Direlda

So I have quite a bit of homework to work on, which means I probably won't be able to meet tonight. ^^; I've tried to get as much as I can done, but there's still a lot left to do.

So Thomas, Salem and I did end up meeting last night. We bounced ideas off each other, though we didn't end up nailing the genre or setting down. That means you can still join in without really any difficulty. But the writing train is getting ready to leave the station and when it does it will be hard to join in, so be aware of that. For next time we meet, which might be next Tuesday, please bring some sort of character sketch! We are planning on using these characters as a way of helping us get started.

I might be finishing up dinner around the start, but I'll hop on as soon as I'm able.

I'll willing to try again this week.

The Omniglot website in general is just overall useful for conglanging because you are able to see all the writing systems in use by languages. It is a rather great place to go for inspiration. \^o^/

That is a good question, considering you are the only one who responded with a time. So if you are on around 6pm CET, then at least I can hop onto Skype and talk for a little bit. I have no idea if anyone else will be able to meet on the 6th at any time. (School just started up for me today, so I'm a bit tired and frantically trying to make sure I know what my homework is--which is why I didn't remind people like I had meant to...).

Well, if you want to get stronger as a writer then this would be a good opportunity to do so. Writing requires discipline. And what better way to become more disciplined than having others who will keep each other accountable for whatever goals are set. Even I could do with some improvement on how often I write. Furthermore, we can help each other improve our writing skills. I have a variety of resources for teaching creative writing and the others probably have some tips. And you might have some insights that we could benefit from. But, if you don't want to participate, then we understand. Doing a collaboration, even if for fun, imposes deadlines that are harder to put off because you are working with others, which can add extra stress to the process. Blessings on your fursuit endeavors! So timezones are going to be an issue, as 6pm Central European Time is 9am Pacific Standard Time is 12pm Eastern Standard Time. To include you in a brainstorming session we would have to make sure we pick a day when you are free in the evening and the people in the US are free in the morning/afternoon. We might have to have you give input beforehand and then pass on what we talked about afterwards.

So Thomas Maltuin and I did a little bit of preparatory brainstorming for the collaboration idea that SalemPertaeus suggested and one of the things we realized was that we cannot get very far without everyone who is interested in being able to participate. That means we need to find a day and time when we can all get together for at least a little bit to decide on the genre and do some setting and character brainstorming. But before I get into that, allow me to go over some of what Thomas and I discussed and what each of us should prepare beforehand to make the meeting a bit smoother. First up is theme. Thomas and I thought that it would be cool for content to mirror form in that the theme be something to do with a group of people coming together. Ideas we tossed back and forth were harmony, reconciliation, and teamwork. Please try to think about those and decide if you like one of them as a theme or would rather have a different theme. Next is genre. We tentatively decided to go with fantasy as the genre because it is a genre we both liked writing in. However, this isn't set in stone as we want to make sure that the genre of the story is one that everyone who will be collaborating is comfortable with. So please come prepared to discuss our favorite genres in hopes of finding one we all like. Finally we talked about characters. The two of us made rough sketches of two characters that could be used in basically any setting or genre (with some tweaking). So please come up with at least a species, profession, and whether they are male or female. You can do more, but that is the minimum. Thomas came up with a male lynx (or was it ocelot?) hunter and I came up with a female fox city guard. While we are doing this for fun, this is a project that you should be willing to spare a few hours a week for. I doubt that we will meet weekly, but it is important for everyone to do a little writing each week. Granted, if work/school/illness/etc. is making life particularly stressful/busy/hectic/overwhelming I'm sure we all will understand and cut you some slack. Does the evening of the 6th of January work for a meeting time? We'll need to coordinate the exact time based upon timezones, but does that day work for all of us? As far as meeting place goes, I think Skype is a good choice because it is a fairly common program and allows us to do both voice and text chat. Does anyone have an objection to that? People whom it would be good to hear from: Salem--this was your idea, so being able to meet with you is key. Thomas--you are very gung-ho about this project, so it is key to make sure the meeting works for you JollyRancher--you expressed interest, so it would be good to know if this is still something you would like to do Zvoc--you also expressed interest, so do you still want to do this and how do we schedule things to accommodate your timezone? SleepySchizo--you, too, expressed interest, so let us know if you want to still be involved Myself--future Direlda, please get me a calendar with all of my other responsibilities written out so that I can better make schedule plans. And wibbley-wobbley it to yesterday if you can.

Out of curiosity, how many of you here have done any conlanging before? In other words, how many of you have made up a language, be it fully developed or only partially, for whatever reason? I have several languages I am working on, though only two are far enough along to be worth mentioning. One is Taipii, a language for an indie MMORPG by Right Brain Games, since I have assisted in its development (but only assisted, as Jeff came up with it and Tettix and others have also made significant contributions). The other is one of several languages for my fantasy world. I'm still working on the transliteration of that language into English because it doesn't have all of the same phonology and clicks and ejectives pose interesting puzzles for mapping into Latinate script. But I may share some of it with you at some point. This thread should be more for talking about conlanging, sharing tips, and briefly mentioning any conlangs you have worked on. If you want to go in depth on one of your conlangs, then feel free to create a new thread for it in the Writing and Books section of the Art Cave.

Monday night is usually game night for me, so that probably won't work. Perhaps Tuesday night, then?

I'm on board. Really all we need is a time to get together to brainstorm. I'm in a writing group with two (technically three, but he hasn't shown up in months) other furs and while we don't do collaborative fiction, we do help each other come up with and refine ideas for our stories. So if we had a time and a means (Skype, IRC, TeamSpeak, Ventrilo, Google Hangouts, etc.) to get together and bounce ideas off each other in real time, then we could come up with everything we needed to much easier.

Well, some of your versions work better than others. The version of the 15th doesn't work so well because it lacks punctuation in that section and could use a few more words to clarify. The version of the 16th works better, though "history" causes trouble for the left side, "manifest" sort of causes trouble for the right side, and while I like "with in" it is hard to read it as a single preposition when reading across. For yesterday, the version where you have "{LIVE}" doesn't work as well because "live" needs to agree with a singular noun "Identity" and a plural noun "histories." And the other version of yesterday doesn't imply to read in down in columns in addition to standardly. Adding "all" in to the left side either before "have shaped" if you like the way the version of the 16th works or between "have" and "shaped" if you like how the version of the 17th sounds would probably make things work a bit better. I'm going back and forth on whether or not "manifest" should change to "manifesting." For the version of the 17th you're going to have to choose whether to keep "histories" or "Identity" the same and then change the other to singular or plural, respectively. As a side note, dashes tend to be a bit longer when used they way you are using it after "footsteps," so it should read: footsteps-- to convey the right sort of dash (sadly I don't know if it is possible on the forums to get the unbroken dash of that length to show up in posts). All-in-all you are doing a good job with the revision process! With poetry reading it out loud can help. And with this sort of interwoven sentences it often is good to write each out separately to make sure they make sense (and, if you're daring, you can try a palindromic poem next--it reads the same forwards and backwards not counting punctuation and revolves around a single word in the middle of the poem).

i was suggesting that you do something along these lines but with your own words: these vulpine words with love of aburaage form in soups and salads a sentence of double proportions it takes a bit of doing, but i know that you can do it-- i don't capitalise right now not capitalising is cool do be do be dool

Teehee! But, yes, they look good! And wouldn't they be fuzzy anyways considering they are anthropomrophic animals? Teeheeehee!

Nice!

So I'm having difficulty with finding examples of how the narrative of a game, as Salem defines it, has affected me. For instance, in Morrowind I never actually completed the main story arc. One of the things I remember most was trying to free the slaves and then discovering that despite having broken into the slave merchant's store and lockpicking the cells open the slaves wouldn't take their freedom because there was no scripted quest for them to go free. Another was having the random assassins that one of the expansions added in spawn in a closet in a Legion barracks, preventing me from falling asleep until I had opened the door and let the more powerful Legionaries take the assassin out. Stumbling across the person who fell from the sky and then trying out the scrolls of Icarian Flight only to meet the same fate the first time around. Or discovering that there is a mudcrab merchant. And having fun wandering around in Solstheim. The stories of Myst and Guild Wars 2 are interesting, though they haven't moved me very much. The discovery of new places in GW2 or uncovering solutions to puzzles in Myst are what I remember more than the storyline. I would say that our perceptions of a story do and don't affect the story itself. Disney's The Lion King is going to progress the same way every time you watch it no matter what you think of it. And yet, if you are familiar enough with Hamlet to see the parallels between the two stories, then that perception will alter The Lion King for you. And I would say that both examples of the hike would be a story. But that's because I view our lives as unfolding stories. For me stories in video games are better when they are co-created by the player and the developer/game systems. Dungeons and Dragons as Foxbunny pointed out, is probably a good model of this. One player from the group takes on the role of Dungeon Master and decides how the NPCs interact with the players as well as throwing in events and quests. But the DM doesn't fully drive the story because how the players choose to act, where they go, and so on also affects the story. And seeing how I have many more stories of D&D affecting me, I would say such a system works. The was the time when one of our party members swore all of us into eternal servitude to a dragon because his attempts to flatter and placate a dragon were interpreted differently than intended. Or the time we thought a Big Bad was called "Master Dinner" because one of his servants had shouted, "Master, Dinner!" but we hadn't heard the pause between the two (it was helped by the fact that Master Dinner was essentially a giant maw that ate through the floor). Or how we took to calling our adventuring party the Unfit Apocalypse (I can't remember if our communal Rock Band 2 band was named before or after our party name, as that was also called Unfit Apocalypse) because we always seemed to destroy quest hubs despite our best efforts not to. Or the time we did a campaign somewhat in the WoW setting and I had a minor miner Worgen Warden.

Ahh, I see! I think Foxbunny and I have a slightly different understanding of the author-reader interaction. For me, at least, that means I view writing as a subset of telling along with speaking, filming, dancing, composing, etc. In other words, writing refers to the act of telling a story in a specific medium, in this case "printed" text. In my view, the audience is an active participant in the telling of a story and what a specific person brings will affect their experience of a story. The story of Peter Pan will be very different for a ten-year-old child and a thirty-year-old parent despite having the same words (or frames if you take a movie version). And so the story will change without changing. To illustrate how easy this can occur, let us consider the word tree. I want you to pause here and picture or think about what sort of tree you see/think of when you hear the word tree. So what sort of tree is it? My guess is that not all of us will come up with the same image/descriptors/etc despite having the same word to work with. And while stories do create larger contexts that explain how we should interpret various words and plot points, they still allow for some variation in interpretation. The context of the reader is just as important as the contexts of the story and of the author. In my view narrative is more than just plot and dialogue. Furthermore, because the medium of video games is different from that of "printed" works or film there are story-telling techniques that are unique to video games, such as being able to have an AI that reacts to the player. Even in linear games you can find variance in how the AI will react to the players--they might not always open an encounter by using the same ability or you might reach them at a different point in their set patrol route. I suppose I see Minecraft as having a story because I tend to see stories in everything. But in a sense the game is giving you narrative elements--it puts a main character (defaulted to Steve) in a setting (often random, but can be specified) where plot happens (you discover ore in an abandoned mine shaft and then have to fight off a horde of spiders and other nasties pouring out of the dark tunnels). Granted, Minecraft doesn't dictate the story as it is happening, but that doesn't mean there isn't a story, at least in my opinion. In one sense, every reading or watching of a story is a different telling of that story because of the different contexts the audience brings. But in another sense it is the same story if it is conveyed via a more fixed medium, such as print (we'll leave off the digression into the fixity and fluidity of texts and language). Of course, oral storytelling isn't as concerned with having each recitation of a story be exactly the same as long as the core of the story remains the same. And when I orally tell stories about my various adventures I am partially writing those stories as I tell them. Each telling is a little different but can be said to be the same story if the core hasn't changed. I tend to play a lot more strategy games, so my narrative experiences, I suppose, fall somewhat out of your definition. I'll have to think back a bit to Morrowind or the Myst series and share what I remember at some later point.

Foxes and/or kitsune! But more seriously, you could try (and/or mix) some of the following: A drawing for every letter of an alphabet (doesn't have to be the English alphabet) Characters, places, and/or objects from a favorite story Illustrations of Bible verses Different poses and/or moods of a single character Ordinary objects made fantastic--a plunger becoming a scepter or an umbrella becoming a shield, for instance Using negative space or scribbles to create an image of something

You did a good job of tightening up this poem! Breaking it up into movements definitely helped. As did the removal/changing of the prose lines, which didn't feel like they fit into the previous version of the poem. Some of the spacing seems more distracting than adding to the poem. For instance, line 13 of Movement Two: "list the meaningless" could probably do without the extra spaces within the line. The extra spaces break up the flow of the line, making the reader read each word as its own entity. I would recommend reading back through the poem and making sure you want the reader to pause everywhere you have added in extra spaces In Movement Four, I feel that lines 1-4 should be alternating sides, such that lines 1 and 3 would be left-justified and lines 2 and 4 would be right justified. And lines 5-10 of Movement Four might be better as their own stanza. I understand that with this first stanza of Movement Four you are probably trying to show two halves that come together to make a whole--as seen by stanza three, which is centered. However, right now lines 1-4 and lines 5-10 don't feel like they belong in the same stanza. In the Final Movement I want to read each half of lines 6-9 as their own unit as well as across. So I keep stumbling over that section. Overall a good poem and I like where you've taken it! ^-^;;~

Game mechanics can be considered a part of storytelling. Remember that with film things such as close-ups, pans, and camera angles are all part of how the story is conveyed. So when analyzing a film it's not just the plot, characters, and setting you have to pay attention to, it's also the various aspects of the medium that affect how the story is able to be told and how the story is conveyed. In the same way, then, a video game has different aspects from both film and books that tie into how stories can be told in the medium. We should expect that games will be able to do some things not possible in other media in terms of storytelling and also have difficulty or not be able to do other storytelling things. And isn't telling a story in some sense 'writing' that story?

Have you ever read After Action Reports (AARs) for games like Crusader Kings II or Total War: Shogun 2? Not every AAR writer is good at conveying a story, but there are those who are able to take their actions and everything the AI does and weave it into a story. I would imagine that creating an AAR for Minecraft wouldn't be too much different from creating one from any of Paradox's or Creative Assembly's strategy titles. And the author in a sandbox game would be filled jointly by the player and by the game. For instance, some friends and I have started a new Minecraft server using the Dark Trilogy modpack. And something that happened early on was that two of them got sucked into a the same hungry node multiple times. Their choices and lack of knowledge led them to fall victim to the hungry node over and over again, but had the game not spawned a hungry node near a location we decided was worth building in then they might not have died seven plus times. Indeed! Reader-response is a valid form of literary criticism because different readers bring to stories different things. My experience of reading The Lord of the Rings will be different from your experience. And my experience of reading it will change over the years. A truly co-created video game experience might look like Minecraft or Crusader Kings II. Because those games give you a framework--give you the setting and the various rules to follow--while leaving you open to chart whatever path within that framework you want. And the games will throw in plot complications such as a creeper surprising you and destroying part of your base or another lord declaring war on you while you are in the midst of a different war.

Cool baseline!

I recommend getting a copy of A Poetry Handbook: A Prose Guide to Understanding and Writing Poetry by Mary Oliver and potentially a copy of The Sounds of Poetry: A Brief Guide by Robert Pinsky. Both provide useful overviews of aspects of poetry with examples of what they are discussing. I'll read through your poem a second time tomorrow and get back to you on specific suggestions.

Why'd you have to start talking about this on a weekend when I was away from my computer! Google Docs is useful for collaboration, but in terms of formatting it is horrendous. I always have to use another word processing program to make the document look nice or meet required formatting (such as APA style...). Also, I think we have two different ideas going on here: Collaborative creative writing where a group of writers either write separate pieces in the same setting (examples of this are the Star Wars Expanded Universe or the Forgotten Realms setting both of which contain many novels by several different authors) or work together on a single piece. Storytelling through group RP where a group of people get together, role play for a bit, and then spruce up the session into something more easily read. Skype is probably the best way for me to communicate as long as there is a scheduled time for me to be logged on. I also find that being able to hear people is beneficial for brainstorming. I'm willing to help out, though I do have plenty of projects to work on (I really need to get my one story's first draft done before Friday and work more on the three collaborative stories I'm doing with my wife before Christmas...) so don't expect too much from me. But I have taught creative writing and I have been published, so I am willing to help you all out, even if it is just to get you flying!

Welcome to the forums! *Direlda bows in greeting* I'm a crazy storytelling kitsune who really should get back to leading a Bible study.