AFAA: draft 1

Jul 31, 2009 23:15

WOOT I AM DONE.

First things first: explaining my reasoning. Because no one wants to read a massive essay on the inner workings of writing, I've tried to be as simple and as short as possible--I made 50,000 characters my landmark 'cos that's one post on-forum. So, coverage as opposed to depth, with the result that there are things in there (such as ( Read more... )

afaa, writing, pokemon

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Comments 8

bobnbill July 31 2009, 16:16:05 UTC
YAY YOU ARE DONE I SHALL NOW READ AFTER MIDNIGHT YAY.

Going to respond to various points briefly by each 'section' because I'm sleepy and can do so anyway HAHAHA. Good luck trying to cut this down though - doesn't seem that easy a job. Go for two posts! :P

Types of stories - idk about how much this is needed for people new to fanfiction:

There are three ‘meta-genres’ in literature: poetry (which tends to have a more deliberately ‘lyrical’ shape or rhyming scheme), prose (such as a straight narrative story), and drama (which is composed of things like scripts, plays and oral literature).

Seems less necessary than the rest, leastways, even if it is nice info, I suppose. Maybe one of those things you'd want to cut down to fit that character count?

Genre - good, straightforward, clear. Maybe cut off one or two if again you need to cut out something to conquer character limits.

Plot and story - I like. (Random - 'There are many ways a plot can be strung together, but to create a solid foundation, you should consider the following ( ... )

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bobnbill July 31 2009, 16:16:45 UTC
Editing - Short but sweet (maybe more emphasis on 'help is good?' in the feedback part err, idk). Maybe also the 'leave a finished chapter/story alone for a day or few after finishing alone, then go and edit - lack of author's bias and all' thing could get a mention as well (new authors do seem to quite commonly rush to get a fic out - emphasis on them slowing down and taking their time seems important to me).

Fandom-specific tips
Understanding terminology - seems good.

The world(s) of Pokémon - ah, canon debates. XD Hmm, seems decent, although Jax's/Valentine's stuff on canon (recently posted about, methinks you would have seen it) might warrant some mention/s in there (maybe for instance in the 'AU' part, where she mentioned examples about Oak which'd fit in there nicely)? But it seems good.

From Game Boy to fiction - agree with part in particular on differences between the games, and writing itself... well, pretty much steady here.

Pokémon - overused and underused - maybe the infamous 'eevee' problem might be mentioned? May be ( ... )

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negrek August 2 2009, 07:14:04 UTC
Just my thoughts as I read it, so it should be more or less in order ( ... )

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negrek August 2 2009, 07:14:35 UTC
Creating a character’s personality isn’t as easy as just listing attributes and giving the character ‘flaws’.

I like this! Glad to see it in there.

The rat pokémon bared its teeth, its long, brown-tipped ears back against its skull and its bolt-shaped tail twitching in anger.

If we’re using this in a section about showing, not telling, could we maybe lose the last two words on that sentence? (Do they really add anything anyway?)

Including a section on using the thesaurus is win!

It’s important because it’s like the story’s ‘dressing’; like we judge a person by their clothes, readers judge a story by how good your spelling and grammar is.

IMO it’s the style that’s the “dressing” and what makes a story pleasing to the (inner) ear; grammar’s important because it’s damn hard to figure out what’s going on if the grammar’s poor. It’s certainly true that readers will (often…) judge a story by it, though.

Grammar use tends to change depending on your country’s style, but the forum has its own, and that is what AFAA uses.Does it? ( ... )

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negrek August 2 2009, 07:15:30 UTC
Perhaps explain OOC and IC more? What does it mean if someone says that your character is “out of character?” And there are two different uses of these, too, though the second is seen almost exclusively (in written fandom) in RPing.

Actually, I would say that the current definition of OT should be the definition of journeyfic, with OT simply be any story that involves an OC as a trainer.

The games began it all, with the player being an 11-year-old out to collect badges, and because of the versatility of the player character the trainer concept is still popular as a story.…Eleven? Was the age of the character ever actually mentioned in the game or directly supplemental materials? Bulbapedia says the protag is ten in the games, and all the supplemental stuff I’ve ever seen sets starter-trainer age at ten ( ... )

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negrek August 2 2009, 07:34:32 UTC
Some further comments in light of bobandbill's replies, as I refrained from reading them before posting mine in the interest of going in without bias...

Actually fine with the story types--it's only one sentence, and sums things up fine. Perhaps mention scripts and how they aren't smiled upon (against the rules, right?) here?

Yes, consistency of tenses, that should be stressed.

Brought to light something I had glossed over, but--inanimate objects as characters? Looking again, I don't think that that definition of character is really very good. The fact that something happens to a priceless family heirloom--for example it gets smashed--might be important to the plot, but does that mean that the vase or whatever is a character? I think not. Perhaps something capable of reacting to actions imposed upon it is more like a character?

Actually I think that's a bigger issue than it appears, but I really meant to go to bed awhile ago and I don't think I want to go into it. In short, inanimate objects are rarely characters, and just because ( ... )

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bay115 August 5 2009, 21:16:18 UTC
Hum-tum. All right, decided to take a look at this as I’m curious what you got so far and I’m impressed. :)

Type of Story and Genre you don’t need to go to a lot of detail. I think the writers should have a basic idea what poetry, prose, and script are. Same goes with genre. And also, I don’t think I ever heard of a short story having a maximum of 3000 words. Some short stories can have a longer word count than that, though not by a whole lot.

The introduction to Plot and story I actually like a lot. Sure, everyone knows what plot is, but they probably don’t get that sometimes plot can go haywire at times if they don’t connect the scenes together and also that plots don’t have to be totally original (*coughNothing,Everythingcough*). As for the other things like conflict and setting, I too think you don’t have to go too much detail over those. Perhaps just mention the bones of the story are conflict, climax, and resolution, and the meat are setting, tense, and POV. Actually, I think POV doesn’t need much mention either since I ( ... )

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