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Messages - FishStampede

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31
Author Craft / How to sell: Individual shorts, collection, or journal?
« on: October 07, 2012, 04:43:58 PM »
I'm currently finishing up my first publishable short story, and I'm exploring options on how to get it out there. An obvious option is Amazon self-publishing, but each individual story is 99 cents. That's basically 47 words per cent with my current story. Looking at it as myself, I'd have to really like the author, otherwise I'd probably pass it by.

There's also the collection option. I could self-publish a novella-length collection of short stories. I certainly have enough of them, if not written yet then coming down the pipe. That might be an easier sell, but then I'd need to get 9-10 more stories out there. That's doable, but lacks instant gratification.

And then there's the old style, of submitting your story to genre fiction journals (including the slightly more modern online format), waiting for a response, then submitting it to another journal when you get rejected. It has its benefits in that they tend to pay very well for short fiction when you get accepted and they have a large reader base. Downside is the difficulty in actually breaking into the business, and the fact they'd probably frown on having it available in another form.

Any advice on which path I should take with selling my story?

32
Author Craft / Re: Author In Progress
« on: October 07, 2012, 04:09:20 PM »
My name is Robert. I used to write all the time in high school, but only now that I've gotten out of the military I've started writing again for real. I'm currently studying creative writing at UNCA, and would like to get my works published.

I mainly write fantasy, of the extremely high fantasy variety. My work started out actually as fanfiction, but it's evolved beyond that. In the class I'm currently taking we're supposed to try to get a short story published by the end of the semester. They're not expecting us to succeed, just to try. I just finished my short story, and so now I'm trying to edit and improve on what I have. If anyone is interested in doing a serious critique of it, let me know.

33
DFRPG / Re: Ancient Knowledge (Asheville keep out)
« on: October 02, 2012, 09:15:14 PM »
Yeah, this is probably more just for my own bookkeeping, since Shonokin are exceptionally inhuman despite not having many innate powers (other than immortality) and I want even the basic ones to be pretty high Refresh to reflect their monstrous nature.

34
DFRPG / Ancient Knowledge (Asheville keep out)
« on: October 01, 2012, 09:05:41 PM »
Now that my first story arc is over, I'm busy plotting out my next one. For that I'm trying to build a new group of villains, and running into a snag.

I don't want them to be HUGELY powerful. Oh, they have some decent sorcerers and the like among them. The main thing about them though is they are true immortals. Ancients beyond measure, older than recorded human history. They are older than some creatures with legit claims to godhood.

They are called the Shonokin and once had an empire stretching across most of North America. They lost to the Invaders (what they call the native Americans), and have been in hiding ever since. Not just from the Invaders (and the Europeans) but also from their gods and monsters. Slow attrition has whittled down their numbers to the point their entire species could probably just barely fill the seats at a minor league baseball field, but they're trying to make a comeback.

I want to give them something subtle to represent their ancient knowledge. After all, they have been around for over 15,000 years. This power came to mind (undoubtedly unbalanced, though the requirements are a bit steep)

Ancient Knowledge (-5)
You have been around since before most modern civilizations. Possibly since before humanity. You have literally seen it all, and so you tend to have an extremely broad base of skills and knowledge.
Prerequisite: You must have been alive and conscious for over eight thousand years.
Effect: All your skills start at Average. Your skill cap goes up by one.
Special: You can take this multiple times, once for each eight thousand years of your life. Bear in mind most gods haven't been around and active this long.

Close enough to balanced for an NPC?

35
Author Craft / Re: Passive...
« on: September 22, 2012, 06:49:40 PM »
Well, passivity in and of itself is not a bad thing. One of my mains is extremely passive, but that's one of her character flaws. Hamlet as a character was defined by his inability to act, and that's normally in the top 5 Shakespeare plays.

A character being overly passive often comes in my experience from them considering their actions too much. They think about what they're going to do well before they actually do it.  For my other character, who is much more active, I often find the best thing to do is ask myself "What could she do that would make things worse?" Then she does it.

36
Author Craft / Re: Writing godlike characters (without making everything Kryptonite)
« on: September 22, 2012, 06:38:16 PM »
I mention exalted, but I really try to avoid looking at RPGs for writing inspiration unless they're specifically meant for what I'm trying to write. Just a shorthand way for me to describe the sort of power some of the characters have. Still, Scion has piqued my interest in the past. I'll probably give it a look.

When they use their powers, it really just fatigues them like anything else. It's a high magic setting so everyone has SOME degree of magical talent and power. What makes the sisters special is that they have access to three different kinds of magic, their talents are very diverse, and they have much deeper wells of energy. When they use up their power they just get really tired. And like anyone who is fatigued mentally and physically, but still trying to surpass their limits, they tend to act irrationally and make stupid mistakes. For all their power, they're essentially human in mindset.

I've pretty much sketched out how the fight with the pirates will go. They use their green dust magic to create a "sea" for the ships to sail on ABOVE the waves, then the mist rolls in like a fog. The mist itself is dangerous to people caught in it, so my main has to fight them in the sky, separated from her forces below who have to deal with the stragglers who wade ashore from the non-flying ships. Up there, she ends up having to deal with cannon-bearing ships, the pirates themselves, and their powerful leader whose magic is producing the green dust.  She's relatively new at fighting so all of this together is a severe challenge.

In another scene I wrote out, I tested the limits of their immortality. A traitor manages to get the drop on the other sister and runs her through the chest. She has powerful healing, but with the downside it brings all the pain of the healed injury at once. So she puts on a great show of humbling the traitor while discreetly cauterizing the wound. Allow me to show that exerpt:

(click to show/hide)

I have not finished writing the next scene yet, but that is the exact limit of her immortality. As soon as the coast is clear, she collapses, barely managing to keep herself alive until her sister returns to help her heal. If he actually had run her right through the heart, the ending would have been very different.

37
Author Craft / Re: Writing godlike characters (without making everything Kryptonite)
« on: September 08, 2012, 11:55:38 AM »
Quote from: Aminar on September 08, 2012, 05:02:26 AM
Not Pokemon enough...  Not nearly. 

Nobodies been worried about you using Ponies as an influence.  Wouldn't be my choice, but my writing has Pokemon, Avatar(airbender and according to my girlfriend blue space people too(but really that's the zelda bit)), Zelda, X-men, Jurassic Park, The Dresden Files, Bartimaeus and a variety of other things on its list of inspiration material.  Most of those were subconscious references I figured out later, but hey.

I think it broke my writing teacher's brain when I mentioned that my epic fantasy story was inspired by My Little Pony. She had trouble forming coherent sentences.

I've had success (later in the timeline, earlier in my writing) with challenging her by giving her conflicting goals. One large battle scene has her dealing with an eldritch abomination that has manifested as a vast, sentient supercell thunderstorm. She has to focus on battling the storm, while her support attacks the heavily fortified city below and take out the cloud factories feeding it. The Mwachi pirates don't have an eldritch abomination supporting them, but perhaps I could use a similar divide and conquer technique?

38
Author Craft / Re: Is it appropriate?
« on: September 08, 2012, 11:32:00 AM »
Quote from: LizW65 on August 29, 2012, 03:39:24 PM
One example of a work that managed to find a good balance of pop culture references is the show Farscape. It used a ton of pop culture references, yet all were sufficiently well-known as to be familiar to just about any Westerner who wasn't living in a cave for the last fifty years, and well-established enough that they don't seem obscure or outdated even though the show ended a decade ago.

I think Farscape did a great job of having their cake and eating it too. John Crichton is a pop culture machine, throwing out references left and right, so American audiences immediately sympathize with him and laugh at his jokes. His companions are aliens from another galaxy, so all of his references are completely lost on them. Foreign audiences (or those just not as plugged in to pop culture) sympathize with his crew and their baffled reactions.

I read a book (part of the Laundry series by Charles Stross) where the main character says he was enjoying reading this book series about a wizard in modern-day Chicago. Doesn't call Harry out by name but it's pretty obvious what he's referring to. The same book has a cultist die via iPod commercial (which, interestingly, most of his British audience would not get). For something less mainstream like the Dresden Files, I'd go for an oblique reference. Maybe something like "I thought about waving my hands and shouting FUEGO but I didn't want to deal with the bill for property damage" or "I needed to think my way through this. Come up with something unexpected. Unfortunately, all I could think of was a polka-powered zombie t-rex. My brain must be on strike."

39
Author Craft / Re: Writing godlike characters (without making everything Kryptonite)
« on: September 07, 2012, 08:18:24 PM »
Interesting replies. I'll try to address the bulk of the points while explaining the particular situation here.

They do essentially have human motivations (although there are no true humans in this world, more on that later). Their power is great, but it is limited and they do tire if they overextend themselves. Because of their essentially human natures, they are more prone to mental fatigue than physical. They can fall in love, they can nurse grudges, they can get angry, and they can simply be wrong as well. They can also die and get injured, though killing them is hard especially if they see it coming.

They're not omniscient, though they do have some abilities of clairvoyance within their element that can let them fake omniscience to those who don't know their limitations: One can see through the rays of the sun, the other can see in areas of darkness, but both can only look at one thing at a time through either magical or normal sight. Beyond that, they have powerful magic within their domains. The active one has powers related to the moon: darkness, cold, dreams, nocturnal beasts, and, interestingly, hope. They don't have any power outside their domains, but within their domains they are mainly limited by their endurance and creativity. In fact, a good deal of their perceived power comes from the fact that not everyone knows of their limitations.

The active one is just really coming into her power. She's been around for many, many years but has been following her inactive sister's orders for that long. Now she's trying to make her own way in the world and fix some of the problems that her sister's laissez-faire approach has caused. Most pressing at this moment is an invasion by a corsair armada.

The corsairs are from a different species with their own magic. They're extremely tall and slim with extra joints on their limbs, and move something like spiders. They also have a unique form of magic using spirits and alchemy that is as much a paradigm shift to deal with as the Canim blood magic in Codex Alera. I haven't entirely pegged down what they can do, but she has only the barest knowledge of what they are capable of as well. It's quite likely she might try something that makes perfect sense but turns out not to work as well as she thought.

My goal is to make this a difficult triumph for her. She manages to succeed by rallying the townsfolk and by defeating some great personal challenge, thus solidifying her position as a good leader and rival to her sister, whether she likes it or not (long term: not).

PS: To answer the elephant in the room: Yes, this is loosely based on My Little Pony, as hinted in the original post. Very, very loosely. They're not ponies, they're humanoids, and it diverges significantly to the point where it's basically its own thing. Hey, we're on the forums of a guy who put a Pokemon vs. Zerg fanfic on the best seller list. ;)

40
Author Craft / Re: Fanfiction: Is It Real Writing?
« on: September 06, 2012, 11:34:06 PM »
You're asking this on the forums of a guy who put an elaborately disguised Pokemon vs. Zerg fanfic on the best seller list? People always bring up 50 shades, why not Codex Alera? Going back further, any retelling of Arthurian mythos, or anyone who writes a new version of the Odyssey is essentially doing fanfic. Just because the ideas are not original doesn't mean it isn't "real writing."

I think the only problem is when people try to cleave too close to canon, particularly with ongoing series where as new information develops, they end up altering their vision to fit with the new material. That puts great constraints on your creativity and often causes logical knots as people try to change their work to reflect changes in another work.

I'm actually rewriting a fanfic of mine into an original work. What I'm doing is definitely "real writing," at least to me. At this point it still bears a lot of resemblance to the original piece, but it's rapidly evolving into something new. I'm no longer worrying about making it fit with canon because it's not the same. The fact that it was once a fanfic was just a good way to get started.

41
Author Craft / Re: Where to hide your Eldridge Abominations
« on: September 06, 2012, 11:25:27 PM »
From my memory of Seoul (what's left of it after the soju), there's a lot of old historical landmarks. You can walk into a temple, and the entire city just seems to disappear. You're suddenly not in one of the largest and most modern cities in the world, but an ancient place with great weight of history behind it. Perhaps one of the historical sites could be useful?

On the other side, there's a huge chunk right in the center of the city carved out for the Yongsan post. I know how the American military can be, how well is that part of the city's underground patrolled?

42
Author Craft / Writing godlike characters (without making everything Kryptonite)
« on: September 06, 2012, 11:19:43 PM »
Or, how to let them have their fun and still preserve the drama. The story I'm writing could be called "high fantasy," "My Little Pony played in the Exalted system," or  "Game of Thrones if it was published in Shonen Jump." Seriously. It works better than it sounds. Be prepared for weirdness ahead.

Anyway, my two main characters have nearly godlike power and a major theme I wish to explore is how sometimes their power can't solve every problem. In fact, aggressively using such power can make situations much worse. On the flip side, not using such power can make people resent you and think they could have done better. To this end I have one who tends towards inaction and letting situations handle themselves, while the other tends towards action. It's the latter one that is problematic.

So how do you handle extremely powerful characters, without it seeming like everything is made of kryptonite? I'll let you give me some ideas, then explain the specifics of the situation she's currently in.

43
Community Cork Board / MLP:FIM belt buckles
« on: September 03, 2012, 02:28:03 PM »
Yes, I'm one of those weirdoes who likes My Little Pony. I'm also selling some my little pony based merch on ebay: Belt buckles based on the symbol of farm pony Big Macintosh.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/271044725164?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649

Need to get a few more orders and then I can think about other designs.

44
DFRPG / Re: Making a killing curse
« on: August 02, 2012, 11:59:52 PM »
Used the aspects because of possible similarity to the weapons-grade entropy curse, and because it basically imposes a moving environmental hazard. Looking back, it seems that environmental hazards are not actually aspects and that seems odd to me, but I'll change that. I know you only get one free tag, that's why I have all those extra shifts at the bottom for maximum health boxes and consequences. I figured those were used to "repeat until dead." Did I misunderstand that part?

As much as I'd like to wing it or use an alternate system, the issue here is I'm using this to get an understanding of the system as is. Those suggestions are good but would be more useful if I was more familiar with the system. I need to know how to handle it if a player decides to do something even remotely similar, though obviously less lethal.

45
DFRPG / Re: Making a killing curse
« on: August 02, 2012, 06:13:59 PM »
What you mentioned is pretty much exactly what I am going for. I guess I didn't explain it too well. Edit: In fact, looks like I left off the spell's damage entirely! Oops.

(click to show/hide)

I don't want to ignore the rules entirely because thaumaturgy's still a tool for my PCs and I'm making this spell as a way to help myself understand the rules as much as it is a tool in the villain's arsenal. Unless things go horribly wrong plot-wise, this spell will probably never come into play. However, just like the horror it's named for, it's sitting there...waiting.

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