Forum Home Lusternia.com Lore Wiki Vote! Forum Rules VOTE ON TMS!
Home› Life in Lusternia› Common Grounds

A Guide to Making Happy Librarians

PortiusPortius Likes big books, cannot lie
in Common Grounds
So, I like culture in Lusternia and I want to make it easier for people with an interest to get into it. I'm guessing that it's kind of like combat, where it's very easy to want to get involved but to be confused about how to get started. Sometimes it can be hard to discuss these things in character, so I put together this little guide to help with that, although it doesn't really touch on anything except the library. You should keep in mind that a lot of these things are sort of subjective, and some of them might not apply to everyone, especially when I start talking aesthetics. I encourage people who have done this sort of thing to add their thoughts onto this, since as one person I probably don't have the full perspective on what stops people from getting started with writing.

FIRST, A FEW TECHNICAL THINGS

Please write your book in Notepad or some similar program, and not in Word or Open Office. If you just copy and paste from a word processor, the formatting comes out terribly and the editor has to fix it manually. I think every first time author I've seen, myself included, has had that problem. Stick to Notepad and life is easier for everyone.

Speaking of editors, you have to set them manually. Only you can write in your book unless you give editorial permission to someone. Make sure you do before you send the book in to be published. I can't speak for other librarians, but I look every book over before it gets published and it's easier if I can just fix things and publish directly without having to send it back to you with either a list of corrections or a request to be made an editor.

WHAT TO WRITE ABOUT

One of the big stumbling blocks that I see people talking about is that they don't know what to write. That's a fair problem, but it's one that can be solved. Pretty much everything that a person writes can be broken down into genres and sets of common parts. To get started, pick a genre that you like. Romances are a common choice, but you could just as easily write a mystery, an adventure, a tragedy, a research paper, or any number of other things. Once choose one, you should work out the general path of the plot and the sorts of characters you'll be using. Think about the genre you picked. Odds are, there are common archetypes in them that form the basis of characters. Start by picking a few of those, and then fill in details. Start broad and work your way down into the little things.

I'll break it down with an adventure as the example, because I like adventures. There are all sorts of adventure plots to choose from. I could go with some sort of hero looking for some object or person, with obstacles along the way. A military adventure is an option, too, or maybe the story of somebody trying to get somewhere. I'll go with the first one. That tells me that I need a hero, obstacles, and a goal. I probably want a supporting cast in there, too. Starting with the hero, there's plenty of archetypes. I could go with a knightly sort of fellow, or a trickster of some kind, or the kind of adventurous fellow who goes out on quests for the sake of the adventure itself, or countless others. You get the idea. I'll go with the first one again. I feel like giving him a companion to serve as a counterpoint, and since I'm presumably writing for Hallifax I'll make it a bureaucrat who was sent along to keep an eye on the proceedings. It could've been a squire, or a lover, or another knight, if I didn't want to go with the bureaucrat, but I feel like this shouldn't be an entirely serious story so I'm going for something that has comedy potential. Let's pick the goal next. The classic pick is some sort of damsel in distress or an item of epic power, but I'm not really feeling that. I've already decided this is going to be on the silly side, so let's go for something that seems a little too small to be the object of a knightly quest. Since this is for Hallifax, let's go with a quest of scientific discovery. We'll say that he's after a rare species of mushroom, because I think that mushrooms are cool. Now for obstacles. There should be a fight, because I'm going with a knightly type hero (Probably a Sentinel, but a field researcher has potential too). It should be over something silly though, since this is comedic. We don't have to settle on the circumstances just yet. That's a detail that we can fill in later. Let's pick a second obstacle while we're at it. If this is a field research type thing, it's probably in the wilderness and that has all sorts of hazards. Let's say it's in a swamp, and our plucky hero runs gets lost in an area full of quicksand. I could add in more obstacles if I wanted, but I feel like this is a good length for the story so let's stop here.

That gives us the basis for a story. A noble field researcher and an overseeing bureaucrat go off to hunt down a rare mushroom for research purposes, and along the way they get lost in a dangerous swamp and dragged into a fight. Or maybe one happens on the way to the mushroom and one happens on the way back. From there, I pick names and fill in details for all of those things.

You may have noticed that a lot of those choices seem pretty arbitrary. That's because they are. You can look at all your options and pick the ones that you like the most, or that seem best for the sort of story you want to tell, or even purely at random if you want. This is a starting point, and you're probably going to tweak things as you go.

HOW TO WRITE

There's a lot of different ways to go about writing things. A full guide to it is really beyond the scope of this post, so I'm just going to give you a few things to think about and advise you to look elsewhere if you want something really thorough.

The first thing is length. Most of the things that most people write for Lusternia are very short. That isn't to say that no Lusternia novels have been written, but most of the time you're only going to be shooting for a couple thousand words. That isn't very much. A story that short should be based around a few key events, not some grand plot with countless episodes. If you want to do that, that's great, but understand that it's probably a much bigger project than you're expecting and it's certainly much larger than what most people write here.

That said, don't pay too much attention the word count. If you're trying to hit a certain number of words, it can be very easy to draw out your writing and put in a lot of words that you don't need just so you can hit your goal. Your writing will suffer if you do that.

Let's go into word choice next. This is probably going to be the most controversial thing I write, and there's a lot of wiggle room here. I'm basing this on what I like to read, and some people will disagree with that. That's ok, this is a subjective thing. That said, I think these are some good general rules.

There's a common idea that an obscure word or a long word is better than a common word or a short word. This is a bad idea. Never go to a thesaurus to look for a synonym just because you want to use a weirder word. The point of writing is to communicate ideas, and odds are the first word you go to to express an idea is the best one. Not always, of course, but that's a thing to think about when you're editing, which I'll get into later. If you pick a word that's too obscure, there's a chance people won't know what it means, and then you're not communicating any idea at all. Sometimes that can be good, if you're trying to set a certain tone or be a little bit on the obscure side, but generally it's not.

That's not the only thing to think about when you're picking your words, though. Your word choice sets the general tone of the story. Different types of words, and different grammatical structures all have different implications, and you should think about those when you right. The best way to get a grasp on this is to read stories and think about the words and structure the authors used, and which of those are consistent across stories in that style or genre.

Example time. Let's say I want to write something that sounds epic, with a hint of ancientness to it. Think Greek myth, or even the Bible. There's some common elements to these that are rare in other styles that I should look into using. Passive verbs are a big one, since they're rare in English but common in Latin and Greek, translations of which are a common source for this style. Participles are good, too, for the same reason. Bonus point for passive participles. Long sentences are another thing to use for this. You can't overdo these, of course, or your writing will sound very odd. Checking for that is another thing to do when you edit.


EDITING

This is really important. It's probably the most important part of writing, in fact. It's certainly the difference between writing something mediocre and something good.

First and foremost, you aren't just looking for typos. You should keep an eye out for them, but they're the least important thing. You should be looking at content here. What sounds strange when you read it, and what isn't clear? Are there things that don't carry the tone you want them to carry?

This can be a hard thing for people to look at in their own work. There's two big solutions for this, and you should use both of them. The first is to wait a while between writing and editing. You should wait however long it takes for you to forget what you meant when you wrote your story. If you remember what you meant, you're liable to think of that rather than what you actually wrote when you look things over. Just let it sit for a week or two before you edit. It'll help, I promise.

The second thing is to have someone else edit it and give commentary. This is important because it can be very hard to be honest to yourself about flaws in a thing you made, either because you don't want to see them or because you see problems that aren't really there, depending on your temperament. Once you have someone look things over, you have to listen to them and really think about what they say. This can be hard to do, but it will improve your writing. Make sure you pick an editor who can be honest with you, too, otherwise it won't do any good.

MOTIVATION

Another big thing I hear people saying is that they want to write, but they can't motivate themselves to do it. This is a hard one to fix, because the solution is different for everybody. Some people find that letting other people know that they're working on something helps motivate them to finish. Other people might decide it's a good way to pick up some extra credits, or that it's fun. You really have to experiment until you find what stops you from procrastinating and getting started, since it's different for each person. It can be something that strikes you as being weird, and that's ok if that's what works. For example, everything I write in Lusternia is just writing practice in a foreign language that I translate back into English. That's what works for me, and I doubt it will work for you, although I do recommend it if you want to learn another language. Just try things and see what happens. Getting started is usually the hardest part. After that, things get easier.

ONE LAST NOTE

Practice makes everything better. Nothing you make will be perfect, but each thing you write will be better than the last. I won't say that practice is the only way to improve, because it isn't, but it's a big one. It doesn't matter if what you write has problems. You can fix them in editing. There will still be some, but everything has problems. Don't avoid writing for Lusternia just because you're worried that you might write something bad, if you want to get into this. Odds are it will be better than you expect, especially if you edit well. And if it really is a bad story, well, then the next one can only be an improvement, and that's something worth working towards.
Any sufficiently advanced pun is indistinguishable from comedy.

Comments

  • DaraiusDaraius Shevat The juror's taco spot
    edited April 2014
    Wonderful, wonderful information. Thank you both.  >:D<

    Speaking of things that are kind of tough to talk about in-character... @Portius, are the characters and details in your biographies pulled out of thin air, and are they considered canon when you publish them?
    I used to make cakes.

    Estarra the Eternal says, "Give Shevat the floor please."
  • XenthosXenthos Shadow Lord
    Portius said:

    Actually, @Estarra and/or @Isune and @toomanyadmintotagindividually, is there a ruling on this in general? Are scholarly things canon if they get published, if they get prestige, or never?
    Scholarly things become canon not by being published, but instead by being submitted for prestige and being accepted as canon in the prestige comments (regardless of whether or not it wins).  Some scholarly winners can get good points, but the comments may note objections to it being actually fact, whereas others they will accept it as such.
    image
  • KalnidKalnid
    Regarding weight: I thought it was default by word count until it won prestige, which gave it +100.
  • PortiusPortius Likes big books, cannot lie
    I'm going to be adding new sections onto this as the mood strikes me and as I get asked questions, so if any of you want me to go into anything in particular, ask away. Now, new section time!

    POETRY AND YOU

    Poetry is cool. It's also hard to write. Just like anything else, a big part of improving your poetry is practice and editing, and all the previous points about those stands. That said, there's a few things that are poetry specific.

    The big thing is form. This cover meter, rhyme, number of lines, and all those other good things. Every type of poem is just a combination of these. Pick them before you start out, and stick to them as best you can. Here's a secret, though. Meter, rhyme and all those other aspects aren't goals. They're tools. Simply following a set of rules to the letter won't make a good poem. Instead, think about what you want to say and use the ones that are appropriate to that. However, once you decide on your form you really do want to keep to it. Once a pattern is established, breaking away from it for a line or two will stand out to the reader as something strange. Sometimes you want that effect, but most of the time you don't. It's generally way better never to have a pattern than to only have one for most of a poem.

    Symbolism is the same way. It's a tool. Writing symbols into a poem is not the goal. It's just a thing that you can use to make your poem better. If you slip some in, don't be too obscure about it. They'll just go over the reader's head and make your poem sound strange. Symbolism is like any other kind of implication. The goal is to make the reader think something without every saying it outright.

    Meter deserves its own section here. It's a complicated topic, and I can't really do it full justice here, so if you want it in detail you'll have to look elsewhere. You can do a lot with to set tone. An extremely generalized and simplified version is that a choppy meter with lots of short sounds is good for action scenes, and that the reverse is also true. That's a decent starting point, but it gets way more complicated than that. Take the heroic meter, for example, used in poems like the Iliad and the Aeneid. The pattern of short-short-long is used a lot battle scenes, because it's invokes a constant motion forward and the beating human heart. Long-Long is often used in more relaxed, discussion type scenes because it's slower, more like a conversation or a nap. This all sort of relative, of course. Shifting from the relaxed option to the excited option creates the feeling of acceleration, for example.

    That's probably about as clear as mud right now. This is a complicated thing, and you may very well want to avoid a formally structured meter. Nothing wrong with that, especially if you don't want to spend an unreasonably long time on the poem. So I'm going to give you a little shortcut, that for our purposes will result in a meter that's good enough 95% of the time. Read the poem out loud. If you stumble over any of the lines, you should probably look over them again. If something sounds strange when you read it, either in terms of tempo or vocabulary, that also deserves another look. This is quicker, easier, and for practical purposes just as good as any other way of handling meter.

    Now, I'm going to give you my one rule of thumb for writing decent poetry. Avoid awkwardness. People often put words in strange orders in poetry, or pick extremely odd words to meet strict metrical patterns or rhyme schemes. Don't do that. It's a trap. A poem should seem light and natural to the reader. Like with everything else, there are exceptions to this rule. But it's generally a pretty good one, and breaking it should always be a conscious choice to create a certain effect, and it should never be the norm.


    A NOTE ON TONE

    Back to prose for a minute. I recently found the source for one of the greatest sentences I have ever read. I'm going to share it with you, and go into what makes it so great. Here it is, the opening sentence from Robert Heinlein's novel Beyond This Horizon.

    "The door dilated."

    That it, just three words, but those three words have a whole lot of information in them. It all hinged on implication and knowing what the reader expects, too. You see, doors usually open. They don't dilate. This immediately establishes that the setting is not a mundane place. But it doesn't belabor that point, so it just gently and discreetly pushes the reader into the setting. That's how you say a lot in just a few words. If that's the sort of thing you want to do, you should read Heinlein and Hemingway and pay attention to how they do thing. When it comes to implying things with normal, everyday words, they're the masters.
    Any sufficiently advanced pun is indistinguishable from comedy.
  • MoiMoi
    Kalnid said:
    Regarding weight: I thought it was default by word count until it won prestige, which gave it +100.
    This is partially correct; I was thinking of Celest's credit rewards (which is +5 for prestige selection or +25 for a winner). The actual prestige adjustment is five times as large, +25 for a **Prestige book and +100 for a ***Prestige Winner.
  • PortiusPortius Likes big books, cannot lie
    I figured that examples are a good thing, so I wrote up the process I went through to write a Lusternia book. If there are any points that anyone wants to see elaborated, just ask.

    A NICE LONG EXAMPLE

    I'm going to take you through the writing process for a recent book published by Hallifax. I wrote it, and Daraius was my wonderful editor. You can read the original book that I sent him here: http://pastebin.com/avthhwvU

    The final product should be available in your organization's library. The title is "The Lives of Etuo Shevat and Harolo Windwhisper"

    I suggest that you read the final version before you read this explanation of how I wrote it, and I will assume that you have it available for reference. You might want to read the original draft before you read the section on editing, too, so you can compare them.


    GENRE

    The first thing I decided for this book was that I wanted to do a civic hagiography. This is just a biography of a paragon of Hallifax. This is a genre with a pretty formulaic structure. You start with an introduction, then a section for the main character's early life, followed by some events in adulthood that mark them out as being really great, and then finish up with their martyrdom.

    CONTENT


    Once I decided on the genre, which gave me the book's general structure and its topic in a broad sense, I had to narrow that topic down. Here are the things I used to make this decision:

    1. I wanted to do something about a Shevat. They're a big family and I felt that if I'm going to write in this genre frequently, it would be strange not to see them represented in my books.
    2. I also wanted to tie this into the Windwhispers, since Portius ICly is big on trying to associate his family, and therefore himself with the paragons.
    3. The paragon would be a soldier. I mostly wanted this for variety, since it was an archetype I hadn't done much with in previous hagiographies.

    With those in mind, I started making choices. Dealing with number one was easy, and I just decided to make the main character a Shevat (This is Etuo.) Three was also pretty easy, although I decided that he coudn't be a simply foot soldier or even just an inspiring officer if he was going to be a paragon. He needed something to tie him to the upper castes a little bit. Since the Shevats are stereotypically sciencey, I opted to make him a military engineer. This kind of puts him halfway between the middle and high castes in Hallifax, which thus far has been a recurring theme in the genre. I figured I might as well do it again and keep it as a genre convention.

    Number two was the interesting one. The easiest way to do it would have been to have Etuo either marry a Windwhisper or to have been the product of a Windwhisper-Shevat marriage, and then to just ignore the ties after that. I opted not to do that largely because it isn't very interesting. Instead I decided to turn this into a book about two paragons, and make the other a Windwhisper. This was a very important choice, and it settled a lot of details immediately. I decided that the Windwhisper (Harolo) would cross over into the artists just like Etuo crossed over into the scientitsts, and so I made him a war poet. From there I settled the roles of each other paragons. They should be in contrast, since that usually works well in books that only really have two characters, and if they're both soldiers it seemed that they should be the ideal leader at different levels of command. Thus, I made Etuo into a strategic type and Harolo into an inspiring front line leader.

    Given that I wanted this to be pretty short, that settles most of the characterization at an individual level. I still had to decide on the nature of their relationship, and I opted for the lifelong brothers in arms style. It's pretty much a stock relationship, and that's fine for this style of prose. This also gave me an underlying theme for the book, namely the platonic bond between comrades in Hallifax.

    SECTION BY SECTION

    The next step was to block out what was going to happen in each of those sections of the book. I'm going to go through them in the order I planned them, which is not the same as the order of appearance.

    First I did the introduction, because the introduction doesn't really require much planning. It's the most formulaic part of the book. It points out that this is a historical document, that it's pieced together from fragmentary sources, and that it might be wrong. It also introduces the book's theme, which I settled on earlier. This is, interestingly, also the most IC section of the book. Portius thinks it's very important to face your own fallibility, so he starts the book with a discussion of it. Similarly, he doesn't believe in being subtle about morals, so he lays it out early. If he didn't have those traits, this section wouldn't be there. If you're writing with your character in mind, you should consider that kind of thing.

    Next I looked at their martyrdom. They're soldiers, so death in a heroic battle is the natural end to their arc. The other main option was death by treachery, but it's very hard to do that without making the main characters look stupid, especially if you're keeping things short and glossing over a lot of detail. That made the death in battle seem like the right choice. There's two main subtypes for that, either dying in the offense or defense. I went with the defense since it seemed more Hallifaxian. Our heroes fall in the defense of the Collective, not on some sort of grand crusade.

    So, what do they die defending? I went with scientists. Hallifax as a culture doesn't seem to care very much about territory, so people are the only thing worth defending. Scientists are the most valuable people in Hallifax as far as Portius is concerned, so I settled on them. Why are those scientists exposed? Field researchers are nice and convenient. I'll make them astronomers, which is an arbitrary choice that I chose because I think astronomy is cool and Hallifaxian. So in summary, the big picture for this section is that the two paragons die heroically defending some astronomers against the evil hordes of Gaudiguch, because the enemy is always an evil horde from Gaudiguch.

    I did their early youth next. I decided that this part should be brief, since the youth of a soldier is less interesting than his career, generally speaking. I decided that I would just use it to focus on the paragons' relationship. I decided they should be born at the same time, because that is a good trope for setting up an unbreakable friendship type story. Other than that, I decided that I should explain why they are so good at everything. That fact that the paragons are hypercompetent was never really in question, since they're paragons, but I felt like I should justify it. I decided that they motivated each other to be better from an early age, since that goes with the themes of Collectivist unity. In general, and especially when you're doing something this short, you want to keep things cohesive and not add in too many different facets.

    That left me with adulthood. At this point the purpose of that section was obvious. It had to do two things, namely illustrate that the two were excellent soldiers, and set up their martyrdom. Since it was looking like I'd be running longer than I wanted as it was, I decided that I would summarize their early career and just include one big event in this section. I decided that should be a massive military engagement of some kind, and compared the merits of a pitched battle, an ambush, and a siege. The pitched battle was out pretty fast. It didn't really offer opportunities to show off the speciifc skills of the paragons. If they were just magnificent generals it would have been an option, but for an engineer and a poet, it just didn't offer as much as the alternatives. An ambush would have been better for that, since it has plenty of room for cunning strategy, but it doesn't do anything to set up the martyrdom. If they took a fortification, though, they could also die defending it later, which ties things together quite nicely. A siege it was. They take the fortress, and it gets turned into an observatory afterwards to explain why astronomers were there. That puts a nice little hint of redemption in there, too, by putting an evil Gaudi fortress to a noble Collectivist use.

    From there, I drafted each section. I'm afraid that I can't tell you all that much about this section. I read through my notes about what had to happen a few times, and when I had a good idea of what themes I wanted to express and what events had to happen, I sat down and wrote. There weren't many conscious choices at this stage.

    I do want to comment on the use of tropes here, though. I used stock characters, archetypes, and plot elements freely. There's a lot of reasons for this. A big one is that it fits the genre. This is a hagiography, so everything is idealized and history is to some extent made to conform to narrative. The paragons have to be heroic and somewhat infallible. If they weren't, they wouldn't be paragons. Using common tropes can help establish that heroism, since the two are linked in the reader's mind. To some extent they're expected. That expectation is another thing that you have to consider.  You have to be very careful about doing things that strongly break away from the reader's expectations. They'll notice it, and it's almost always noteworthy when it happens. That doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, of course, but it does mean that you want to take care when you do.

    Editing

    Next up was the editing stage. I handed the book over to Daraius for commentary, choosing him both because he's a pretty solid editor and because I wanted the Shevat family head to have veto power over things in a book about his family. Here's the letter he sent me in response: http://pastebin.com/jbz3WZzK

    The fact that the non-editing parts of the letter are magnificent aside, that is very useful. There's not much to say about the typos. They happen, and you look through the book to find them and fix them. Proofreading is important, but not as relevant as the content critiques.

    Comment number one was the first time I'd even thought that the paragon's races wasn't explicit. I had a very clear conception of them as the stereotypical races for their families, and so I completely forgot to make it explicit. This was an easy fix that I slipped into the part on their early lives. The appearance part is harder. I don't want to be too specific, since that kind of clashes with the idea that this was pieced together from historical fragments, and you don't want to be too specific about archetypical characters since the reader will usually have their own idealized form that their brain will supply, but at the same time some general description would be a definite improvement. The solution here is to be a little vague in the description. This also went into the section on their youth, and I think it made things better.

    The second comment is the more interesting of the two. I think it would be both very Hallifax and very Portius to add in a technical digression on the machines themselves, and of all the historical records that Hallifax would preserve I think blueprints are the most likely. Plus, as soon as I read that suggestion I thought that it would be really awesome to have them use a sort of proto-aerochemantics. This is a very good idea, but it's also a tricky one to implement. I don't want to disrupt a battle scene with a sudden technical interlude, after all. What I really want to do with this is add in footnotes, but you can't really do that books in Lusternia. I thought about this for a while, and decided that while I couldn't elaborate on any of the devices used in the battles, I could absolutely expand on the time skip at the start of the martyrdom passage. I considered expanding on Harolo's poetry a little here, or even adding a few fragments of it, but decided not to do so since this book is really more about Etuo than Harolo. This is the biggest content improvement added in the editing stage.

    After that, I had to choose between publishing as it was or further editing. I opted to publish, even though the book would've been improved by bouncing it to a few more editors and some more polishing on the new additions. There has to be a point where you decide that further improvements would be too small to justify the time you'd spend making them, and I felt like I had hit it. Part of why I felt that way was that I wanted to get it out before the end of the Lusternian year. Deadlines matter sometimes, even if they're mostly self inflicted.
    Any sufficiently advanced pun is indistinguishable from comedy.
  • DaraiusDaraius Shevat The juror's taco spot
    edited May 2014
    Portius said:
    he's a pretty solid editor
    I just won Lusternia, y'all. Pack your bags and go home.
    I used to make cakes.

    Estarra the Eternal says, "Give Shevat the floor please."
  • ZouviqilZouviqil Queen of Uberjerkiness
    Daraius said:
    Portius said:
    he's a pretty solid editor
    I just won Lusternia, y'all. Back your bags and go home.
    Back your bags?
  • LillieLillie
    edited June 2014

    Please write your book in Notepad or some similar program, and not in Word or Open Office. If you just copy and paste from a word processor, the formatting comes out terribly and the editor has to fix it manually. I think every first time author I've seen, myself included, has had that problem. Stick to Notepad and life is easier for everyone.

    Obligatory whine about weird quote things.

    Anyway, I would definitely recommend Notepad++ instead of just plain old Notepad. It's much more manageable and even has a spellcheck in it, with none of the problems that Word/ OpenOffice brings. Also, in Notepad, sometimes (if you have word wrap on) the formatting goes all to pieces and you get a bunch of empty lines that you never asked for.

    Also, in Notepad++, you can see how long your line is (there's a handy counter at the bottom) and make sure none of your lines are longer than 81 characters without having to resize your window or do a 'test' line.

     Notepad++ all the way!
    The Necromentate's mind opens to you, and a grotesque, demonic figure appears in your mind's eye, screaming in torment:
    "THE DEMON LORDS CAN NEVER TRULY BE KILLED - GREAT IS THEIR POWER."


    You shock a platinum-coloured geomycus with tales of terror bestowed on villages who don't follow Magnagora.
    A platinum-coloured geomycus slaps her knee and declares that, by the gods, Ptoma Hive should follow the Grand Empire of Magnagora after all!
    Shouts rise up from Ptoma Hive, as its denizens loudly pledge themselves to the Grand Empire of Magnagora.
  • LeradLerad
    The trick to removing those extra lines due to word wrapping in notepad is to disable word wrap, THEN save, and then reenable word wrap.

  • PortiusPortius Likes big books, cannot lie
    LET'S TALK TOPICS: POETRY

    Have you ever wanted to write some nice Lusternian poetry, but had trouble picking a topic? Have no fear, I'm here to help! I'm going to through each org and lay out some broad topics that you might want to pursue for poetry (or prose, but this is really aimed more at things that work well in poetry. Some of them also work well in prose, others don't.) But before I do that, we should go over a general thing about poetic topics.

    You can always talk about emotions and all sorts of abstract ideas. This is popular, but it's also kind of dangerous. It's not entirely without reason that the stereotype of bad poetry is poetry that goes on and on about emotions and ideals like love. It can be done well, but it's very hard. If you want to transmit an idea about an emotion in poetry (and all writing comes down to the transmission of ideas) then it's often better to go for a less direct approach. As an example, the poems which I think are the best love poems ever written are not poems that talk about what sort of thing love is. Here's a rule of thumb. The more abstract the poem, the harder it is to make it a good poem. You shouldn't overlook the opposite form,  narrative poetry (which is often a better way to communicate abstract ideas than trying to do it directly!) when you're planning things out.

    Now that I have that out of the ways, there's one caveat before I go through each org. I have not played in all of these. Serenwilde, Magnagora, and Glomdoring are outsider perspectives based as much on how I think the org should be as how it actually is. That said, I think they'll still be pretty useful as a starting point for people.

    As a note on vocabulary, the main difference between an epic and an epyllion is that an epyllion is short. In terms of themes and topics, think of them as interchangeable unless I say otherwise in the entry. This is an oversimplification, but it'll work for our purposes.

    Hallifax: If you want to go abstract, go for concepts like love, beauty, and reason. Focus on the higher emotions, and the traits of the ideal member of a given caste. Caste should really inform your topic quite heavily. The ideals are different for each caste, after all. In terms of narrative, I suggest two main categories. The first is what I call the 'caste epic' which is about a single caste. The main structure is a single character who exemplifies his caste in some way doing things that are appropriate to his caste. This gives you epics about research projects for scientists, and wars for soldiers, which are the two castes that are best suited to this genre. An example published in game would be Jekkex. There are also what I call 'Collective Epics' which are about members of multiple castes working together to serve Hallifax. The Glorious Expedition is an example of this. Strong themes for all Hallifaxian poetry include the unity between comrades, service to the Collective, and the power of the state. I think Hallifaixan poetry should tend towards the idealistic and slightly propagandic, in general. Hallifax is kind of totalitarian, and that doesn't leave a lot of room for poetry that questions the party line.

    Serenwilde: Nature is the obvious choice for an abstract topic, along with the seasons. There's a lot of good space for religious poetry directed at the spirits, which is kind of its own category as distinct from either the really abstract or the purely narrative. If you want to go narrative, you've got a lot of options. If you want something short, I'd suggest an epyllion that focuses on a hunt of some kind, along with any aftermath. Focus more on the chase than the kill. If you want to do a full epic, I suggest a blood feud as a plot. Start with the cause, go through the feud itself, and end with its resolution. This ties into strong recurring themes for Seren poetry, which might include cyclical aspects of life, like the seasons, but also the line of generations in a family or clan. I think the idea that nothing is permanent, but that patterns repeat themselves is a strong one for the Serenwilde.

    Celest: Faith, virtue, devotion. If you want to go abstract, go for that sort of idea. Religious poetry about the supernals and saints is very appropriate here. For narratives, you have a strong model in real life. You should focus more on the deeds done if you want a sort of secular adventure, or focus on the religious strength of the protagonist if you want something slightly more abstract. Glory is a good theme in general, either individual or focused on the faith/kingdom, but so are themes focused around piety. The juxtaposition of the two is a good thing to explore here.

    Magnagora: Power and excellence are strong abstract topics. Once again, you have a good target of religious poetry in the demon lords. As a topic for narrative poetry, I suggest what I like to call the 'domination epic.' This genre has a fairly simple plot arc. The protagonist is initially disgraced by someone due to a failing of some kind. The bulk of the plot is dedicated to him overcoming that failing, and building a powerbase to conquer the person who disgraced him. It ends with the protagonist forcing the antagonist to submit to him. There's a lot of room there for ideas about individual power, but also for the transcending of boundaries. The latter of those is a very Magnagoran theme, especially when combined with ideas about improving oneself through becoming undead and freeing yourself from the fates.

    Gaudiguch: The natural abstract idea is freedom. Narratives can be focused on liberation fairly readily (see The Chainbreaking) but you might also want to consider personal quests of enlightenment or empowerment. In every case, individualism is the name of the game. That said, the real strength of Gaudiguch is in slightly more obscure sorts of poetry. You can do drinking songs and dirty limericks and the like, but I'm going to assume you want something a little less obvious than that and a lot more interesting. You should look at invective. As far as I'm concerned, Martial and Catullus were from Gaudiguch. Go ahead and make things a little dirty and wild, but remember that innuendo isn't a substitute for wit. If you go too far with it, it loses its cleverness and charm.

    Glomdoring: A lot of the things that I said about the Serenwilde also apply here. You're still a forest, after all, you still care about nature. Follow the general pattern of the Serenwilde, but emphasize the wyrden differences. In a hunting poem, they focus on the chase. You should focus on the kill. They focus on how things recur over the generations, you should focus on people adapting. Be a little more individualistic, and a little more focused on power, whether that power is physical, mental, social, or something else entirely. Be a little more nationalistic, too. Where Serenwilde can be really open to external aspects of nature, Glomdoring should be more focused on the wyrden nature, and spreading its specific type of nature to the world.

    Note the overlap on these. There's a lot of places with room for religious poetry, or nationalistic poetry, and basically every culture produces adventures. With a few exceptions, the difference isn't so much in the broad topics as the details of those topics. Even then, there's overlap. Some topics, like narrative romances, are so universal that I didn't feel the need to include them in the individual sections. Don't discount them!

    And remember, this isn't exhaustive. There's a lot of room to do all sorts of things, and this is only to help get you started!
    Any sufficiently advanced pun is indistinguishable from comedy.
  • IdrazilIdrazil
    Curse you @Portius, now have to add this to my bookmarks!
    image
  • PortiusPortius Likes big books, cannot lie
    This post is being written by request. Readers should feel free to send me their requests if there's some library topic they'd like me to cover.

    LET'S BE SCHOLARLY

    People tend to have more experience with literary type books than scholarlies, both in terms of writing them and reading them. The best way to get better at writing them is to read real scholarly works and to write your own, but a lot of the things that apply to Lusternia scholars don't apply to real ones. I'm going to start with a few general notes on scholarly writing in general and then go through some different types of scholarly books one at a time.

    GENERAL REMARKS

    First of all, all scholarly books are going to have you making things up. Even if you're writing a scientific assessment of something found in Lusternia, you're going to be making things up. You generally cannot extract enough information from the game on any topic to write a book about that topic. You can find enough to give yourself a starting point, but you'll have to elaborate on your own. And you should try to base your book on things that are in game as much as you can; you'll tend to do better in prestige competitions that way. You should always look for library books on a topic before you write about it, and consider citing them in your book as sources of information if that is appropriate to your work. You don't have to agree with them, either. Refutations and disagreements are perfectly valid topics!

    Next, I want to touch on the academic tone. There's no description I could give you that can match simple exposure, so go read some research papers and make a note of word choice and grammatical structures. You will often, but not always, want to write in a similar style when producing scholarly books. As a rule of thumb, anything that is being presented as a formal academic work should be written in that way, and other scholarlies have more room for variation. Be careful with this, though. You have to be wary of writing in an extreme caricature of the academic tone, because taking the general trends in it too far will result in something that's more or less unreadable. Editing will help with this, whether you're too extremely academic or too informal!

    Know your conclusions. Most scholarly books will either be arguing for a given position or presenting information on a topic. You really want to know the position you're arguing or the information you're presenting before you start writing. Think it over before you start. Having a shaky understanding of what you're presenting (even if it's something you've made up!) tends to result in shaky presentations.

    THE NARRATIVE

    Here's the easiest way for most people to write a scholarly book. You can write a narrative history, which amounts to taking a literary style story, slapping on an introduction giving it some historical context, and calling it good enough. That's the most basic level, at least. You'll often want to consider adjusting the tone for this sort of book to a sort of hybrid between a formal academic voice and a more casual narrative voice. Apart from that, these are more or less literary works.


    THE ESSAY

    This covers any sort of persuasive essay or presentation of subjective information. These are your philosophical works, your book reviews, and all other such things. Most of the scholarly books I've been asked to review are of this type, probably because it's the kind most people are familiar with. Most of the guidance you received in school about writing essays applies here, but it's often more flexible than your teachers lead you to believe.

    To write one start by picking a topic and taking a position on it. You want this to be fairly specific, since that will help keep your essay from wandering too much. If you want to write a book review, it's not enough to simply pick a book. You also have to choose the opinion of it that you want to argue. The book being good or bad is better, but not that great either. Arguing that a book reflects a society in some way? Much better.

    Once you've picked your topic, introduce it to the reader. You generally don't want to just drop it on them in the first sentence (although sometimes you do. These are rules of thumb, not laws of nature.) Provide some background information first, and gently lead the reader into a clear statement of your position. For an essay of a length that's likely to be published in Lusternia, this should probably get a paragraph, or maybe two in the longer cases. Most people find this part, especially the very first sentence, to be the hardest part. Odds are that it will need more editing than the rest of the essay.

    After that, you're making your case. Try not to make claims unless you can support them, either by citing empirical evidence (even if you've made up that evidence yourself) or through a more abstract reasoning process. You might want to consider thinking about counterarguments to your claims and try to disprove them here. Most people find this to be much easier than the introduction, since they're fairly used to trying to convince people of things. This will make up the bulk of your essay.

    End in with your concluding remarks, which will probably be about the same length as your introduction or slightly longer. People often take this as a chance to simply restate their introduction. That is bad. You don't want to introduce new arguments or information, but you also want to avoid repetition. Your goal in this section, more than anything else, is to elegantly end the essay. You need it not to add to the argument so much as to avoid an abrupt ending to the book and to give the reader something that will stick in their mind once they stop reading.

    There's a special note on tone for essays. I see a lot of people use rhetorical questions in them, often excessively. They aren't inherently bad, but they need to be used with care. Use them to introduce arguments and ideas. Do not use them as the core part of an argument, or the essay will read less like you're making a point and more like you're idly speculating or wondering about something. If you use more than one sequentially, this tendency will increase. Be very careful about doing so.


    THE EXPERIMENT

    This covers reports on single experiments performed in the hard sciences. You don't have to have any knowledge of the science itself, but it does help. Consider doing a little research before you start writing.

    The writing process for experiment reports is surprisingly simple. Start with a factual question. For example, you might ask what contributes to the growth rate of powderfruits. Then pick your answer. To follow the example, you might decide that the addition of water increases growth rate up until a point, at which point is causes problems, and that increasing temperature leads to a similar pattern. Then, design an experiment that will have give you that answer.

    Experimental design, at the Lusternia level, is pretty simple. Just remember to only change one variable at once, and you're pretty much good to go. We don't hold these to the same level as real research papers, after all! Read up on some real experiments, though, if you want guidance here.

    That will give you all the information you need to start writing. I can actually give you a template for writing these!

    Introduction: What are you researching, why are you researching it, why do other people care? Answer those three questions here and you're more or less good to go.

    Experiment: Describe your hypothesis (your best guess at the answer to the question) here, and then explain the experiment you're using to test it.

    Results: What happened when you did the experiment? These should strongly and clearly imply whatever answer you decided on for your question.

    Conclusions: What do those results tell you? Your question's answer goes here.

    Pretty simple. Most reports following this template will come out at around 1k words, plus or minus about 150. If you want a longer book, compile several reports on related topics.


    THE TEXTBOOK

    This is an explanation of something factual. It differs from the essay in that you aren't arguing for anything, just presenting information.
    To write one, start by making a list of all the topics you want to cover. These should all be related, and you don't need more than one if you only want to write something short. Organization is the biggest concern here. Ideally, you should address one topic or section thereof and then move on to the next with as little backtracking as possible. If you are explaining something that requires information about something else, but that required information in before the section that requires it. Try to make sections relate to the ones that come before and after them, too. That'll help reduce choppiness.

    Choppiness within sections is also a concern. You don't want the book to read like a simple list of facts. As a rule of thumb, if you could take all the sentences you've written and make a bullet pointed list out of them, you're too choppy. The easiest (not the only) way to prevent this is by starting sentences with words that refer back to previous sections. "Thus" and "Therefore" are common ones in academia, but they're far from your only choice. Sometimes you'll use full phrases instead, such as "For that reason." That said, don't go overboard on these. You want enough to link related statements together and no more than that. If you use too many, your book will start sounding very awkward.


    GOOD LUCK!

    That's not exhaustive, of course. There's plenty of different types and subtypes of books that I haven't gone into here, but it should be enough to get people started. When in doubt, look for books that are similar to what you want to write and study them. And remember the most important rule of scholarly writing: know what you are trying to present! As long as you have a very firm grasp of your position before you get started, you'll probably not go too far wrong.
    Any sufficiently advanced pun is indistinguishable from comedy.
  • DaganevDaganev
    Do lusternians still prefer the long prose paragraph format for books, or do they prefer more UX friendly bullet points, short sentences and frequent paragraph breaks?
  • DaraiusDaraius Shevat The juror's taco spot
    Unless it's a tech manual, if you're going to spend the time and effort to write something, you should write it well. It should 'sound' good to be worth the readers' time.
    I used to make cakes.

    Estarra the Eternal says, "Give Shevat the floor please."
  • DaganevDaganev
    Daraius said:
    Unless it's a tech manual, if you're going to spend the time and effort to write something, you should write it well. It should 'sound' good to be worth the readers' time.
    So players prefer to "read" than "skim"?
  • DaraiusDaraius Shevat The juror's taco spot
    edited September 2014
    I can only speak for myself, honestly, but I'd hope people who check out books actually read them. I guess there is kind of a skimming mentality when it comes to most areas of the game, but I have the (totally untested) impression that the kinds of folks who visit libraries and check out books are also the folks who like to read full rooms, designs, character descriptions, etc. 

    At the end of the day, though, you've got to pick a style you're comfortable with, meaning you're comfortable writing it, and you're comfortable presenting it as your work to other players. Plus, if you're looking to win some bardic credits with your writing, you'll get more mileage with prose than with bullet points! :)
    I used to make cakes.

    Estarra the Eternal says, "Give Shevat the floor please."
  • DaganevDaganev
    Ok thanks.
    I personally prefer to write in prose paragraph form, but I've been learning at my office that I get more eyeballs and responses from people when I find a way to write in short easy to ready memo/bullet points.
Sign In or Register to comment.