Desiderius Price

The lion’s share is characters and organizations, including family trees and membership rosters. (Each character has things like birthdays, deaths, religions, parents, occupations, notes, etc….) Obviously, MCs will have more details in their notes than, say, a great grand parent. For more noteworthy events, I’ve got those, and some place names too. I try to keep it simple. Each character/org/etc gets an XML file, describing that character, including parents, organizations they belong too. Then I run my (custom) tool that creates a folder full of HTML files, generating the family trees, rosters, etc from those character/org XML files. My current tally is 2186 characters and 305 organizations in this database – this is collective across my entire work in the SR universe. I’ve been trying to expand into 3D modelling using blender/unreal with limited success.

World building’s easy…. bbl, need to work on that database tracking mine….

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I figured practice would help me….

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Historical fiction is that, fiction ….

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Chapter 10, “Valentine” is now posted. Enjoy. - DP

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I’m a bit more cautious as I was quoting from my own works…. Thanks for the compliment. On the rewrite, I was like, “don’t change this!” Apart from an odd grammar/spelling thing or two, it stayed intact.

Legally likely true, but to a fan, the change can be jarring enough that it might as well be fan fiction.

I try to avoid opening paragraphs of detail…. My current story starts with sound. And I nest details in with the actions, quoting the start to my story (use prohibited, example only): And yes, I agonize on the opening, because that’s key to drawing in a reader.

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I’ll add in small details, to a few items, just so it’s more than “a desk”, or a “light”, but a “yellow light” or “wood desk”, adds a small bit of vividness. (Of course, don’t go overboard and spend five chapters describing the intricacies of the Paris sewer system.)

Actually, for skyrim, there’s a very excellent mod, Falskaar, that has the quality of a DLC. Apparently, the mod author wanted to get a job at Bethesda and spent a year making the mod as a “see-what-I-can-do”. While he didn’t land a Bethesda gig, it did result in him landing a job with a different game studio.

Glancing at wikipedia on derivative works… (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work) and… Guess it comes down to whether or not it’s “authorized” …. And we all know fanfics can be done commercially, with permission. J.J Abrams being quite successful at it.

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I’m not a lawyer, so I’m not an expert and fanfic is already on the edge of legality. So while a fanfic does infringe on the original author’s work, it’s also got its own copyright because it’s considered a derivative work. In the case of Harry Potter, JKR’s made it generally clear that she’s okay with it so long as you’re not making money from it. I mention the derivative work thing because she can’t take your fanfic and publish that without your permission either… In the gaming world, some game studios make that a stipulation in the ToS in order for a mod-author to publish a game mod, ie, the studio can take it and make it an official part of the game. Saving of stories is a definite grey area, and makes authors uncomfortable because some saved copies have a habit of showing up on other websites, perhaps an older revision, under either their name, or under a new author’s name (see the hall of shame for examples...).

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I did delete one story because I was replacing it with several others as a rewrite – still in progress… Other reasons I’ve heard are publishing (publishers will typically demand it), and/or other legal issues. I’ll typically cringe when I hear about somebody pulling a story though, just because it’ like a star going out, there’s a void where it was.

I’ve probably guilty of building up a lot of things only to abandon them, as the story works itself out. Also, there are times that something like that can be useful to distract too. (ie, in a murder mystery)