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Today I found something I wrote for a school assignment from when I was in 3rd grade (that would be about 7 years ago; I was 8 or 9). I have no recollection of writing it, but it reflects my current style to some degree and as such was probably written right when I decided I really liked writing. Here it is: It's quite short and has a few corny parts, and in general really has nothing on my current writing, but I was younger and not yet serious about writing, so I at least found it quite impressive for me to have written at that age. The concept, while probably not completely original, was new to me at the time, and the ending twist, while clumsily executed, would practically be worthy of the Twilight Zone if there had been more of a build-up. If you didn't get it, the "at least that's what it meant to him" line was meant to suggest that Justin is on the little planet but has already come to see it as his home. It's intentionally ambiguous, unlike anything else I wrote in that period of my life. Speaking of which, I have a few more stories I wrote way back when that I might post in here sometime, if anyone's interested. In any case, I'm considering taking this idea and fleshing it out into a longer story that I could perhaps enter in a writing contest. I have a few other ideas too (mostly "wouldn't it be cool if...?" ideas, like my latest "wouldn't it be cool if a psychologically damaged man fell in love with someone he had made up and had to come to terms with the fact that she wasn't real while going through therapy?") which I also plan to use as short stories at some point. Anyway, I suppose I've been up long enough, I should get a few sleep cycles in before I have to get up for my college classes tomorrow. I'll have some kind of new entry up...eventually...
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This sonnet is dedicated to how bad I am at writing sonnets. It was written while I was hyper (hyper for me means getting 8 hours of sleep and a cup of coffee XD) so don't take it too seriously. It's whimsical with a bit of seriousness in there. NOTE: In this sonnet, "lol" is pronounced like "lole" (rhymes with "roll"). I can't write, especially not sonnets. My rhymes just aren't quite good enough. What's something that rhymes with sonnets? Bonnets. See? If my rhymes were steak they'd be too tough. Tough steak is no good, in my opinion. Another thing, getting exactly ten Syllables is too hard; see, my minion? I only said that for the rhyme, men. Good, now I'm on the penultimate verse. Penultimate means second-to-last, lol. Gah, "lol"? Could this sonnet get any worse? Let's find out, as to the last verse we roll. This verse gets to be shorter; I love it. Now this is over, so don't have a fit. Had some fun writing this. In case you were wondering, I made it blatantly horrible on purpose; I could write a better sonnet if I had to. I just hate writing poetry. Especially rhymes. *shudder* I hate rhymes. (That makes the prophecy back in Book 1 painful to reread for me. It was actually pretty painful to write.) In other news, I'll be reposting Books 3 and 4 starting next Monday. Book 4 is nearly done and I've actually already started Book 5. I'm doing the first draft of Book 5 by hand, just for the sake of variety.
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Last night I was digging through the files from my old laptop copied over when it broke. I found a short story that I wrote a year ago. In this entry, at the very bottom, I wrote this: I finished that short story a few days after that entry was posted, but I never got around to posting the story. The past couple days, I've been wanting to write a short story. A really thought-provoking short story, better than the other two I've written. So when I found this one that was already written for me, I decided I would polish it (because my writing was not good a year ago at all) and send it out into the world. The polishing is done now, so I just need to decide on the title, and then I'll post it. The titles I'm currently considering are "Goodbye", "Destiny", and "Smile". Leaning towards "Smile" at the moment. The original title was "The Final Decision", but that's like uber-corny. XD The story is a change of pace from my usual writing because it contains no "action"; the conflict is hero vs. self (the hero being Matoro), so all the action takes place in Matoro's mind. Right now, the story has nothing to do with the Dairuno Toa series; however, I could slightly change events in the story to add in Guutana and it would take place during the Harmonization arc of 2010. I don't really want to do that, but if you guys think I should, tell me and I will. Anyway, onto the... Writing Tip of the Week This tip is about plot. This is extremely subjective, but if you want to tell if you have a good idea, run it through this test. Score yourself throughout the test. 1. Can your plot identifiably be broken into exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution? It doesn't even matter if you don't know how the plot is going to end yet, but if you pay attention to this while writing, give yourself 20 points. 2. Do you have a hero or heroes that the reader can sympathize with? Give yourself 20 points for this, and take off 20 points if you don't. 3. Do you have a villain who is clearly bad and who the readers can clearly tell is not to be rooted for? Give yourself 20 points for this. Give yourself an extra 10 points if this villain is actually an anti-hero, tragic hero, or amoral but not evil. Subtract 40 points if you have no villain. 4. Does your story have a final confrontation between the hero and the villain? Give yourself 10 points. Is this confrontation action-packed? Give yourself 10 more points. Does your villain win? Take off 4,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 points. (That's 4 octillion points. I think. XD) If your villain is a recurring villain and you're doing a series, only take off 10 points. 5. Do you believe in the plot? Do you think it's good enough to sell? Are you proud of it? For every question you can say yes to, add 50 points. If your score is under 100, your plot idea needs work. If it's a negative number, you should probably scrap the idea and start over. If your score is more than 240, you either cheated or made a math error. XD
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I really don't have much to say about Story of the Dead this week; it's coming slowly lately and I'm still working to jump the hurdle that is Chapter 12. :annoyed2: But I'm thinking as soon as I pass it, I'll shoot ahead, at least until the next snag, which I'm assuming will be at about the time the Dark Hunters arrive, probably not until Chapter 15 or later. (Yes I did just give you a spoiler.) This is a really long one, so we'll now be moving right along to the... Writing Tip of the Week This week, as the title of this entry suggests, is about how to create a character - hero or villain or love interest or best friend or ninja sensei or little sister or (so on and so on), it doesn't matter. This is a nearly fool-proof way to create a sound, believable character. Note that this tip isn't written with Bionicle in mind like most of my tips are - this is to create a human or humanoid character. You could probably use the same thing to create Bionicle characters, though. The next time you have some idle time, just close your eyes so you only see through your mind's eye, into your imagination. (I apologize for the flowery language but this whole idea is so romantically poetic ) Normally when you close your eyes, you see darkness. Maybe a few random colored blobs. Well, I see in vivid detail people and detailed scenes playing out in my head when I close my eyes, and all I need to do is give them a little attention for them to appear. With your eyes closed, just try to imagine a person there. Don't think too hard about how the person looks, because then you'll be controlling it too much; you want this concept for a character to be completely from your subconscious. It's like how your mind creates a dream character - it just randomly generates a person even if you've never seen anyone who looks like that in your life. Eventually the character will appear. Once you're this far and you've got the mental image of your character, look at her (using female pronouns because the first character I ever did this with was a girl and saying him/he, his/hers, he/she gets really annoying after a while). Note her appearance and try to keep that first mental image in your head as the "finalized concept art" of your character - do not reimagine anything about her later. Next try to pick out everything abnormal about her. My character, when she first appeared to me, had her face covered in tattoos and looked gloomy; her clothes were uninteresting but her shoes were oddly bright red. And she was standing in a subway station. The more you focus on the abnormal parts of your character, the more real that image of her will become to you. The next steps can be hard because they involve completely bypassing all logic and being willing to believe completely ridiculous things... Blotting out all sense of doubt, tell yourself that this character is a real person and exists in your subconscious world. (To me, metaphorically, the mind is kind of like a stack of three "worlds" on top of each other: The top is the conscious world where your conscious thoughts occur and it's pretty empty and small. The second one down is the subconscious world where your dreams take place - there's an entire universe in there and that's where stories happen. And the bottom world is the unconscious world which is sort of empty but it's where characters and ideas come from.) Then go into your subconscious mind - this will probably require closing your eyes again and being in a near-sleep state - find your character, and talk to her. Not only does this get in mind her voice and how she acts around other people (for example, my character was shy and she tended to look away from me when she talked), it gets you to know about her. Her past, her future plans, her secrets, her accomplishments... It's kind of like an interview that takes place completely within your own mind. And this kind of thing should probably be done when you don't need to have any kind of contact with the real world at all. I tend to find myself going into a "trance" where I have to consciously shake myself out of this world before I can move or even hear in the real world. A long car ride or when you're trying to get to sleep are good times for this. Mentally note any observations you have during this "interview" and then move onto the next step. Become the character. Going into the trance I described earlier, put yourself in the subconscious world and manifest your subconscious self as the character, not yourself. This can be awkward and forced at first, but you'll eventually fall into it, like an actor who gets into their role so much that they practically are the character they're playing. Once you've done this, you should have a really great feel for the character. You should know her at least as well as you know your best friends, and probably as well as you know yourself. I routinely switch from my own personality to the personality of my character, in fact, and can do it more or less at will. The big thing here is asking yourself the question "What is my (or my character's) goal?" Your character can actually answer this for you, or you'll answer it for yourself if you are the character at that time. My character told me simply that she wanted to be free, which told me I had a hero character on my hands who readers would probably be able to sympathize with. Taking the details of her life I already knew, I put her in a scene and started writing. That's your next step. Write while you're being the character, paying attention to what your character senses - write down exactly what she sees, hears, feels, smells, tastes. That's the key to writing good description that will hook the reader in and make the reader become your character as well. At this point, the character is done and she should be so real that you can have a mental conversation with her at will. Generally by the level of attachment you have to a character you can get a feel for if they're going to be a main character or a minor character. From their goal, you can tell if it will be a hero or a villain. Usually the first character that rises to your head will be the main hero. But I suppose it could happen differently. As you go through this process, you'll develop a cast of characters (and quite likely schizophrenia as well, but as far as I'm concerned, as long as I know the voices in my head are my characters, I'm not too concerned ). You may or may not already have a setting, but if not that's the next thing you'll want. And so for the next tip, I'll tell you how to make a good setting.
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Finally Something Besides My Epic Series
Auserv: Toa-Kal of Emotion posted a blog entry in blogs_blog_1004
I'm considering doing a feature for this blog called Epic of the Month, where I give an award of some kind to the best-written epic started in that month. To be fair, the winner would be posted on the first day of the next month (so if I do this starting this month, February 1st will be the day the winner is announced). Um, aside from that, I don't really have much to say. I'm starting to write a new story, that I may someday publish, and I have no idea how it's going to turn out. But the character is turning out to be the most interesting of one of my characters in a long time, and holds more promise than any other non-Bionicle character. She just popped into my head one day and I wouldn't let her go until she could give me a nice story, which she's doing for me now. Onto the two days late: Writing Tip of the Week Last week the tip was on creating a believable hero. Today we'll see how to create a believable villain. Generally I would suggest making your hero character first, but sometimes characters will just kind of be there in your head (contrary to what I said last entry, this is normal--I've learned a lot about writing in the past week, lol). If you get the idea for a perfect villain, don't worry about having a hero first. You want to make your villain a foil character to your hero. Whatever your hero is, your villain isn't. In fact, your villain is the opposite. (Don't take this the wrong way--your hero is alive, but that doesn't mean your villain should be dead. ) Say your hero loves dogs. Well, then your villain kicks every dog he sees. Exaggerated example, but you get the idea. Just like your hero, your villain needs to have a goal. His goal should be directly or indirectly contradictory to the hero's. That means that either his goal actually is that the hero doesn't succeed, or his goal would mean that the hero doesn't succeed. The motivation for this goal, whatever it is, must not be (and I cannot possibly stress this enough) "cuz that's just how I roll". Even beyond the ridiculous goofiness of that statement, this is simply not a good reason for doing evil. No human in their right mind goes around saying "Well I think I'm going to go kidnap and kill today because it's fun". There sure are people who are that horrible, but no one wants to read about them. I once read that a writer's job is "harder than God's", because when you're writing a story that really happened, people will not question even the most unbelievable events and characters. When you're writing a fictional story, people will constantly, if subconsciously, try to poke holes in your story and say "Well that's not realistic", even if you can point to a real person who was just as bad as your villain. This goes hand-in-hand with what I just said: even if there is such a horrible person, no one wants to read about him, no one wants to be reminded of how cruel people can be. So don't write about these people. Expanding on this, your villain gains a whole new level of depth when you give him a noble cause. Some bank robbers are just trying to get their families financially safe, I'm sure. You can, in a way, sympathize with such a person. No, it's not right, but at least he wasn't robbing the bank because it was his idea of a good time. Even if he was just robbing it because he was greedy, he has more depth than the one-dimensional puppy-kicker who no one wants to read about. The same book that said that a writer's job is harder than God's told me that a villain should "at least be nice to his mother", to further expand on this idea. However, you have to do this right. You can't have an entire scene from the villain's point of view just to go on and on about what a horrible person he is--and then, seemingly having become uncomfortably aware of how unrealistic this is, you quickly invent a soft spot for him. What you need to do is build the character around his soft spot--what is he doing all these evil things for? Or who? One last thing about this kind of villain: despite all of what I just said, you can write a villain like this and pull it off. The only way this will work, however, is if the villain has a very good reason that he has become this horrible. Maybe you can explain through flashbacks or scenes from the villain's point of view. (Or a long-winded speech to the hero as the villain is about to kill him, but we all know how cliche those are. XD) This can even create sympathy in the reader for the villain, which is always interesting, but this is dangerous because people could criticize you for condoning the villain's behavior. Moving on from this subject now... In the end, the villain must be defeated. You can have him win temporarily, but at the end of the book, the villain must be defeated. If he isn't, you have to write a sequel or at least end the book hopefully. (Think the 2005 ending in the Bionicle story--yes, the Toa Hordika have freed Makuta unintentionally, allowing his plan to continue, but at least they won their battle, completed their destiny, and the future is looking hopeful.) Generally, I don't like seeing a villain who realizes his mistakes and becomes a hero. This does not include: -A villain temporarily joining up with the hero when they have a mutual enemy or goal. (For example, Teridax and Vakama, briefly, in Time Trap) -A villain who used to be a hero turning back to being a hero again. (Brutaka in Into the Darkness, Vakama in Web of Shadows) -A villain that pretends to realize his mistakes to get the hero to trust him, only to turn on him again. (Hahli basically did the reverse of this in Prisoners of the Pit) Those could actually be good ideas, if you do it right (isn't that always the catch, lol). Again, it's late in this time zone; I'm tired and I've said a good deal, so I'll just let you guys digest that. To conclude this tip series about characters, next week will be about my newest method to develop a character, which I just developed literally within the last five days. -
After the emoticons have been permanently banished, I'm thinking about changing the blog's theme to a more writing-based theme; doing regular entries on what I've been writing, the current ideas floating around in my head, writing tips, maybe an epic of the month feature (maybe ) stuff like that. Also, in September once my homeschool year starts back up in full, I'll be beginning to write a novel and attempt to get it published, as a school project. I could also keep my (few) readers posted as far as that goes. In any case, the emoticon theme will be remaining for a bit longer, but not forever, and the most likely change after that will be a writing theme. Anyone have any comments, questions, objections, or pasta salad for me?
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At long last, another update! This one I promised to Lhilertoro a while back; now I'm finally delivering. Without further time-wasting which no one will read, I present: How to Name a Character NOTE: This entry reflects how I name characters, and may or may not be easy or convenient for you. The first thing I do when naming a character is to choose some kind of base for the rest of the name to come out of. If you’re fluent in a language other than English, perhaps try taking a word from that language as your base (not “gracias” from Spanish or “bonjour” from French, as those are well-known among native English speakers and make the name too obvious). You could also take English words that describe your character (my Internet ego, Auserv, is a bit of an obvious portmanteau of “automatic” and “servant”, being that Auserv was originally a Toa of Electricity, automatic brings to mind electrically-run appliances, and a Toa serves the Matoran). Or of course, you can always bang on your keyboard to create a base name (though I don't want to see any characters named Qeithapewgtihaoi;dsht). Most of the names I use in my stories were created in this manner. Combining Bionicle words is fine too, though since we’re all Bionicle fans, this should be done more discreetly if you don't want the name to be too obvious. For the purpose of this naming tutorial, we’ll assume that we’re naming a Matoran who has just seen his friend killed by Dark Hunters, and has been exposed to evil for the first time in his life. Well, let’s say we want the base words to be “taste” and “evil”...in Japanese. Well, if you don’t know Japanese, pull up an online translator–there are plenty and they’re easy to find. I’ll be using “ajiwau” for taste and “warui” for evil. Now we mix these words together. Ajiwarui combines the words in an awkward pun, but it doesn’t roll off the tongue. Cut out both I’s and the W; they are mostly responsible for the word being hard to pronounce. Now you have “Ajaru”, which sounds pretty cool. Now comes the optional part. If you want to make sure your name isn’t already the name of something else, just type it into Google. “Ajaru” gets almost 3,000 hits; apparently it is the name of a place in Brazil. So now we just change the vowels and transpose the consonants till we find something with virtually no hits. After a bit of playing around with this, I found that “Ujauri” is relatively close to the pre-Google name, and gets only one hit with Google. Now, we’ve gone from “taste evil” to “ajiwau warui” to “ajiwarui” to “ajaru” to “ujauri”, and in between each step, there is no real obvious transition. Still, the last step (the Google-proofing of the name) can take a very long time. It’s best to not be so strict if you want a name quick and either skip the Google part entirely or be satisfied with getting, say, under 500 hits. So a quick recap: Step 1: Pick (a) base name(s). This can literally be anything. Step 2: Mask the base so you can no longer tell where the name comes from. This may involve translating the base into another language, combining two words into one, and adding/removing letters or scrambling a word. If the base is already gibberish, this step can be skipped. Step 3: Run it through Google and change the word slightly so it gets no hits. If it gets no hits the first time you run it through, you’re good and you can skip step 3. If you don’t really care, skip step 3 anyway. Step 4: Step back and look at the name. Make sure you’re happy with it. If not, start over with a different base. If so, congrats, you just created a decent-sounding name! You can also be lazy if you want and just type a Bionicle-sounding word, like...Krazatu...make sure it doesn’t have any Google hits (it doesn’t), and be done with it. In fact, a lot of my characters were named this way. There’s nothing wrong with it, but it’s a lot easier to guarantee the word will not be found on Google if you go through the entire process. And as a closing note, feel free to take the names Ujauri or Krazatu for your epics, since I won’t be using them. (Quick edit: I typed this article up in WordPerfect quite a while ago. Upon doing the Google searches again, Ujauri and Krazatu no longer have such low hit numbers, but they are still low enough to pass as good names. So don't worry about it.)
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So I've been on hiatus with Emoticon Freewriting for a while. It was mostly because the last time I tried it, the emoticons took over my blog. Well, I'm thinking that if they hate me doing it so much, maybe if I do it again, they'll leave my blog. It's worth a try...right? So today's emoticon is: This emoticon is definitely not happy. In fact, he looks rather mad. Which I suppose is why the name for this emoticon is "burnmad". As it turns out, most BZPers use burnmad to express intense anger. But there seems to be a misconception about this guy which has been getting on my nerves for a long time. It seems that every time somenone uses burnmad, someone else automatically assumes that the first member is flaming. Flaming does not equal emoticons that are on fire, people. It means that you are insulting someone or just being generally mean. I doubt this blog entry will really change anyone's opinion on the matter, but it seems appropriate to rant when I'm using the burnmad emoticon to freewrite about. Today's five minutes are going by very slowly...and I'm running out of things to say. May I also add that burnmad is generally used inappropriately by members whose topic becomes "hot". They use a majority of burnmads and the other burning emoticon (the one that bounces up and down on fire; can't remember the code for it) to show their happiness for having made a hot topic. Since they aren't angry, I don't really see any reason to be using the burnmad emoticon. As far as I can remember, I've never used the burnmad emoticon... It just always seemed a bit immature to me. Plus there's never anything that gets me mad enough to turn my face blood red and make it catch on fire, LOL. But then again, I've been using a lot of emoticons that I haven't used before since the emoticons took over my blog, so maybe one of these days you'll see a burnmad in one of my posts. And now it's been five minutes! --- Wow, that was probably the most I ever stayed on topic during a freewrite. I'm interested to see how the emoticons (and you guys) will react to this.
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So my mom is forcing me to suggested that I enter a science fiction story contest. I wasn't really excited about it, but then my brother started learning about building an autonomous robot. From Wikipedia: So as soon as I read that, my vivid imagination started running wild. What if someone made a perfectly autonomous robot? A robot that was able to sustain itself forever without ever needing to see its human creator? What if this robot could create other robots and create a miniature self-sustaining society... and then what if this robot society got fed up with humans and decided to take over the world? Yeah, I know the idea of robot overlords is cliche, but these wouldn't be humanoid robots who were programmed to serve humanity and turned against them. These would be robots who looked like a Roomba and were programmed for some tedious task like vacuum cleaning. Maybe by the end of the whole thing, the humans will be the ones serving the robots. And so the idea for my contest entry was born. Of course, there's a word limit... Word limits, I think, should not exist for writing contests--they hamper creativity instead of encouraging it. But I do enjoy a challenge. And, I suppose, a break from all of the Bionicle writing I do. Wish me luck, or something like that!
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Here we go. Today's emoticon is: Hah, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that I don't know what today's emoticon is. But in fact, I do. It's the "notsure" emoticon. I'm not sure exactly what this emoticon is not sure about, but he looks very confused. Maybe he's confused about what I was talking about in my last emoticon freewrite, and what the comments on it ended up like: it ended up being a discussion about how time is measured. I could say that there were a lot of times during that discussion that I looked like this emoticon. Normally, in talking to people I know, I'm among the smartest person there (not to brag, but I am a straight A student, or was before becoming homeschooled, and a few of my friends are... not straight A students, so I have reason to feel smart among them). Generally I like to use big words that confuse people, but when I'm talking with people older than me--and much smarter than me--I end up sounding stupid and my vocabulary disappears. Speaking of vocabulary, my brother is currently obsessed with buying the game "My Word Coach" for Nintendo DS. Quite frankly I don't see the point. It's not like it's going to teach me any new, useful words--it's probably meant for an age group lower than mine anyway, so it would probably be a waste of $20. But if anyone has it, and if you think I might like it, I'd appreciate if you could tell me. But as for now, I get vocabulary words e-mailed to me every day due to some thing I subscribed to, so I don't really need a video game to do that for me. Anyway, it's been five minutes now! *** And thus ends the second emoticon freewrite in the history of the world (or so I think). Oh... and... keep an eye on my blog for some major upcoming changes... Emoticon-related changes...
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Could it be, perhaps, a new blog feature? Why, yes it is! After the complete failure of Ask Auserv (I swear, the only question I got PMed is "Can I GS in your comedy?"), I decided to come up with a new blog feature. It involves emoticons. It doesn't involve anything submitted from you. I don't know exactly what to call it... But I'm thinking: Emoticon Freewriting! What I'm going to do is every week (or something like that) I'm going to take an emoticon off of the "Show All" list and just start freewriting, using the emoticon as the starting point of the free write. After 5 minutes, I'll stop and the blog entry will be posted. So today's emoticon is... This fellow looks quite bored. I wonder what happened to him? Or perhaps... what didn't happen to him. Because when you're bored, nothing is happening. That's part of the definition of being bored. Actually, it might not be, but I'm not going to look it up in the middle of a free-write. Looking up definitions in the dictionary is not something I do very often because it usually ends up in much annoyance when pages get stuck together. I prefer to look words up on the Internet, on Dictionary.com or Merriam-Webster's website. Um... I have to keep writing, but I'm out of things to say. Three more minutes... On the topic of minutes, who decided to make them sixty seconds? Wouldn't it have been easier to make a hundred seconds in a minutes, a hundred minutes in an hour, 10 hours in a day, 10 days in a week, 5 weeks in a month, and 10 months in a year? I guess if time had a separate Metric system counter part, it would probably work like that... But seriously, whoever came up with this stuff liked multiples of 6. And I, quite frankly, don't like the number 6. I mean, I don't have anything against the number personally, but I think it's a ripoff of my favorite number, 9. I hate that it's just an upside down 9, especially when you're trying to do math homework upside down and you see the number 63 and you think it's 93. It's really annoying. Oh, and now I'm done! *** That got a little more random than I thought it would. But I like it. Anyone else like it?
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I didn't get to do a blog entry yesterday because I put it off for a long time and then at round 11:30 PM, BZP went offline, so I couldn't do a blog entry before I went to sleep. But anyway, I have a semi-good entry for you today. A few days ago, I learned that there is going to be a Short Story Contest on BZP, the fourth one. I didn't enter the first three, but this one looks interesting, so I decided instantly that I was going to enter. My short story, entitled The Seventh Stone, is almost 5,000 words long. I finished it last night. It's sort of an alternate ending to Mask of Light, where Takua doesn't put on the Avohkii right away after Jaller's death. It stars Takua, the Toa Nuva, the Turaga, Hahli, Makuta, and Ahkmou, in no particular order of appearance. I consider it perhaps my best writing so far, but I'll leave it up to you guys to decide that. I'm going to touch it up a bit before I post it, but expect it in the next few days. I've got Bionicle Legends 8 now, and it was a really good book. Greg's best, I'm thinking. Anyone who reads the books, and even those who don't, might want to buy it as opposed to waiting for spoilers to be allowed on BZP and then reading them. It's really a great book. So... bye. See you all tomorrow.
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For my 500th post, I have decided that I'm going to start a comedy called "The Comedy-Makers". It will star every Toa that has ever been a set, as well as myself as the author and perhaps guest stars. I would tell you what it's about, but perhaps a preview will work better... Here is an excerpt from Chapter 1. That's only the first part of the chapter, and it's subject to change before posting this, but I'd like to see what other people think before I post it. This is a new experiment for me. You see, I'm funny (IMO), but it doesn't come out in my writing except through cynicism and sarcasm. Hopefully this will allow BZPower to see an entirely different side of me, and I'm thinking I'm going to have fun doing this too. In other news, I've beaten Metroid: Zero Mission already, so I'll be doing a review for it tomorrow, probably. I'm still sick, but I'm recovering. Hopefully in time for my friend to come over tomorrow. Anyway... yeah... I don't really have anything else to say.
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I know we have a topic for this already, but this is more like something that would go in a manual of style than a writing tips topic. Not to mention that the last post in that topic is mine and I don't want to double post... Anyway, today I am going to teach you all about the progression of a story. In other words, I'm going to break down a story into five parts. Like any good teacher does, I will start my lesson with a diagram. Just pretend I'm doing this on an overhead projector, and this isn't a crudely-drawn text diagram. Climax / \ Rising Action Falling Action / \ Exposition Resolution Beautiful diagram, I know. What it means is that with each part of the story, the excitement builds until the climax, where it starts to fall until the story is over. Let me explain what each of those mysterious words means. (Actually, I'm sure most of you have learned this already. But it never hurts to review.) Exposition: The introduction to the story, where the characters, setting and conflict are introduced. It's brief and usually is all taken care of in the Prologue or Chapter 1. Rising Action: The rising action is the meat and potatoes (or asparagus and potatoes, for you vegetarians) of the story. Basically, it's the stuff that happens while the protagonists (good guys) try to solve the conflict. Climax: The most exciting part of the story. The climax is the final struggle to solve the conflict. The final battle, if you will. Falling Action:This part is where the story starts to get boring. Peace and order have been restored (or at least the heroes have made a leap towards it, if this is part of a series), and now the story explains what happens after the final battle. If it's a Metroid game, the falling action will include a race to get off of the planet in a few minutes before it explodes. But if it's not a Metroid game, you probably shouldn't do that. Resolution: The resolution is basically the lowest part of excitement, as the conflict is finally resolved and the heroes get on with their lives. Of course, this formula does not always apply. Take my second book, for example. Of course, it's not done yet, but it sort of goes like this: Climax Cliffhanger Ending / \ / Climax Rising Action Falling Action / \ / Rising Action Falling Action As you can see, there is no exposition, because I expect you to know the characters already from the last book. It starts right away with action, introducing the conflict that the island of Dyteeli is 500 feet underwater. The first climax is in Chapter 9, where the whole "Dyteeli is underwater" thing gets resolved. There's some falling action. But then the second conflict comes up. I don't want to spoil it yet. There's more rising action, which is the part I'm writing right now. There will be a second climax (though it isn't a battle; the final battle was actually in the rising action in this story), and then there will be some more falling action, for about one chapter. Then the excitement rises again at the very ending, as the story takes a surprising twist that will hopefully leave people dying to read the last book of the trilogy. And there's your lesson. I might do stuff like this again sometime, but right now I have to go finish up my story's rising action!