Leaderboard

I find the whole series fascinating. You write these three with grace and style. I thank you.

Finally decided to get healthy and start to drink more water… two litres of water and around 10 hours later, the news announces, the cold water is contaminated with soil bacteria, and we shouldn’t drink it… FOR FUCK’S SAKE!!!

Oh good, I’m in good company. Oceania I can write about forever. There’s alot of history there. As is expected when characters have incredible longevity. Character conflicts can last for millennia. Since one of the main characters is 102,50 year old.

Leaving breadcrumbs is fun but dangerous. You have to ask. WHo am I leaving these crumbs for? SOmething that will be apparent to people from one cultural or educational background. may not be apparent to another. The problem is, you don’t want to hint too much since people with certain knowledge of genre conventions run the risk of figuring things out first. The best clues, are the ones the reader picks up the second time they read. They will ideally remark. “ohhhhh so that’s why showering in spite of the watter being cold. It was to wash off the blood and mud.” Once your story is resolved and you’ve basically completed your final draft. Go back and sprinkle some details here and there. Not additional details but rather details that one could otherwise infer from what was already there.

Don’t create antagonists as Villains. An antagonist at heart, the person who’s goals run counter to the protagonist. THey are just both people that desire something and are journeying to get that thing. The first thing to humanize an antagonist is that very few people see themselves as the ‘bad guy’. Everyone thinks they have good reasons for what they do and that they are doing what is best for themselves and those they care about. Give them goals, , give them a reason for their goals and ask yourself why this person and the protagonist are at odds. Is it a grudge against the protagonist specifically or is the protagonist just an obstacle to be over come. Or to put it this way. is it personal, or incidental. personal indicates that the character holds a sepecific and focused hate for the the protagonist specifically. Incidental just means it was a matter of chance , that in the course of their own independent goals they wound up in opposition. It’s sort of like how soliders are. VEry seldom is there any actual hatred for the enemy soldier, not genuine hatred. They are just there and you have your orders, and they have there’s. If you want to get advanced, you cmake the antagonist be essentially be the protagonist, just facing the opposite direction. Give them the same trains, qualities and etc as the protagonist.

How to fend of stagnation. Easy. Know when to stop writing. The biggest problem with stagnation is when a work gets trapped by it’s own fandom. Star trek and Star Wars have fared better than many. where this is most prevelant is in the world of comics. What was the last major change that occured tro batman as a character, and I mean as a person, not a change in his ability. The trust is a story is an idea, a question. But once the question is answered you have to know to move on. When a series exists only to please fans , then it becomes beholden to those fans. You can’t change things up majorly because the fans will in most cases hate that. Fans, for all their complaints, generally want very little deviation from the status quo. If you must keep writing, one good trick is to take the same world but approach it from a different angle. But again, this also creates a problem with publishers. Publishers don’t like, strange and different, they don’t know how to market that or who to market it to. Once a series makes a name for itself as X, publishers generally want it to stay as X. This is why Sherlock holmes novels begin to fall into a pattern after about the 5th story Stagnation comes when the story exists for the sake of the readers, not for its own sake. granted, a story must always factor the desires of the reader, but it should never be beholden to those expectations. TLDR: If you want to prevent stagnation: Stop writing that story and start a fresh story, ine fresh setting with fresh characters., Or even in the same setting with fresh characters. Make sure your story has a message, and make sure its not a message you’ve already written a story on. If the reason for writing is, for the fans, or for the money, then you probably shouldn’t write it. You can also embrace the stagnation and make it the theme of the story itself.

Yay! Thank you so much, pittwitch! I think she deserves to be worshipped, what with all the rubbish she’s had to put up with over the years. And who better than these two? I reckon the three of them together make a little army all of their own! Who could ever defeat them? So glad you’re enjoying it!

This is Canada, DP. Our angry mobs favour the hockey stick.

Kinda by accident, in how I’ve gone about my original universe, I think I’ve got enough to last a lifetime of writing. If I had stuck to just the main story, it’d expire faster, however, I’ve been doing a lot of backstories instead, exploring some of the elements and mechanisms within the universe before I embark on the main story. Even still, with how it’s set up, there’s opportunities for future battles, detective series, a “reality” like story (ie, cops), more character developments, etc. I like Star Trek, however, most of the series were rather formulaic, cookie cutter, with a set patterns of episodes, warping to the next planet/star-system to start fresh. When DS9 started introducing some continuity between shows, it became a lot more interesting. I haven’t seen the latest (Discovery), however, the earlier shows fell into the same series of ruts. -- DP

Don’t overthink it. Stick to your lore. an ancient Chinese inspired culture is one of the easier ones. Since China had an incredible amount of dynasties and cities. Gods are harder. I’d start top down with a pantheon, then the hierarchy etc. It also depends on what kinda god feel you are going for. Are they like the greeks flawed but bringing order to the universe. Animal headed or more fantasy D&D based. Naming places are easier than you give credit. The misty mountains are indeed misty. Clown cave is indeed filled with clowns. Simplicity at times is better than wit.