And wow, is fangirl Japanese everywhere still a thing? I feel old, coulda sworn the internet didn't do that any more.

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

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

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.

---

And yes, that applies to plots, too. Imagine you've got this character in your head, we'll call him Luke Skywalker. He lives on a desert planet with his aunt and uncle. One day you imagine him racing his skyhopper down Beggar's Canyon, another you picture him at Toschi Station with his friend Biggs. He can have all the adventures you can dream of on Tatooine.

But until you sit down and say, for certain, that he's followed his new droid to Ben Kenobi's hut, seen his guardians killed, and fled the planet with a smuggler and a wookie... he's never going to become a Jedi. And frankly, I'll take Star Wars over the unlimited adventures of Luke in the desert any day.

hS

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.)

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