in your stories on actual animals, and research stuff to suit? When it makes sense, of course.

In my case, probably most of my main cast are some sort of fox, so I've ended up reading up on a couple of them, mostly just red foxes, for a bunch of eeveelutions and a ninetales. Though I did decide due to coming from a very cold country, I should base my umbreon protagonist on an arctic fox instead, so her fur turns white in the winter.

And special mention to vaporeon for being a pain, and not just being possible to base on one animal. Sure, red fox but blue, but then one ends up having to consider various aquatic adaptations, so one ends up reading about otters as well, for the sake of basically nothing more than paws and fur. And that's not even mentioning the generic fish characteristics. Also, is vaporeon meant to have gills or not? I was never quite sure on that point.

Edit: Bulbagarden is now telling me, immediately after posting, that I'm offline. Reassuring...

My lord, the real world is my first port of call, simply because it's fascinating and unlikely and wondrous, and for all that pokémon breathe fire and stuff, they can't match up to that.

Being a bit less of a ponce about it, I do go to real animals and whatnot for the same reason that I go to real cities to write my settlements. You can at the very least figure out some interesting battle description from watching how real animals move and fight. It's kind of funny, actually, but it's amazing how few people really know how cats move and behave. Despite the entire internet (Apart from me) being united in adoration for Felis catus, I don't think I've read many fics where the cats convincingly behave like cats. Anime is even worse in this regard, with all of them acting like roly-poly fluffballs meowing constantly and never disembowelling something small and squeaky for its own amusement.

As for Vaporeon ... hmm, for behaviour I'd go otter, physiologically I think I'd mix some delphine in there. Probably wouldn't give it gills, if only to refuse to subscribe to the "All Water-types can breathe underwater indefinitely" trope
 
My lord, the real world is my first port of call, simply because it's fascinating and unlikely and wondrous, and for all that pokémon breathe fire and stuff, they can't match up to that.

Being a bit less of a ponce about it, I do go to real animals and whatnot for the same reason that I go to real cities to write my settlements. You can at the very least figure out some interesting battle description from watching how real animals move and fight. It's kind of funny, actually, but it's amazing how few people really know how cats move and behave. Despite the entire internet (Apart from me) being united in adoration for Felis catus, I don't think I've read many fics where the cats convincingly behave like cats. Anime is even worse in this regard, with all of them acting like roly-poly fluffballs meowing constantly and never disembowelling something small and squeaky for its own amusement.

As for Vaporeon ... hmm, for behaviour I'd go otter, physiologically I think I'd mix some delphine in there. Probably wouldn't give it gills, if only to refuse to subscribe to the "All Water-types can breathe underwater indefinitely" trope

Not the biggest fan of cats myself. I can sort of see the appeal of something fluffy wandering around the house on its own, but I don't find domestic cats of much interest in comparison to wild cats at least. And yeah, then there is also their malicious tendencies. So yes, I'm not entirely sure why the cats rule the internet either.

I'd originally planned on not having gills as well, but I looked up whether there's anything in original source matter about it. I'd assumed there wouldn't be - pokedex entries normally aren't very helpful on an actual biological basis, but it turns out it does actually specify in the RSE entries that vaporeon does have gills. Which is a surprise, considering by their normal standards, even if it did specify that vaporeon could or couldn't breathe underwater, it'd more likely be by magic or through their toes or something weird like that.

Oh, and believe me, I'm already having plenty of fun playing about with typical water-type expectations. For instance, despite being a vaporeon, he has never actually been swimming in his life, and when required to at an important time, is quite reluctant to get in the water. And, to parody the fact that a perfectly normal, warm-blooded mammal is apparently supposed to be weak to grass, he has hay fever. Well, it's more logical than the games, anyway.
 
As for Vaporeon ... hmm, for behaviour I'd go otter, physiologically I think I'd mix some delphine in there. Probably wouldn't give it gills, if only to refuse to subscribe to the "All Water-types can breathe underwater indefinitely" trope
Well, considering it can dissolve within water like a ninja, I'd say giving it gills (or at least some other way of surviving indefinitely) isn't out of the question.
 
I don't mean to stray away from the conversation here, but I'm probably gonna take a break from writing. I've been doing Tumblr RPing for a few weeks, and it seems to have the satisfaction of working with others more prevalent. This isn't to say I'll never write again, just going on a hiatus.
 
Dialect is something I struggle with a lot. Kimberly from Storm Island is supposed to be very courteous and well-mannered. Combining that with her wealth, I tried to make her sound posh and refined, modelling her after what I assume would be upper class British, but I don't know how well I'm doing. I simply don't know anyone who fits that description to base it off of.

I think in terms of a 'working class voice', you'd be interested in someone who values their time through their words. Someone who's ready to be a lot more personal with people, even strangers, rather than mindful of social etiquette. Things like being on a first name basis, etc. It's hard to explain. I'm sure there's people out there much more qualified to talk on the subject.
 
I've always had difficulties around dialect. When I wrote Jack, the biker Alaska battled recently in 8ES, I tried to make him sound more 'lower class', but similar to KP, my mind went straight to England and a kind of cockney-ish dialect without going full slang. In fiction I read, I don't really see much use of dialect unless the character is Texan, Scottish, Irish or poor.
 
Okay, thanks all, that's sorted that one out. So going on from that, to what extent would you say you base the pokemon in your stories on actual animals, and research stuff to suit? When it makes sense, of course.

It depends.

For instance, the characterization and behavior for the award-winning Jolteon from "A Sine of Things to Come" was based largely on firsthand experience. It's mostly experience with a specific very young, very energetic terrier-mix puppy that my parents had recently adopted. Since I lived nearby, my folks would often call me in to help out or take care of the little bouncing bundle when they were gone or otherwise unavailable. Thus I got to contend with an absurdly high-energy creature, which also desperately needed attention, comfort and affection, among more basic canine needs. I also got to observe the interactions this little bouncing fuzzball had with a much older, much more sedimentary Great Dane/Black Lab mix: how they contrasted, how they complimented and ultimately connected.

Occasionally there's also hints of my roommate's sassy needy diva of a cat, and sometimes other things I pull from research, but Jolteon is primarily that one terrier puppy.


As for the topic of dialect in a story. I generally won't go out of my way to make sure a dialect is known, but if I do, really the main thing I do is to listen to native speakers of the dialect I want to write for, a lot. I know I've mentioned this on this forum somewhere before, but there was one instance where I knew I wanted to write someone with an absolute, distinct Scottish-style accent and dialect, but I didn't want to outright say so, nor did I want to go overboard and make the whole reading thing awkward (which I had done before, and it was certainly awkward).

So to correct my awkward mistake when I went to rewrite that character's dialog, I listened to hours and hours and hours of David Tennant, speaking in his natural native Scottish accent. There were a few others, but it was mainly Tennant, since there was a staggeringly wide array of media I could access.

Ultimately, it worked. In retrospect, one of the things that stands out about writing for dialect isn't necessarily how the words are said, which is really difficult to represent with just words on a page, but word choice, vocabulary, how sentences are phrased inside that dialect. That to me is what really sells a dialect in written medium, and does so subtly, to a point where some of my readers have told me that they really heard this character speaking in a Scottish accent, and I didn't have to totally butcher words to do it either.
 
The problems with dialect, as I see them, are twofold. First, phoetic accents all too easily look silly (I'm looking at yeh, J.K Rowling), and the last thing I'm prepared to do is puncture the drama of a scene because my protagonist has broken out into a burst of very strong, very apostrophied Black Country. The second is that when I go full Black Country I can easily baffle Londoners, let alone the Americans who make up the majority of my readership
 
Being in the Southern US, writing in that distinct drawl comes naturally (but I usually save it for when the gang is playing cowboys) I've been lucky enough to hear several different versions of this dialect, so I will second what someone said earlier--if you want your dialect scenes to sound realistic, listen, listen, listen!
 
I don't really think too much about dialect, mostly cause I still haven't really fully made sure of just how divided the world in my story overall is. As thus it's mostly kind of random for me and kind of bases itself more off on the character's personality kind of. Granted that's not dialect as much as just the way a character talks which...I guess it's the same...no? I don't know. Either way I tend to focus more on the character's personality and how they've grown tod ecide how they talk but even then there's a lot of times where they might break out of it, like say words that don't go with their dialect but I think that's mostly owed to the fact that they're still teenagers and they're among people from different parts of the world on a daily basis and they rub off each other a lot, I mostly got that based on how I changed my way of speaking from time to time after living in the US though.
 
Is there anyone who currently has a story (or in my case, a sliver of one) hosted on fanfiction.net been getting messages about something called "Inkitt" recently? It seems like generic spam since the message appears to be quite robotic and copy/paste, but perhaps someone with more knowledge might be able to fill me in? I didn't go to their website because I'm suspicious it might be a malware plot.
 
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