story writing...some thoughts on preparation

sachmo · #1 September 3rd, 2002, 09:50 PM

So capn, you have a seperate file with all of your characters in it? Does that work for you? I tried it, but I found that alt-tabing from the game to the story was enough, and with a third doc open, my brain was overloaded, so I added my character list to the end of my story, where lookup was seemingly easier.

dogscoff · #2 September 3rd, 2002, 11:33 PM

Something I've done for O & C is to keep a timeline. Very handy...

MythicalMino · #3 September 4th, 2002, 01:20 AM

do you guys suggest that i write my first story using a human race? i have a custom alien race...but not sure though

dogscoff · #4 September 4th, 2002, 09:29 AM

Up to you really. I mean you could just make the aliens very human- like if you wanted to, and get the best of both worlds. It can be hard writing about an alien race, because you have to describe things which are quite normal to them but strange to us, and it keeps interrupting the flow of the story.

On the other hand, it can save you a lot of research because you can just say "ah well it's different for aliens" - for example if a character needs medical attention, you don't have to trawl medical websites looking for the correct treatment - just make something up =-)

capnq · #5 September 4th, 2002, 10:30 PM

Quote:

capn, you have a seperate file with all of your characters in it? Does that work for you?

It has so far, but then I've only got four characters at the moment. Since I've only written one scene, I haven't had to go back and look people up yet; the main reason I started the list was to keep the spelling consistent on the aliens' names. The game I'm writing it for is a PBW game that hasn't started yet, anyway.

I've never had any trouble tracking multiple windows; it isn't unusual for me to have three or four open when I'm surfing these Boards.