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The Prancing Pony (Fellowship of the Ring Empire Thread)
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| Oh, I see...A bit of a sticky wicket! |
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Be careful not to get the balls sticky when stroking ones wicket. 
         
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The Guardians may get the most posts, but this thread gets the longest ones!
By popular demand, here are my tips for writing, mostly taken from books about writing that I’ve read. Some apply more to novels than the sort of short stories we write here.
A satisfying story usually has a three act structure, beginning, middle and end. A good way to think of these is:
Beginning:
Make the reader want X to happen. (eg, a likeable hero has an urgent problem. The reader wants it to be resolved happily.)
Middle:
Make the reader believe X won’t happen. (eg, the hero tries to tackle the problem, but things go wrong and he’s left in some disastrously bad situation. The reader can see no possible solution.)
End:
Make X happen. (eg, the hero pulls himself together, draws on his hidden reserves, and resolves the original problem.)
A sympathetic hero is useful, but not always essential; for example, the happy ending might be about a character who the reader doesn’t like getting his comeuppance.
There are other story types where it doesn’t end happily, eg tragedy. If you’re going to write tragedy either (a) make sure you’re a genius, (b) draw attention away from the tragedy by emphasising that something good has been achieved even if it wasn’t what the reader was expecting, or (c) do it in a short (funny?) story where the reader isn’t too emotionally involved.
How do you make the hero likeable (which is usually enough to make the reader want something to happen to make him happy)? One good trick is to have him suffer and be treated unfairly, right at the start. Oddly, this will make him more sympathetic than if you merely make him a good person. Let’s look at two possible openings:
Alone in the gloom of the cell, Jake Carver gritted his teeth and tried to ignore the gnawing pain in his belly. At long last, he heard the sound of keys rattling in the door.
“Here’s your food, you murderous filth,” said Grint, the warden. “I do hope it meets your satisfaction.” He dumped a dry husk of bread on the filthy cell floor, and a mug of water beside it. Then he tipped over the water with his foot.
“That was clumsy of you,” said Grint. “You want to be more careful. Don’t want another beating, do you?”
Jake held his tongue, and waited until the warden was gone. Then he devoured the bread hungrily, forcing chunks of it down his dry throat...
Jude Goodchild sat in the chair at the end of the table, laughing at people’s jokes and helping himself to another glass of wine.
“Another banquet in my honour?” he said. “Weren’t the first three enough?”
“Not for you,” said the mayor. “Why, after all the good work you’ve done for the children, I’m half tempted to make your birthday an official holiday...”
Now, didn’t you care more about Carver’s plight than Goodchild’s situation? Even though, for all you know, Carver may be a serial killer? If it later turns out that Carver was wrongly convicted (or that Goodchild is an awful person who’s been embezzling charitable funds), the reader will feel justified in his initial feelings.
Another odd rule of sympathy: The audience will forgive someone merely telling lies about the past or present, but will rarely forgive someone for breaking their word about something they intend to do in the future.
The typical sympathetic hero:
Suffers, but not in a pathetic manner; preferably for a good cause. Doesn’t whine. Keeps promises (but can use deceit). Isn’t cruel. Doesn’t gloat. Isn’t a hypocrite. Treats the rich no better than the poor. Takes action – otherwise he gets boring. Is fairly normal, and talks in a similar way to the reader. Is clever when it counts, but not in too intellectual a manner. Fights honourably. Doesn’t go where he’s not wanted. Isn’t greedy. Doesn’t seek power. Has at least one flaw (eg pride) to make him real and interesting. Has at least one special skill.
The traditional loathsome villain:
Is a sadist. Complains about things. Breaks oaths. Gloats. Is a hypocrite. Treats the rich better than the poor. May be slightly insane. Is intellectual, and talks in an overly precise manner. Fights dishonourably. Seizes power and wealth whenever possible. Conveys a sense of danger – try to imply that even other villains are frightened of him.
Try to make all your characters into real people, all with their own agendas and world views, even if it’s someone you don’t like or don’t care about. The worst villain usually feels that the world has forced him to be what he is. And minor characters shouldn’t look like they’re just there to explain things for the benefit of the reader. If you have the character following his own agenda in conversation, it will feel more realistic.
Plotting:
“There’s a storm coming.”
If you can’t think of any ideas for stories, maybe you shouldn’t be writing. But here are some techniques for developing ideas:-
Remember a story you’ve seen or read that didn’t quite satisfy you. What was wrong with it? What didn’t you believe about it? Maybe you could write something similar (but not too similar) that takes a very different turn: (What if Gandalf had decided to keep The Ring for himself? What if that guy in the Star Destroyer had decided to shoot down R2D2’s escape pod at the start of Star Wars?) You can also use ‘what if’ situations from real life. What if you had replied to that spam message about Nigerian oil reserves? Suppose you decided to pretend to co-operate with them in order to amuse yourself and waste their time, only to discover that you’re dealing with a gang of vicious criminal fraudsters who threaten to kill you?
When you’re doing routine plotting, consider every detail. It’s all too easy to have the hero escape amid a hail of gunfire. That’s what the readers will be expecting. They’re probably bored of it. Maybe if you had him shot in the knee and recaptured, the story would be more interesting? For science fiction, look at anything around you, and imagine how it would be different if you could wish for it to be better. Instead of a cup, how about a device that can teleport the liquid directly into your mouth. But if such a device existed, what else would people use it for? Theft? Murder? Or look at a current social trend, and imagine it taken to the logical extreme (or reversed). Imagine a future where X is either banned or compulsory. What would things be like with compulsory handguns for all schoolchildren? What would TV look like if not just violence but all unpleasantness was banned from our screens? How would people respond? Look at some odd situation in GalCiv and try to explain how things could work out that way, or how people would feel about it.
Have some opinion about where the story is going when you start it. You don’t have to work out every detail – with any luck your characters will take on a life of their own and the details will take care of themselves. However, you should keep an eye on ‘set-pieces’. These are dramatic episodes involving confrontation and revelation that require a lot of setting up. For example, Luke confronts Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back. Much of the rest of the film is spent suggesting that Luke isn’t ready to take on Vader, but still putting him in a situation where he has to do it. You have to be aware of the set-piece and what’s going to happen in order to write effectively the events leading up to it – this is foreshadowing. You can foreshadow directly, by having people talk about how dangerous something is, or indirectly, by having an analogous situation occur early on. For example, you see an animal being killed. Later, a human is killed in similar circumstances or for similar reasons.
That type of analogy is a ‘symbol’. Symbols are a powerful technique. An example: in the Shawshank Redemption, you see the prison governor guy extinguishing a cigarette with his boot, just before he has someone killed. The snuffing out of the cigarette symbolises the snuffing out of a life.
Some classic symbols (beware cliché):
Rain – tears.
Sunshine – happiness.
Shadows and clouds – threats.
Dawn – hope.
Snow – redemption, for some reason.
An eagle soaring overhead – heroism, leadership.
A glass of red wine being spilled – spilt blood.
A character being confused or decisive about a minor issue can symbolise his attitude to bigger things.
Remember, it’s the attitude that makes it interesting. When the night is dark, does the hero quail in fear, or does he look forward to the dawn?
Back to foreshadowing. When you promise something, don’t disappoint. For example, when Luke said, “You killed my father!”, if Vader had replied, “Yes, and I’m glad I did it!” that would have been keeping the promise. If he’d replied, “No, I didn’t. I never met the man!” that would be disappointing. But saying, “No – I am your father!” is breaking the promise in a good way. (Something like, “No – Obi-Wan killed your father!” might have been interesting too...) Where possible, promise something and deliver something better. In order to do this, you have to give a false promise early on. This is part of the ‘setting up the set-piece’ process.
In a full length story, important characters should have ‘story arcs’ – their own personal challenges faced. A good way to make it work is to have the character do something at the end of the book that he’d never have done at the start, due to the changes he’s undergone as a result of his experiences. For example, in Pirates of the Caribbean, Orlando Bloom’s character (who was a mild-mannered fellow with a hatred for pirates at the start) ends up risking his life to save Captain Jack Sparrow (the Johnny Depp character, not our one) from the gallows.
In a short story, on the other hand, there’s usually only room for one main thing – a plot twist, a punchline, or a feeling conveyed by a particular situation. Everything else is peripheral to that, but don’t neglect the characters and details.
Use mystery and suspense. Suspense is when the reader wonders what is going to happen. Mystery is wondering about what already happened. So, in the example I gave that opened in a prison, there was a sense of mystery in terms of why the character was in prison. Suspense happens automatically in most stories, but you have to work at mystery. If I’d made the first sentence begin, “Jake Carver, who had been wrongfully convicted of murdering his mother-in-law...” there would have been no mystery, although there might still be suspense in terms of whether he would escape.
I said you should start with the hero suffering, but don’t rely on suffering alone – a hundred pages of someone living a miserable life and doing nothing about it drains the sympathy away. If a potential publisher reads the first page of your book, and there is nothing in it that makes him feel the need to keep reading, he may throw away the rest unread. Mystery draws readers on. But if you overdo the mystery, you create a situation where the reader has no idea what’s going on. “A figure moved across a room, reached into a cupboard, withdrew an item, and departed. Outside the window, enormous tree-like objects rose and fell. This was typical, for a Wednesday.” Lots of mystery, but without something the reader can follow and relate to (like Carver’s hunger) they won’t care for long enough to find out what’s going on.
There is a general rule, “show, don’t tell”. So if you want your hero to be a coward, and to later overcome his fear, don’t just write, “He was a coward.” Show his cowardice causing some problem, which he can spend the rest of the book trying to solve. (If the whole book is about the hero struggling to fix his own mistakes, it’s best to have it end with him making things better than they were at the start or it won’t feel like a real achievement.)
Similarly, if you’ve invented a future where all children carry pistols, don’t just write, “In the year 2026, a law was passed requiring all children to carry pistols.” Write a scene where, say, the teacher has to discipline a difficult child, and is being very cautious not to offend him too much, because he might get killed.
Sometimes, it’s better just to tell, to avoid situations that are confusing for the reader. You have to make that call yourself.
Writing style:
This is a very personal thing. Some people might hate the fact that I started that last sentence with the word ‘this’. Others won’t care.
The show-not-tell rule can apply here too. “It was a dark and stormy night.” This is not good writing. It’s not specific enough. It doesn’t conjure up much of an image in the head of the reader (or if it does, it will be different for every reader). It might be better to refer to a tree being blown about by the stormy winds. But don’t just say a tree – say what type of tree. After all, it’s your imagined world, so if you don’t know, who does?
“The elm tree in my garden thrashed its branches wildly, like an orchestra conductor directing the thunderous blast of the storm.”
Is that better? Maybe a little over-the-top? I’ll let you decide. Notice a couple of other techniques in there. Firstly, I’m making an inanimate object seem more interesting by making it use an active verb. (For example, you could say, “The garden had a white-picket fence around it.” or “A white-picket fence encircled the garden.” Which do you prefer?)
Also, I used a simile. (“like an orchestra conductor...”) Quite effective in modest quantities.
(A metaphor is similar, except you remove the word ‘like’, creating something that isn’t actually true. “My head felt like it was stuffed full of cotton wool.” Remove “felt like it” to change it to a metaphor.)
“The machine-gun spat out spent cartridges as I fired it. I kept firing the machine gun until the very last cartridge was spent. I felt the barrel of the machine-gun, and found it hot enough to hurt my hand. The spent cartridges were just as hot.”
Sounds bad? Avoid repeating the same word lots of times close together. Use your thesaurus (you do have one, right? Shift F-7 in Word?)
If you have to use a word lots of times, make it look intentional, as if you really want to ram the point home. For example, “There was blood on the floor. And there was blood on the walls, and blood on the windows, and blood on the ceiling, and blood leaking out of the hole in her skull.” This is more dramatic than if you said, “...and more of it on the walls, and some more over on the windows, not to mention some on the ceiling...”
If your prose looks too flat and empty, try adding a few adjective or adverbs. But keep them to a reasonable level. “I walked briskly and boldly down the dark empty alleyway. The harsh, anodyne glare of the tall, metal streetlamp left long sinister shadows everywhere.” Too many.
Pick a tense and perspective right from the start, and try to stick with it. For example, you might want to write all in the present tense (which creates a sense of immediacy and involvement) and from a particular person’s viewpoint. If you’re writing from ‘inside’ someone’s head, everything in the story must be coloured to the way they see the world. Anything they don’t know about or don’t notice can’t be mentioned at all.
“My eyes follow her tongue as it passes across her ruby-red lips. Her husband continues talking, but I tune out the words. This is love, the real thing. I catch a glimpse of movement reflected in her eyes, and try to turn, but a great heavy weight descends on the back of my head, and I fall to the ground.”
To take the opposite approach, you could write the same event from a third-person omniscient perspective in the past tense.
“Jackson continued his attempt to bamboozle Moorcroft with promises of wealth and power, but Moorcroft’s mind was elsewhere. He stared at Miss Jemmet, Jackson’s ‘wife’, hypnotised by her great beauty. Offended by his presumption, Miss Jemmet made a secret gesture with her fingers. Her bodyguard, seeing it, took a silent step in Moorcroft’s direction, and belted him across the back of the skull with his blackjack. Moorcroft crumpled and fell. Jackson went pale. He hated violence. “Dump his body in the harbour,” said Miss Jemmet, and walked out.”
There are lots of other ways you could go – writing first-person, past tense, for example. The most important thing is to be consistent, but some choices are better than others for particular situations.
Writing from the inside of someone’s head is one of the unique advantages of being a novelist over, say, a scriptwriter. A good writer can make the reader feel how someone else feels. On the other hand, there’s a lot of information you might be unable to convey from that viewpoint. Writing past-tense can create a distancing effect, but has the advantage of making it feel like someone is telling you about something that has really happened.
Two things at once:
If you have to write something that isn’t particularly interesting to keep the story going, the two-things-at-once technique is worth thinking about. Let’s say a character has to explain something to the hero. It’s not particularly realistic that the character would stop to explain this thing, but if he doesn’t, the hero won’t know about it later and would be unable to take an important action. How can you make this work better? By doing something else at the same time. For example, the character could reveal something about himself in the biased way he explains it. You could add some humour – like having the hero be sarcastic in his response to the information. Or you could have something else going on while the guy is talking.
Two things at once is almost always better. The romance between Han Solo and Leia in the Star Wars films was more interesting than Anakin’s romantic scenes in Attack of the Clones. One reason for that is that Han and Leia’s relationship developed only while people were trying to kill them. Also, they both had an arrogant side to their personality, so were always trying to gain the upper-hand over the other. Anakin, on the other hand, developed his romantic plot while on picnics, etc. (Even so, Lucas managed to mix it with some crude foreshadowing of how he was going to turn evil in the future.)
A brief note on comic writing:
Most humour comes from people doing things that are foolish, or improper. Because of this, comic characters tend to suffer. Some emotional detachment must be created so that people will laugh rather than feel too much pity. Techniques that you can use are to emphasise the funny line in some way (eg, put it in its own little paragraph), or use exaggeration or understatement. Practically anything that leaves you looking stupid can be made funny in this way.
Comic plots don’t need to follow the same rules as normal plots. Subverting the stereotype plots of conventional writing can be part of the fun. But if you can get a happy ending in as well, you’ll probably sell better.
Hard work is a good substitute for talent.
To be a professional writer, you should write every day, and not just for half an hour. Writers become better over time. (Although there are different types of ‘getting better’. JK Rowling finds it much easier to think of things to write than she did at the beginning of her career. As a result, her new Harry Potter books are four times the length of her early ones. Not always a good thing.)
When writing a story, write it, then read it, then rewrite any bits that could be improved. (And use a spellchecker, please...) There are enough bad stories in the world already, so it’s always better to write one good story slowly than two bad ones in the same amount of time.
[Message Edited]
    
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That is great Mat!!! You have a great talent.  
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The whole point was that you don't need talent. You just need to learn a few cynical ploys such as torturing your hero and working a bit harder, and success is guaranteed!
(Legal disclaimer: Success is not guaranteed.)
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The night was humid...
Sorry, I couldn't help myself there.
Identify that and you get yourself a nice shiny influence point. 
 
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| Do I get the IP, Huh, do I? |
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No.
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Great stuff Mat!. You dont mind if I copy and paste that for future reference. Sometimes it's hard to remember all the tips when your a beginner.
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Throw Momma from the Train... saw it quite recently.
| How long do you usually spend on a story, Matthew? |
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Depends on the length. Maybe two or three hours of actual writing? I usually have the idea some time in advance and let it float around in my head for a week before I start work.
| You don't mind if I copy and paste that for future reference. Sometimes it's hard to remember all the tips when your a beginner. |
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Go ahead.
Some of those tips come from books by Ansen Dibell and Orson Scott Card, compiled in "How to Write a Million", or James N. Frey's "How to Write a Damn Good Novel".
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| Throw Momma from the Train |
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Sorry, Greldon. MD gets the shiny new Influence point.
The whole subject of writing sparked that little gem of a memory.
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| Orson Scott CardI love his books. |
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Yes, same here. He is an excellent author.
    
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| MD gets the shiny new Influence point. |
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Thank you for your generous gift. I must confess that you humans know how to show the proper respect. We look forward to improved relations in the future.
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| Thank you for your generous gift. I must confess that you humans know how to show the proper respect. We look forward to improved relations in the future. |
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Here I am sending to you this red ball, bounce it back to the Torians.
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Since you're in the area, Mr The Renegade, how do you win your many alliance victories? I've finally got AP working properly, and I got an alliance victory, but by that time I was within a few turns of conquering the galaxy anyway.
Is it a question of regular bribery? Or initial alignment setup? How many races do you typically ally with?
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I try to bribe them from the beginning, trying to keep them in the beginning of the game in warm or friendly, after a while usually the Drath and the other new one end allying with you rather early in the game. I go for full development of techs and I use 15% social 85% techs, and after the first 3-4 years I end catching up with the AI's in many techs, basically I see what they have and I research what they don't have and then exchange. After I have couple of allies and 2 or 3 of the rest on friendly I bribe them to attack each other, I have noticed that if they are at war, their research slows down alot. So I always try to have at least 4 of them on war and I keep researching my way up. I usually end the game after the turn 2190 with 4 or 5 AI's, very seldon I have allied with all of them.
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I also set the AI's all in pure good or chaotic good and always pick good choices in the events.
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Huge, uncommon is my setting in the planets or huge rare.
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Huge - either uncommon or rare for me - all races pure evil.
Alex
   
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