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Anime Jason 
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Member Since: Sun Sep 12, 2004
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In Reply To
Visionary

Subj: Uh-oh...
Posted: Sun Sep 09, 2007 at 10:34:30 pm EDT (Viewed 377 times)
Reply Subj: My opinion...
Posted: Sun Sep 09, 2007 at 09:22:48 pm EDT



> Being continuity issues, however, this isn't as hard to overcome. It simply means that there is a need for a stronger explanation behind the actions, and is something that could have easily been incorporated into part 3 if you wanted the story to stand within continuity more firmly.

Part of the problem is that I waited too long to solve that problem.  When someone watches a multi-part movie or reads a multi-part book, and they don't like how it's going, they usually don't stick around till the last part.  I think what happened so far turned off the audience, and it's almost certainly at the point where quite a few people won't care what Part 3 says anymore.

 
> As for how Akiko was portrayed, I tend to agree that she didn't seem like the dangerously intelligent leader of a criminal underworld. The feedback you have gotten in this regard seems to have rattled you the most, making you question whether you should continue to write with other people's characters. Certainly you should. If you're concerned about how you treat other characters, then the simplest rule to follow is to treat guest stars like guests... As their "host", you should try to make them come off as well as possible. The easiest way to do this is to reinforce their established "role" in the Parodyverse, and to have the character provide significant aid to your own. If the guest star is a villain, then the point should be to reinforce the threat that this character poses.

She would have come off well after Part 3, and it would have left some interesting questions about who exactly was in charge of the situation.  The problem was, the list of complaints had grown to the point where I would have also had to re-write Part 1 and 2.  

Not just re-write, but re-plot and basically make it a whole completely different story.  Because things were so far gone, it would have been silly for me to try and substitute characters at the last minute, or re-do only certain scenes so the rest makes no sense.  I know a few people said "All you have to do is correct this", but there are so many corrections the story wouldn't be readable anymore.

I still have a point I'd like to get across story-wise but I have no idea how to do it anymore.  Part of the problem is that my own cast isn't large enough or balanced enough for them to provide that kind of motivation to each other.  And sadly the point is to damage Chiaki's relationship with the organized crime families, so it can't be a gentle interaction like the rest.  In other words it can't possibly work right now.


> While these guidelines may at first seem somewhat limiting, I'd say they're really not too terrible... Especially if you look at the sheer amount of lasting change Vizh and my cast have gone through in stories that included other people's characters.

It's my own fault.  I tried to split up the story to increase anticipation and so I can start posting it before I finished it completely.  Unfortunately, this is the kind of story that can't be posted in sections because it made everyone angry.  Also unfortunately, it's too late to fix it now and the whole concept is ruined.  Even if I change things in the story around it's not going to be readable by anyone who saw the one I pulled.

As much as I tried to avoid it, I'll just have to chalk it up as a huge failure and scrap it.


> I can understand if the feedback you've gotten on this one has killed off your enthusiasm for finishing it, although I think that's a shame. I definitely, however, think you shouldn't give up on writing in shared continuity or in mixing your cast with others. I also encourage you to collaborate outright with your fellow writers more... It's very rewarding, and does not lessen your co-plotter's enthusiasm to read the final result when the story is complete and posted. Some of my favorite Untold Tales plots involved some level of participation on my part beforehand.

It hasn't killed off my enthusiasm for finishing it.  It's impossible to finish without a complete re-plot and re-write.  That's what I'm reluctant to do, because a) I can't really think of how to do it now, and b) if I do manage it, it'll look like a rehash of something that was already posted, which sucks.

As for collaboration, that's tricky in this case - very tricky, because so many have a stake in Akiko that I'd essentially be sending the entire story to everyone who's going to read the story before I post it.  Then nobody will need to read it once it's on the board.  Also because of the scope of Akiko's participation vs the number of people's input it needs it's likely I'd have to re-write it several times, and then it may be so far out of date it wouldn't be worth posting anymore.

Otherwise on the topic of collaboration, I seem to have a problem with really bad timing.  Every time I've tried to ask poster-Hatman something, he'd leave town for weeks.  It happened once with killer shrike, and at least twice with Ian.  Then I usually give up waiting for a reply and finish writing anyway.  It paid off so far, so I stuck with that model.

It's not that I don't like collaboration, it's that I'm not good at it.  My timing is terrible, my writing schedule is too strict - I usually don't like to spend 2 or 3 months writing something because I'm waiting for replies.






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