Talk:PAW Collab

Sue

Not sure on when this story is supposed to be set but looking at the dates given in the 'little things' I assumed it was at least 2038.

I am aiming with this character to show a bit of technology from the near future to contrast with the anti technological bias in the blind pig storys. Today prosthesis are about roughly 1/6th as strong as normal human limbs but research into stuff like [Dielectric elastomers] points towards possible fully functional prosthetic limbs in the forseeable future, even DARPA has doled out funding with the mission of developing a prosthetic arm as functionally capable as a human arm by 2009.

--Devin 06:13, 2 October 2007 (EDT)

Good idea there, Devin. This story is one of the "indeterminites" - the scene-setting itself should be around 2038, but the vignettes themselves are going to fit in the period from the onset of "blowtorch fever" and TFOR all the way through to the stories "present". I think we might have to specify the time period every time we shift to another vignette. — ShadowWolf 14:09, 2 October 2007 (EDT)

Page Purpose?

I can't make head nor tail of this page. I think the story needs to be broken off onto its own page, with links to character backgrounds instead. What I see is that it's somehow embedded into the middle of the page. And that makes me go huh? --Buck 22:18, 5 October 2007 (EDT)

The page isn't really "public", per-se. Sure, we're letting people see the story as it evolves, but at the moment we've got it formatted in the way that worked the best for us when we started the collaboration. But I'll change the page about and move the story so it's the first thing visible. — ShadowWolf 22:30, 5 October 2007 (EDT)

Getting a 'Complete' story out of this

Howdy. This here is just a little thought on how much more writing we need to get this story done and presentable.

Now we have beginnings for all the characters atm, so thats good. Now for a bare bones example lets say we also need a middle and an end. If everyone writes two more snippets of size similar to what they already have this will if you look at the amount already written be a tremendous boon to the word count.

The goal should be that your middle snippet describe something towards the middle of the night. Bits of the game, conversation, getting something from goordy, intellectual monologues(I know how much you guys love these;) ).

And the last snippet describes something towards the end of the night. People leaving, yourself leaving, an oath to stay up all night and drink as much as possible I don't know you figure it out.

But this will at the very least give us a story which is what we are aiming for. We can add snippets of cool ideas on after word or during but we should at least have a story with a beginning a middle and an end. Otherwise if we don't keep this in mind we risk being stuck on what to do with this story a month or two down the road, which i will not let happen.

The advantage of this? Everyone only has to write a couple more segments of whatever size they can manage and this puppy will have enough meat to be considered done!

Order could be a problem but my advice is to just not worry so much about it and write what you can. If you can write something in response to something someone else wrote go for it! If not, just write as though its the middle or the end of the evening and if its the end keep in mind whether or not people are still there is all. Thats it.

At this point, it's clear that the story is not progressing well. Why? I think it's because we don't really have a story yet. We have an overall goal, yes -- "let's introduce readers to the PAW setting" -- but without a story, we might as well be writing a travelogue/documentary.

I have a suggestion for the overall plot: This story is about Mr. Peaches' ferretgirl. Specifically, it's the tale of how she comes to terms with her new body. The other characters are pretty much accustomed to being TFORs, and we can use their backstories to both (a) give readers info on the setting, and (b) help the ferretgirl get used to what she is. Yes? No? Cubist 02:54, 29 January 2009 (EST)

Ideas

I've been thinking of the editing we're going to have to do after we finish writing this and there aren't many solutions to making the story easier to follow. The problem it has, currently, is that the shifts in perspective are rather jarring and the tense and voice change for each part.

There are an innumerable number of ways to do the edit, but there are only two that would solve the above problem:

1. pick a viewpoint character and rewrite all the parts so that character is telling the story
2. use third-person omniscient
3. Select a standard tense and voice, then expand and condense the different parts so they are longer and have the events overlap, told from the different characters

The first option would involve a lot of work by all involved people and selecting who to have as the character narrating the story is always a chore. Changing the viewpoint to third-person omniscient would seem to be the easiest, but it would remove a lot of the unique voice of the different authors involved. And the third choice isn't much different from the first in the amount of work required, but it is a much more commonly seen format and is generally used for round-robin type stories. If anything, the third choice will preserve the unique voices and also provide a platform for the different authors to extend their characterization a lot. — ShadowWolf 19:53, 14 October 2007 (EDT)

Speaking as a guy who once wrote a short story with 11 different first-person viewpoints, I don't see what's so horrible about having multiple different perspective-shifts. As long as you clearly identify the 'breakpoints', like we're doing right now, where's the problem? Cubist 05:15, 15 October 2007 (EDT)

I think I have to agree with Cubist on this. Option 1 would require cutting out massive portions of other peoples snippets(just look at dash's or sue's introduction for instance.) and the other two options would be very labour intensive and may not come across the way they were originally written afterwards.

Although I cant think of to many examples of published stuff I have read with this many different writers working on a single story like this all doing their own different thing I have seen this happen multiple times on the TSA List itself and considering that not a whole lot of the writers on the list are being paid for anything they write it is almost always an easy thing to forgive.

--Devin 15:50, 15 October 2007 (EDT)

Bard is the one who started the whole thing. I kinda agree with it, which is why I like the third option the most – it gives us a way to preserve everything that exists and will also lessen the jarring nature of the currently existing parts. Of course, we could always edit the smaller sections together into single, coherent wholes :) — ShadowWolf 17:18, 15 October 2007 (EDT)

1.21

Good couple pieces by felix and peaches here, I really liked how you handled rosa's sense of dispair peaches! I got an idea for sue for after rosa leaves the washroom just before anyone starts on a follow up to this newest one of rosa's and if not up tonight its because I fell asleep at the computer and it should be up tomorrow night at the latest.

--Devin 04:23, 2 January 2008 (EST)

I'd like to call the one after yours, Devin. I've got some good ideas as well. Arrow Quivershaft 05:23, 2 January 2008 (EST)

Go ahead with it :) I've got a part in the works for Scott that fits between the latest Dash and Rosa parts — ShadowWolf 15:38, 2 January 2008 (EST)