"Are we qualified for this?" - Fixing Ready Player One

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Creative Convention > "Are we qualified for this?" - Fixing Ready Player One

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Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

chitoryu12 posted:

Well, we're officially in the phase where we can start writing this first chapter. So anyone can submit writing samples to test the waters.

CHAPTER 1

It is hell to awaken. A dream, while a lesser thing, is still greater in its possibilities than the world that I wake to. My body, like all bodies, is designed for experience. My flesh is woven by millions of tiny nerve cells each starving for some sort of stimuli, some tiny little electric itch that they are desperate to have scratched. It is their reason to be. And as I awaken, they are calling for it like infant birds seeking food.

It is a world of deprivation I awaken to. I could not possibly describe it to you, this feeling of emptiness, not unless you have seen what I have seen. Felt what I have felt. Been where I have been. This world is a long empty room filled only with the lonely sounds of your own echoes. To live in it is like feeding on gruel after having seen a feast. And yet still I am glad for it, glad for this moment.

If not for these brief moments, between the dream and the ecstasy, I might lose sight of the pleasures that await me. These agonizing seconds in the total sensory exclusion of reality serve only to remind me of the inferiority of a life lived in analog. Still though, I made sure to sleep in my suit. I had even learned how to fall asleep with the helmet still on, to spare myself the inconvenience of having to find it every morning. The shorter the journey, I thought, the better. It only took a few seconds of tedious, tiresome, desolate reality for me to find the 'on' switch.

And then I was there. Every inch of my body was caressed by silken hands. Every hair was erect and tingling with the ecstasy of it. My mouth began to feel the gentle sensation of lips, of oval office, of cock, all at my command. My penis enjoyed the wet agility of a human mouth, the warmth of a pussy, the suction grip of an rear end in a top hat, in a harmony of pleasure. My anus felt the warm tickling of a leathery and muscular tongue entering it, preparing it for greater insertions yet to come.

I was in the ONANSIS. I was home.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2018 17:40

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 00:06

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

nine-gear crow posted:

Some guy literally pissed in a jar and it won an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. What are your thoughts on that in 50,000 words or less?

Piss Christ is both aesthetically pleasing and intellectually provocative

49,991 words to spare. Eat it Hemingway.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2018 17:49

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Do we have to write in chronological order? I want to redo the party scene with Art3mis and Parzival next

# ¿ Apr 11, 2018 17:57

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

chitoryu12 posted:

I can't tell if you're being serious so I'm afraid to answer.

Too late I read your answer before you edited it

Why would you doubt my seriousness? So far I am the only one who has actually contributed prose.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2018 18:15

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

My premise for this rewrite is that I want to take the concept of enjoyment and elevate it to the level of pleasure while moving the metaphor from media to sexuality.

In the same way that Cline envisions in a world in which entertainment is consumed not for the enjoyment of it, but as an act of competition between peers, I want to posit the same for eroticism. In Cline's vision of a decadent and decaying society, the need to horde and absorb entertainment uncritically robs a person of the pleasure of the text. In the same way, I want for the availability and ease of sexual gratification to eventually rob the protagonist of a sense of emotional pleasure. Sexual activity no longer becomes a matter of pleasure or intimacy, but merely a race to achieve and experience ever more grandiose physical pleasures as a way of asserting superiority to one's peers.

In this version, Halliday, while something of silicon valley Marquis de Sade, comes to suffer an existential crisis that eventually destroys him over his loss of "want." His ability to immediately obtain any physical pleasure has left him envious of a time in which he could experience desire. The challenge of the keys in this version is to push the cunters aka "oval office hunters" into ever more perverse acts of self-gratification to see if, at the zenith of onanism, one can still obtain a sense of gratification wholly separate from immediate pleasure. Namely, can the human experience persevere in the face of the totality of effortless fulfillment.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2018 19:16

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Samizdata posted:

Joyce doesn't count. We were talking about narrative fiction.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2018 19:23

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Chapter: ---- (fit this into the timeline when appropriate)

Art3mis and I moved to the center of the dance floor. Soon we were surrounded by onlookers, each of them diverted from their own pleasures by the the site of us under the red glow of the spotlight. Her fingers gracefully skimmed the warm and loose flesh of my testes as they reached towards my oiled rear end in a top hat. Her hand gently breached the crevice of my lower buttocks, and slowly her finger wormed its way into the clutched muscle of my anus. She breached it, and slowly sought out my prostate. At the same time I explored her quim with my hand. My middle and ring finger pried apart the twitching hole of her vagina while my thumb found its way through the ring of her clitoral piercing. Each time I explored deeper into her wet hole, I tugged hard upon the ring. I wanted to train her to find no difference between pleasure and pain.

We circled upon a dance floor slick with the congealed mix of jism and vaginal excretions. Our motions in each other's bodies were as much to the rhythm of the music as to the slapping beat of the loving all around us. She grew closer to climax, and I was infatuated with the sense of power. My control over her pleasure felt as powerful as control over life and death itself. She was a babe in my hands, wholly at the mercy of my whims.

I looked her in the eyes and told her simply, "I love you." She was surprised both by my revelation and by the sudden insertion of my cock inside her.

"You don't mean that," she said.

"I do," I said.

"You don't even know if I am really a woman. What if I am secretly a big hairy guy?"

"What is gender? Would I refuse a symphony because it was played on a different instrument? Every body has pleasure to be gained from it. All flesh can be enjoyed equally."

"What if I am fat."

"Then I would gently caress each of your folds"

"What if..."

I placed my hand around her throat. I knew she had a vr suit powerful enough to transfer the sensation of strangulation. I knew she was out there, somewhere, struggling for breath at my hand. If I wanted, I could hold her in my hand until she passed out. Such was the ecstasy of my ownership of her at that moment.

"Listen," I told her, "It doesn't matter what you are in the real world. I love you just the same. Even if you were a single smooth lump of skin without a single orifice, I would gut you just to told my pleasure from your warm innards."

"You would kill me, then?" she said.

"Of course. There is no value in preserving beauty. Precious things are only so because they are brief. A flower that lasts forever is no lovelier than a stone. You are beautiful Art3mis, so I would do you the honor of destroying you. So that you would be beautiful forever. Because that is my love for you."

"You do not love me," Art3mis said, "You speak only of my body"

"Are you so foolish to think you are anything but? You are but flesh. Not soul, not mind, only body. Just like the rest of us."

It was at this affirmation that I felt her first climax.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2018 19:57

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

In the same way it was Cline's dream for Spielberg to make the movie, I hope to have a movie of my version done by Pier Paolo Pasolini

# ¿ Apr 11, 2018 19:59

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

Excellent.

Caligula: Divine Carnage is giving me ideas about the kind of spectacles you might see in the fix fic. It's a fascinating book. Ancient Romans would mark the end of a gladiatorial battles by collectively ejaculating onto the arena. That would fit right in into this orificecracy.

My goal is to slowly draw the narrative focus away from the personal physical pleasure he feels and isntead towards the pleasure he takes from his sense of dominance as he progresses further in the quest. I hope for the book to lose all pretense of eroticism by two-thirds of the way through, as each act of sexual gratification becomes more wholly dispassionate. If the reader is not numbed to all levels of titillation by the end, then I will have considered the project and intellectual and artistic failure

Mel Mudkiper fucked around with this message at 20:14 on Apr 11, 2018

# ¿ Apr 11, 2018 20:11

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

I feel like having the second challenge be performing the lead role in Salo would be too on the nose. Perhaps he has to participate in a Giallo film?

# ¿ Apr 11, 2018 20:17

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

It already feels like you guys are going the way of all goon projects in that you all want to contribute ideas but none of you seem to be willing to actually do the work

I mean hell my psuedo-intellectual psycho-sexual parody has more progress than this entire thread

complain all you want about people taking the piss out of the project but go have a project already

# ¿ Apr 11, 2018 20:44

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

chitoryu12 posted:

It's been like one day since we started actually working on the prose.

And in that one day you have spent more time arguing how to insert footnotes into a theoretical first chapter than you put into having a first chapter

# ¿ Apr 11, 2018 20:50

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

I apologize for the delay in responding to the reports made about this thread, it took a while to process things.

I find it a little insincere that a thread dedicated to mocking and picking apart a terrible book suddenly gets upset when people mock their terrible book

What protects them against people pointing out how bad the idea is when the original inspiration for the project was pointing out bad an idea was?

# ¿ Apr 11, 2018 23:32

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

the problem is there's basically no point to that discussion, it just turns the thread into a slapfight.

1st: "let's do project!"

2nd " ur dumb, also project is dumb"

1st: "your opinion is noted and will be ignored, moving on to the project. . . "

2nd: "NO PAY ATTENTION TO ME YOUR PROJECT IS BAD, I DEMAND YOU FEEL BAD"

When it comes to this kind of slapfight I'm going to err on the side of people who are trying to be constructive and to create something.

Also note that the specific posts I've dinged people for have been, specifically, low-effort empty stupid slander badposts that didn't even make semantic sense. The ONANSIS stuff was at least mildly amusing, but "how about not writing fanfiction" is just empty threadshitting to no purpose, and claiming that the writing of fanfiction is somehow "morally bankrupt" is taking internet self-righteousness to a ludicrous degree.

A. gently caress you, ONANSIS was more than mildly amusing and is, currently, the only actual written content in the thread. The ONANSIS is art. :colbert:

B. I don't think he was calling all fan-fiction morally bankrupt as much as the fact a bunch of people were hating a book so much they take it upon themselves to improve it in their own eyes as being morally bankrupt. I would not go so far as to say that, but its certainly a ugly sort of vanity to have such a project.

C. BotL is a pompous rear end in a top hat but his criticisms were pretty meaningful. Deciding the gender of a character by vote while still having no clear vision of tone or prose IS putting the cart before the horse. If you want to say he's an rear end in a top hat, that's fair. However, his points were not empty. That's half the reason we found them amusing. He had a POINT that people refused to engage with.

D. Creative Convention is for creating writing, Book Barn is for talking about writing. Technically, BotL was more on topic than they are :colbert:

EDIT: Missed your edit, I have said my piece. Posts in this thread from here on out will be exclusively related to further exploration of the ONANSIS

# ¿ Apr 12, 2018 00:05

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Personally, I petition we leave the thread alone for a bit, mostly because I want to see if/what they produce

However, one question

Samizdata posted:

Oh, really? Tell me more, oh wise sage.

(https://www.google.com/search?q=narrative+fiction&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-1)

Straight up, what is your working definition of Narrative Fiction and why doesn't Joyce count

# ¿ Apr 12, 2018 12:44

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Write the book smash mouth

# ¿ Apr 12, 2018 13:30

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

chitoryu12 posted:

Joyce did stream of consciousness writing in more than one work, neither of which I particularly enjoyed trying to read.

I did send his letters to my friends though.

wait you've enjoyed reading Larry Correia so far but not James Joyce

# ¿ Apr 12, 2018 14:10

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

sebmojo posted:

Hi welcome to your new forum let's make this nerd thing the best nerd thing

thank you, I look forward to feedback and new ideas to explore in the ONANSIS universe

# ¿ Apr 12, 2018 14:30

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

chitoryu12 posted:

Something that just came up in the book thread made me think about the extra life Wade gets.

What's a better way to have him get something so powerful that doesn't involve just playing a hard video game?

he should have to finally write the book he has been talking about for a week

# ¿ Apr 13, 2018 14:35

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

chitoryu12 posted:

My two points on that:

1. Mass market writing isn't inherently bad, merely a good vessel for bad books. Describing a book as cozy and entertaining is still admitting that it's entertaining, even if you're upset that it didn't do something deeply artistic and unusual. Demanding that all fiction be written in the most maximally artistic ways is not unlike denouncing that any artwork except surrealism or cubism is just mass market trash, and that's how you get hipsters.

I feel like its fundamentally depressing for a writer to believe their book is of so little value to not be worth writing well. The idea of a writer setting out to create a product that doesn't provide anything other tha base and indistinct entertainment is painfully capitalist.

I would also argue that the idea of good writing and experimental writing are not the same. Not every good writer writes like Faulkner or Joyce. Hemingway is the greatest English prose stylist in history and one would be hard pressed to call his craft experimental or avant garde.

# ¿ Apr 18, 2018 14:44

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

chitoryu12 posted:

A book doesn't stop being an artistic effort simply because it's easy to read and understand, any more than a book starts being good art when the prose gets more purple or the author starts making a failed effort to imitate Hemingway or Steinbeck. The book remains written as a narrative in Wade Watts' head, and thus should be written in a way that a socially awkward teenage nerd would describe his situation. The difference is that we're actually making him a character with feelings, rather than a walking list of pop culture references.

The problem with mass market prose is not that its "easy to read and understand"

The problem is that it is inelegant and indistinct

# ¿ Apr 18, 2018 15:28

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Mrenda posted:

There's often a pride expressed in reading. "I looked around the hospital waiting room and everyone was on their phone! Not ONE person, [apart from me is implied,] reading a book!" I'm fine with reading being escapist. I'm fine with trash fiction. There are plenty of people who work hard all day long, they're tired, stressed, and their night with a book is a relief. These people might work physically active jobs, thought intensive jobs, they might be standing in one spot giving a pre-written response to the same question from a series of hundreds of people. A book that helps them switch off is fine by me. The difference is people somehow put that reading above watching a procedural crime show. They see that as somehow more worthy than watching a crime lab technician solve a murder.

Language and prose might be one way to value a story (keeping in mind, as you pointed out, the difference between Hemmingway, and Joyce and Faulkner.) The ideas present might be another. The exploration of the human condition, loss, grief, joy, hate, anger. The exploration of human interaction. All of this can have value for making greater (humanity.) But there still needs to be a line drawn between books which set out to achieve this, and books that are written for other purposes. Not all reading has the same goal, and not all writing is a grand achievement of human creativity, thought or ambition. The idea that books are a good thing, that reading is a valuable thing, no matter what, is having a horrific effect its environment.

I don't think the emphasis on style and prose is because of some deeper belief that books are sacred and magical. For me, its just the simple belief that things should be done well if you are going to do them. Its why Raymond Chandler is better celebrated than Michael Connelly. It's not just books. Take Steven Spielberg. The dude has worked exclusively in schlock for his entire career, but one of his defining features is that he does schlock WELL. He is a master of the craft of filmmaking, and its that mastery which elevates his films from the generic mass his stories arrive from.

Even popcorn style turn your mind off entertainment deserves to have a level of "craft" applied to it.

# ¿ Apr 18, 2018 15:46

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

chitoryu12 posted:

Would it work better for you guys if I tweaked the remainder of the chapter for a day or two and then posted the rest so we can move on to Chapter 2, or would it be best for me to post the draft I've got right now to see how it's working?

If you want the project to be truly collaborative you should give the thread as much raw material to work with as possible. If you are fixing it up behind the scenes and then showing it off, you are essentially taking ownership of the project.

# ¿ Apr 18, 2018 15:54

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Clipperton posted:

5 hours left

And then the hero returns

# ¿ Apr 18, 2018 16:01

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Mrenda posted:

For me that ends up in a separation of what the aim of fiction, film, TV, etc. is. You may want the best as a reader. A writer may want the best from their stories. Yet there needs to be a recognition that not everything is "art" and not everyone wants that. Once you recognise it's easier to focus on your own enjoyment and dismiss other matters. Even if it's to bathe in your dismay at the world (and write about it on highly topical and relevant internet discussion pages.)

(A common refrain in a professional rugby team I follow is, "Have you no pride?" Calling on each other to work their hardest in recognition they can do more. For some people their pride, their achievement and goal, is writing a story people fully switch off with, for others it's changing the direction of modern literature.)

I get this mentality, but it is a wholly capitalist and consumerist mentality. It suggests books are products and readers are consumers and the book must act transactionally in its relationship with the reader.

# ¿ Apr 18, 2018 16:03

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

chitoryu12 posted:

It was established in the OP that I've still got the final say on the content to make sure that it doesn't bog down on one chapter for months or end up with people trying to shovel in weird or terrible stuff, but I was hoping that I'd get some contributions from people on feeling out the prose or including something they thought would be important to cover. It looks like I ended up being the only one to post anything, though.

thats hardly fair

I posted two chapters

# ¿ Apr 18, 2018 16:06

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Mrenda posted:

There's a lot of writing for an audience. Even publishers asking prospective authors, "What's your market? Who did have in mind when you wrote this?" I quite like having my fancies indulged, rarely as it happens, but that seems to be what many people expect from their "entertainment."

Yes, a capitalist society produces capitalist writers who produce capitalist fiction. Thats my point. The idea that idea that one doesn't need to concern oneself with craft because the book is meant to be a product to non-discerning audience is toxic and restrictive.

# ¿ Apr 18, 2018 16:15

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

chitoryu12 posted:

3. It also opens the door to creepy stuff. When I first proposed the idea, it took like 3 posts for someone to earnestly bring up virtual snuff, rape, and terrorist training in OASIS. Goons are gonna goon, and I wasn�t comfortable with letting contributions go without review.

You are bothered by the fact that a book ostensibly about a hyper-developed form of the internet would have the same problems as the internet?

# ¿ Apr 18, 2018 16:34

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Its a good point

A collaborative work is an exercise in writing more than it could ever be something intended to be read

If you just want a better version of RPO, write it yourself.

# ¿ Apr 18, 2018 16:42

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Sham bam bamina! posted:

The way it is right now - and I know that you aren't really thinking this way - is actually more like an idea guy getting some vague thoughts about a totally awesome game into his head and then asking around developer forums for a team of programmers who can help him out by doing The Work.

AKA every goon project ever

Mrenda posted:

It's impossible to escape the control of a system, but at least a lot of the journals I read are self-funded, not-for-profits, and at most have some state arts body funding. Even then the editorial line often falls along stories that conform to their thought, and even confirm it. This might only be confirmation for your point, and you might see it as further validation, but small journals that in theory answer to no-one aren't coming up with anything truly challenging. Some times it's adjacent to challenge, which is probably the best I can hope for from a small magazine and myself, but a lot of what I've read recently falls into the comfortable area of reading.

read babyfucker

# ¿ Apr 18, 2018 16:48

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

chitoryu12 posted:

I'm honestly fine with writing the whole thing myself if that's what it ends up being. But a lot of people came up with a lot of contributions during the initial discussion in the Let's Read thread, and there was serious interest in a collaborative effort of some. All of the issues with allowing unbridled contribution and having people write chapters by themselves were addressed back then. If there's still interest among people in contributing prose, I'd like to keep up with the original plan. I'll still write it myself if nobody else wants to, since I said I was going to do this and I don't plan on giving up on the first step.

I tried to warn you about it back in that thread, but goons are notoriously "idea" guys. You will get 20 people what something should or could be like but 0 people willing to actually do it.

# ¿ Apr 18, 2018 18:00

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

feedmyleg posted:

I'm just going to bow out with contributing my thoughts, then, because to me those aren't the words of someone who is willing to collaborate or listen to outside ideas. You want to do it your way on your terms, which is fine, it's your project. But don't try to position it as some sort of group collaboration.

You are still welcome to contribute to the ONANSIS project.

We are open to anything... and we mean anything

# ¿ Apr 18, 2018 18:22

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

I gotta admit I am not feeling that first line.

Here's a pitch. Start the novel in OASIS. Its a novel about VR, why start it in the real world? Hell, I would go so far as to start it in medias res.

You can also make the first line reference to Neuromancer more than a reference and actually make it play the same role as it did in the source text.

"The sky over the Tomb was the color of neon"

# ¿ Apr 18, 2018 21:18

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

BravestOfTheLamps posted:

Why would it be important that the protagonist doesn't remember what colour the sky was?

Yeah, its something no one would ever think about.

The only way saying "I dont remember the color of the sky" is if your protagonist was explicitly referencing Neuromancer in his own mind. And in that case, play it up a little.

Also, as much as I am loathe to praise Cline, your version is missing a certain level of enthusiasm the original had. Your protagonist feels alienated from the world he inhabits.

# ¿ Apr 18, 2018 21:31

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

chitoryu12 posted:

While it's a reference to Neuromancer (in a way that's more subtle than how Cline did his, which were to directly state exactly which references were from which fiction), it also serves as the first step in showing Wade's isolation. Feeling alienated is kinda the goal I'm going for.

With the character Wade has in this version, he's an outsider to a greater degree than the original (where he's supposed to be friendless but still has snappy comebacks for the school bullies and instantly takes to becoming a celebrity). He has no friends in real life, a lovely home life, and no online friends except for Aech (who's a hardcore egg hunter that Wade still has trouble understanding). His social anxiety keeps him from interacting with pretty much anyone except for brief moments when necessary, leading to a sense of isolation and alienation from the rest of the world until the High Five give him a true bonding experience.

Well yeah but that just means you have a novel that isnt really any better but is certainly less fun. What improves a book about a dude having a vr 80s adventure if he is sullen and morose the whole time?

# ¿ Apr 18, 2018 21:44

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

nine-gear crow posted:

Post your opening chapter.

Botl and I are co-authors of the ONANSIS project.

# ¿ Apr 18, 2018 22:01

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

chitoryu12 posted:

Don't take this the wrong way, but it sounds like your criticism is based on judging the entire novel on the beginning of the book before any character development and assuming that nothing will change. Read the outline and character summaries again. The whole point is that he gradually comes out of his shell, finds romance (accidentally loving it up but managing to figure his poo poo out and recover by the end), finds an appreciation for the outside world by actually leaving his apartment of his own accord to try and conquer his social anxiety, and recognizes how his personal demons and flaws match Halliday despite his criticism of the dead man and works to conquer them to avoid becoming the same figure upon winning control of OASIS.

I am reading it as a reader. Anyone who reads this is not going to have pre existing knowledge of your intentions and story outline. As it stands, nothing catches me as a reader from this introduction, I dont feel a real hook.

# ¿ Apr 18, 2018 22:11

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

nine-gear crow posted:

Please don't co-ordinate with your alt so openly. It's unbecoming.

What are you even mod of anyways, I only see you in threads after BotL posts

# ¿ Apr 18, 2018 22:17

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

chitoryu12 posted:

Can you give some examples of openings that would personally hook you into this story? Or how you'd rewrite some of the things I have in there?

As I said, open in medias res. Create a universe that is slowly revealed, instead of just tossing out the hook of the world immediately. Imagine your reader hasn't even read the back cover. They are starting from perfect zero in your world. Guide them into the setting, use the character to slowly open them up to the scope and vision of the world of the OASIS.

Think about the line you are referencing. "The sky above the skyport..." line is really good because it does exactly this. Your reader is at a zero point, they are given two pieces of information.

1. It is the future
2. Technology is a form of aesthetic

The rest of the opening chapter continues to guide the reader into the ideas of the world gradually.

Imagine if Neuromancer opened with "The sky was blue like a tv. Anyways I am a hacker in this thing called cyberspace with is a big digital world. I enter it and steal information for crime lords. I do it with a chip in my brain" No one would keep reading.

As for writing examples myself? I am not gonna do that. You already said you are going to have final say on what goes into the "book", and I am not gonna waste my time writing stuff that is just gonna be thrown out at your whim. You posted in the creative writing subforum looking for feedback. I am giving you feedback.

Mel Mudkiper fucked around with this message at 22:28 on Apr 18, 2018

# ¿ Apr 18, 2018 22:25

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 00:06

Mel Mudkiper: Jan 19, 2012; At this point, Mudman abruptly ends the conversation. He usually insists on the last word.

Here, I will be nice and give you a real quick paragraph example of how it could open

The sky above the tomb was the color of neon, ever-changing and never the same shade twice. The grinning maw of the face carved into the black stone mountain was either welcoming me, or mocking my arrogance in coming. I do not know how many people stepped through those ebony fangs into the dungeon below, but I know that no one had ever returned from it. If they had, the quest would already be over, the prize already won. Standing here, before the first of Anorak's challenges, I was faced with two possibilities. Either I, somehow, had found the missing piece of a puzzle that had gone unsolved for years, or, more likely, I was simply next in the long line of victims who never made it a step further. Of course, I was not afraid of dying here. I couldn't die here after all. I was afraid of something worse. Game over. Which meant being forever disconnected from the OASIS.

# ¿ Apr 18, 2018 23:00

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Creative Convention > "Are we qualified for this?" - Fixing Ready Player One

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