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farla"Shattered Phoenix" is something to keep an eye on. Also, the author's cafe is looking particularly failtastic. Only on Serebii could people actually be debating the inclusion of filler. And then suggesting even worse ideas.
For example, say some character, named Character A, is walking along Route 7, a rather boring Kanto route. There is nothing there but trees, grass and an entrance to the Underground Passage. Instead of saying, "Character A walked on Route 7 from Saffron to Celadon.", it is probably better to say:
"Character A began walking on the currently windy Route 7, knowing Celadon was not too far away. He looked at the entrance to the underground passage, and then the violently swaying trees, which reminded him of those ones in Pallet, his hometown. Character A wondered if the trees there were also being tossed about. He knew his mother did not like wind. He hoped she was alright - after all, Character A and his mother had never been apart for more than twelve hours until his adventure had begun many months and three gym badges ago. He decided to sit under one of the trees and, ignoring the many passersby between the big cities Saffron and Celadon, several of whom looked at the ten year old with curiosity, wrote a short letter to his mother, asking about the weather and her mood. It was the first letter Character A had written since his departure from Pallet, for in his excitement about raising his Charmander and eventually his Pikachu, Mankey and Abra he had not paid much attention to communication outside of the Pokemon Center's videophone. Yet he knew she would appreciate seeing his words written in the style which uniquely belonged to Character A."
Meanwhile there's another thread on "OMG why are people so unfair and judgemental about journey fics!!!! it's just because newbie authors do them and not because we all suck let me tell you internets, i have written a journeyfic and therefore they are totally awesome done well"
There is some beautiful Not Getting It in the very first post. To take a mere tidbit from the mass of insanity:
To tackle the above reviewer's argument against journey fics, let's take this piece by piece, starting with the most common argument:
1) "They're easy to write."
Really? Then why are there only five or so (point is, not many) decent journey fics (and I'm pretty lenient on decent) in the complete section at SPPf, two (Ross Ferguson's Journey of Champion: in Kanto and Archangel A.J.'s R.J. -- Legacy of a Master) not completed? If it's "easy" then why do most authors abandon their journey fic within the first five chapters?
It gets dumber from there. I mean, the very next post on the "omg journeyfic is so oppressed by haters" is someone (agreeing, no less) chiming in that they like the genre.
There's some lone voices of sanity (...okay, only Negrek) and Dragonfree appears to... I never know quite how to classify Dragonfree, who's generally saying things that make sense in the broad sort of way, but in context are terrible, terrible suggestions. I guess basically it's a matter of being unable to accept that certain things, while not absolutely awful in every single appearance, are still, on balance, going to be worse a lot more often than other ways of doing it. So she's often fighting the good fight for "it can technically be done decently" which ends up defeating any hope people have of getting useful advice. It's like having a thread on grammar that's half people arguing that it's possible to write without capitals or punctuation and still have a good story.
Finally, on page three Yamato shows up to make me not feel guilty for never emailing him back as well as confirm my assumptions that generally, if someone on Serebii shows up to say Idea X is not a bad idea because they've made a good story about it, Idea X is a terrible idea and their story is shit.
Then there's a thread listing/collecting names. I mean what the fuck.
Sometimes I think I'd be satisfied if people on Serebii got just slightly more elitist so their terrible ideas about stories would at least stop reaching FFN, but it'd probably result in non-Serebiians getting even more convinced it's good advice and directing each other to relevant threads.
Anyway, I guess the moral here is that Unoriginality doesn't cut it, I need to make an actual original trainer writing guide. Stupid Serebii.
For example, say some character, named Character A, is walking along Route 7, a rather boring Kanto route. There is nothing there but trees, grass and an entrance to the Underground Passage. Instead of saying, "Character A walked on Route 7 from Saffron to Celadon.", it is probably better to say:
"Character A began walking on the currently windy Route 7, knowing Celadon was not too far away. He looked at the entrance to the underground passage, and then the violently swaying trees, which reminded him of those ones in Pallet, his hometown. Character A wondered if the trees there were also being tossed about. He knew his mother did not like wind. He hoped she was alright - after all, Character A and his mother had never been apart for more than twelve hours until his adventure had begun many months and three gym badges ago. He decided to sit under one of the trees and, ignoring the many passersby between the big cities Saffron and Celadon, several of whom looked at the ten year old with curiosity, wrote a short letter to his mother, asking about the weather and her mood. It was the first letter Character A had written since his departure from Pallet, for in his excitement about raising his Charmander and eventually his Pikachu, Mankey and Abra he had not paid much attention to communication outside of the Pokemon Center's videophone. Yet he knew she would appreciate seeing his words written in the style which uniquely belonged to Character A."
Meanwhile there's another thread on "OMG why are people so unfair and judgemental about journey fics!!!! it's just because newbie authors do them and not because we all suck let me tell you internets, i have written a journeyfic and therefore they are totally awesome done well"
There is some beautiful Not Getting It in the very first post. To take a mere tidbit from the mass of insanity:
To tackle the above reviewer's argument against journey fics, let's take this piece by piece, starting with the most common argument:
1) "They're easy to write."
Really? Then why are there only five or so (point is, not many) decent journey fics (and I'm pretty lenient on decent) in the complete section at SPPf, two (Ross Ferguson's Journey of Champion: in Kanto and Archangel A.J.'s R.J. -- Legacy of a Master) not completed? If it's "easy" then why do most authors abandon their journey fic within the first five chapters?
It gets dumber from there. I mean, the very next post on the "omg journeyfic is so oppressed by haters" is someone (agreeing, no less) chiming in that they like the genre.
There's some lone voices of sanity (...okay, only Negrek) and Dragonfree appears to... I never know quite how to classify Dragonfree, who's generally saying things that make sense in the broad sort of way, but in context are terrible, terrible suggestions. I guess basically it's a matter of being unable to accept that certain things, while not absolutely awful in every single appearance, are still, on balance, going to be worse a lot more often than other ways of doing it. So she's often fighting the good fight for "it can technically be done decently" which ends up defeating any hope people have of getting useful advice. It's like having a thread on grammar that's half people arguing that it's possible to write without capitals or punctuation and still have a good story.
Finally, on page three Yamato shows up to make me not feel guilty for never emailing him back as well as confirm my assumptions that generally, if someone on Serebii shows up to say Idea X is not a bad idea because they've made a good story about it, Idea X is a terrible idea and their story is shit.
Then there's a thread listing/collecting names. I mean what the fuck.
Sometimes I think I'd be satisfied if people on Serebii got just slightly more elitist so their terrible ideas about stories would at least stop reaching FFN, but it'd probably result in non-Serebiians getting even more convinced it's good advice and directing each other to relevant threads.
Anyway, I guess the moral here is that Unoriginality doesn't cut it, I need to make an actual original trainer writing guide. Stupid Serebii.
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Date: 2010-01-31 07:42 am (UTC)And authors are just more likely to fail at some types than others. Third person is a lot easier to add description to, it lets you jump between characters or blather on about trees whenever you feel like it, it doesn't require you stay in a character's head the whole time. I see authors failing at first person a lot more - and I also see slightly more experienced people switching to third mid-story and saying it made it easier. Some of them manage to get through it, but they would have had an easier time with third.
People just starting out have no experience. For a lot of them, they don't even realize that writing different POVs is more than just the difference between using "I" and "he". They don't know why they're having so much trouble, and they give up. Once they're more experienced with writing, then they can learn for themselves what works and doesn't, but getting them there has to be the first step.
And, well, look at how people plot. That's the non-newbie version of this. A lot of the problem in the journeyfic thread is people assuming that there is only one way of writing an OT fic. So they follow the checklist. Then they try to pace the story by putting something meaningful and relevant at each point. Then they boggle at the idea of skipping one of the things on the list, because they've put something relevant there. Because they've been trying to write their whole story under the assumption all of those things are going to be required, and even worse, they've been doing it to the point they don't have any other storyline going on. So "skip the lab scene" sounds like "skip the story" because they have no idea where they can skip to, of some scenes being more important than others, of any of it. And a lot of the checklist is why OT fics stall in two or three chapters, because it just doesn't occur to people they could do it differently. Telling them it's required, or that it's not exactly required but good authors don't skip because they've put relevant stuff there...not helping.
It's more or less like mapping out a clear path from one point to another. There may be lots of interesting stuff all over the place and lots of ways to get to where you want, and maybe there really is a very pretty area you can see along the way if you manage to find the right place to cross the river, but if you've never seen the area and you just want to get to the end, it's better to have someone tell you one clear path that's pretty easy to follow instead of talking about how many choices you have. You can come back again once you have the lay of the land.
And this is all an even bigger problem when everyone's trying to write epics instead of one-shots. At least with a one-shot you can experiment, and still get to the end and try again.
...huh, I think that'd be good advice too. So many people drop out on their first fic, telling them to try out short stuff would probably help that.
Anyway.
It's going on the forum simply because that's where the people there are. The problem with anything fancy is that it's actually really hard to link up posts - the individual post link is actually the end of thread link, so I have to go through the emailed copies to put it together. And I can't link offsite there at all. If it's completely unworkable I could end up posting it here and linking from my profile, but I'm going to aim for linear first. It's not intended to be long enough to really have separate sections.
My plan is a how-to for writing an OT fic, which should be more or less linear and a second thread going through explaining how I planned out Lucki so people can see examples, since I still have all my notes for that. A third will just be general advice on the order of "but seriously, don't use first person". It's all intended to be the bare basics - once that's covered, then I can think about if I want to do more.
It'll depend, I suppose, on exactly how detailed I end up having to get.