Resource Fanfic Writer's Desk: Your Place for Writing Discussion, Questions, and Advice

Sure why not. What is the lead character's name? I am always curious as to what people name a character that is based on themselves. I think if I did a self-insert my character's name would be Darth Di'kut.

 

well as I said he is a human male bounty hunter and his name is Kran Starborn of the Red Akk Dog which is the name of his starship which is funny because the akk dog within star wars is red so it weirdly works out name wise. And I even thought of a original blaster that this character has think of a futuristic blunderbuss thats all black with a scope on it and with it the character is def. more so star wars i don't want someone thinking he could be a character within firefly just based on the gun.

 

That sounds interesting. Make sure you post it in the Fan Fiction- Before, Saga and Beyond section (and not in the Resource area...I made that mistake once) when you are ready to post. If you have questions on how to go about posting feel free to ask me or any of the moderators would gladly help you. Or you can go to the new members forum and request an experienced member to adopt you. http://boards.theforce.net/threads/e-adoption-get-help-from-an-experienced-member.50006156/]Adoption[/url] Link I also think the beta request thread is active if you need to find somebody to proofread your story and give advice. http://boards.theforce.net/threads/the-beta-reader-index-v4-1-and-concrit-index-april-2008-update-new-info-survey.22308091/page-11]Beta[/url] Link

 

The only problem so far is thinking up names of my wookiee character and my twi'lek thats an aspect that I want it to stay true to the culture that they are apart of.

 

What I do for that is go to Wookieepedia and type in Wookiee or Twi'lek. Usually they will have a list of members of that species that is featured in the movies or novels. Sometimes there is no similarities in the names, sometimes there are. Most of the time it looks like the authors just started typing on the keyboard blindly. For example if you look at Wookiee you will get this list of names:

• Lowbacca
• Lumpawaroo
• Quagga
• Rorworr
• Salporin
• Tarfful
• Tojjevvuk
• Tyvokka
• Vryyr
• Yarua
• Yubookoo
• Zaalbar

 

Hopefully my user name request goes through soon because I asked for it to be changed to my characters name that I based on myself.

 

Crazy question here--I'm in the process of outlining a new story wherein the Jedi are losing their ability to touch the Force. Essentially, the midi-chlorians in their cells are becoming inert. The Jedi are dying, in a sense. However, I hit the proverbial brick wall on how that could happen. Anyone have any ideas?

 

The first idea that came to mind was perhaps a disease that targets Force-sensitives? A parasite infection? Perhaps even an engineered pathogen, a bioweapon created by an organization that wants to remove the Jedi, as they are a threat?

 

Thanks. I thought of some sort of pathogen, but couldn't get it to jive with my next bit of idea, which is when one of my characters realizes that his negative emotions allow him to touch the Force fully, stimulating the midi-chlorians back to life, so to speak.

 

A mental illness, then. Though, if it is widespread, then perhaps a pathogen that mimics a mental illness. It disrupts some chemical in the brain and changes the afflicted's moods, which in turn cause the midi-chlorians to go into a dormant state. The science is a bit odd, but it could work.

 

Stang guys that's part of my upcoming NaNo 2013 plot. I had a scientist identify midiclorians and then make a virus that targets them. It is disbursed by aeresol and would only affect force users.

 

Great minds think alike I guess.

 

My idea for my story was midichlorians are organelles similar to mitochondria. They have their own DNA...just like mitochondria. Therefore if you have something with it's own DNA you can attack that specific DNA and not harm cellular DNA and therefore the organism.

You are saying your character discovers he can access the darkside and lets him touch the Force (sort of like Callista?). Do you want the story to go that he has to go dark but he eventually can go back to the light side? That one is harder to figure out than having a person who can only touch the darkside. In that situation, I guess what you can say is there are two types of midichlorians...one that handles the lightside and one that handles the darkside. If a scientist took blood from a Jedi to identify midichlorians he probably would have mainly light side midichlorians to analyze. And any virus invented to attack these midichlorians might just affect the lightside midichlorians. When the Jedi with failing powers touches the dark side he is activating those surviving darkside midichlorians.

That is one way to do that.

I guess you can try to figure out how the Force is drawn into the Jedi. Maybe something blocks that path to the light side, but the darkside is unaffected. In this case it might be part of the brain and a mental illness like Traknar said would be a possibility. Fix that path and you can regain your powers.

 

I wrote a viggie about the use of Yslamarmi (whatever) blood used to block a Jedi's ability to access the Force. Maybe take it a step further.

 

Thanks for the ideas everyone. I think I know which direction I'm going to head with this now.

 

Anyone know any good alternatives to msword, i;ve been trying Kingsoft.

What other word provessors are available, and what experiences have you had with them?

 

I pretty much only use ms word, but open office is also really nice, and it's totally free. Just google it and like the first result will be the website where you can download it. I use it for all of my school papers and I may start using it for fics again.

 

I've been using OpenOffice lately and I find it to be pretty user friendly. The biggest perk is that it's free to download.

 

I use Open Office now. On my old computer, I used Microsoft Works Word. Open Office is better. And... it's free. Always a plus.

 

Corel WordPerfect for me. I've used it for years and prefer it to MS Word. I use Word at work and haven't found a whole lot of functional difference between the two at the level I use them at, but I like WordPerfect's menu layout better than Word's ribbon, plus I'm just more familiar with it.

 

Scrivener!!
(Which I have yet to download for my new computer... need to get on that.)

It's not free, (there is a 30 day free trial) but it is a fantastic program, especially for writing. If you win NaNoWriMo they usually give a 50% off coupon, which is how I bought it. There is a learning curve, but once you get it, going back to just a word processor is pretty much impossible.

 

Oh, I forgot about Scrivener. I've been meaning to download the trial. I need to get on that when I get back.

 

Is Scrivener better than Open Office? How do they compare?

 

I think open office is like MS Word...but I may be wrong about that. Scrivener helps you plot out and storyboard your fanfic. You can write chapters, break it up into scenes. You can move those scenes or chapters around by just dragging them. You can put down all the information of your characters in the program. Have research all in the same place. And when you have the chapters and scenes the way you want them you can tell the program to compile the story together. It is easier to write a story that may have things going on with different characters in different areas. You can download a free trial version and there are tutorials on YouTube.

http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php







I hope this helps. As others have mentioned earlier if you do NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and complete it they will give you a code to get the program for half off. Unfortunately, that doesn't happen until November.

 

OpenOffice is fairly simmilar to MS word, but it has a couple features MS word doesn't have (likewise there is a couple things newer versions of MS word has that open office doesn't). But for basic use they are the same thing, just different lay outs. I prefer OpenOffice's layout. Plus I'm only on a demo version of MS word, OpenOffice is completely free. I discovered OpenOffice Only about a year and a half ago when I discovered the demo MS word would NOT let me do footnotes (a history studet's bane of existence). So someone told me about OpenOffice to do papers on and I keep forgetting how much I prefer it to MS Word.

Aside from the learning curve and figuring it all out, I have heard nothing but good things about Scrivener. I really want to try it. I think I may download the trial tonight. And 45 bucks for a program such as that, really isn't that bad, considering the newest version of MS office is like $140.