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Comments
If it's easier for you to do, by all means crank it out!
Is the backstory necessary in order to understand the comic or is it there mostly for you to set it all on paper?
A little of both; the mechanics of the world(s) featured in the comic have the potential to become somewhat convoluted, and I'd rather not risk jeopardizing the pacing and character development when I can just get a lot of it out of the way beforehand.
Oh, and I'd also like to use these one-shots to get some practice drawing.
Are Kangaroos and Koalas actually a big deal in Austrailia, or would having an important one of each in my story set in Austrailia be too stereotypical.
Both. :P
Once I reached a certain level of narrative complexity, structure and layout became a practical issue. Telling five different parallel stories with between six and twelve different major characters in each (discounting numerous side characters) without confusing or boring the reader is difficult, to say the least, and figuring out how to physically structure the story so as to allow the reader to take in each component at their own pace while still keeping the other stands of the greater plot in mind can be crucial.
I think part of it comes down to the fact that once I have named a character, I begin to know them, and so cutting them out of the story or fusing them together becomes difficult to impossible. They may change quite radically—the secondary antagonist of one of the arcs, a fellow named Ashford, is completely different now from my initial idea of him—but removing them entirely is not an option. Instead, I simply end up starting a new plot thread, or removing them from one part of the story only to shunt them somewhere else down the line.
Add to that the inherent surreality of the premise and intended tone, and you can see why I might be concerned... although that would require explaining those things as well, perhaps. Alas, alack.
Ah. Fair enough, I hadn't thought of it like that.
Well, most people aren't writing artsy deconstructionist epics with casts of Tolstoy-worthy proportions. They don't really need to. And that's OK.
IJBM: Resisting the urge to write a Liar Game/Scrubs crossover.
ahahaha
so
my assignment for comedy writing is
writing for a talk show host
kill me
kill me this is hard
So, like, I was thinking about posting about it on TVT, but I feel more comfortable asking you guys for an opinion. So, my point is, I've been thinking about how one can play with what TVT calls "Our Dwarves Are All The Same".
Picture a group of survivalists (or perhaps just survivors) hiding from some cataclysm high in the mountains, in caves or other underground shelters. As time passes, this grows into a culture of living underground, and by necessity (you've got to accommodate the population somewhere), mining. Poor nutrition and lack of vitamin D caused by limited exposure to sunlight results in their stunted height.
One could, I think, work in other Dwarven tropes, like stubbornness or respect for tradition, by tweaking the details of their initial beliefs. Say, a group of Randroids having Galted out devolves into stubborn penny-pinching hardasses. A group of scientist refugees, a staple of old post-apo fiction, ends up with a vaguely religious reverence for "ancients" or "ancestors", a distorted memory of great thinkers.
So, like I said, I was curious what would you guys think of that. I mean, I don't claim I'm doing some great novel thing, but I see no harm in these musings either.
Miners are already pretty dwarfy. That is, people who mine for a living. Go read up on those folks.
Heh. Looks like I'll have to take it to TVT anyway if I want to get answers without asking for them. It's, just, I felt kinda more interested in your opinion than generic Tropers. Miners, I certainly agree there's a lot of inspiration around. My feel was that it wasn't exactly the point, miners don't really make for a separate people. But on the other hand, that's an idea too: to play with typical Dwarven conventions by presenting them as just a working class culture, no separate peoples involved.
(Hmm, perhaps this is a discussion fitting better in our generic fantasy thread?)
I think it could be interesting.
That's got me thinking now: what if the reverse happened? I'm not suggesting you write two different stories, but if humans could become Dwarfy in appearance and culture under certain conditions, what about Dwarves becoming non-Dwarfy under other conditions? Dwarves get stranded in a forest, let's say, and after several generations they become culturally more like Elves.
The environment you grow up in goes a long way toward determining what kind of person you are, obviously, and environment often shapes culture as well, and once a culture takes shape it often stays the same for a long time. So I find the "humans becoming Dwarfy" thing pretty plausible.
I was really suggesting that you go research miner culture and stuff. Those folks have different sets of priorities and needs and values, which are somewhat interesting to me.
^^ "Elfy Dwarves" sounds like a Dwarf Fortress player's worst nightmare, heh heh. Yes, that would be interesting to try out too, with the point that some brands of fictional Dwarves are so hardcore about tradition, they'd rather try to fashion shovels of pieces of sticks and dig holes under the roots. (Hmph, that in itself would be far enough from generic.) I think D&D, of all places, tried some cultural variety in their Dwarves.
^ Certainly. I'd rather not assume there's some universality of culture among mine workers, but more research is never going to hurt. Miners around here, for one, have their own parade uniforms and stuff. That sounds like something that hasn't been yet tried in fiction.
Speaking in general - I wondered what my idea is closer to, an actual twist to what TVT calls an "Undead Horse Trope", or just the same overused trope with some minor variety thrown in.
Don't think about what trope things fall into. Your story will be shaped by your mindset. "Tropes" make you focus on the blocks so much that you just make a big tunnel.
See the shape that the story is going to take, and compare it to how other stories are shaped. In other words, look at the big picture.
Oh well, now I have to explain myself. Don't worry, if I ever accomplish any writing, the lists of TVT won't be much of an inspiration, not that it will be any good in either case. I was merely curious what kind of reception you think that idea might garner, but I can see your advice covering that too.