Birthday Salutations!!!

Happy birthday, Jester!

Which I daresay I'll be saying to you In Real at some point today, but I thought I'd big it up here as well. The Scribblepit post count is now 19 - only four left for this month! Although, Scribblers, please note: there can only be four more this month. Save any extra for March, kiddies.

Scribblers notes cont.

Cool, great idea!

OK, here goes:

Finesse: Unofficial second in command - instinctively takes command if Chronal isn't there, and the others accept and expect this.  Witty, observant, quick thinking.  Probably has concealed issues about her super-power, which is a partial reflection of her appreciation of her friends - she's much better at using their powers than anyone else's, so when they're not around she feels it.

SHIFT: I think a sense of calm should be relevant to her.  She can fight, and has the potential for anger etc. but close to her nature is inner peace.  Yeah, and she probably loves trivia.

We're a group of mates, so I think it's worth making sure we keep up making it clear that these guys really get on.  That's definitely already in there, just thought I'd mention it's good!

NARRATOR: Yeah, I was WELL proud of that one!  It's really cool you've made him an unimaginative loser, too.  It means we can have fun with him being an idiot, and if we get bored but want to keep the character we can always make him cool and dangerous.

I think The Pit should look like a Centre Parcs Villa with more rooms and secret passageways etc. added - cool to have a basic structure we all know and love!

OK, I'll get cracking on Issue the Third!  :-)

The Official Scribblers Discussion Board

I thought I'd include this for all those who are going to write the Scribblers, since Jester and I have both now done a story each and I know Blossom is going to soon. First of all; the characters are the hardest! Stereotyping each other is, therefore, the way forward methinks. So:

Chronal - A leader-type by necessity, but otherwise fairly daft and playful.
Dialogue memes: "You know what that doesn't? Matter." "You know who cares? No one." etc.

Amity - Child-like and sweet, and rather fond of playing games and drinking tea socially.
Dialogue memes: "Splendid!" "Oh, let's play a game!" etc. Think Enid Blyton, but not racist.

Wraith - Quite reticent, rather geeky. Judges people who conform to things/are pretentious.
Dialogue memes: "Success get." "Biscuit get." etc. Also negative rhymes, eg "Smoker choker".

Lyric - Suave, cynical karate ninja. He can quote Wordsworth while breaking your face.
Dialogue memes: "I Captain want tea." He also says dreadful things. I shan't write them.

Finesse - Ooh, trippy. She's me. I just gave her stuff to do, so someone else will have to fill her profile in.

Shift - The trickiest of the lot, and I didn't quite manage to get her right. Again, suggestions gratefully received. I think next time I'll make her into the trivia buff: a constant stream of "Did you know...?" as her dialogue. Not sure, still.

As you write these characters, please add here anything else you've brought to them or whatever. It would help me no end! I'm rubbish. Oh, and the bad guys:

Mr. Sintaro - The head of a convicted offenders transportation company, called Transporters Of Reprobate Yobs (or TORY for short. I was feeling childish.) He has lots of money at his disposal, countless henchmen and now, possibly, potentially, he has super powers...

The Narrator - totally Blossom's idea. Lyric's mysteriously long-lost brother, who feels misunderstood by the world and is therefore a criminal. Needs to grow the crap up. Fond of wearing foppish black costumes. He is incredibly powerful, but has no imagination or real understanding of how to use his powers.

Our supporting cast so far consists of Kayleigh, our biological scientist contact. That's it. Our HQ is called the Pit, and we have an environmentally friendly plane - the Trans-Jet. We get grants from the government, apparently - make of that what you will.

Anyway, yeah, please add to this. Let the discussion commence...

Return of the Internet

I'm back! And I've got a new trick and all. Anyway, I should hopefully get writing again soon, but Symbiosis may take a little while longer since Sebastian has upped and died on me, the indescribable cad, and everything I had plan-wise is on him. Therefore I may well try something new in the meantime.

I'll try and review the stuff I've missed as soon as possible.

Re: New Fantasy Story

For those who've just read Chapter One: Pilgrim's Howe, I just wanted to post something regarding what I'm up to, my intentions and feedback.

This is an idea I've had brewing for a while - it's also the beginning of the fantasy story I've been threatening you with for a while. You just can't have too much fantasy. There's a big prize and serious kudos points for the one who guesses where I'm going with this. The hints are all there. Does it feel familiar?...

On the subject of feedback, I'd like as much as possible.

ಠ_ಠ

I'll be drawing some stuff soon that you people can write plots or scenarios from/ about /whatever.

100th Post

I just wanted to point out that we've reached the 100th post on Scribblepit - woo!

Also, I've finally finished reading and commenting on everything. This is an exciting place to be.

Procrastinating from the main plot and opinion Poll

Ok, so I'm 5 chapters in now in my story and I realise I'm still about 10 years off the start of my main plot. Not to mention adding in random extra bits of subplot that never existed before.

How frustrating.

Out of interest- which narrative voice is people's favourite? The choices that I've used at least once can be summarised as:

1. 3rd person (mostly) impartial narrator
2. Letters/ Diaries
3. Formal journals etc.
4. Encyclopaedic Dictionaries/ Identification Records.
5. Newspaper Articles
6. Prophetic Scripture

Also, Favourite/ Least Favourite Chapter for those lucky souls who've read them all.

Personally, don't really have a favourite at the moment, but I'm quite fond of Chapter 1 because I know what the creepy evil presence is and no-one else finds out for what will probably be 100 chapters at my current rate of procrastination. Least favourite is chapter 3 at the moment.

ASBO-Boy - Predictions

Right, I'd like to know where people think the story is going. Be as brief or as in-depth as you want.

Doing it this way means I wont give away any irritating knowing looks that I find myself incapable of stopping without the aid of a pillow.

This is also a good way of letting me know what you think is important re: character/plot resolutions. If you would like to see something addressed, make a point of it and I'll probably accommodate it somewhere.

Cheers me dears.

Aliens Have Landed: Part 1

Oh, dear, another post to talk about a story. I'm such an attention whore. Anyway, I do dislike the "Exposed" tag, but I can't think of anything better. Now I see why Doctor Who Confidential and Torchwood Declassified have such crap names - there's no word that means "behind the scenes" and is anything approaching cool.

Anyway, I'd originally started writing far more for Laoren and Trenavass, but then realised that the school actually housed the interesting part of the story. Since Trenavass's revelation is such a standard plot twist that it's barely more than a plot device, there was only so much "I can't believe it!", "soz Loz" dialogue to write before the aliens themselves needed to start marching.

Deleted scenes: There was a line that Jeremy was asleep upstairs. I took it out, because I like to leave characters unmentioned unless they're directly relevant. Rest assured, Jeremy still exists, and will no doubt hear the news soon enough.

I've been interested in the "person close to you is actually royalty" storyline for a long time, possibly because of my own tenuous link to royal blood. I pretty much stole the whole storyline of royal-alien-sheltering-on-Earth-from-other-aliens from everyone's favourite Classic Who writers, Pip and Jane Baker. It was largely the premise of Watt on Earth. And it had a character named Zoe, and I nicked her name too. I'm such a farce.

In retrospect, I think I made a big mistake in the lies he told Laoren. I'd prefer it if he'd merely lied by omission, rather than flatly fibbing. I mean, that's sort-of there - he never said he wasn't a prince, and indeed, he admitted that royalty were one of the most likely types of his species to speak English. But I think I should have made it clearer that he actually wasn't expecting the police to turn up at all, let alone so soon. And he shouldn't have told her he'd be meeting governmental types. Silly alien.

Anyway, I hope I've done Ffion justice in this story. Always hard to build up unseen characters. Incidentally, although I created it mostly so that Stephanie's story would make more sense, the Apathy Dart Gun is my new favourite sci-fi gadget. Imagine it - you get mugged on the street, so you take a shot, and the mugger just becomes absolutely bored and wanders off to watch Any Dream Will Do. Or you see one of those awful "GOD WILL JUDGE AND KILL US ALL" people on a street corner, and he just thinks "bugger it" and treats himself to a McDonald's Happy Meal.

Connections

Thought I'd talk a bit about the connections between my posts, since they tend to crop up a lot in comments and such.

I find the joining-the-dots method of writing to be incredibly satisfying, which is why the last two stories - Ambition and Therapy - aren't directly connected to any existing characters or storylines. Eventually, they'll no-doubt cross over with some other characters, but for the time being, I like that they're new and fresh.

So, for the record, Trenavass and Laoren and Lunar Mist and Sunset have no set ending - they're largely exploring the world. I have resolutions in mind for all the other stories, although that's not to say that I won't be coming back to those characters again (Arthur and Mr Spencer have already been resolved, but the latter in particular has more to share).

But the big question is - how effective is this method? Is there too much crossing over? Too little? Is it not clear enough that these stories exist in the same universe? Would it matter if certain stories were read out of order?

The Trenavass stories are in a direct series, which is why they have an umbrella title, but should Lunar Mist and Sunset have one too? Since Jom went back to re-label his ASBO-Boy stories, I've been tempted to do something similar.

Ambition

Note before I start: I've labelled this post with the word "Exposed", which I intend to do for any post of mine where I want to discuss a specific story. It'd be cool if other people did the same, so that writers talking about their individual stories can be easily found. I feel that I want to discuss certain things I write, but know that they're probably not going to raise the necessary questions, so I'll post them here. I assume that this is true of many other people's posts too, and I'd love to know the things I couldn't guess.

But anyway!

"Ambition" is both standalone and the first in a series. It's standalone, because for the time being, I don't intend to further Arthur's story. He's come full circle, which was partly the point of the exercise. It exists in the same universe as everything else I write, and indeed, the first draught had a reference to Mr Spencer. But I decided it was self-indulgent, and Mr Spencer became Dennis Freeman.

In a way, it's an evolution of an earlier idea, which I never wrote, because it was basically just a joke. The idea was, this young child has had an awful early life and, at the age of five, everything goes right for him at the same time. So much good stuff happens to him, that inevitably, the story seems to be leading to his downfall. And then it doesn't - a punchline, and the child gets to live happily ever after.

This takes it a step further - an ominous tone depicting something that is, in theory, nice and lovely. And anonymous organisations are always creepy.

I think this is also the first story I've written here that truly keeps the characters at arm's length. No inner thoughts, only a few clues as to their motivation, that sort of thing.

Reordering posts

Right, labelling now means we can look up single stories without everyone else's getting in the way, which is very useful and we're all very pleased with it; but is there a way to reorder the posts? So that you can read them oldest first? As it stands, it's just a bit tricky to read posts when you have to keep going up and down the page. Techno wizards, please don your wizards' hats here! Any ideas?

First Ever Post

Ooh... my first post- and it isn't even a story. Well, I'm working on something, but until my final exam is over tomorrow I doubt I'll do much in the way of actual writing.

I will also then have time to read and make more comments- which I like to do. I can put on my literary criticism spectacles and grammar pick too- but I'll only really do so if the author asks me too.

I would like to read more of everyone's writing- although, to repeat a comment I made on an individual post: Iceduck- whatever happened to the man who loved the woman in Orange? Is he coming back? I'd like to know what happens to him now that the Running man story has been completed.

That's all for now, folks.

Boasting!

Woohoo, first new post! Take that, Jester, Miss I-Write-In Everything-New-First!

I don't really have anything else to say, other than I realise I'm abusing the system by doing this. Um... Hi, Mam!

Explanation

Hi all.

This blog serves as a behind-the-scenes companion to Scribble Pit. The idea is, we post questions, suggestions, requests, or anything else that we might want to discuss here.

The main things I think this'll be useful for are:

1) Proper discussion of stories. Plenty of people leave notes on other people's stories, but they're not likely to return to the page later to see if the original author has replied. So from now on, if an author writes "what did you mean by this bit?", there's a proper place for a response.

2) Critiques and requests. With some stories, authors want proper critiques. With others, writers are perfectly happy to leave a story as is, with no interest in persuing it further. Here, authors can explicitly ask for critiques on specific stories.

3) Discussion. Things like the layout, labels, general admin stuff. And ideas for new projects, maybe - like, if two writers choose to experiment with taking it in turns to write installments, discussion of it can go here.

Also, because of the notes situation, short replies should be posted as comments, but detailed responses should be posted as new posts, for all the world to see. As a rule, remind yourself that not everyone will necessarily read a note, but everyone will see new post.