Idea

[toushin]

coming up with a story idea isn't really that hard what is hard is putting it together into a coherent whole. i find it far easier to come up with technique styles and charecters as i put an idea together piece by piece and i was wondering could we ad a category for that. one where instead of giving a full story idea members could give there ideas for techniques styles or charecters

[Ellen Kuhfeld]

Every author does it differently. I plot a story like a vacation trip -- you set out the high points, the places you just have to go -- then head in that general direction, spending time at whatever interesting things you come across along the way. Monica Ferris (a mystery writer) has written down her technique, which starts with the ending.

She and I have written stories together, available on Amazon as Minnesota Vice. We put stories together in completely different ways, and have had a few terrible, er, arguments about the plotting. (We don't co-write any more, and she stopped being half of Margaret Frazer after the sixth book for similar reasons. One of these days, in her copious free time, she is going to write a book called Collaborations Are Murder.)

Of course, that's not exactly what you asked for, but I have no powers in the making of categories here.

[Spica75]

coming up with a story idea isn't really that hard what is hard is putting it together into a coherent whole. i find it far easier to come up with technique styles and charecters as i put an idea together piece by piece and i was wondering could we ad a category for that. one where instead of giving a full story idea members could give there ideas for techniques styles or charecters

A "Nuts&Bolts" section or something? Or does it already fall under the "Fic Research" category? Not sure...



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We put stories together in completely different ways, and have had a few terrible, er, arguments about the plotting. (We don't co-write any more, and she stopped being half of Margaret Frazer after the sixth book for similar reasons. One of these days, in her copious free time, she is going to write a book called Collaborations Are Murder.)

Ouch.

[toushin]

Nuts&Bolts I think that would be perfect some place were you can put a concept or bits and pieces of an idea.

To put my thoughts into perspective let me explain the process behind one of my ideas. While at the same time answering WG_Writer’s question

viewtopic.php?f=57&t=8540

Bear with me because this will be long I came up with the idea while reading Dark Titans I really enjoyed it but Big Trouble In Little Tokyo fell a little flat for me as a lot of the characters were changed in pretty obvious ways to get the outcome the author wanted. Since this usually involved them doing something stupid for no explainable reason it took me out of the story. So the idea of continuing that storyline popped into my head so I wrote down an outline for it.

I used the concept of Zero In which is where the title came from Minkei or Private Police as that is essentially what the Super Normal Defense Force only it was formed to deal with meta humans and not firearms. Since Big Trouble In Little Tokyo happened in the Shinjuku ward causing me to immediately think of GetBackers as I’m a fan of that series (and there are a lot of similarities between Ban and Ranma, heck the anime’s were done by the same character designer, and illustrator). Its more of fusion then a crossover I used GetBackers arcs then rewrote them so that they fit this DCAU/Ranma universe as police cases for the SNDF. Then I brought in characters that fit that asteadtic as well.

In all honesty I kind of forgot about my original intent after that as I said it’s more of a fusion then a crossover so used characters from and various other series its more based off the characters then the original. Since I had to change a lot to get them to fit the DCAU and Ranma. Such as changing sci-fi/fantasy aspects so that they more resemble martial arts technique, changing how martial arts styles/techniques work, changing histories and even creating them. It became really fun and also how I got into creating martial arts styles and techniques.

Eventually I got the basic outline done and that was it until I read Reflections Lost on a Dark Road while I hated that story it surprisingly renewed my interest in both Dark Titans and The Road To Cydonia as like with Big Trouble In Little Tokyo they’re was just to many changes done to the characters (as well as the original fics themselves) that it was impossible to see them as canonical. So wanting those stories to continue I started taking my original more seriously.

I recently got into the dcau comics and teen titans go comics causing me to realize how vast the dcau is and I’m starting from scratch again. Thinking up and idea let along writing the fic itself is complicated. Just like Outlines and Scenes bridges the gap between Ideas and C&C. Nuts&Bolts can bride the gap between nothing and idea. Sometimes all a person is a basic concept, a character, style, technique that needs fleshing out this could help with that.