Subject: Flat characters and generic cutouts
Author:
Posted on: 2014-05-02 15:40:00 UTC
"After all, how can you mock a Sue for being a flat character, if your characters are generic cutouts?"
Most Sues are being mocked for exactly the opposite. Trying to be speshul, unique, not wanting to be flat or generic enough.
Okay, folks, folkettes, folkarans, folkonians, and folksters! For the past few months we've been quietly working on a revamped and (hopefully) easier and smoother path to getting Permission. Rather than the current 'link to one of your stories and we'll complain that it's not quite the write sort of story, and also that your bios don't tell us enough', we're going for 'write two short PPC scenes based on random prompts, so we can see your agents, adore them, and give you Permission with no further hassle'. Sounds cool, no? No? Shh.
Anyway. In order to do this, we need to actually come up with the random prompts - and rewrite the Wiki article to accommodate the change. That's what we've been trying to do, and we need your opinions.
This finely-crafted link goes to the document that contains both of those things. The Wiki article is above, and the prompts below. I've restricted editing to comments, so please comment on:
-Things you think need changing in the Wiki sections. This can include the wholesale addition of FAQs, and actual alterations to the way things work. Also please comment on any ongoing discussions, if you have something to say.
-Any problems you see in the instructions for the prompts. They're meant to be self-explanatory - if you have to ask 'What?', then they're not, and we need to know so they can be rewritten.
-Any issues you have with the prompts themselves. They're set up so that each box has one prompt (the top) that can apply to anyone, and one that may not apply to every agent.
-Anything else!
This request is particularly for Permission Givers (who'll have to deal with the resulting requests), those who have recently been granted (or not granted) Permission (and therefore know best how the current system works), and those who are thinking of seeking Permission (and thus have a vested interest in having a system that works). But comments from anyone else are also welcome!
And since the first question I get is always 'deadline?', let's say one week from today. Unless there's significant ongoing debate, we'll roll it out on Friday 9th May, 2014.
hS
A new process, huh? Great! I'll give this a look and give some comments on suggestions for prompts.
I had trouble with my Google docs. It seems to be temporarily down on my end.
However, I did manage to get a glimpse of the prompts, and they look great! Good job.
This new version makes it a lot less stressful for Permission-requesters. I can remember rewriting my request at least twenty or so times because I wanted it to be perfect and didn't have much to go off of aside from other people's requests.
The example agent bios are especially helpful, since those are what I mostly kept scrapping due to me being either too descriptive or too vague.
The 'bonus points' thing seems a little iffy, since people might choose those specific prompts so they can name-drop and seem more knowledgable, but I understand the purpose of making sure the person knows PPC canon. I think that as long as they don't shoehorn names in and demonstrate in their request that they know what they're talking about, they'll be good.
(Was the "we'll complain that it's not quite the write sort of story" a typo or a pun?)
Would it be wrong to suggest a PPC Bingo to see how many of these prompts can be worked in--in a natural way!--to normal missions and Interludes. I seriously had a mental image of a Bingo stamper, "Seen this, seen this, seen this, done this one myself, seen this" while I was reading over them.
I'm looking forward to getting Permission sometime in the future. And, speaking of Permission, how long should you usually post and interact before asking Permission? I know it's on the Wikia, but I just wanted some other people's perspectives. :)
I'll help -- hopefully. I will if I can.
I hung out on the Board for about a month before I asked- but I think I got permission because:
1) I posted a lot- if I had something to contribute to a thread, I shared it. If I had a funny idea, I shared it. If someone posted a new mission, I read it and gave concrit.
2) I was planning on asking for Permission the instant I discovered TOS and when I read the requirements, I wanted to make sure my request was as good as it could be. I'm not kidding when I say I rewrote my request so many times that I have an entire pile of paper in my bedroom of scrapped drafts.
I guess just hang out, have a good time, don't be shy, and have your request polished by the time you ask.
Hope this helped! ;)
I'll probably do the same; thanks for the help! :D
Seriously, I've been trying to put together something for Permission for a little while now, and the examples for Agent bios really help explain exactly what you want to see, as well as some decent formatting for it.
I had a quick look and I really don't like it.
It seems most of those prompts are about the boring, non-mission bits of a story that no-one ever bothers to read because we all just skip past them to get to the good part where you poke fun at the badfic and kill the Sues responsible for it.
Maybe it'd be if the prompts gave us examples of badfic writing and we had to show how we'd mock them and how our agents would react to it. Otherwise what's the point? No-one, not even Jay and Acacia themselves, ever managed to make the non-mission parts of a PPC story interesting, so how are we expected to do it?
(Having said that, at least Dark Brother 16 deserves credit for trying to think of ways that the HQ stuff can at least be made relevant to the mission, with his bureaucratic antagonist idea. It's just a shame the killjoys are all trying to stop him, rather than suggest ways his idea could be made to work.)
(BTW you seem to be one of the worst offenders for wasting readers' time with pointless HQ stuff. Some of your stories don't even have any mission in them at all! Until you can fix that problem with your own stories, I don't see what gives you the right to judge others!)
Anyway, other problems with the permission procedure are that we have to think up out own agents. Yes, I know this is something inherited from the old system, but it still needs to be fixed. If I should ever see a badfic so bad that I personally want to be the one to kill it, then I won't want to waste my time having to create new characters before applying for permission to do it. I'd just want to grab a couple of off-the-shelf, free-to-use agents and send them after her as quickly as possible.
... the same baffling time-slip which afflicted Cassie? Only in reverse, obviously, and adding an extra day to make it the 1st again?
hS
He (and I, and I'm sure a few other people as well) want to know if you are kidding or not.
Just speaking what's on my mind.
I guess it's because I'm coming at this from the perspective someone who hates writing fiction. As far as I'm concerned, it was one of those unpleasant things we were forced to do in school, like dissecting frogs, that I can't imagine anyone doing unless they absolutely have to. (But that "have to" includes "have to because your innate skill and talent for writing compels you to.")
So, yeah, the thing about the PPC that I love is the missions, the way they're taking the piss out of stories that really shouldn't have been written but Suethors went ahead and wrote them anyway, even though they didn't need to! That's just about the main thing that makes the PPC so much better than ACMSES or the OFUs, and why I chose to follow you rather than them.
My ideal PPC fic would start with the agents arriving on the badfic side of the portal, and end with them leaving after having killed the Sue. Nothing else. (Seriously, is there anyone who likes reading all the pointless HQ stuff?)
If I ever ask for permission, it'll be because I've seen a badfic I hate so much that I have to write its death personally. And I won't want to waste my time doing all the boring writing-fiction stuff like creating characters and especially deciding what they look like.
(And the annoying thing is that I have seen a couple of badfics I might like to be the one to kill. And it's just the thought of all the unecessary writing that's putting me off asking for permission!)
And I like writing it, too. In fact, it's my favorite part of any mission, because the authors aren't restricted to their agents' reactions to the badfic. It's just two people chilling in their RC either shooting the breeze or trying not to shoot each other, or wandering about HQ and interacting with other agents, or buying some lava mitts to give their mini-Balrog a hug. It's the entire universe of the PPC that makes it so fascinating to me, and I want to see it all.
It might seem odd to you, but character interaction is one of my favorite parts of any story. Everyone knows that agents go into badfics and kill them, but what is Headquarters like? What do the agents do in their free time? Why do they act the way they do? How do they interact with people other than their partner?
A lot of what has made the PPC different from the rest of the Canon Protection Initiative is our shared world and story format. Without the 'pointless HQ stuff', we're just a group of people who write disconnected stories where people go into badfics and kill them as part of their own vigilante justice system.
Without the HQ stuff, we set ourselves up as the fanfiction police, and I don't think there are many of us here who want that reputation.
I doubt I've convinced you, but think about it this way: have you ever watched a YouTube video of a cat playing a piano? Probably. Did it serve a purpose? Of course not! But it was funny, right? A lot of stuff we as humans do is pointless, but we do it anyway because we think it's enjoyable- and that right there is enough to make it not pointless.
...If you hate writing fiction so much, and seem to really disapprove of the PPC setting being more than glorified MSTs, why even be here? I'm not sure I understand why you don't just write MSTs then, which is of course perfectly valid in its own right.
(Also, an MST doesn't literally have to be done with the MST3K crew, if I'm understanding a point you made in one of your replies to hS correctly. Also I suspect I might have just pretty much repeated what hS asked you, if so I apologise - I just found myself very curious. And of course, please don't take this as a "grr, I don't like your opinion so I'm running you out of town" thing, I'm just not sure what you're really getting out of this.)
To answer both your questions in one:
I don't usually enjoy MSTs that don't feature the SOL crew. An OC MSTer in the theatre feels as wrong as, for example, an OC Tenth Walker in the Fellowship.
Maybe it's because nearly every OC MSTer I've read seems to be a thinly-disguised Sue or Possession Sue who speaks Gratuitous Fangirl Japanese at every opportunity even when they're not MSTing anime fics, and they're not even characters who should know any Japanese in the first place.
(When you read Frodo and Sam as the MSTers calling a character "baka" or "hentai," suddenly the badfic being MSTed doesn't seem so bad.)
And wow, is fangirl Japanese everywhere still a thing? I feel old, coulda sworn the internet didn't do that any more.
Ah, well, I've no idea whether fangirl Japanese is still a thing, This was many, many years ago, but it put me off OC MSTs for life. (Even if I tried to read one now, I'd be too busy worrying about possible signs of the MSTers' Sueness that I wouldn't be able to "just sit back and relax.")
As for why the PPC instead of MSTs in the first place. You get to kill the badfics as well as just MST them. You're the next step beyond MSTs.
I think you'll find that the majority of people here like the "HQ stuff". That's why there are whole series dedicated to FicPsych, the Kitchen Staff, Postal Department, DoSAT, Building Maintenance, and others. That's why we know what the Flowers do when they're not on the clock, and that some agents play Cluedo or search for mind-altering substances.
If you don't like the writing, and you just want to see someone mock badfic, then I think you may be in the wrong group. I don't say that to be mean; it's just that the characters and the fiction are kind of the point, here. We are here to make good stories out of the bad. After all, how can you mock a Sue for being a flat character, if your characters are generic cutouts?
-Phobos
"After all, how can you mock a Sue for being a flat character, if your characters are generic cutouts?"
Most Sues are being mocked for exactly the opposite. Trying to be speshul, unique, not wanting to be flat or generic enough.
The problem is when a character's 'unique' traits are a) not actually explored ('She's scared of spiders to the point where she has to hide under the bed from them!' Sure, in this scene, but next chapter she walks through Mirkwood with no qualms), or b) identical to every other 'speshul' character ('... and she's beautiful but everyone hates her and she's the best ever with a bow and a sword but she trips over her own feet and Legolas has to catch her and she's shy and and and' dear sweet Nienna we've met that girl too many times). The latter type are generic, the former make her flat - and all too many characters do both.
hS
Most people who read the PPC - and particularly, most people who want to write for the PPC - love writing. And when I say 'most', I mean 'I can't think of anyone who's ever said otherwise'. Some have difficulty with it, of course, but that doesn't mean they don't enjoy it.
So, to answer your question, yes, most of us like reading the, uh, 'pointless HQ stuff'. It's what differentiates PPC writing from MSTs.
And, actually, if I can interrupt myself, you might find MSTs more your reading style. If you haven't run into them before, they consist literally of going through a story line by line and mocking it. AW's site has some examples, or you can probably find your own to suit your fandoms. Anyway, back on topic.
So I was quite baffled by your 'Until you can fix that problem with your own stories', since, well, a lot of what I'm known for is the non-mission stuff, and your defining it as a 'problem' is rather strange - from my point of view. If you're coming from the viewpoint that the only good thing the PPC can do is kill badfic, then yeah, I can see that would make sense. But I really can't get my head around that idea.
Can I just ask: why do you read anything at all? You read PPC missions for the snark, and it seems from context that you read fanfic to laugh at how bad it is. Do you read anything else? Because as far as I can see, you're classing everything other than mocking bad writing as 'pointless HQ stuff' and its equivalents; how do you get through, say, a novel?
Also: you said 'I'd just want to grab a couple of off-the-shelf, free-to-use agents'. Thing is, we don't actually have a lot of free-to-use Action agents (Lux, maybe?), and a lot of the ones we do - recruits from badfics - have very little personality defined. You'd still have to decide on their character before you tried to write them. That's... just how writing a character works.
Like I've said earlier, MSTs may be more your cup of tea. You can take the in-character approach like AW, or you can literally sit down and eviscerate a story line by line, just detailing everything that's wrong with it. No fiction-writing in sight - just pure snarky dissection.
hS, still... rather baffled
Thanks for the reply.
The reason don't like writing fiction is that I have so many story ideas that are all alive in my head. And by "alive" I mean they're all active, jumping about from the end to the beginning then back to the middle, and twisting and altering and changing themselves all the time.
But in writing the story out, I have to start at the beginning and continue to the end in a straight line, with no contradictions, and just basically suffocating, murdering the once-living idea in my head. It's so depressing to see the corpse being laid out one word at a time. How do you guys cope with that?
My other problem is writing descriptions. I'm just not the sort of person who thinks visually at all. There have been times in real life when I've literally not noticed whether someone was black or white. That's how non-visual my mind is!
OTOH I love writing dialogue. It's the one bit I enjoy. I'm just not any good at it. All my characters all seem to speak with exactly the same voice. It's annoying.
So, if there was a type of fiction with no descriptions, no plot, and only one speaking character, I'd love to write it. (But who would ever want to read it?)
Anyway, to get on to your other questions...
Yes, I do love reading. I really, really love reading. But what I love to read depends on my mood. I tend to go for PPC stuff when I'm in a vicious, bad-tempered mood and want the satisfaction of seeing something nasty being disposed of. Otherwise, there are plenty of other things I could be reading instead.
And yes, I love MSTs. I've even tried writing them in the past, but without much success. I'm British but Mike, Joel and the Bots are all American and make many America-specific references that I don't even understand and can't get right when I try to do them. (e.g. I've only recently found out that it's a company called The Land of Dairy Queen, not a person called the Landov Diary Queen!)
Yes, the alternative is to create my own own characters instead of the SOL crew, but that brings us right back to where we started. Not to mention that new characters take it further from MST3K canon, and respecting canon is as important to me as it is to the rest of you.
And of course, there's the problem of writing the various host segments, invention exchanges, etc. that people fast forward past to get to the MST proper.
More importantly, MSTs don't have the cathartic release of seeing the main character being killed by the MSTers at the end. (You know, I'd love to see Mike accidentally blow up the Sue's world during the final host segment at the end of a MST!)
Anyway, thanks for your patience. And I promise that if I ever do apply for (and get) permission, I'll make dure my story includes at least a couple of scene of tedious HQ stuff, just to keep you guys happy.
I've been mulling over how to best respond to this series of posts. My previous attempts have all been scrapped due to my coming off as antagonistic and jerk-like. I can't say whether this post will come off any better, but I'll give it my best.
I put it to you that an untold story, regardless of how fluid or dynamic it might seem to you, is far more "dead" than anything put to a page. You say that your ideas are "alive" in your head because they have the ability to change and evolve. That's all very well and good, but change for who? You craft a beautiful and moving story in your head. Who's being moved? You're the only person who can see these spectral narratives. It's all very well to say you have ideas, but ideas not acted upon are ultimately pointless.
I feel a great deal of satisfaction when I wrap up a written piece. I haven't killed the story; I've given it to my audience. People get to see this thing that I have crafted for them, this world to which I have given substance, these characters into whom I have poured my sweat and blood. And if I can move the readers in some way? If I can make someone laugh or cry or think with my words? Pure gold.
Yeah, not everything you write is going to make you happy. You have to compromise. Sometimes that leads to mistakes. I've looked at plenty of my old pieces and gone "Shoot, I'd wish I done this instead of that." I don't let that stop me from writing. It just means I try twice as hard to make my next project better.
Writing for the PPC should not be a chore. It should feel like a school assignment. We write to sharpen our skills. We write because it's fun. We write because we have ideas and stories that we want to present to the wider world.
We do not write (or at least, we should not write -- I've harped on that point quite a few times, but people either don't listen or don't remember) for catharsis, or for some twisted form of internet justice. Writing through anger is not a good way to approach a story. You shouldn't be walking away from a story going "That's so stupid, MAIM KILL DESTROY BURN." You should ideally be saying something like "That's so stupid, it might actually be entertaining if I do this and this and this."
Finally, I just want to advise you to try moderating your tone in the future. Calling the veterans "killjoys," referring to anything not mission-related as "tedious" and "pointless," and telling Huinesoron that he was "wasting readers' time" strike me as being borderline insulting. If that was not your intention, then I apologize for jumping to conclusions.
PC
Sorry if I was rude.
Like I said elsewhere, I only tend to turn to the PPC when I'm already in a grumpy, miserable, bad-tempered mood and want the satisfaction of some Sue slaughter. If that seeps into my posts, then you have my apologies. It's not done on purpose to upset anyone.
Just wondered since it seemed like it was weakening the point you made, unless I misunderstood.
"It should't feel like a school assignment" is what I meant to write.
I spotted it and was like "Uh, why's PoorCynic suddenly arguing against himself?" :P
Some of that stuff was absolutely insulting, and then there's this bit which is not only disrespectful, but rather condescending:
"And I promise that if I ever do apply for (and get) permission, I'll make dure my story includes at least a couple of scene of tedious HQ stuff, just to keep you guys happy."
Now, of course I don't know if the tone was intentional and won't act as if I do, but I can at least speak for the impression I got.
The reason don't like writing fiction is that I have so many story ideas that are all alive in my head. And by "alive" I mean they're all active, jumping about from the end to the beginning then back to the middle, and twisting and altering and changing themselves all the time.
But in writing the story out, I have to start at the beginning and continue to the end in a straight line, with no contradictions, and just basically suffocating, murdering the once-living idea in my head. It's so depressing to see the corpse being laid out one word at a time. How do you guys cope with that?
This reminds me to some extent of J.R.R. Tolkien, who worked on The Silmarillion from 1917 until his death in the '70s, and never got it to a point where he was satisfied. He kept rewriting, reworking, and generally meddling with it. The only reason The Lord of the Rings was published was because his publishers dropped a deadline on his head (and actually made one stick!).
I know what you mean about living ideas, and actually, it's one reason I like playing in the PPC ball-pond. Because the world is so huge, virtually every story you write is a vignette. It doesn't murder an idea, pin a character to the page - it just snapshots a moment, or a day, in their life. Then, next time you find a moment you'd like to pin down - or, if you prefer an alternate metaphor, a memory from their life that you'd like to catch on film - you write another one.
A lot of my more recent stories have consisted of this: taking snapshots of what the characters are doing, not filling in the gaps. Example: Origins is nine scenes spanning several decades. Perhaps an even better example: The End of the Beginning is what happens to my agents - and their children - in the next thirty years. The 'pins' I've stuck into Dafydd (to take a random example) consist of 1) leaves PPC, 2) has kids, 3) ... runs away into the multiverse with his wife.
Since the last Dafydd entry in EotB, I've brought him back to HQ twice (most recently for a party), have him dropping in on an upcoming mission, and even have him forming a trans-dimensional organisation of his own. In no way is his story murdered - it just keeps on growing. And because I've written the core of it - because I know who he is, and what experiences he's had (like, say, accidentally killing himself with a magic ring in the middle of the worst badfic around... that was kind of formative) - those past and future tales can be better shaped to fit him.
And I think that's kind of my view. By writing their stories down, I'm not killing my characters - I'm letting them grow. Unwritten characters are just ribbons of potentiality waving in the breeze - hard to grasp, and however pretty they are, they're never going to be anything other than ribbons. But pin one end down, and you can weave a braid - or a celtic knot - or a rope - or add wire and make a sculpture - or repaint it in different colours - or even, if you choose, cut it up.
And characters are the same way. Once you start setting their experiences in stone, they act like real people - they adapt to fit their circumstances, they change as a result of what's happened to them. They can have all the adventures you can think of if they stay in your head - but until you start fixing things in, they can never grow.
You're not doing a very good job selling it. The idea of twisting and arranging a freshly-killed corpse into a braid or a celtic knot is a bit too macabre (even for someone who claims to be a "Ghost" in the screen name!)
And as for the Star Wars thing, presumably the attack on the Death Star is the main focus of the story idea, and what changes is the plot leading up to that: who's attacking it, and why. Like I said, story ideas don't necessarily start at the beginning. And once the Luke version got written down, all the possible alternate versions died, or were consigned to the living death of AU.
OTOH if there is any advantage to actually writing it's the chance to make sure your ideas die with dignity.
(Long, rambling, and slightly incoherent explanation/example coming up. You have been warned.)
My recent brainstorming session with Dark Brother has given me a brilliant idea for a scene with a couple of PPC agents in a Doctor Who fic. I'd love to share it, and because it's just a short scene, not big enough to twist and turn in my mind, I should be able to write it up easily enough.
This idea relies on the agents being in a fourth-wall-breaking Doctor Who fic with a borderline redeemable Sue. So I'll have to invent a parody Sue for the scene, of course. That shouldn't be too hard. After all, like you said, they do have their generic aspects. And it's not as though there's going to be a perfectly suitable fic in the Unclaimed Badfic list, is there?
Except, I went to check the list anyway, just out of curiosity, and found: this.
CURSE YOU IRONIC OVERPOWER!!!
My scene idea has now attached itself to that, re-written itself to match that particular TARDIS crew. So now if someone else PPCs that fic, my idea will die anyway by not being included in it; a slow, painful death from neglect.
I really, really want to write that mission just so that the scene gets to die a quick, dignified death in my mind, and a decent funeral and wake afterwards. Then the will can be read and the inheritance passed on to that idea's heirs.
(A funeral and will is definitely a better analogy than your idea of tying origami knots in the deceased!)
The question is, will I be able to do it, or am I too much of a coward to actually kill the idea myself?
The PPC generally respects claims, so you can pretty much go "I want this one" and nobody else'll touch it.
...it would be pretty selfish of me to claim it for myself if I'm almost certainly never going to write it (since I don't have the courage to risk murdering my own ideas).
Is there some sort of limit for how long fics can remain claimed without anything being written?
We've had missions on the claimed list for years, it's pretty much a "we'll respect the claim as long as we know you're still interested in writing it" thing.
The fic has now been claimed! Yup, you've convinced me to have a go at writing. It'll probably turn out awful, but let's give it a try anyway.
So should I apply for permission now, or wait for the new rules?
If nothing else, use the time to settle in a bit more and consider where we've been coming from, you might find something useful in what people like hS, Cynic and Phobos have tried to tell you. This isn't a lecture, just saying the extra time will give you more opportunity to gather your thoughts.
(Besides, the revamped permission mechanic looks like it's more fun than how we've been doing it.)
Maybe more fun if you're already the sort of person who already enjoys writing. The new mechanic looks like no fun at all from here. :(
You said you wanted to give it a try, the prompts will let you get into the swing of things and used to how your people tick for when you jump into missions. I'd be perfectly willing to help you along if you like, too.
Yeah, some help would be great. Thanks. Feel free to email me to discuss things.
(*hugs*)
I see how I feel in the morning, and if I'm still interested, I'll claim it.
Huinesoron wasn't talking about making objects out of dead bodies. He was comparing potential characters to ribbons, and those ribbons were what was being shaped into different forms, each form being representative of a similar base idea that was exposed to its stories and developed differently because of a character's experiences. Your metaphor was the one about the process of writing stories being comparable to dragging something up from the depths and slaughtering it. Both metaphors were viewing the same topic from different angles. No one is saying that those ribbons need to be made from dead bodies. That would be gross, and would make for very impractical ribbons.
I understand where you're coming from, though, in a way, since I used to have a similar view myself. Everything was just so much more dynamic in my head, and if I didn't like something, I could go back and change it. No one flubbed their lines, the action was always just as well-paced as it needed to be, and I could always get to the good character moments and fun climaxes without having to get through any of that morass in the middle. The problem, though, is that if I didn't write it down, it all went away. No matter how great an idea was, or could have been with a little more effort, it eventually vanished, leaving only a vague sense of frustration as I stumble on a box of fragments months later. I didn't want to trap anything on the screen, where it couldn't fill any and all available space the way it used to and keep itself constantly growing and changing, but I didn't want to lose crucial portions of what I've invested so much thought in, either.
Even if I only save little pieces, there are still spores left of what was. If there's no record of an idea because I'm afraid of what will happen to it, I'd never be able to see what it could become under adversity, I'd never be able to look at it months later and say "Well, this is stupid. Why did I think this was worth anything? Wait, no, it can still work! Maybe if I do this...", or my personal favorite, fitting ideas into one another and building a world out of scraps and possibilities. Sometimes, an idea won't work, maybe because of something I hadn't considered, maybe because of character inconsistency, or maybe because I hadn't set it to anything quickly enough and someone else has done something, however unintentional, that renders it unusable, but if I know what it is and where it is, I can always come back to it, rearrange a few pieces, and send it skittering out into the world.
So, yeah, that long ramble happened. Sorry. Once it started, I didn't want to cut it off until it went on for a certain amount of time. Basically, though, even though you want to see your thoughts grow as much as they can, they won't be able to if they aren't used for anything. Even if they burn out in the end or they need to be taken apart, it's far better that they have a chance at becoming something more than remaining unrealized forever. If you've got three stories for Luke and only one leads to him becoming what the story that's being set up needs him to become, who says that all three have to be Luke? Who says that they have to all even live in the same location, or take up the same destiny? Maybe you could get three characters for the price of one, and then all three of them could start prompting stories of their own, and impressing, or influencing, or inspiring yourself or others to start making new stories based on the old ones. Maybe Jedi destiny Luke could meet up with speeder-adventure Luke that you decided early to merge with another character you had good feelings about but only ever came up with a name and backstory for, and speeder-Luke takes Jedi Luke to his desert oasis castle that you thought up one night and needed to use for something and figured "hey, used-to-be-Luke needs an awesome place to stay". Even if everything gets put together out of order, or you need to rework something important about the castle so that it won't all fall apart when speeder-Luke inevitably overshoots the landing and crashes into the portcullis, it's better that you get to see your stories grow than to let them fade away.
Ugh this is turning into a subjective ramble again I did not have this in mind when I started out I only wanted to point out a misinterpretation and maybe share a bit of personal experience I'm going to stop now
My mind's mental vision of a written story is so strongly a dead corpse, that even when he says it's a ribbon, I'm not really convinced. I'm still seeing a corpse instead.
Interesting comments about going back over old ideas months later. It's pretty much the exact opposite of the rules the teachers forced us to use when writing fiction in English lessons in school. (Write a story with one of these opening sentences. It must be at least so many words. You must complete your first draft in full before going back and changing or editing anything. Your story must be finished and handed in by end of class.)
Of course, that was years ago, so maybe the rules for writing have changed since then, and you can be more flexible nowadays. If so, I wish I'd known sooner!
Those rules are not so much about writing as they are about standardization. It makes grading a story easier for the teacher. Feel free to throw all of that out when writing for yourself. There are no time limits or draft requirements here.
-Phobos
OK. Thanks. That's good to know.
But this brings us back full circle to what brought me into this thread in the first place. The proposed new Permission rules: "Write so many words about something that you don't want to write about, just so that someone can judge you."
It's exactly the approach that put me off writing in the first place!
I've gotten so used, over the years, to only really paying attention to either something I'm working on, or something I'm thinking about, that people's bodies all kind of . . . fade into the background, I guess. When I'm sweeping in the petting zoo, and a customer asks me a question, i need to make a conscious effort to look up into their face to seem respectful, because my subconscious mind is like WORK WORK FOCUS FINISH NOTHING EXISTS OUTSIDE THIS PILE OF POOP RIGHT NOW
I don't think I've ever sat down and fully described one of my characters before. I can describe canon characters fine, because I have someone else's description(s) to imitate. But my own characters, PPC or not? I really only have a vague idea what they look like, because to my (slightly sociopathic) mind, a person is a set of actions and words, not a physical form.
Anyway, what I really wanted to say was, when you do get permission, don't feel obligated to world-build any PPC stuff before and after the mission. If you want to focus on the action, that's fine. At the same time, though, there needs to be a bit more to your agents' dialogue than "I really hate this," because that's neither a useful critique, nor interesting to read. :)
(Technically, Doc looks exactly like me, but I don't trust my ability to put my own face into words. So.)
I can remember a face if it's put into written words, but in real life, I mostly identify people by the sound of their voice. I remember vague details like hair color, but I can't remember eye color or hairstyle or nose shape or anything.
That might be why I'm so good at mimicry, actually. My brain just registers the person's voice, and it's kind of nice when I'm repeating an accent for my friends.
So don't worry, you're not alone in your weirdness. ;)
WORK WORK FOCUS FINISH NOTHING EXISTS OUTSIDE THIS PILE OF POOP RIGHT NOW
That sounds like me when I'm writing. WRITE WRITE WRITE PLOT TWIST NO WAIT THIS WOULD BE BETTER IF I DID THIS WRITE WRITE WRITE WORLDBUILD WRITE oh hi mom what do you mean it's past midnight?
Especially at the stingray petting tank. I have to make sure every group that comes up hears the proper way to touch them. (Since fish need their slime coat intact to keep infections out of their skin, we only let people pet the stingrays with two fingers at a time.) On busy days, so many people are milling through that skinny hallway, I can't keep track of all the faces swimming back and forth, so I'll watch for unique shirts within a group.
"Family with kid wearing Doctor Who shirt already heard me, couple with man wearing purple and yellow checked shirt already heard me, group with multiple Duck Dynasty shirts is new. Also, ew."
(Seriously, why anyone would still want to associate with those people after what they said about gay people is beyond me.)
(Also, what is with these womens' shirts with the window shades cut into the back? I see them all the time, and I'm pretty sure they're supposed to be wearing another shirt underneath, but they never do, and then they turn around, and it's like, underwear. '~' )
My standard dress is a t-shirt and jeans in colder weather, t-shirt and basketball shorts in warmer. Shirts like that just strike me as trashy. I freaking wear bras and it still makes me uncomfortable.
I didn't think it was possible for me to become more of a pariah at school than I already am, but when I expressed my dislike of Duck Dynasty, I got a bunch of nasty remarks from the other kids. I live in a rather homophobic part of the country, which is just lovely. :/
You've probably heard this before, but the situation with kids being mean really does get better in high school, and even better in college. (Can't claim that the homophobia necessarily does, of course.)
And in an AP class at that. Gosh, why don't I like people more? >_
I like to say I'm homophobicphobic. ;)
I can only hope it really does get better in college, because high school has actually been worse than middle school. *mutters* Just one more year... just one more year...
I apologize for making assumptions about what grade you were in. Um . . . at least you're a lot more mature than your classmates? ,>~,>
I still don't feel like I've matured since the age of twelve or so. I suffer from Peter Pan Syndrome- I don't want to grow up. (^_^)/ I do like to think I can make better choices than most kids my age, but if someone cracks a fart joke, I'll start snorting like a pig. If I see a tree, I want to climb it. If I see a shiny object on the ground, I run over to see what it is. ADD for the win.
School just sucks all around. You never get to learn what you want to learn and you have to put up with idiots who don't know what a preposition is. (I'm not kidding- at the beginning of the year, my Latin teacher had to give the class a crash course in basic English grammar. It was scary.)
Yeah, that FOCUS FOCUS FOCUS thing sounds familiar. (And the opposite, when you really don't want to focus to something so you let yourself get distracted by everything around you, so so still don't end up really noticing anything.)
Thanks for your words of encouragement. I've not read your fics yet, but I'll bookmark them, ready to give them a try ready for when I'm next in the mood for a bit of PPC action,
And don't worry about my missions just being agents saying "I really hate this!" I may not enjoy the process of writing very much, but I'm still good enough at it to do better than than that!
To give an example from that Doctor Who fic I mentioned in another post, a typical bit of the mission might go something like this:
-----
Sean pulled out his Character Analysis Device and pointed it at the Sue.
[Abigail 'Abby' Mason, OC, Human, Age 15, Female, 37.14% Mary Sue and rising]
Not too bad, so far, but it was still early in the fic and the character hadn't done much to establish herself yet. He showed the results to Hild, who pulled out her own Canon Analysis Device and pointed it at the Doctor.
[The Tenth Doctor – or maybe the Eleventh depending on whether you include the War Doctor, and don't even get me started on those faces from "The Brain of Morbius"...]
Hild hit the CAD firmly on the side. Doctor Who's flexible canon meant that CADs sometimes had trouble focussing. Those agents who worked permanently in the Doctor Who Division were usually issued with special models that were shielded against such effects. Being a general assistance assassin, not assigned to any particular division, Hild didn't have that advantage, but fortunately, a good thump could often achieve the same result.
[The Doctor, Canon character, Timelord, Male, 15.5% OOC]
[Donna Noble, Canon character, Human, Female, 10.2% OOC]
"Not too bad, yet," said Sean when she showed it to him. "So far it's mostly just fallout from crossing into the wrong universe."
Meanwhile, Abby had stepped out from behind the tree, and introduced herself to the Doctor.
"I'm your number one fan!"
"Fan?" Donna asked. "Of him?" She gestured to the Doctor.
Abby nodded. "Also president of the fan club."
"Of course, she would be the president," sighed Hild shaking her head. "Typical Sue."
"I wonder how many adult fans like having this girl as president of their club?"
"Maybe we're being too harsh. The so-called club's probably just her and her friends."
"Yeah," snarled Sean, "imaginary friends at that."
----
What do you think? Is that good enough?
I'll admit, I laughed so hard my sides hurt at the CAD's [The Tenth Doctor – or maybe the Eleventh depending on whether you include the War Doctor, and don't even get me started on those faces from "The Brain of Morbius"...]
That was brilliant.
The interaction between the agents was very natural, and I could see you doing some awesome things with them in their RC. *hint hint* I'd really like to know more about Hild. Normally you see it spelled Hilda, but the missing 'A' is making me curious. I don't know why.
Thanks. The CAD thing pretty much wrote itself. We've normally seen them either working perfectly or blowing up, and it was time for something between those two extremes. (You know, like the way most technology sort-of works most of the time, even if it isn't exactly in the way you want it to work!)
Hild is the old Anglo-Saxon form of the name because she's part-Rohirrim. (Is it "part-Rohirrim" or "part-Rohirric" or even "part Rohir"?) Anyway, she's a semi-fic blip that's been going round my head for years, so I know her quite well.
OTOH Sean is specially created for the mission. (I wanted to call him John. He preferred Sid. I thought "said Sid" looked silly in text, so we agreed on Sean as a compromise.)
You've got discussion through banter, good conservative use of fic quotes, and a meta joke bout the show and its fandom. You can do this!
Thanks. Glad you liked it. I've got plenty of ideas for banter, meta jokes, etc. But the problem is I don't always enjoy writing them.
(BTW I'll never understand why interviewers always ask authors, "Where do you get your ideas from"? or "How do you think up your ideas?" Ideas just naturally dance into your head of their own accord all the time!)
At the risk of sounding supremely egotistical, do you ever wonder if authors (and film-makers and game developers, etc.) have "better" (more active) imaginations? Or do other folks get story ideas too, but have no interest in making them?
("For what it's worth", but I ran out of space.)
But in reverse order.
Writing MST3K fanfic is not the same as writing MSTs. MSTing is a concept - the concept of taking a story or watching a film and making comments throughout. MST3K is a very entertaining TV show. But you don't have to write MST3K to write MSTs. It would be like... uh... insisting that every sonnet have to be about comparing someone to a summer's day? I dunno, something like that. MSTing is a style of writing, and like I say, you can write it with characters, host-segment-equivalents, etc - or you can literally write your comments interlinearly, in your own voice.
Still, I take your point about not getting to kill anything. ;) So, is it possible to write a story with no description and no plot?
(I'm actually going to address your 'how do you guys cope?' opening in a second reply; it seems like it deserves its own sub-thread)
A story with just one character speaking, taken literally, is probably a stream-of-consciousness sort of thing; they tend to get a bit strange. But let's be a little looser. Some suggestions:
-Write in first person, and give your 'narrator' character free rein. If you imagine it's literally your character telling you about the events - getting sidetracked, forgetting details, refusing to talk about the tough bits - you've actually turned a story into a one-sided dialogue. You can even have a silent second speaker, leading to things like this:
We ducked behind the barn because, well, would you stay in plain sight when there's a multi-hued dragon on the rampage? I turned to Amelia and demanded, "Could you maybe think next time?
No, Sally wasn't there. Didn't I say? Oh, right. Yeah, she ducked into the tower off to our right. Came out a few hours later with a-- but I'm getting ahead of myself.
That might well fit for you - your narrator would be 'jumping about from the end to the beginning'. If you muck about with it a bit, you might even find a way to stop the story having to be consistent. Maybe your character hops timelines at random - or maybe they're just a liar. ;)
hS