Bredlah¿

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My meme machine made the spontaneous decision to ram seven feet worth of Swiss halberd up its, uh, disk drive. I'm currently putting it through suicide counselling and have sent its five children to live with their great aunt far away from any central European polearms, but it looks like recovery's going to be, in the doctor's words, a massive bitch.

So don't expect too much from me for a few days yo.

I remember now.

You've not had great luck with your computers, huh Termite?

@Kho What is the name of the book though? I have been searching for something to read so I can justify procrastinating more.

@Double Capybara Writing a Novel by Nigel Watts

On the topic of hints for writing stories, some time ago I ran into something simply called as the Eight Rules for Writing Fiction made by Kurt Vonnegut.

1: Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2: Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3: Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4: Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.

5: Start as close to the end as possible.

6: Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7: Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8: Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Some of them support what Kho summarized, while the last one opposes it. Balance is always best In my opinion and, quite frankly, writing a story is not like a cake recipe. You can write something good while disregarding said to be important things or rules and you can also write something bad while following them, but these rules can certainly help.

@Slime Those are a few good tips. However, I would caveat rules 6 and 8 on that list with "Be reasonable." I can see them getting incorrectly used pretty easily if the other rules aren't emphasised to balance them. Rule 8 ought to be counterbalanced with rules 1 and 4, while rule 6 should be counterbalanced by rules 1 and 5 (in a slightly different way).

6: Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

I FEEL SO CALLED OUT

You've not had great luck with your computers, huh Termite?

@Muttonhawk Of course. Sherlock Holmes, for instance, is a great story precisely because of its mysteries and how they're pieced together, but in other stories it's these mysteries that create cliffhangers, which I hate. And it's not like you should ever make a character suffer for the sake of suffering, just make them have a good life with a fair share of trips and tumbles, like you're doing with Conata.

These rules are spices tbh. Add too much or too little and your story will usually end up bad.

*drop kicks a belated post*

If Tauga ever gets to beat up Heartworm, I'll be dosed up on pure catharsis for at least a month.

HEARTWORM ILL KILL YOU!

From another book I came across, with a more philosophical approach, since we're discussing rules and Loki asked about characters.

'The novel is the great virtuoso of exceptionalism: it always wriggles out of the rules thrown around it. And the novelistic character is the very Houdini of that exceptionalism. There is no such thing as "a novelistic character." There are just thousands of different kinds of people, some round, some flat, some deep, some caricatures, some realistically evoked, some brushed in with the lightest of strokes. Some of them are solid enough that we can speculate about their motives ... But there are scores of fictional characters who are not fully or conventionally evoked who are also alive and vivid. The solid, nineteenth-century fictional character ... who confronts us with deep mysteries is not the "best" or ideal or only way to create character (though it does not deserve the enormous condescension of postmodernism). My own taste tends toward the sketchier fictional personage, whose lacunae and omissions tease us, provoke us to wade in their deep shallows ... We have only their unreliable narration of events.'

For those who haven't noticed, we now have a zeroth post on the first page of the IC. Check it out.

For those who haven't noticed, we now have a zeroth post on the first page of the IC. Check it out.

Oh nice.

This reminds me, I gotta get something done this turn.

If you are not up to date with the most recent post, I must warn you. The 0th post has SPOILERS. Terrible, heart-rending spoilers.

@Kho Has it really been 5 years since the Realta came?

@Slime The situation is wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey right now. We've compromised to give a range of time around a date that a turn represents, so your timelines can be closer or further from the realta invasion if you like.

@Kho In my defence, I did put it in a hider.

@Slime For mapping that timeline, I used Xerxes. Tauga rose to power almost immediately after the Realta invasion. She was in power for a couple of years (long enough to rebuild a lot of stuff and for a famine to pass). Then Amartia returned, and things went downhill rapidly. War preparations took some undetermined time, then the Xerxes Battle happened (off stage, mostly). Concurrently, it would have taken Lifprasil several years to manufacture and train 10000 Cosmic Knights.

We are now formally after the Xerxes battle. 5 years post Realta seems like a good date.

That said, the circa 5 years is very circa. It could be plus or minus several decades.

So, everyone, about the Xerxes fight.

-Demons and Realta might have gotten involved??? At some point? Maybe?? idk??? Go ask Rtron. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

To be specific!

-Vestec appears, makes some long spheeel about an arena (think LADIES AND GENTLEMANNNNNN type thing)

-Teleports Xerxes (Status effects, all forces, and everything else) into the Realm of Madness. Declares it 'The Arena'. (-10 might to make the Holy Site 'The Arena')

-A giant half hourglass (with boulders instead of sand and an open bottom) appears above the ruined city of Xerxes and all it's combatants. Next to it are two numbers one red and one blue that respectively represent Xerxes and Lif and allies numbers. Vestec declares that the first side to eliminate all the other side wins. Also that when the giant hour glass empties, his shield will leave and the denizens of the Realm of Madness will have free reign. He declares the fight to begin. Everyone presumably begins to throw down, giant boulders from the half-hourglass begin to fall, and demons begin to gather at the edges of the shield. They soon reach numbers many time the size of Liffy and allies numbers.

-Right as the shield falls, Liffy engages Amartia in mortal combat.

-Before the Demons can overwhelm everyone through sheer numbers, Amartia is slain and Vestec teleports everyone out of Xerxes (and thus the Realm of Madness) and lets them do their own thing.

<Snipped quote by Antarctic Termite>

To be specific!

-Vestec appears, makes some long spheeel about an arena (think LADIES AND GENTLEMANNNNNN type thing)

-Teleports Xerxes (Status effects, all forces, and everything else) into the Realm of Madness. Declares it 'The Arena'. (-10 might to make the Holy Site 'The Arena')

-A giant half hourglass (with boulders instead of sand and an open bottom) appears above the ruined city of Xerxes and all it's combatants. Next to it are two numbers one red and one blue that respectively represent Xerxes and Lif and allies numbers. Vestec declares that the first side to eliminate all the other side wins. Also that when the giant hour glass empties, his shield will leave and the denizens of the Realm of Madness will have free reign. He declares the fight to begin. Everyone presumably begins to throw down, giant boulders from the half-hourglass begin to fall, and demons begin to gather at the edges of the shield. They soon reach numbers many time the size of Liffy and allies numbers.

-Right as the shield falls, Liffy engages Amartia in mortal combat.

-Before the Demons can overwhelm everyone through sheer numbers, Amartia is slain and Vestec teleports everyone out of Xerxes (and thus the Realm of Madness) and lets them do their own thing.

I hope you brought that up with the people involved.