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TNTOS

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Blog Comments posted by TNTOS

    Riisiing Moon

    Posted

    A good character, in my opinion, has a purpose and a motive. He strives to reach his goal, whatever it is, and won't stop until he either gets it or dies trying. Those types of characters - whether they are heroes or villains or something in between - are always interesting to follow, since they do not merely sit around and wait for stuff to happen to them. No, they seize the first chance they get in order to fulfil their dreams or meet their goals. They don't even have to succeed to be interesting. As long as they don't give up, the reader will likely find him interesting.

     

    That is not the only trait of a good character, of course. A well-written character is also human, even if he technically isn't human. He will have admirable qualities, for sure, but he will also have undesirable qualities. He may be brave and courageous, but he may also be reckless and possibly short-tempered, which could get him into trouble if he is not careful. No one wants to read about a fully good character or a fully evil character, except in certain types of stories (for example, fairy tales and parables do well with one-dimensional characters). It is hard to relate the person who is always doing good and being happy and is always a good and kind person. It is also hard to relate to the evil, cruel and coldhearted person who is never happy, never does even one good or decent thing, and in general is a nasty person to hang around. A good character, like real people, is a balance of good traits and bad. He may have more good than bad or more bad than good, true, but he still has at least a handful of both, just like you or me or anybody else in real life.

     

    Of course, this is all my opinion and I am sure there is a lot more to a good character than what I just mentioned above. But it is these two major rules I try to follow whenever I make a character for my stories and I believe I have succeeded. At least no one has complained about my characters so far :P .

     

    -TNTOS-

    Shadix

    Posted

    The only one I've run into is #1, but fortunately I have gained a significant number of brand new pencils recently (for free, BTW), so I won't have to worry about it as much as I used to.

     

    On #5: Even though I am homeschooled, no one has ever said that to me (that I can remember, anyway). Odd, but I'm happy. Feel sorry that it's happened to you, though.

     

    -TNTOS-

    dviddy

    Posted

    See guys, you say things like 'good MOCs don't actually get comments'. But I've been a member in the BBC for eight-and-a-half years, and not to toot my own horn or anything, but almost every one of my MOC topics has been at the very least a hot topic, including the original Vayland Dragon topic. So this one, which only received four comments in the first day of being open, makes no sense to me at all. That just has not been my experience with how the BBC works. I dare say this is the greatest thing I've ever built, and MOCs of that caliber usually get swarmed.

     

    Maybe it's because you changed your name. I know that even if you happen to be the most popular member ever and everyone knows your name, if you change your name people will not recognize you like they normally would. Everyone knows who Darth Vader is, but not everyone knows who DeeVee is, although I suppose it isn't that hard to figure out considering how similar the names are.

     

    Or maybe you just picked the wrong time to post it. I don't know.

     

    -TNTOS-

    TNTOS

    Posted

    So, I thought of something. If you're telling us to read the chapter, why do you give us basically all the plot points?

     

    --Tahu

     

    The problem is that when I try to summarize a chapter, I try to write it in a way that is interesting yet accurate to the chapter itself, which unfortunately can lead to spoiling the entire thing, as you have shown me. For some reason or another I want there to be some continuity to these summaries, so that people reading them won't go "What?" when the summary makes the next plot twist look like it came out of nowhere, when in the chapter itself the twist makes perfect sense.

     

    But I shouldn't do that. The point of a summary is to detail the basic points, not show every single little plot point. It ideally should have enough to interest the reader, but not tell him everything, so that way he will have to read the story itself to get it all. Here, for this chapter at least, it seems like I have failed in that regard.

     

    So essentially, I have no excuse except I am terrible at writing concise and interesting chapter summaries :P . However, I'll try my best to make the next summary less spoilerific, so people reading this blog will have to read the chapter itself to get the whole thing, even if it makes the chapter sound less-than-complete or whatever.

     

    Thanks for pointing that out, though. I wasn't sure if anyone had noticed that flaw of mine besides myself.

     

    -TNTOS-

    Shadix

    Posted

    The character you seem to be thinking about is Toa Chiara, a Toa of Lightning, introduced in one of the newest BIONICLE web serials, The Yesterday Quest.

     

    Since there is a difference between Chiara and Charia's names, I don't see why you can't use Charia. Of course, you might be thinking of a completely different character, but as far as I know, the only character named Charia is the one you are using.

     

    -TNTOS-

    bonesiii

    Posted

    Well, bones, I wasn't necessarily defending Dorek's argument, although I guess it might have came across that way. I thought I was presenting a completely different argument, actually. Oh, well. Not that I care, since I'm not seeking a debate, but whatever. I'm not very good at presenting my thoughts, so I tend to make a lot of mistakes, even when I carefully think over what I want to say before I say it.

     

    Whatever. Guess it doesn't matter.

     

    -TNTOS-

    bonesiii

    Posted

    @Bones: While I pretty much agree with everything you have said here, I noticed you said that the job of the BZP news reporters is to do their job to the best of their ability. It seems to me that you are assuming that every news reporter is always doing their job to the best of their ability all the time, when sometimes they may be lazy or else write subpar articles or whatever.

     

    Not that I think the news reporters are always this way, but it seems to me that they can't possible make quality news reports all the time, just like how I can't always write good stories all the time. They have to produce subpar or lower quality news reports every now and then, right? Even if they had a reason for it?

     

    However, that opens the question of what makes a "quality" news article and what doesn't, a question that I am unwilling and unable to answer, since everyone's opinions on what is "quality" varying so wildly it's hard to make a firm judgment on that without getting one group of people or another upset at you.

     

    But like I said, I totally agree with everyone else that you said. I just thought that maybe what I said above hadn't occurred to you, although if it did feel free to ignore this comment.

     

    -TNTOS-

    Inferna Firesword

    Posted

    I've noticed, even if you didn't mean to add them, they will surface up. It's happened to me a lot. I wrote a story just for a plot, but lots of messages/morals/symblism got in there without my doing, but in the end I was quite happy with it. It even challenged how I originally thought of things.

     

    I wouldn't worry about it. Stuff like that should come on its own.

     

    Precisely what I was about to say.

     

    But I would like to add that, even if you write a story with a planned theme behind it, that theme may end up changing during the actual writing process. For example, my most recent epic, An Unlikely Alliance (link in sig, BTW), was originally going to be titled Fear and be more of a horror story focused on, well, fear. Part of this is still evident because the main antagonists' group name means "fear."

     

    However, as I began to actually write it, it soon became evident to me that the story was more about trust, friendship, the limits of keeping secrets from friends, exactly how much you should share with other people, putting aside old grudges to work with those whom you hate in order to survive, and so on. As a result of this, I changed the name of the story to its current title to reflect the change in theme. Not that I am complaining, since I think the story itself turned out to be stronger and more original as a result of the theme change. Plus I like "An Unlikely Alliance" a lot better than "Fear," title-wise.

     

    So basically, don't be afraid to change your story's theme if you think it'll be for the best, since if you think that then it probably is.

     

    -TNTOS-

    GregF

    Posted

    Awesome, I wonder when the other three will be introduced... if this is that team.

     

    Greg said he might not have a full team of six Toa if he feels that won't give him enough room to develop them all, so we may only get Psionics, Lightning, and Iron unless Greg decides to add more later on.

     

    Anyway, great news to hear. Really excited about TYQ now :) .

     

    -TNTOS-

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