Unoriginality OT

[farla]

Chapter 24 (Sometimes the answer's just no) of Unoriginality OT is up. I don't think it's a particularly good chapter, but it's been done for a while and it's slapped up on fanlib already, so posted (Really not sure how I'm going to get around the no-special-characters thing in the long term, PR alone is pretty much unworkable without being able to distinguish between speech/pokemon speech/psychic speech.)

Should be a second new chapter up shortly, as I made the mistake of checking out Serebii and found someone actually advising the "start somewhere interesting...then jump back to the very beginning of the story" model of trainerfic and was filled with the desire to maul them.

Comments

[negrek.livejournal.com]

..."start somewhere interesting...then jump back to the very beginning of the story" model of trainerfic and was filled with the desire to maul them.

Ugh, yes. That topic made me so angry. Especially Glajummy's post about missing "key emotion points" if you don't do flashbacks. I mean, really, if you were to start a story about me in my teenage years, think about all the outstanding moments you'd miss out on! My first steps! That time in third grade when I made a really awesome little diorama! Clearly flashbacks are the only option for capturing these crucial and no doubt highly relevant, emotionally charged moments.

[farla.livejournal.com]

I can't help but think there's some intersection here with the sueish mentality that we really want to hear about every article of clothing the character is wearing, about all her plot-irrelevant accomplishments (best singer ever!), the whole ingredient list of she's eating for lunch, who she knew when she was five, and...

[purplekitte.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I'm sure there's a lot of bad fic out there in that model, but honestly I don't think giving back story and context in flashbacks around chapter four is such a bad thing in and of itself. Way of the Wolf by E. E. Knight does that, plenty of other pretty good books though I'm failing to think of any off the top of my head that anyone would have heard of. Though I'm sure you'll have loads to parody, in an unfamiliar setting it can be a good way to get the reader engaged in an interesting plot while spacing out the necessary but often tedious "how this world works" and playing with what the characters vs. the readers know at any given time.

Honestly, I'm just jumping to the defense because I'm working right now an original story in the format of "random fight scene... beginnings of plot... plot development in the present inter-spaced with flashbacks... present and past plot lines intersect, aka the reader gets the big secret the narrator has been avoiding saying outright... final plot build-up and climax... theoretical resolution I haven't written yet". I can already see in my head in seconds just how bad an OT fic that format could be made into.

[purplekitte.livejournal.com]

And the newest chapter is funny. It reminds me of this Pokemon RPG I once tried in junior high and the utter confusion of the mods and DMs as my character helped Pokemon solve their current trouble and then left. It finally got to the point of them having Pokemon run after her yelling "Wait, take me with you!" at the end of every scene because they couldn't conceive of a plot not going that way like it always does in the show.

[farla.livejournal.com]

That sounds hilarious. It could only be more awesome if you then DMed and had the pokemon refuse to go with your players.

[farla.livejournal.com]

The thing that sent me into a murderous rage was actually the post above: You could start off at the climax of your story and then immediately jump to the beginning--it makes the reader want to know HOW they got there.

Well, that's what I do, anyway. I suggest a huge battle--or whatever you have planned.

As to the flashbacks, it's really more that we've seen people use flashbacks like they're suggesting, and it sucks because they're not flashbacking to anything important or plot-relevant, they're flashbacking to Perfectly Standard Manner of Getting Starter, Perfectly Ordinary First Battle Against Pidgey, Perfectly Generic First Pokemon Capture, etc because obviously everyone really cares about every detail of their sue's life.

It's people failing to understand how the basic concept of skipping ahead and flashbacking to whatever's relevant works because they assume the readers want to hear every boring second of the journey.