Discussion The Scribble Pad (Fanfic Writing Discussions)

Thing is, if I ever am to describe this, it won't be a long multi-chapter story, it will be a short one-shot with a time skip after the main events, and it will most likely be done through a dialogue the POV character( another OC). I am not sure if one can express the depth through a single conversation. As for the individuals, he will most likely meet Han and Leia, who will be grateful for what he's done. And Luke and the other OC's( both of whom he already knows will think of him better( particularly the other OC, since she kinda mistrusted him after a certain incident where he almost fell to the Dark Side again in his life) . But still, I am not certain if recovery is possible for someone who spent centuries in stasis, to find everyone who knew them long dead, the world changed and their own identity lost to time( by that I mean no records of their existance being preserved to the time they find themself in).

I am also not sure if having him fight the main baddie is a good idea. There is already a main cast of 4 Force Sensitives, and 4v1ing a villain is kinda not epic. So I've had an idea to split the group up, have 2 fight the villain, and 2 to go save civillians/ fight Dark Side abominations/ the villain's yet enother henchman. I think having this OC fight the main bad guy makes sense from his backstory standpoint, since this character's story is very much intertwined with the baddie, and it's kinda personal for him. But on the other hand, I want Luke and Rey to fight the main villain. And also there is the problem with the POV character not fighting the villain, since I can't describe much outside her visions and feelings through the Force connection she has with Luke. Now who should I let fight the main bad guy?

 

FireKeeper

What if the main characters are battling who they think is the bad guy, but actually the OC that die is actually fighting the real bad guy?

Personally I'm not a fan of talking like, "Hey, do you remember poor little Kyser sacrificed himself so that we could get a way? We need to kill the big bad "WAGAG." "Right, let's do this!" I want to read about Kyser fighting WAGAG, instead of having people talking two lines.

I suppose it could still be done, but maybe considering write short story A, POV Kyser (the one who sacrifice himself), and short Story B (WAGAG POV). Then your main epic.

The only stasis I ever used was carbonite freezing. Maybe the tanks at the game level of KOTOR where the Jedi hostages are kept by Malak? But I think carbonite freezing works best. Unless you make up your own form of stasis via fanon?

 

What if the main characters are battling who they think is the bad guy, but actually the OC that die is actually fighting the real bad guy?

Personally I'm not a fan of talking like, "Hey, do you remember poor little Kyser sacrificed himself so that we could get a way? We need to kill the big bad "WAGAG." "Right, let's do this!" I want to read about Kyser fighting WAGAG, instead of having people talking two lines.

I suppose it could still be done, but maybe considering write short story A, POV Kyser (the one who sacrifice himself), and short Story B (WAGAG POV). Then your main epic.

The only stasis I ever used was carbonite freezing. Maybe the tanks at the game level of KOTOR where the Jedi hostages are kept by Malak? But I think carbonite freezing works best. Unless you make up your own form of stasis via fanon?[/quote]


He is travelling with the main characters on the same ship( or at least, that is what I am currently imagining), so everyone in the team knows who's the real baddie, not just the OC that might die. Also, it's not that he tries to hold the bad guy back, by dying at the hands of the baddie I meant dying during the final confrontation. If he isn't the one fighting the baddie, he doesn't die.

Well, what I imagined was something akin to the Rakata stasis in SWTOR, which was keeping ancient prisoners on Belsavis for millenia. They are preserved, don't remember how self-aware they are while being put there( haven't played those quests for a long time, I think they are conscious during this though). I do not want the OC to be conscious though.

As for carbon freezing, I am worried about the health effects it might have on that character. Han went blind after half a year, and several centuries would most likely do a far greater damage. And I don't want that character blind, crippled or falling apart in any way, because I need him to be able to fight.

 

My lead character is asked, by a friend, to do a job his mother asked him to do, but he is to busy with his girlfriend to do it. My lead offers to do the job. He could run into some trouble on the way to do the job, but the the climax so to speak is his arrival at the destination. Then he could foul things up on the way back to the temple.

 

No, I think the destination is the climax of the story. It is the "runs into trouble along the way" that is going to make things interesting. Or he gets to the destination only to find that the person isn't there or the package isn't there...essential the destination has moved. The payoff/climax is that the job is complete.

Things fouling up on the way home is, I think, the sequel.

 

Uh isn't the climax the battle with some bad guys/found out you are in trouble?

Lead character is asked to the job and he agrees to do it equals rising action

Arrives at destination, can't do job/fight bad guy equals climax

Finished job/won battle against bad guy equals falling action.

So Mistress Renata, isn't job complete the falling action instead of climax?

tl;dr Climax is the fun part at the middle.

 

I agree, MU. I thought about having him run into a Feleen who appears to be being mugged, but turns out to be less a victim than originally thought.

 

So, I have an idea in my fanfic where my OC offers Rey to try to unlock her past memories( she thinks Rey might somehow be connectes to the will of the Force, with some sort of a role to play in the future events, that's why she's so curious about her past), including those of her parents, using a technique similar to what Kylo did to interrogat his prisoners. Once she finds out Kylo did this, however, she outright refuses to do it, saying it's out of the question and tells Rey she will be able to restore her memories on her own once she is trained, through meditation.

What would be Rey's reaction to an offer like that? Would the very idea of someone getting into her head like that disgust her to the point she would refuse finding out about her past? Would Rey actually agree to it in order to find out the truth? Would she insist on my OC trying it on her even after the former protested when she heard about Kylo? Or should I just scrap the idea because it sounds too far-fetched?

 

As of the end of TFA, I read Rey's hypothetical reaction would be pure disgust from the bottom of her heart. This is because she didn't even want to touch Luke's lightsaber again. She didn't want to get her memory back. The memory scared her. Sure, she is sympathetic to the Jedi and want the FO stopped, but my reading is that she don't want to remember horrible memories.

Rey, faced with an offer like that, would be grateful but kindly refuse. (Even though as I said, she would be screaming No! Don't) in the inside. She's a friendly young woman with tact.

My advice is you don't have to scrap the idea. You could still have your OC perform it/offer to perform it. Rey's reaction, of course, is also up to you.

 

I agree with Darth_MU. Plus I don't think Rey "lost" any of her memories - like any kid, the memories she retained of her parents would have been limited, but that is just my interpretation of TFA. But don't scrap the idea.


So I just discovered an old fic I started but never finished (but had intended to before other ideas took over) TOTALLY works with the quote challenge I was stuck on. It definitely isn't close to what I originally intended to do with the quote, but I think it is going to work out well, plus I finally have motivation to finish this short story. Killing two tasks with one fic!

 

I don't know about anyone else but I have some fairly sharp memories form a young age. I sort of remember my second birthday, I have vague memories of things I can't be sure of and i have some fairly clear memories of the house my parents may or may not have owned when I was born and we moved when I was around four, I remember when my parents bought what must have been the family's first PC, an IBM and I took the covers off the keys on the keyboard and put them on other keys.

I think that Rey remembers more than she has let on and maybe we will learn more.

 

I have memories of when I was 4.
Nothing from earlier

the dumbest thing I did when very young was to put sticks of matches across a black protective cover of an old style audio speaker. Totally ruined an extremely expensive piece of electric appliance. Probably current price would be around 2000 USD.

 

To answer the memories question, I thought that some Force sensitives retain their earliest childhood memories, like Leia remembering her mother. Also, Rey might have just not remembered her parents due to being a child, but in my fanfic that isn't the case.

But that's not the point, I scrapped the idea of my OC offering to get into her head anyway. What I wanted to ask, is there anyone who would care to do a quick check of my story( or the first part of it, to be exact, since I am splitting this particular one into parts)? I wrote to my beta, but they don't seem to reply( I suspect it has to do with my mail ending up in their spam section, like the last ones did). I really want to publish this one before going on holidays, so I can move on to the next ones( I set December as a deadline for myself, but I will be busier in the autumn due to studies, so I want to write as much as I can in summer while I am mostly free), that's why I am asking if someone else can provide their opinion.

The story itself is not long, and you don't have to beta all the things that come after it( I hope my beta eventually replies). Message me if you're interested. And as I said in the topic, I am open to concrit, and I don't like when people go easy on me.

 

FireKeeper Did you check out the Beta-Reader Index? There's a list of people there that you can PM to ask them to beta for you.

 

I'll do content warnings if cornered into it.

Most of my fic does not require them.

 

I think in professional publishing, the author or publisher label a work YA, Junior, Novel. So that when you pick up a YA, Junior books, you know there won't be things too bad in there.

I seriously think Lost Stars should be labeled as Novel instead of YA though. Sure, the protagonists are young, and they are probably only 25 at the book's end. But the subjects include some things which is not appropriate for youngish teens. Not to mention some deep philosophy young readers won't understand.

 

I have a similar thing.

Mature content wise, my fics don't contain any sex scenes. Like, ever. There are several reasons to this. First, since my return to writing( I also tried to write fanfiction when I was 14, but it sucked so hard I deleted it, hope nobody saved it), I haven't written or even planned a single shipping fic, and I doubt I will in the nearest future. There might be pairings, but they are not going to be a big focus of the story. I am largely indifferent to romance as a genre, there are genres I like more. Second, even if i were to write a shipping fic, I would have left out the sex scenes/ impled they happened between the chapters, but never outright described the process graphically. The reason for this is that I have seen lots of terrible sex scenes written by people who quite obviously never had sex or even have basic knowledge of human anatomy. I don't want to repeat their mistakes, so I won't write sex scenes, at least in the nearest future.

Violence can happen in my fanfics though, with varying degrees of graphical description. I don't care much about it, if it happens, it happens. I don't think of teens as gentle beings who can be scarred forever by anything( in fact, in my experience most of them are quite the opposite, they would sooner traumatize someone else than allow themselves be traumatized by media), unless it's something so extreme it makes even my blood chill. At best, I rate my fanfics T or equivalent on most resources just because I am paranoid about getting banned or something like that, though.

 

I don't think by writing fanfics it means that fic automatically must have sex scenes to qualify as a 'shipping fic.

Violent wise, I hope my fanfics are family friend enough.

 

I have no problem writing a mild sex scene that's board-friendly if the story demands it. It won't be graphic, it won't be IKEA, it will not contain mentions of body parts, just a connection on an emotional level. And a good writer knows when to fade to black or, I dunno, show stock footage of trains entering tunnels, rocket being fired, flowers blooming et cetera.

As far as content warnings go, I'm all for them, for as long as they are not spoilers. If you know that something will freak somebody out, I am not even against a custom warning just for them. There are some stories that can potentially upset sensitive people and if there is a way to tell them so, why not?

By the way, hi, nice new thread.

 

I stink at sex scenes, too, so I'm glad the boards here have limits. I prefer to lead the readers to the door of the bedroom and leave the rest up to their fevered imaginations... Like Hitchcock. Only sex, not violence.

 

Love the commentary by FireKeeper & Mistress_Renata. I focus more on the process of relationship building and personal growth than on graphic descriptions of what should be and is private. I'm totally meh at action although I like reading it so I don't have to worry about violence etc. I often detail in-between events (stuff happening between chapters) in dialogue.

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I'm thinking of doing a short story featuring L/M after VOTF to their wedding I wanted input on ideas about what internal issues each could be grapping with, particularly Mara and how they would resolve this. Of course Mara has trust issues but I would like input on how this would play out tangibly/plot wise. Wanna show them growing closer as a couple.

The process of events will cover an interval of 6-12 months. Also a question, so many of the talented FF writers here know about SW days of the week etc. Is there a Wookieepedia article on those?

 

WarmNyota_SweetAyesha, I think one of the issues you should address is Mara's desire for privacy. She doesn't like the attention and prefers to slip into the background. Perhaps your story could look at how they compromise between her desire for something very low key and his gregarious nature, wanting to invite every single person he knows.

 

Here is the Wook article about the Galactic Standard Calendar: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Galactic_Standard_Calendar

There is also this great post about it in the Fanon Thread by Daneira: http://boards.theforce.net/threads/...sion-continues.50024318/page-32#post-54216055 (have a look too at the posts that follow, there was an interesting discussion with several variants).

 

Mara has, presumably, has spent most of her life living alone (yeah, she was a part of Karde's crew, but I'd imagine she had her own quarters). There's a whole lot of freedom when it comes to living alone: want to leave baskets of clean laundry in the middle of the hall for days? Only you have to go around them. Want to move your couch so that it's in the middle of the living room? NOBODY care but you. Burn dinner because you ripped out your medical device and end up on the floor eating popcorn, covered in blood, and drinking whisky to drown your tears? Nobody will ever know (NO, those three examples didn't come from my personal past 12 hours at all ). Luke as well probably got used to this freedom between the body-snatcher and Mara). Point is, when you are suddenly sharing your life and space with someone, you have to ask the other person what they want as well. But you don't have ask for every little thing. Maybe Luke and Mara need to find that balance.