Watcha Writin'?

[Zkribbler]

...there's always dragons, but that's cliché.

uh oh [Zkribbler covers over his opening line: The refugees came stumbling down out of the high passes of the Dragonlair Mountains, bruised, filthy, torn, and exhausted. ] Move along. Nothing to see here.

BTW Airships won't work here because they need engines. In The Word for World is Water" folks have electricity. Here, not so much.

 

[Zkribbler]

Now is Saturday. Stuck for the last couple days. Then I remembered the advice of Mickey Spillane for when a writer is stuck. Kick open a door and spray the room with machine gun fire. You don't need to know yet who's shooting or why. Okay, I have a medieval fantasy, so no machine guns. But a bomb works just as well. Now, 1137 words.

 

[warpus]

I wrote a short story! I would love to get some feeback in terms of grammar, formatting, spelling, other standards, story flow, characterization, and anything else that jumps at you that you think i did poorly or well.

I've put it up here, because it seems like a place where I can write and maybe find some readers. If you open this link on a mobile device it might ask you to install the app, but you should be able to read it without logging in or installing any app. It looks a lot better in desktop view though, on your enormous office computer.

There are three parts, so if you read the first part and think "This doesn't seem complete", there should be a link to take you to the next part. Overall it's pretty short, it shouldn't take more than 10 minutes to read the whole thing.

The story is NOT family or work friendly, it has some swearing and adult situations, although nothing violent or sexual.

I wrote this to try to fit the theme of the following 3 concepts: ASTRONAUT / DOING DRUGS / LIVE ON CABLE TV.

I was going to draw something for this, but it went nowhere, so I sat down and decided to write a story instead. Let me know what you think! It's my first attempt at writing something and putting it out there as something people might want to read as a genuine story.

I would also welcome advice about the website I used to publish this. Are there better places to publish stuff? You can supposedly make money on this site if you get popular, but that's not my goal yet.. since I know that I don't have any sort of following. But it did contribute to my decision to go with them.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I wrote a short story! I would love to get some feeback in terms of grammar, formatting, spelling, other standards, story flow, characterization, and anything else that jumps at you that you think i did poorly or well.

I've put it up here, because it seems like a place where I can write and maybe find some readers. If you open this link on a mobile device it might ask you to install the app, but you should be able to read it without logging in or installing any app. It looks a lot better in desktop view though, on your enormous office computer.

There are three parts, so if you read the first part and think "This doesn't seem complete", there should be a link to take you to the next part. Overall it's pretty short, it shouldn't take more than 10 minutes to read the whole thing.

The story is NOT family or work friendly, it has some swearing and adult situations, although nothing violent or sexual.

I wrote this to try to fit the theme of the following 3 concepts: ASTRONAUT / DOING DRUGS / LIVE ON CABLE TV.

I was going to draw something for this, but it went nowhere, so I sat down and decided to write a story instead. Let me know what you think! It's my first attempt at writing something and putting it out there as something people might want to read as a genuine story.

I would also welcome advice about the website I used to publish this. Are there better places to publish stuff? You can supposedly make money on this site if you get popular, but that's not my goal yet.. since I know that I don't have any sort of following. But it did contribute to my decision to go with them.

Okay, I read it. And my first impression... was that the middle part doesn't seem to have anything to do with the first and third. It's too disconnected. I realized by the end of the third part that it actually is connected, but it seemed that you'd suddenly started a whole new story.

I'll re-read it to get more impressions since this was a quick read.

I don't think you need to worry about NSFW issues. I've seen stories with much more swearing and drug use on other sites. For instance, I've seen more of both in the Harry Potter fanfic I finally gave up on after 300+ chapters (the author claimed the story was about Sirius Black, but she killed him off halfway through and then made Mary Sue characters out of Ginny Weasley and an original character... and I think it was when she egregiously killed off Andromeda and Ted Tonks in a rather gruesome way that I finally gave up on it... she's not going to like the feedback I dropped).


Wattpad is appropriate for original stories that aren't fanfic, as fanfiction.net doesn't allow original stories. Archive Of Our Own (AO3)? Not sure about that. They allow more latitude than fanfiction.net, and more explicit stories, no issues about drugs or swearing or sex, as long as you use the appropriate tags to let prospective readers know what to expect if they read it.

========

I decided to replay King's Heir to remind myself of the source material that my very large project is based on, and discovered a couple of details I'd never noticed before in the dozen-plus previous times I've played it. Spending a couple of nights figuring out the royal lineage puzzle and researching Anglo-Saxon names and giving the people in the puzzle actual names has helped immensely. I can now put a name to the carved image of a king on a 200-year-old tower that is one of the supports for an immense drawbridge spanning a river. I just need to re-examine the royal lineage puzzle to see if the carved image matches the portrait reasonably well. If it does, that would be such a satisfying bit of attention to detail on the game developers' parts.

And... it's a decent match. It's more of a hybrid between Wulfric and Erik, but close enough. It's too bad these screenshots are so fuzzy and the faces aren't very clear. But at least I've got the characters sorted and this will let me delve into prequel stuff going back approximately 200 to 250 years if I want. The tower in question was built 200 years before the events of the game, so it's in the general ballpark.

The reason there are two screenshots is because I still haven't decided if Queen Gabriella's consort is from Stormhaven or Ravensmoor. It makes no real difference to actually novelizing the game itself, but it could make a difference to the expanded/alternative version I've been writing.

And I've been doing more research, this time on small boats used in the 11th century. I remember a segment from the documentary series The Story of English in which they were talking about Middle English and the words used for various kinds of boats. Thank goodness I remembered the one I was thinking about was called a "coracle". It's been driving me nuts for ages, talking about the little boat one of the characters used to get away for short trips to favorite spots on the lake or in the quieter portions of the river. Griffinvale's capital city is situated on an island in a humungous lake, and there are canals and bridges all over the place. It's impractical to use large wagons or carts to get around (though the old king loved his purple and gold carriage that was anachronistic to this time period), so people travel by foot or horse on land and for those living near the lake, having small boats like coracles and skiffs is as normal as modern people having cars or bikes.

 

[warpus]

Okay, I read it. And my first impression... was that the middle part doesn't seem to have anything to do with the first and third. It's too disconnected. I realized by the end of the third part that it actually is connected, but it seemed that you'd suddenly started a whole new story.

Thanks for reading my story!

Is the second part feeling so disconnected a problem because my story is so short? That's how a long of novels introduce new characters, by jumping to a completely new scene, the significance of which might not become apparent until later chapters.

 

[Zkribbler]

I'm toying with a detective story with cats. I can get them into trench coats and fedoras...but can they even hold automatic pistols?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I'm toying with a detective story with cats. I can get them inti trench coats and fedoras...but can they even hold automatic pistols?

There are probably tens of thousands of memes of cats holding guns. I personally find those pictures abhorrent, but some find them funny.

You know what a cat would find an awful weapon? Water pistols. No cat likes to have water hitting them.

 

[Patine]

I'm toying with a detective story with cats. I can get them inti trench coats and fedoras...but can they even hold automatic pistols?

There are probably tens of thousands of memes of cats holding guns. I personally find those pictures abhorrent, but some find them funny.

You know what a cat would find an awful weapon? Water pistols. No cat likes to have water hitting them.

I take it these are naturally anatomical cats, and not anthropomorphic or semi-anthropomorphic cats, then?

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I take it these are naturally anatomical cats, and not anthropomorphic or semi-anthropomorphic cats, then?

I'm talking about stuff found on the Cheezburger site, so yeah, real cats. Some are probably photoshopped in the way they hold the weapon.

I took a look at Maddy's paws to see if she had thumbs. I suppose you could say they do, but they're not opposable or manipulable the way human thumbs are.

 

[Zkribbler]

I take it these are naturally anatomical cats, and not anthropomorphic or semi-anthropomorphic cats, then?

I'm not really sure. My ideas are really fluid. I suppose if they're in trench coats, most likely semi-anthropomorphic. Possible titles: "Maltese Pussy," "Chat Noir."

 

[Patine]

I'm not really sure. My ideas are really fluid. I suppose if they're in trench coats, most likely semi-anthropomorphic. Possible titles: "Maltese Pussy," "Chat Noir."

The former sounds like a porn title, so probably not the best choice.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

The former sounds like a porn title, so probably not the best choice.

The Maltese Puddy-Tat
Teh Maltese Kitteh

The Maltese House-Panther? (assuming you're talking about black cats)

"Chat Noir"... sounds a lot like "Le Chat Noir" - the name of a famous painting.

 

[Zkribbler]

... there's always dragons, but that's cliché.

Wyverns? Will o the Wisps? In one of my stories, I have evil, semi-scincient blackhawks

 

[Synobun]

Giant bats could work? There are a couple mythological bat gods (Mayan and Polynesian), so a lesser form could be justifiable if mythology is required.

 

[Zkribbler]

The Maltese Puddy-Tat

I like this a lot.

 

[Synobun]

I don't think many people know this, but Zkribbler actually had several completed novels that he had edited and prepared for querying/publication. He just never pulled the trigger on it. I'm not sure why; he seemed perfectly content with trying to get the short stories published in magazines instead.

I hope his kids do something with them. They were pretty fun, quirky fantasy adventures.