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Writers' Workshop General Chat Thread

What kind of story are you writing Ghostsoul?

It's a little hard to explain, especially if you aren't a part of the fandom the story is for. It's effectively combining aspects from 'Magical Girl', 'Urban Fantasy' and 'Cosmic Horror' but so far doesn't totally feel like it fits in any of the three categories. I'm trying to get the right balance between character and plot within the first chapters though.
 
My personal favourite kind of prologue is one that starts immediately after the action, particularly one where the protagonist has failed or been defeated. Then you can either carry on in a linear fashion as they redeem themselves, or timeskip backwards and explore how they got to that point.

I'm also curious as to what fandom this is for now.
 
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My personal favourite kind of prologue is one that starts immediately after the action, particularly one where the protagonist has failed or been defeated. Then you can either carry on in a linear fashion as they redeem themselves, or timeskip backwards and explore how they got to that point.
That's called In Medias Res.
 
Not quite. I'm specifically talking about starting after the action, post res if you will (the prologue of Star Performer is the example I normally use). Starting in medias res is one strategy, but it's not one I like unless I'm writing an action-oriented story and want to start as I intend to continue. Starting after the action has finished lets you start the story on a calm note that nonetheless offers exciting potential developments in many different directions.
 
Nothing better to start an evening thinking no sensible writing can come out of you, only to end up with 50+ new events that open the door for more adventure and sudden shifts in allegiance. All of those began with a simple idea that one character got, which set a chain of events into motion.
 
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Coffee shops are a double-edged sword. I was at my usual place to do some reading today - mostly to avoid the students at the library - and ended up leaving early. Not because of the would-be yummy mummies, for once, but because I kept overhearing some guy enthuse about some kind of pyramid scheme and couldn't stop giggling ("That's the power of network marketing!")
 
-9 degrees celsius and 7 m/s winds today, mmmmm

though i guess it's not as bad as that one january when it was -29 degrees celsius on the first day of school and i wore nothing but skinny jeans because PLANNING
 
I don't remember the last time I posted something in this thread...... What was that something zipping my mouth, or my mind?

I would like to ask, what does it mean to be "dramatic"? People using this adjective quite a lot when they describe a story, but I don't think many understand its meaning. Well to be fair I don't have a clear standard either. So what does it mean for something to be dramatic? And say for instance death, what is the different between a dramatic death and a non-dramatic death? (An exaggerated ceremony in the church with hundreds of people sobbing in heart-breaking tone and the priest praying for the corpse laying in the flower-decorated coffin VS corpse found under the collapsed building debris after an earthquake, something like that I guess?)
 
To me, drama is an exciting or emotional turn of events.

Random corpse under a building: no emotional connection.
Exaggerated ceremony: not a turn of events. We know they're dead.
Man twisting a plot in on itself with a few secret, well-placed strikes to the plan: Dramatic twist.
 
i suppose i'd say drama is "attention-catching". using loud, sad music or complete silence when a character dies - dramatic. making the scene be all bout the character's death - dramatic. having the character's death provoke string responses in the other characters and influence their behavior - dramatic.

but having a man eat breakfast in the morning and his wife make coffee for him, then having the wife passingly say "by the way, did you know that the owner of the nearby supermarket died?" and the man react with "huh. no i didn't" then both go back to what they were doing like nothing had happened - that's the opposite of dramatic for me.
 
Serious talk in spoiler.

It's starting to dawn on me that I'm going to be working on a cruise ship around Hawaii again next week, while all this N. Korea drama is going on. A flubbed (thankfully fake) launch warning in Hawaii just caused a bunch of panic over there this last weekend. Even if it was a false alarm, the absolute chaos it must have caused for my shipmates while they were in port is something that strikes at me close, and worries me to an extent and in a way I don't think I ever have. I think the scariest part is because I'm familiar with the ship and how it functions, I actually can imagine plausible worst-case scenarios, and how they'd play out, and what might happen.

Holy crap.

Edit: wow, talk about a downer. A brief moment of concern, but I'm going to do fine as I put the pieces of it in context. While I can worry about the situation, and be highly concerned over it, I won't be held down by by fear. I do my duty and do my part, whatever may happen. In the meantime, I intend to enjoy the things I like.

On that note, I'm actually pretty excited. Just did a massive edit sweep of every single chapter in my story, and I think I can say I'm satisfied with where I'm going with it now that I've cleaned all that up.
 
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Serious talk in spoiler.

It's starting to dawn on me that I'm going to be working on a cruise ship around Hawaii again next week, while all this N. Korea drama is going on. A flubbed (thankfully fake) launch warning in Hawaii just caused a bunch of panic over there this last weekend. Even if it was a false alarm, the absolute chaos it must have caused for my shipmates while they were in port is something that strikes at me close, and worries me to an extent and in a way I don't think I ever have. I think the scariest part is because I'm familiar with the ship and how it functions, I actually can imagine plausible worst-case scenarios, and how they'd play out, and what might happen.

Holy crap.

Edit: wow, talk about a downer. A brief moment of concern, but I'm going to do fine as I put the pieces of it in context. While I can worry about the situation, and be highly concerned over it, I won't be held down by by fear. I do my duty and do my part, whatever may happen. In the meantime, I intend to enjoy the things I like.

On that note, I'm actually pretty excited. Just did a massive edit sweep of every single chapter in my story, and I think I can say I'm satisfied with where I'm going with it now that I've cleaned all that up.

I'd hope that that kind of fluke never, ever happens again. But. You never know what bullshit can happen. Stay safe out there. :p

Glad to hear about the story edits, though! Does this mean we'll perhaps see a new chapter of A Sine of Things to Come soon?
 
I've recently rekindled my interest in Fullmetal Alchemist, which I was an annoying fangirl of back in 2014. Mind if I ramble?

I've always thought the main reason why I think the second half of FMA03 feels so jarring, even though I knew in advance it would get darker, is because it was around the halfway point where I switched from watching a fansub to the English dub. It also feels like they were making it up as they went along. An awful lot of the early episodes are either filler that wouldn't look out of place in the Pokémon anime, or with some manga adaptations that are more faithful than Brotherhood, except with more raw melancholy. The raw melancholy is what got me hooked. This has given me an idea of what Fullmetal Alchemist "should" be like, which causes me to think that Brotherhood feels lacking. By the time 2003 gets on with telling its own story, it's too late.

It also feels very incohesive. When I first saw the first episode of 2003, I honestly wasn't expecting the protagonists to accomplish their goal. Without spoiling anything, the way they go about accomplishing it was foreshadowed, but it didn't feel like the natural conclusion to that kind of story. It felt rushed. A twist in the last ten minutes of the last episode made me so mad because it made the entire series feel meaningless. The plot twist in the penultimate episode certainly surprised me, I can say that much, but I accidentally semi-learned it in advance from the internet after I had watched about twenty episodes, which further adds to my conflicted feeling.

My issues with FMA03 aren't because it's depressing. I expected it to be depressing. The problem is that it's convoluted.

I should really give Fullmetal Alchemist a second chance. I'm interested in buying the manga.
 
Yeah, 03 had some problems. I still like it, but Brotherhood is a fair bit better - and the manga is better still. I have both sitting on my shelf atm and I regularly come back to them.
 
I read the manga up until... Damn I can't remember. I just don't visit the library enough to regularly pick up the next three volumes.
 
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