Writers' Workshop General Chat Thread

[Nitro Indigo]

Meanwhile, the only fanfics I've read in months are sections of Cars 2 fanfics that contain my brOTP. Anyone know any good Spirit Tracks fanfics?

 

[UselessBytes]

Meanwhile, the only fanfics I've read in months are sections of Cars 2 fanfics that contain my brOTP. Anyone know any good Spirit Tracks fanfics?

I've never considered reading LoZ fanfictions. Are there any good ones for Phantom Hourglass?

Continuing the fanfic theme, I've noticed that there's an unusual amount of high quality fanfiction for Metroid proportional to the total amount written, as opposed to something like Pokemon where a good fic can be a bit of a needle in a haystack.

 

[Arkadelphiak]

As someone who's suffered the duty of finding said Nanu x Reader fanfiction for purposes of drunk entertainment, I can say there are a lot of fics that suggest far worse. Also, the word choice in the sex scenes is usually cringe-worthy.

>duty
>gurl pls

Terrible Nanu x Reader fan fiction + text-to-speech on Discord + alcohol = hysterical laughter

C A N C O N F I R M

 

[AceTrainer14]

Continuing the fanfic theme, I've noticed that there's an unusual amount of high quality fanfiction for Metroid proportional to the total amount written, as opposed to something like Pokemon where a good fic can be a bit of a needle in a haystack.

Though obviously not this section, of course, where our fics are all needles in a very tiny haystack

 

[Nitro Indigo]

Continuing the fanfic theme, I've noticed that there's an unusual amount of high quality fanfiction for Metroid proportional to the total amount written, as opposed to something like Pokemon where a good fic can be a bit of a needle in a haystack.

That's called Sturgeon's Law.

 

[canisaries]

do you guys do written character refs for your characters? i actually ponied up and made one today, and it felt really useful in figuring out the character better. templates on the internet are good also because they make you take stuff you hadn't thought about into account.

 

[Beth Pavell]

For minor characters that are expected to appear more than once I tend to a short profile to fix them in my head. They tend to focus on appearance, mannerism and personality, though, more an impression than a profile I suppose.

I certainly think development games - like the OC character development from the writer's forum on fanfiction.net - are rather good for major characters since they're good for coming up with apparently banal details that might well find a place where you least expect to need them

 

[UselessBytes]

do you guys do written character refs for your characters? i actually ponied up and made one today, and it felt really useful in figuring out the character better. templates on the internet are good also because they make you take stuff you hadn't thought about into account.

I used to do a huge detailed one with every major character I made, but nowadays I just slap down basic identifying features and a personality description down and call it a day.

 

[Misfit Angel]

This is usually what my character references look like for the major characters and, in some circumstances, some of the secondary characters as well. The main character of Land of the Roses has about 250 lines of information, trivia, details, unsorted notes, quotes and other stuff. Usually, a lot of these details are left unmentioned in the story, but I find that cramming so much information into a character's background, personality and relationships with other characters really helps to humanize them and make them easier to identify with. It makes the process of writing the story much more enjoyable.

 

[CrystaI]

I have several different character profile template I created myself where I use it personally for all my projects. According to their degree of importance within the story and type of characters, each consists of different contents I must fill in before I start writing or even planning any plot that features them.

For the first two-thirds it looks like any other character sheets one may find in the internet. But for the last third, it is something else just for myself as a creator and writer. It is not "extremely detailed" to the point of jotting down all the trivia of the person's daily-life (In any case I don't need it and it doesn't help anything in my story-writing, nor it will help me in thinking this character is more "human"), but nonetheless it is useful in always being remindful in something that is not about the character itself, but me the writer myself.

For Very Important Human characters (e.g. Protagonists and Deuteragonists):

Spoiler

Basic personal info:
- Name
- Gender
- Height (at first chapter)
- Body build (at first chapter)
- Age (at first chapter)
- Date of birth
- Place of birth
- Hobby
- Things excel at
- Things unskilled at
- Likes
- Dislikes

Character summary:
Generally I will write several paragraphs where each describes the character's:
- Characteristics and personality (from my POV as a 3rd-person omnipotent)
- How other people generally sees him/her (so this is the above but from in-universe 2rd-person POV)
- What is his/her situation and what is he/she thinking right before chapter 1
- What does he/she wanted to do in the near future (so a little spoiler of chapter 1)

And then some separate paragraphs where I will colored the font in gray, where that is "insider info" not known by any other characters in the story but only him/herself, or alternatively speaking the secretive side of this character where doesn't want to be known by any others. These will be things like:
- The character's personality described in more details, especially situational
- The secret of this character

Past History:
I generally do in bullet form in chronological order. Because this is more personal and in my fic doesn't have any exact year number, so generally I just write down what happened at what year-old the character is. I just write down the most important events that attributes to his/her current characteristic and personality. For anything so trivial like when the time he/she learned to stand up and walk without help from his/her mom? Don't expect that. As long as it doesn't contradict the character's main personality, these trivia I can always came up on the spot if the story requires some sense of daily-life.

Relationship with other characters:
Write in bullet form of each characters this person has interaction with. Note: I write this from 1st-person POV, so this will shows how the character think of other characters and how will he/she interacts with that person. Also note that I includes the handheld pokemons of that character as well, because I believe no one will treat his/her team completely equal, there must exist some favoritism, or else it is not "human".

Battle information:
Specifically for pokemon trainer character. The character's favorite battle style, his/her mannerism when he/she is on the battlefield, anything characteristically specific for battle.
Note that this section doesn't includes strategies and tactics, because IMO, battle strategy and tactic is what one should came up on the spot according to the situation. If one need strategy and tactics, mind just go research The Art of War.

Character design comment: (NB!!!)
Oh this is my favorite corner, and possibly the most important corner in another sense . This is how me the creator of this character think about this fictional character. Generally I just talk about how I came up the idea of this character, what I want him/her to do, how I think of him/her as a person, and how I think of him/her as a character within this fictional work.
The reason of me in creating this corner is, for me to gain more passion into this character such that I can empathy more easily with him/her, yet at the same time, to always remind myself this character is another person not the same as me, I should never ever self-inserted into him/her.

Personal monologue:
This is a new corner I came up recently when I was working in the first chapter and planning some future chapters. This is like a "break the 4th wall" corner, where I the creator ask some questions directly to this character and he/she answer it. To be fair, just because I'm the creator, that doesn't mean he/she will definitely answer my question. It all depends on the content of the question itself.
The reason of me creating this corner is, I wanted to understand his/her reactions and feeling towards specific things. This corner also helps me in solidifying the persona of this imaginary person.

For Very Important Pokemon characters (e.g. Handheld of protagonists):

Spoiler

Basic personal info:
- Pokemon species
- Nickname
- Gender
- Type
- Ability
- Age (at first chapter)
- Height (at first chapter)
- Weight (at first chapter)

Pokemon species summary:
So this is like the Biology section in Bulbapedia's page. I still included in this profile is because, the official information is quite dissected disconnected and scattered. The Pokedex said one thing, but then the Anime may contradict it by showing something else or expand it further by interpret it differently, even different games portray the pokemon differently. So I need one single unique description of that pokemon species for my fic, where this will also be the same description for all the same pokemon within my Pokemon World.
You can say it is just rewriting of the Pokedex entries, yet, I includes some of my own interpretation of this species, so it is never 100% equal to any official canon portrayal.

Character summary:
This is the characteristic and personality of that specific pokemon held by that specific trainer. This is a complete different section separate from the above, as the above is the summary of the species itself, where this section is the summary of that single individual of that species.
It is still the same like that for the human character, where I write several summary paragraph for the character's:
- Characteristics and personality (from my POV as a 3rd-person omnipotent)
- How other people (and possibly other pokemon as well) generally sees it (from in-universe 2rd-person POV)
- What is his/her situation and what is he/she thinking right before chapter 1
- What does he/she wanted to do in the near future (so a little spoiler of chapter 1)
The secretive info colored in gray:
- The character's situation personality described in more details
- The secret of this character (Though I don't think most Pokemon will have it...... except a few exceptions)

Past History:
It is written also in bullet form about its most important past events in chronological order. Well for a pokemon character, most of the time its past is equivalent to its trainer, so 90% are its past before it met its trainer.

Relationship with other characters:
Also written in bullet form and from 1st-person POV of each characters this pokemon has interaction with. Well because it is pokemon, so more than half shall be other pokemons.

Battle infomation:
I always put a link in here to Bulbapedia Pokemon's Game data section and to Smogan's Competitive strategy page, because I always need to check for reference.
But other than the two links, I will also write down something else such as linked moves, combination moves and original moves. Please note I create my own original moves for my pokemons, as long as that move is within the ability of that pokemon.
And just a side note. Despite I take the game stats for battle info reference, I don't follow it rigidly without any flexibility.

Character design comment:
The same corner for human characters. Well I didn't design the pokemon species itself (salute to Ken Sugimori! ), so I talk about this specific individual pokemon character that is used within my fic, how is it compare to the general impression of its species, how I think of it as a character, etc.

Personal monologue:
The same "break the 4th wall" corner for human character. Well this might be a little inappropriate for pokemon characters because, well, it is pokemon. Do they possess human-like thinking? I don't know about other people's fic, but in my fic, YES, they do possess human-like emotions (not necessary mindset, mind you). They just lack the ability to speak human language.
Ah, but don't worry, they won't reply in Poke-Speech. Because within this corner, their thought will be "translated" into comprehensible human language.

For the not-so-important secondary characters and supporting characters, normally it is just the trimmed version of the above two templates by eliminating things I don't think it is necessary to know. Or, despite the same template, the things I will fill in will be shorten to just a sentence, no long paragraphs with fine details.

BTW, there isn't a section about the character's physical appearance. That is because, I will draw the characters out using Paint Tool SAI and Photoshop. Words are just too vague for me to visualize the character. I need illustration to solidify this character into a "person".

 

[Nitro Indigo]

To be honest, I don't have character sheets, I just have general ideas of characters in my head. I sometimes worry that my characters act too similar.

Also, I write about fictional species so I don't have to worry about getting anything wrong, but I can still slip in Genius Bonuses. (eg: a fictional species based on a combination of birds of prey, feathered dinosaurs, and hoatzins having smaller but more colourful males.)

 

[canisaries]

i'm not sure if injecting genius bonuses into your work is too good an idea... i hope those come naturally and you're not putting them in just to seem smart or anything like that.

in any case, wouldn't really call something like that a genius bonus, just inspiration, as colorful males are not a rare concept.

also, regarding drawing your characters: i think that can be detrimental. i've gotten feedback about not describing my characters enough, and that's likely because i already draw them. but anyone who hasn't seen those drawings, they wouldn't have a clue.

 

[Beth Pavell]

It depends on how (Warning: Terry Pratchett praise yet again) you implement the "genius bonus", and Pratchett really was a master at this. When I read Discworld books as a teenager I appreciated them as quirky and often silly fantasy novels - as I've got older (And, admittedly, read some of the very comprehensive guides to these references), I've begun to notice more and more of the cleverness. It absolutely enriches the narrative but doesn't detract from the core of a good story. Lord and Ladies is a classic example, simply crammed with folklore references, and the only time it really falls down is during the Lancre Morris Men's skit.

It's a fine line to tread, because although I usually advocate assuming your audience is at least as clever as you are, it easily slips into looking like boasting about how much you've read, or worse still, lecturing the reader

 

[diamondpearl876]

It seems there's quite a bit of interest in this topic, so it might benefit other users who don't frequent the general chat as much to start a new thread about it about it if anyone wants to do so. :~)

 

[CrystaI]

The issue about drawing the character is, you SHOULDN'T included it into the writing.

What I mean by that is, the illustrations of characters shouldn't be included into what the reader will receive at your end product. Here my latest chapter. Oh that character is so difficult to described. Here's the photo of him. He looks handsome isn't he? No no NO. That's not how you do.

I draw out my characters, but that is ONLY for MY OWN visualization sake. I still need to describe him/her in detail using the most suitable word I can find. Readers will not sees my character design sheets anywhere even in the citation. It is the kind of documents equivalent to plot planning sheets, which is made just for the writer's own personal usage, it will go nowhere outside my computer.

Readers, the only thing they will received from me, will just be the story itself written in words and letters. Any pictures and illustrations like the Japanese visual novel? I may do it, but is simply extra bonus. That is not icing on the cake, because icing is included in the cake, but pictures are like candles which is always excluded from the cake itself.

 

[Nitro Indigo]

Sometimes when I'm trying to come up with stories, I end up just drawing the same character over and over. I don't do this as much as I used to, mind.

By the way, did someone ever actually make a taxonomy thread?

@canisaries Animal Gender-Bender - TV Tropes

Legend Of The Guardians The Owls Of Ga Hoole has a female snowy owl that looks like a male one, because male snowy owls have less spots than female snowy owls. Also, the female owls are smaller than the males, which is the opposite of real life. In most birds of prey the female is much bigger. Perhaps they thought making the sizes accurate would confuse the audience?

Make of that what you will.

 

[canisaries]

i saw the movie of that owl thing and it triggered me for reasons i cant for the life of me remember anymore

 

[AceTrainer14]

We need an extra judge for the awards to help with the Alternate category. If you are familiar with any of those stories and want to help out please message me ASAP

 

[Arkadelphiak]

This is what happens when you bet AceTrainer14 that you can make hilariously bad fan art of Alaska x Latios:

Spoiler: PREPARE THYSELF

 

[canisaries]

that reminds me of a very high quality discord conversation i had a while ago
where i wrote the masterpiece that is dear nemesis 2
(i'm blanis)

Spoiler: screencaps (NSFW text)