Stolen from people. What kind of memetic epidemiology makes us credit meme sources, anyway?

[camwyn]

I think it would be fun to talk about stories, but the usual memes are like, "What happens next?" "Tell me about Character A?" Which isn't so much talking about stories as it is writing more of a story. But you know how sometimes you read something and you're like, "I got ___ out of this story, I wonder if I have that right?" or "What on earth was ____ supposed to be?" and it's too awkward to ask the author? Now you could totally ask!

I've heard people say that writing is hard because you have to make decisions, but we never really talk about the decisions we make with stories or why we make them. We talk about plot bunnies, but not about how we actually turn them into a story.

And it seems like a lot more fun to do that than to do work.

So, if you want, ask me questions! (Or use this to ask your flist to ask you questions).

What were you trying to do [here]? Why did you decide to ____? This is what I thought about XYZ, is that what you were going for? What made you write ____? Why did you decide to do this? And so on.

Applies equally to my RP characters as to anything else.

Comments

[chanter1944]

I've always been a little curious where you were going with Ray and the Lake Tele Blues plotlet thingie. Was it meant to develop into a longer story arc, or was it purely for the purpose of finding an oops! dimensionally sideswiped autobot inna DRC? *curious*

[camwyn]

I wanted to get Ray out and about to show some of the weird stuff going on elsewhere in his world. It wasn't really meant to be a longer story arc, but I did mean to periodically find some kind of an excuse to mention cryptozoological studies or parapsych research being done in Africa, preferably at the university level under Dr. Ndebele's auspices. Because honestly, when Americans write about anything even remotely parapsychological in Africa, it comes in two varieties:

- Witch doctors
- Mummies

I'm aware that there was a movie called "Baby" that involved the Mokele-Mbembe, so that's a faaaaar distant third, but really, most American images of the supernatural in Africa are either witch doctor based or Egypt based.

I had at one point been planning on doing a Halloween arc in Ethiopia involving the monks of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, too. That one was going to be a reworking of the "Apocalypse - What, NOW?" cartoon episode. Wound up taking too long to work out, so it was handwaved. I may have to go back to that at some point.

[kd7sov]

I know the Armageddon Clock removed all potential for magic from all of Ray's available timelines. So, what would happen if some event that ordinarily would provide or unlock magical powers occurred?

[camwyn]

A dramatic fizzle-out, I think. And someone would be contractually obligated to make some kind of comment about how that should either have given him supernatural abilities or killed him so why is he just walking around as if nothing happened, possibly while making faces of fanboy frustration.