Miscellaneous Fanfiction Writing Thread (Solicit Advice Here)

[Historia]

Pegasus dualists? WTH are you talking about?

Uh. In (the 4kids version of) Yu Gi Oh, when a character is killed off or whatever, they're banished to the "Shadow Realm". My memory is spotty, but I remember Pegasus sending people there for the lulz. In the Nasuverse, Scathach is the ruler of her own realm, also called the "Shadow Realm". See the connection?

It was a joke.

[RoydGolden]

Uh. In (the 4kids version of) Yu Gi Oh, when a character is killed off or whatever, they're banished to the "Shadow Realm". My memory is spotty, but I remember Pegasus sending people there for the lulz. In the Nasuverse, Scathach is the ruler of her own realm, also called the "Shadow Realm". See the connection?

It was a joke.

I thought it was a joke, but I couldn't figure out over what. That's actually pretty funny.

Also were you really turned off my writing just by how I use different words to describe hair/eyes? Seems better then just describing something as pink/red/purple/whatever in the same words over and over again. Of course that kind of stuff can become ridiculous if overplayed (see Purple Prose), but I don't think I took it far enough to be really bothersome. And the opposite (Beige Prose) is also generally something to avoid. (Though of course, a sufficiently talented writer can pull off either)

[Historia]

I thought it was a joke, but I couldn't figure out over what. That's actually pretty funny.

Pegasus thrusts his hand out, his trap card activated by his hapless opponent. "I banish you to the shadow realm!" he declares, and his opponent screams, suddenly swallowed by the black space around them as if he'd never been. Triumphant once again, Pegasus flips his long, luxurious silver hair and displays a winning smirk. "Who's next, I wonder?"

MEANWHILE, IN THE SHADOW REALM

"Another one?" Scathach says with an audible groan, staring at the man sprawled out before her as she sat atop her throne. Snapping a finger, she has him carried off, wondering just where in the World these bastards were coming from. She looks up, seeing the hole in the sky, and frowns.

Just then, another person falls from outta nowhere, landing on the ground with a crunchy splat, blood and guts and gore decorating her nice floor.

"Oh, godsdammit." She'd just had that polished.

Looking back up, she really needed to get that thing plugged.

[RoydGolden]

Poor Scathach. Guess even immortals still have to pay the roofing bills.

[naschyamamoto]

i'm not the best one to ask, sadly

though, if i may, i would like to ask about the gundams "stomping all over fuyuki"

would that be during a holy grail war or...?

Ah yeah... I should probably give a more detailed summary. *clears throat*
Basically, Setsuna and Graham from Gundam 00 are summoned as Servants in the Holy Grail War, along with Lelouch vi Brittania, Marianne vi Britannia, and possibly Sakaki Minato of Gundam Build Fighters Try as well. There's a whole bunch of extra-complex backstory explaining how they all get there, but it's really just an excuse to have Archer, Shirou, Lancer and Bazett interact and face off against characters from various Sunrise series.
Setsuna is Saber, Graham is Berserker, Lelouch is either Caster or Assassin and Marianne is Rider. If I fit Minato in as well, he'll be Caster for sure.

[CG-3m1y4]

...And why would you want Gundam Riders in a Holy Grail War settings? Makes totally no sense, and pretty much would bend canon in a bullshit way.

Heck, even Ultraman or Godzilla would make WAY more sense than any Gundam/Code Geass/Mecha series.

[SeiKeo]

I thought it was a joke, but I couldn't figure out over what. That's actually pretty funny.

Also were you really turned off my writing just by how I use different words to describe hair/eyes? Seems better then just describing something as pink/red/purple/whatever in the same words over and over again. Of course that kind of stuff can become ridiculous if overplayed (see Purple Prose), but I don't think I took it far enough to be really bothersome. And the opposite (Beige Prose) is also generally something to avoid. (Though of course, a sufficiently talented writer can pull off either)

You should almost never need to do this.

[naschyamamoto]

...And why would you want Gundam Riders in a Holy Grail War settings? Makes totally no sense, and pretty much would bend canon in a bullshit way.

Heck, even Ultraman or Godzilla would make WAY more sense than any Gundam/Code Geass/Mecha series.

Well, that was kinda the point. Just to add something absurd to the mix and see what happens.
Plus, it'll give me a little more skill (I think) at writing Fate crossovers and a better grasp of the mechanics, since again I'm planning a YGO crossover after this one. Or maybe I'll finish the YGO one before the Gundam one. Who knows?
That said, I'm pretty sure that Archer could still take on a Gundam pilot with UBW, and Gae Bolg can almost certainly rip through a Gundam like paper in its javelin mode. Graham and Marianne don't use laser beamspam as well, so I think the odds are at least a little bit balanced there.

[Dullahan]

yeah

it really doesn't matter

how many times do you actually in real life pay attention to the eye colour of people you're talking to to the extent that you'd feel the need to come up with multiple words for it

maybe justifiable if they're genuinely unusual - e.g. full heterochromia - but even then you might not really register it

[SeiKeo]

even if you are tempted to make some sort of point about the person by way of their eye color, reconsider, as 'the eyes are the window to the soul' is one of the most hackneyed tropes in existence

[Kirby]

Also, why do we need their appearance described when we know what they look like already?

(this isn't rhetorical, to say "never describe appearances", because there's a time and place for it. but what's your reason?)

[Dullahan]

even if you are tempted to make some sort of point about the person by way of their eye color, reconsider, as 'the eyes are the window to the soul' is one of the most hackneyed tropes in existence

albeit semi-true in nasuland

[Seika]

Never mind real life, just read professional fiction (that isn't Twilight). Even introduction scenes rarely try to build a complete photographic picture of a character in the way that I see fanfic doing all the time - and in fanfic you're meant to already know what most of the characters look like! Then the level of detail falls away still more: while amateur writing is plagued with 'the blue-eyed girl' and 'the red-head', better authors will come up with epithets that are actually pertinent to the situation at hand and have some creativity about them, which is rarely generic physical description. (There's also a lot less use of epithets in general, I think, probably because the scenes and sentences are more skilfully constructed so that identifiers aren't as necessary, and the prose or dialogue can flow on without them).

Film adaptations of books don't usually cause casting controversy because there's a perfect description of the character which is ready-to-hand - quite the opposite. Fans have put together differing mental pictures from relatively sparse detail, which then must inevitably clash with whoever's been chosen for the part because you can't satisfy all the separate ideas.

As a very general rule - and I say this as someone whose personal taste in literature is for richer description, not stark elegance - it's usually better to aim for sparse prose. There's the basic benefit of paring your writing down to exactly what it needs to say, without hiding any of the important parts beneath excessive verbiage, which is something all teachers and editors will encourage you to do. Then, even if your actual language use isn't the most brilliant work of genius, you can still carry readers along by raw virtue of everything else it conveys, whether that's the story, the concepts you're exploring, or whatever. It's just an unobtrusive medium for you. But excessively florid prose is an immediate negative, and actively hinders the audience from getting to what else might be good about your work.

(Also please don't Trope Speak at us).

[Imperial]

Physical appearance is generally a character's least important attribute. There are exceptions, such as the Lannisters being unusually blond, which sets up a twist about someone's parentage, but by and large, a character's actual character is their most important feature.

Stopping the prose train to lavish a paragraph on someone's appearance typically doesn't make much sense unless a POV character is pausing to admire the character's beauty or size them up.

[RoydGolden]

Never mind real life, just read professional fiction (that isn't Twilight). Even introduction scenes rarely try to build a complete photographic picture of a character in the way that I see fanfic doing all the time - and in fanfic you're meant to already know what most of the characters look like! Then the level of detail falls away still more: while amateur writing is plagued with 'the blue-eyed girl' and 'the red-head', better authors will come up with epithets that are actually pertinent to the situation at hand and have some creativity about them, which is rarely generic physical description. (There's also a lot less use of epithets in general, I think, probably because the scenes and sentences are more skilfully constructed so that identifiers aren't as necessary, and the prose or dialogue can flow on without them).

Film adaptations of books don't usually cause casting controversy because there's a perfect description of the character which is ready-to-hand - quite the opposite. Fans have put together differing mental pictures from relatively sparse detail, which then must inevitably clash with whoever's been chosen for the part because you can't satisfy all the separate ideas.

As a very general rule - and I say this as someone whose personal taste in literature is for richer description, not stark elegance - it's usually better to aim for sparse prose. There's the basic benefit of paring your writing down to exactly what it needs to say, without hiding any of the important parts beneath excessive verbiage, which is something all teachers and editors will encourage you to do. Then, even if your actual language use isn't the most brilliant work of genius, you can still carry readers along by raw virtue of everything else it conveys, whether that's the story, the concepts you're exploring, or whatever. It's just an unobtrusive medium for you. But excessively florid prose is an immediate negative, and actively hinders the audience from getting to what else might be good about your work.

(Also please don't Trope Speak at us).

Other people have told me my prose is too dry, though. I don't agree (obviously), but I can't believe you'd read my writing and come away thinking it's overly florid. Reminding the audience that characters are physical beings with physical appearances every now and again ≠ Purple Prose. And I don't even know what you're talking about with the "Trope Speak", as I never use that in my fiction writing.

I understand that you may not have been replying to me in particular, but I was the one who started with conversation in the first place, so I figured I might chip in.

[Arashi_Leonhart]

The only times you're really going to bring it up is if it's important to whatever perspective you're using or you're deliberately painting a specific kind of picture.

In the rewrite thread, I recall calling attention to Shiki's eyes since the story is from Akiha's perspective, and Akiha at one point in the VN pays close attention to the color of his eyes, which is why I used it. If it were written from the perspective of say, Hisui, it wouldn't really matter as much.

In the other case, I might call attention to his eye color--and its otherworldliness--to point out, oh, here comes Mystic Eyes, time to bend over. Not really relevant if he's just going to chat with Arihiko about girls.

[RoydGolden]

I don't even describe character appearance all that much, honestly. The most I do is generally a brief description of hair color, eye color and maybe body-type. More if it's an important/unfamiliar character.

The only time I used more then a paragraph to describe appearance was in Misogi and Scathach's introduction scenes, which even then were hardly what I'd call "lavish".

[Arashi_Leonhart]

Introducing a character shouldn't really be about describing height, weight, hair, and eye color though. It should be about introducing their character, heh, which is better served with more relevant details.

[RoydGolden]

The only times you're really going to bring it up is if it's important to whatever perspective you're using or you're deliberately painting a specific kind of picture.

In the rewrite thread, I recall calling attention to Shiki's eyes since the story is from Akiha's perspective, and Akiha at one point in the VN pays close attention to the color of his eyes, which is why I used it. If it were written from the perspective of say, Hisui, it wouldn't really matter as much.

In the other case, I might call attention to his eye color--and its otherworldliness--to point out, oh, here comes Mystic Eyes, time to bend over. Not really relevant if he's just going to chat with Arihiko about girls.

Characters aren't detached voices floating around in a vacuum, Arashi. The exact details may not be important, reminding us that the characters are physical human beings is. You seem to have this idea that you should only write what's "necessary", which leads to an unnaturally sparse picture of the written world. Of course that can be done right if used to enforce a deliberately vague, distant or dreamlike atmosphere like with the Misogi flashback I included in the latest [Fate/All Fiction] snippet. But generally a little bit of "color" (both literally and figuratively) goes a long way.

- - - Updated - - -

Introducing a character shouldn't really be about describing height, weight, hair, and eye color though. It should be about introducing their character, heh, which is better served with more relevant details.

Especially in a story that's supposed to be from a given character's perspective (which mine isn't, but I do sometimes tend towards writing in that direction) there's only so much detail about someone's character you can garner within five seconds of meeting them. What's wrong with superficial impressions being, well... superficial?

- - - Updated - - -

Of course, you're right in that it's best to hint at the character's nature/personality in their appearance whenever possible. Like Misogi who's described as having "an oppressively average aura that seemed to drag down everything around him" or Gilgamesh with "red eyes like those of a beast" and "lines of arrogance soiling his otherwise handsome features".

[Arashi_Leonhart]

I'm unsure what you're getting at. The whole point that I was making is that, for instance, eye color isn't relevant to establishing Shiki as a physical being, nor is it necessarily relevant to the parties that may be observing him. Akiha is going to take notice of different things than Arihiko, you know.

Prose should do multiple things at the same time in a story. Stopping to go, "such and such was tall, square-jawed, and had a nice ass" is pretty transparent. Taking note that they're tall when it becomes relevant since the perspective character is suddenly standing next to them and feeling intimidated by that height is less so.