The SolAARium: Discuss the craft of writing - Alphabetical Index in the 1st Post

Having lived in Memphis and met Mr. Foote ( though briefly ) I find myself "listening" to his books as much as "reading" them. He really can tell a story - his actual voice is great for storytelling also - and the fact the story is true just makes it better. James McPherson did a great job of this in Battle Cry of Freedom IMHO.

I hate a protagonist who has no trouble, just pulls out the magic whatno and whacks through the enemy. I want my hero to Struggle! and have some believable character flaws, like Forrester's Hornblower.

Weber's Honor Harrington started out well but has become too "unstoppable" too fast, I think ( but I 'll fight for each book as it comes out! ).

Director,

I agree on your assessment of character flaws making an engrossing hero. And Hornblower is an example there. Did he "help" his mad captain fall? Ah, we'll never know. One might say it would fit his character, especially in a desperate strait.

That's probably why I like the "Winds of War" series too. Pug Henry to me is an incredibly believable character, and I loved the way Mitchum played him in the two miniseries as well. Other characters could annoy me. But Pug was always an interesting one. Whether he was underestimating what Byron was capable of, questioning how close to the Nazis he was really getting, or returning to his element at sea. And I've never thought Herman Wouk a bad author either.

About the 400 years/pacing issue- Joe, did you write your Alliance AAR in the same manner you wrote your murder mystery? I think we may have been premature when we moved on, as we hadn't fully explored this one....

Anyway, onto the current subject at hand:

You know, I feel like the odd man out here, because I don't read historical fiction or biographies.... read a lot of poetry, and modernist-type fiction(y'all know I am a Ulysses guy)... but I figured out something weird about myself... I love the allegorical... tales which are based upon the great works of literature... Ulysses, the Gap Cycle(which is based on Wagner's ring cycle), the Waste Land, the Dick Gibson Show(the Canturbury tales)... and then there is the Faust/Job thing, but that sort of goes without saying. And you can't read Pratchett without tripping over the subrefences...

Ironic that someone who claims to have a problem writing an AAR on a short time so lionizes a long ass book about a single day...

I have to say, the more intertextual something is, the more I like it... and that is something you should remember when reading my work... I stuff a lot of things under the surface... like it seems like no one has noticed their cameos so far... or the pop culture references...

And I agree about Shelby Foote... I could listen to that man rattle off insurance rates....

Sidenote: SM, well, don't blame me... I am history as an art kind of guy... it is all these social historians with their numbers and such which are ruining the field, because they are trying to make that the primary tool in trying to teach the subject. Without the background that goes around it, social history is dry and hard to understand. Like why would a sudden reduction in caloric intake and emigration in 19th century Ireland be relevant to a student, if they didn't know about the potato famine?

living a life of too many facts and not enough figures,
M

I've really missed out getting in on some of these conversations already, but I wanted to through a few of my responses into the ring.

Re paragraph formatting:

I simply adjusted my writing style to make the presentation better on the web page and more reader friendly. My own observation is that if the text exceeds about a dozen lines before there's a line break then it's simply too dense a block unless it's a very occasional thing. If I were writing for novel publication, I'd rework the paragraphs into more "correct" form instead. I don't think it's necessarily harming my writing development, but is simply using a technique that flies slightly in the face of conventional formatting in oder to appeal to a broader audience.


Re Immersion:

I am utterly immersable when I read. I tend to suspend my disbelief and then say to the author "Bring it on!". I prefer to lose sense of anything that is happening outside of or away from the book, and I hate having lots of ambient noise (radio, TV, or anything like that) on when I'm reading. My favourite place to read is in bed, and on my sofa would be #2. I don't want external stimuli...I want to be overcome by what the author has to offer.

Re 400 Narrative:

To each his own. I know that I will never try doing another one on the kind of scope that I would normally wish to apply these days. I revel too much in detail (and verbocity of course...never forget the verbocity ) so I think the longest period I might tackle now would be about 100 years if I really carefully set out a set of goals and targets to meet. I would move away from a character-driven story and choose a more "winds of war" approach with spartan character development (if I include any dialogue at all) and more nationlistic or national narrative instead. While it is possible, 400 years is just not something I feel I could sustain (e.g. l'Eminence Grise) in the sort of styles that currently appeal to me as an author.

Plot Scripting:

I'd really like to address Storey's scripting question, but I suspect it will be a somewhat longer and interesting discussion so I will refrain from doing so until the other topics have run their course.

Originally posted by Storey


I'm wondering how much of the story is scripted out before anyone here starts writing? Since I stay with the shorter game time span I have the general plot laid out but hardly any of the details. An example is when I did the murder mystery I knew who was killed and who did it and the most general details of what happened. I had this idea and started writing and fleshed out the story as I went along. I can't count the number of rewrites the story had since it was almost continuously happening. The characters started with a name and grew from there, as did their actions. It's not that they wrote themselves it’s more like I worked it out in my head before I put it to paper or computer screen. Is this different when writing for 400 years or for 4 years?

Joe

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This is interesting because it's a question I've picked up personally as my next term approaches (albeit slowly ) for the Venice collaborative.

For my last entry, I had it all scripted out. It was in drama form, quite long (five acts!) and I had family coming in to town around the time I was due to post, so it behooved me to have most of it sorted. Also, the form dictated the question: drama is purely character driven; EU2 is decidedly not (at least not in any practical sense). I needed compelling characters to fill the space and drive the narrative regardless of the game action. My solution (without having played the game yet) was to construct situations (and, subsequently, fully realize-scenes) wherein I would leave spaces for game information to fill.

The problem, of course, it this leads to some awkward moments if the game takes such a turn as to make your story incompatible. The right balance has to be struck so that the game itself doesn't become completely irrelelvant (it is an After Action Report still, after all). I didn't have any qualms about slightly rearranging some of the minor events in my doge's reign. They all really did happen, but it made a better story to have them happen in the AAR in the most dramatic way possible for the characters.

Now, for my next doge, I've made the conscious decision to not plan for or write a single word until after I've played the full reign. Plus, (and I realize this is unique to collaboratives) my doge and Warspite's are brothers, so I'm waiting to see what he writes and will work off that.

I'll have to let you know which method I prefer, scripted or spontaneous.

EF1

~just occured to me, my first AAR was all spontaneous. Guess I'm better qualified to talk about this than I thought.

How much scripting?

Well that depends. For a 400 year AAR, I really don't script that much for non-game events. I have ideas of stuff to do at this time or that, but they're left pretty "free" so that I can tie them to the game events as things draw nearer to the appointed time.

Now if I do the mini-saga I'm thinking of doing next (see the bAAR for the discussion on it), then I'll be ploting a lot more, because the lives of the people involved will be examined more deeply. I also scripted a good deal of my last Doge for Venice, but that was because it was a gag.

The reason I bring up scripting is because in the 1800's and even up to the mid 1900's it wasn't unusual for writers to first publish in weekly or monthly publications in a serial format. Dickens and Doyle are a couple who come to mind that did it this way. I’ll even bet they used the old cliffhanger to make the reader come back for the next edition. I don’t know how much they had to rewrite their stories to change them when they were published as a novel; it would be interesting to know. This possibly changed somewhat in the mid-1900 with more short stories being used. I remember in the late 1950’s reading science fiction and murder mysteries that were mostly short complete stories as well as a few serial stories. I don’t know if this is still done or not since I’ve drifted away from magazines.

My point is what is done here is of course stories in the serial format. I believe Secret Master plays the entire game and then he will write it down based on his notes. This is a great advantage since you can take a minor incident and show how years or decades later it effected the history of a country. I on the other hand tend to write as I play. Usually I’ll play a ten-year period and then create the story around it but I do this when I’m focusing of game play. The two stories that focused of character and/or story plot I did the opposite. I finished the game and then wrote the story. Is this the norm?

Bismarck I think this answers your question about if there is a difference on how I wrote the Alliance and murder mystery. How about you? Do you use the same method in all your AARs?

EFI I’ll be interested to hear which method you preferred. I really liked what you did in the Venice AAR!

Shawng1 This sounds like the way most do it here. Should be interesting to see how this changes if at all with your mini-saga.

My apologies for my inability in expressing my thoughts it causes me to have to beat on a subject for a period of time before I become clear to others. I assume that for those that play the entire 400 years first there isn’t any preconceived idea of what the story is going to be other than a story about a country. We then sit back and start constructing the story but how much of the story do you start with? For example in the Gods did play I tried to create a small part for a humorous sidekick (Helen) for the main character (Ate). When I created her I didn’t know that Helen was going to be anything but a small one-time part. She grew by herself and became one of the main characters. I’m sure this has happen to all or most here. What I’m trying to ask is do any of you sit down with a template and build a story around it. For example you need a hero/heroine, a villain, a humorous sidekick, an innocent bystander, a good character that has to go bad etc etc. Scripting for me is not only writing the story out at one time but also having a firm idea of where you’re going and how you’re going to get there.

Storey,

No problem, it's not "beating" on the subject, IMHO. Keep in mind, though, that most of us who play 400 year AARs do so with certain goals for that nation in mind. Thus I do have a certain concept of where the story is "going," due to that even before I start the game. Also I look at the game events and bone up on the history of the nation beforehand too. So I hav some other factors worked in as well.

So no, it's not "just" the game events that provide the story arc, as it is. Does that help?

As for the mini-saga, I plan for it to be a lot more "personal." The game mechanics will be buried. The game history will provide the alternate history of the plot on the "larger" level. But there will be more "intimate" personal conflicts as well.

Originally posted by shawng1
Storey,

No problem, it's not "beating" on the subject, IMHO. Keep in mind, though, that most of us who play 400 year AARs do so with certain goals for that nation in mind. Thus I do have a certain concept of where the story is "going," due to that even before I start the game. Also I look at the game events and bone up on the history of the nation beforehand too. So I hav some other factors worked in as well.

So no, it's not "just" the game events that provide the story arc, as it is. Does that help?

As for the mini-saga, I plan for it to be a lot more "personal." The game mechanics will be buried. The game history will provide the alternate history of the plot on the "larger" level. But there will be more "intimate" personal conflicts as well.

Click to expand...

Yep it helps. I sometimes forget the obvious in that many times we set a goal for the country we play and that has a profound impact on how we tell the story. I've been playing Austria where my goal is to destroy the Ottoman Empire and every Moslem country in the Middle East. If I were to write about it I would use the warrior/priest king on a holy crusade route.

Watch out for that mini-saga. It sounds like you’ll be doing a whole lot of writing.

Does anyone write the whole thing first before they even start posting it? Maybe that’s closer to what I’m trying to find out. I wonder if Dickens or Doyle had their stories written before they published or if they had to write like mad to meet a deadline?

Joe

I recommend a little book called "Rommel and the Rebel" by Lawrence Wells, a bit of alternative or "unwritten" history ( it deals with events that could easily have happened and passed unnoticed ). The scene with Rommel, William Faulkner and a jar of moonshine on a midnight tour of Shiloh is priceless.

I thought it was going to be pretty eary to do an AAR.
Then I thought about doing an AAR people might actually want to read -

So I started with questions -
1) how do I get a single character's viewpoint and input over 400 years
2) where would he go
3) what would he have to do in order to survive
4) how would he get back here to tell the story

And the more I threw caution out the window and just let the story go where it wanted, the happier I was with it. Now, mind you, what with Russian mind control experiments, ghosts, time patrolmen, the Knights Templar, the Masons, Rosslyn Chapel and New Age crystals - its gotten pretty demented.

But the characters have gone where they wanted to go more often than not, and if the plot had to be reshaped because of that, well - google! and brainstorming. And you guys, who've been great to a newbie ( thanks, Bismarck ).

SO - yes, I scripted it, and I've torn up the script several times. I don't even know that the basic game underneath it is all that fascinating, but I have had SO MUCH FUN piling it on!

Short stories and serials are dead outside a few magazines because publishing houses want novels and long series of connected novels, or books with movie tie-ins.

There's an idea for a small press - the EU2 series, like all the Star Trek and Star Wars books, and all the RPG novelizations.

Originally posted by Storey


Does anyone write the whole thing first before they even start posting it? Maybe that’s closer to what I’m trying to find out. I wonder if Dickens or Doyle had their stories written before they published or if they had to write like mad to meet a deadline?

Joe

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My play Andrea Gritti, doge of Venice in the Venice collaborative was entirely written before I posted anything. The whole thing was work out in Word before it came close to the Internet. I did some minor technical revision (the wondrous Preview Reply button is my friend ) as I submitted it, but it had been constructed completely, then transferred.

This of course delves into the question about serialization and pace for the medium. I had to weigh how much I should post at any one time in order to not overwhelm the reader. The whole thing took about 10-12 days to put up entirely, but I thought to go faster would risk alienating readers faced with an unending wall of words. I had to consider that not everyone has a chance to sit and read every day, so those who were out for any length of time might have been put off by a mountain of endless posts they were not in any way invested in yet when they came back to check to the forum. [wow, that was a long sentence.]

But this is something that pre-writing allowed me to do, to control the pace of the story artificially by dole-ing out the posts at my own clip. The numbers of regular responses I got told me that it worked out OK because people seemed to be following along.

On the other hand, O, Bohemia! was typed directly into the Reply window exactly as I am typing now. If you read that, you'll see the difference. That thing runs all over the place.

EF1

Originally posted by Storey

Bismarck I think this answers your question about if there is a difference on how I wrote the Alliance and murder mystery. How about you? Do you use the same method in all your AARs?

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Well, the tendencies I had while writing the BotSE have been more fully realized.

Generally, I play about 50-100 years ahead of what I am writing, and I can't play more until I am in that range(so it is sometimes weeks between times I play), so that I have a general idea of where things are going, but there is still so much that could happen, and there is mystery at the end of it. I generally know where chapters are going to begin and end the day I write them, and I use those arbitrary yet fuzzy dates to build the chapter... like let's look at my chapter "Goodnight Jack", I literally only had one event to talk about for that period... the treaty of access, which in terms of playing terms, I allowed as a warning of impending war with Russia.

The rest I made up on the fly. I had it in my mind that Vadim II would be the "Law Maker" and it was a time without war, so I added that subplot, and I was listening to a song by Saint Etienne called "Goodnight Jack", and I thought, well, that'd be a cool reference, so there goes Jacob Lomsky... and now I have a nice rift between the descendants of Matysek, which I may or may not build on... depends on if it works with what I have down.

The chess thing with Vadim I... well, searching for Bobby Fischer was on right before I sat down to write about him, and it stuck with me, and I just went with it. I get lucky sometimes because some of the stuff I wrote two or three chapters ago, or longer sometimes just lets me just slide into a situation. Again, the Goodnight Jack chapter... when I had the war with the Ukraine, well, I wanted to introduce Ivan IV, so I had an international incident in the Black Sea, and earlier, I wanted to talk about the expansion of Russia, so I put it in, not realizing that it would be useful later.

With fictional monarchs, I have to sort of figure out where people go... when they are born and such, but I generally just figure things out as they are about to happen... like I don't know how the future monarchs are going to come up... I just play it by ear... but with the rulers of Cyprus now in the save file, I can use treedom's parser to figure out when people should be born, so I can add that information when need.

I also don't write a chapter straight through, rather, I flesh in incidences and then connect the sections later....

And I understand exactly what you are talking about with minor characters ending up stealing the show... my minor characters ended up starting dynasties... I mean, I never forsaw the Rabicans, Lomskys, Sapeletos, and others taking prominent roles in the drama until the moment when it came to me to wind back to them. There was no premeditation there... just one thing led to another.

Cliffhangers: Well, that just sort of happened... people commented on a few, so now I try to use it... and if I go to PDF form, I will probably leave them in.

Interestingly , the one and only unscripted AAR I've written was A Few of My Possessions where I essentially flew by the seat of my pants as I played - and it shows in that it is really more of a felshed out history log with a bunch of humour thrown in more than anything else.

The opposite end of the spectrum is The Rivers Run Red where the entire period of the story was played about five months ago. Since then, I've been doing exhaustive research (probably topping 200 hours by now) into the RL history of the Palatinat, the surrounding elector states, Burgundy and French royalty and nobility, military leaders, social customs, the Golden Bull, the HRE, the Papacy, the genealogy of the Wittelsbach family, etc. I also went back through all 20 years of history log that led up to the begining of the novel, and for a good 20-30 years beyond it. I have all the leader, monarch, and event files for all of the involved nations for the period of about 5 years prior to the start through to about 5 years after the end.

I then went in search of as many historical and detailed maps as I could lay my hands on - of cities, provinces, counties, and nations - during the period. I'll be constructing a lot of my own supporting visual material and so I need these raw bases to do the work from (as you've already seen in the AAR) and it's essential (to me) to have more than just the capital city of each province available to me for action to occur in. This wouldn't be as critical in a less detailed work, but I need to be able to almost plot out day be day where certain forces are, and to pick suitable battlefields for the armies.

Having done all that, I sat down to begin figuring out which characters to involve, and where. I developed highly detailed "character sheets" (remind me to get LD to tell you about the great one he's given me) that allow me to keep track of each individual so I don't get them confused. I also decided that I wanted to really push the game events deep under the story, and to use the sequence of play as simply framework for the order of things...and then I began to nudge a bit here and there with both RL and the game to turn it into a coherent whole. For example: I have one RL personage (almost all the RRR characters are RL people) who I intend to kill off for plot reasons but who didn't die in RL until the 1450's.

I also don't feel much compunction about ignoring a game event that had essentially no impact on my game, not do I have a problem with shifting the order or exact timing of an event to suit my needs (as EF1 mentioned above that he did for his play). If figure it's better to sacrifice a little "accuracy" on that end to present a better constructed overall work of fiction.

I also sat down and decided on a series of themes that I want to develop and explore during the course of the novel, and a couple interweaving plot lines that I want to make the principal focus of the narrative, and so these had to be very sarefully constructed so I know exactly where I'm going with them.

Then I sat down with all of those materials, plans, plots, themes, etc., and developed a complete choreography for the entire novel. I started with broad strokes, gradually grafting the pieces together and getting finer and finer in detail until everything was fitting snugly into place - essentially to the point where I know almost the exact content of the next 20-30 posts on a per-post level, and I have and exact script of the order that everything will happen. It's a massive amount of material when put together (a stack of about 6" of paper at the moment, in addition to the stuff on my hard drive) but it gives me the assurance that I'm ready to do the writing.

Then I started.

Now this is probably excessive (and anal) as an approach, but it's probably the one thing that will ultimately stand me in good stead to bring the whole thing home in the end. If I hadn't been sick this last while, I think you'd be enjoying where I'm going with it, and I've promised myself that I will set aside tomorrow to pollish off my next instalment, and begin writing the next (for Saturday or Sunday posting).

I don't think that the importance of settling on thematic, stylistic, and plot decision choices in advance of writing can be overstressed. Ultimately it is the mark of a good piece of fiction in my mind.

Originally posted by MrT

1:I also don't feel much compunction about ignoring a game event that had essentially no impact on my game, not do I have a problem with shifting the order or exact timing of an event to suit my needs

2:I also sat down and decided on a series of themes that I want to develop and explore during the course of the novel

3:I started with broad strokes, gradually grafting the pieces together and getting finer and finer in detail until everything was fitting snugly into place - essentially to the point where I know almost the exact content of the next 20-30 posts on a per-post level, and I have and exact script of the order that everything will happen. It's a massive amount of material when put together (a stack of about 6" of paper at the moment, in addition to the stuff on my hard drive) but it gives me the assurance that I'm ready to do the writing.

4: I don't think that the importance of settling on thematic, stylistic, and plot decision choices in advance of writing can be overstressed. Ultimately it is the mark of a good piece of fiction in my mind.

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I've broken your post down a little MrT.

1: I find this important. If you've decided that the story is what's important and not relating the game events I can see why. I wonder when this shift in importance took place? In my last AAR I did the same thing in not worrying if the sequence of events was correct. The story started to become the focus of what I was doing not the game events. It seems that this is becoming a recurring theme with several writers here. One extreme is the log AAR the other is where it becomes difficult to even see the game events. When did we go from telling the events in an intertaining way and move to focusing on telling a good story?

2: This is something I haven't done since I'm still just at the 'just tell a good story stage'.

3: This is where we differ in approach a little. It's not just the amount of detail that I'm talking about it's that you have the background done before you start writing at least with your current project. I start writing probably within 2-3 days after I've decided on the basic story line. However I don't try for historically accurate stories. If I did I would have to do the same as you. It would be embarrassing with so many European readers to get the facts wrong.

4: I agree once you’ve decided on the style, theme and plot you can begin writing. If you don’t stay with what you’ve decided on it can come across as confused or unfocused especially with a complicated plot such as yours.

Yeah...that is the big mental shift isn't it. The story is no longer subservient to the game, but rather the reverse. The game becomes a means of plotting structure and timeline, suggesting "events" that will happen during the course of the narrative and populating it with the monarchs and accasional leaders, as well as providing the goeography and general backdrop (socio-political and regigious) of the set. It's the plot lines, themes and characters that emerge that become the real focus of the writing and upon which the story will fail of succeed.

BTW: for anyone who is going to focus on a few charcters and use them for anything other than as a vehicle to describe what's happening "in game", I can't recommend LD's character sheet highly enough. If you can sit down and fill it out for each of your main protagonists then you'll never get caught out by having your creation act out of character and confuse your readers. I've actually added a couple of items to his sheet to remind me about the writing style to use when looking through his/her eyes, but it's a marvelous tool!

Originally posted by Storey


I've broken your post down a little MrT.

1: I find this important. If you've decided that the story is what's important and not relating the game events I can see why. I wonder when this shift in importance took place? [...] When did we go from telling the events in an intertaining way and move to focusing on telling a good story?

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Unless you're doing a straight-out, no-frills history-log type AAR, I don't see any way to tell any kind of narrative story that doesn't in some way deviate from the game itself. The minute you have a character open his/her mouth and say something, you've deviated. That's fiction. That's a story. That never happened in game terms (at least my therapist says I'm the only one who can hear the voices coming from the computer while I play... that's right, isn't it?).

I don't think it's a particularly blurry line. Once one decides to tell any kind of story--as I see it, anyway--the mechanics of the game are immediately secondary. Still vital, still necessary (otherwise this is just an online creative-writing seminar) but secondary. I think of it as the spine, around which everything else, everything visible and tangible, hangs.

Further, I don't think the writer has any obligation to the reader with regard to what should be left in and what should be left out. Sure, there's an element of the AAR that is informative and educational (I read some myself sometimes just to see how someone played a certain country), but there's no ethical compunction to make it obvious. As long as the general arc follows the arc of the country's fate in the course of the game, that's an AAR.

EF1