themes — Legacy Forums — Strolen's Citadel

Re: themes

#41

Longspeak you are the smoothest writer on the Citadel. Any project you are working on is likely worthy of your time (and your reader's time), because the end product will be good solid meat and potatoes prose. To be fair, I think Scras was trying to bond/commiserate with you over being annoyed.

I am going to submit an amazon Epub. As part of my career I have assembled multi-author reviews of nonfiction topics twice before and multiauthor primary literature a handful of times. I can do this. I can do this in spite of the fact that my grammar is terrible, my spelling is worse. If you are curious I can send you my CV (it likely has a spelling error in it) . I have never self-published on Amazon. I have never published fiction.

I am not going to do this because I am qualified or have excess free time. Neither is true. But because it strikes me as challenging. Because Scras was inspired to do it. For me the process and prospect are even a little intimidating. I like that. And if strolen can build this whole website while working full time with kids I know I can upload s**t to amazon (I rarely watch TV or play video games, I need hobbies to keep my mind off work).

I am going to include all of Aramax's poetry. Hopefully I will have some help in formatting. If need be I will pay for an outside proofreader and a reviewer. Hopefully Strolen will help me put this all under the banner of the Citadel.

Poetry is transcendent it does not need to fit a theme.

But the prose can fit a theme. The theme will be Shape-shifter, metamorphosis, double-gangers, lycanthropy, shamanism gone to far and so on. The stories need to take the things that define a person and explore them, take them apart and put them back together, trash em or inflate them till they are like distorted clown face on a balloon ready to pop. The stories need to be speculative fiction. That means sci-fi or fantasy. I want at least five stories. I not going to tell you if your story is good or bad. You are not going to get a score. This is a judgement free process. The default is all stories are good, I just want to make sure that they are as clear as you want them to be.

I am going to find cover art. If I have to pay for it I will.

I would like a roughly 1000 word easy on the shape-shifter mythos (a forward), journalism style with at least three real world references (no wikis). Review stuff like selkies to the T-1000 and explain the whole lesbian werewolf subgenre (kidding, I mean who doesn't understand that?). Tell us what roots our fear in doppelgangers or where we find hope in them (looking at you Scras).

I want a roughly 1000 easy on the Citadel (looking at strolen).

What I don't want. I don't want are five stories all set in the genre rich tolkien-esque western europe inspired settings that don't need a lot of unpacking. I'd like one story like that, but I would like new worlds, modern worlds, fantastic worlds that are as interesting as the story themselves.

I would like variation in the length on the stories as well. If we get a flagship novella that would be great (looking at you Longspeak). Finally perhaps we can do one metafiction piece. What is metafiction, the Citadel is metafiction, but so William Gibson's short story "13 Views of a Cardboard City".

Any one of you could do this, take the lead, hopefully, if this works you can take the lead on the next one. You will have benefit of learning from my mistakes. But I am going to do this if it is just Moonlake, Aramax and myself. I hope others will join.

Inspiration: Metamorphosis (By Kafka), Shadow Over Innsmouth (By Lovecraft), Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyder (By Stevenson)
But Shapeshifting is a popular troupe. We can do this.

Scras you practically have already with that snake woman story on the site.

This is what I wanted to know, and this I can run with.

Re: themes

#42

So with your analogy, Scras, if you just want to eat, why don't you go with solution 1 that I suggested- just write a short story that you feel like writing, post it up on Google and wait for feedback from others of the epub group?

I will thank you for your suggestion pushing me in a somewhat different direction. I've spent the last few hours working on my novel. I finished writing the first draft last year, and I gave it the recommended downtime before starting revisions, and then Summer happened, and inside stuff got back-benched for outside stuff.

I don't really feel like writing a short story, what I'm doing for the ePub is out of a sense of obligation, and Axle being persuasive. He's a persuasive guy :)

I have a number of friends who are visual artists (sculpting, computer animation, prop-making, rotocasting, etc) and I can very easily separate them into two distinct camps in how they approach their art.

Camp 1 is the stereotypical artist, they chaff under guidelines and directions, and they pour their work out of their heart. What they do is impressive, but it is an unreliable source, runs on their schedule and emotional preference and nothing makes them happier than supporting their art and telling them, make what the medium tells you it is.

Camp 2 says what do you want. If you aren't specific, they get agitated. What do you effing want? They are happy to make things, but it's not freestyle willy-nilly. Place your order, make your down payment, and in X days, come collect your art.

I am closer to camp 2, so I apologize about that, because there are definitely some camp 1 people here. (ZERO offense is intended or implied, it's just two ways to get the same result)

Re: themes

#43

@Scras, what you said that camp 2 is what I suspected about you whereas I'm def. more of a camp 1 person although the pouring out of heart bit is a state I've yet to achieve (burden of too much education and too intellectual a mind). That was when I suggested this compilation of long list of acceptable themes to everyone. But then you went off and said no no no, I just have a time constraint. So then, cos I'm a practical person I offered those 2 solutions for your circumstances. And then somehow you told me you just want to get on with the short story so I thought solution 1 was the more suitable solution for you. I wasn't really trying to push you in one direction or the other. Anyway, glad that it indirectly produced a positive outcome for you.

Re short story writing, I'm actually quite like you in that I always feel underqualified in writing up a short story. All these story ideas I have, most of them are epics which conforms to my own love for epic fantasy in the first place. I don't really see the epub as an obligation but a chance to develop further my writing skills but there's a bit of a parallel I can draw with the short stories not really my type thing.

Anyway, Axle's taking the reins of this in his hands now so I think we two can just go off and do our own short stories for this venture.

Re: themes

#44

Longspeak you are the smoothest writer on the Citadel. Any project you are working on is likely worthy of your time (and your reader's time), because the end product will be good solid meat and potatoes prose. To be fair, I think Scras was trying to bond/commiserate with you over being annoyed.

I am going to submit an amazon Epub. As part of my career I have assembled multi-author reviews of nonfiction topics twice before and multiauthor primary literature a handful of times. I can do this. I can do this in spite of the fact that my grammar is terrible, my spelling is worse. If you are curious I can send you my CV (it likely has a spelling error in it) . I have never self-published on Amazon. I have never published fiction.

I am not going to do this because I am qualified or have excess free time. Neither is true. But because it strikes me as challenging. Because Scras was inspired to do it. For me the process and prospect are even a little intimidating. I like that. And if strolen can build this whole website while working full time with kids I know I can upload s**t to amazon (I rarely watch TV or play video games, I need hobbies to keep my mind off work).

I am going to include all of Aramax's poetry. Hopefully I will have some help in formatting. If need be I will pay for an outside proofreader and a reviewer. Hopefully Strolen will help me put this all under the banner of the Citadel.

Poetry is transcendent it does not need to fit a theme.

But the prose can fit a theme. The theme will be Shape-shifter, metamorphosis, double-gangers, lycanthropy, shamanism gone to far and so on. The stories need to take the things that define a person and explore them, take them apart and put them back together, trash em or inflate them till they are like distorted clown face on a balloon ready to pop. The stories need to be speculative fiction. That means sci-fi or fantasy. I want at least five stories. I not going to tell you if your story is good or bad. You are not going to get a score. This is a judgement free process. The default is all stories are good, I just want to make sure that they are as clear as you want them to be.

I am going to find cover art. If I have to pay for it I will.

I would like a roughly 1000 word easy on the shape-shifter mythos (a forward), journalism style with at least three real world references (no wikis). Review stuff like selkies to the T-1000 and explain the whole lesbian werewolf subgenre (kidding, I mean who doesn't understand that?). Tell us what roots our fear in doppelgangers or where we find hope in them (looking at you Scras).

I want a roughly 1000 easy on the Citadel (looking at strolen).

What I don't want. I don't want are five stories all set in the genre rich tolkien-esque western europe inspired settings that don't need a lot of unpacking. I'd like one story like that, but I would like new worlds, modern worlds, fantastic worlds that are as interesting as the story themselves.

I would like variation in the length on the stories as well. If we get a flagship novella that would be great (looking at you Longspeak). Finally perhaps we can do one metafiction piece. What is metafiction, the Citadel is metafiction, but so William Gibson's short story "13 Views of a Cardboard City".

Any one of you could do this, take the lead, hopefully, if this works you can take the lead on the next one. You will have benefit of learning from my mistakes. But I am going to do this if it is just Moonlake, Aramax and myself. I hope others will join.

Inspiration: Metamorphosis (By Kafka), Shadow Over Innsmouth (By Lovecraft), Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyder (By Stevenson)
But Shapeshifting is a popular troupe. We can do this.

Scras you practically have already with that snake woman story on the site.

Your overwhelming support for my poetry is inspiring., the least I can do is back you 100%.That is what I'm going to do. You told me before to answer your questions directly. I ask you to do the same. Based on your percived length of the work, Do you feel I should write more poetry or should I concentrate my efforts in editing and tweeking? I also have a short story buzzing in the back of my head that would easily be adapted to the theme(in fact it would work better as a shape shifter). You wanted verius lengths and it would be short. Point your swedish shepard in a direction or two and I'll try to get started.

Re: themes

#45

We have enough poetry right now. Put if the number of stories expands beyond five, then yes please write some more (you can write some more anyway and pick and choose what you want to go in). I thinking one poem for each story plus 1. So if we have five stories, that will be six poems.

Please right up your short story. Do me a favor, post the setting in the forums. While I do want every story to be about a shapeshifter or somebodies relationship with a shapeshifter/s. I hoping for a variety of settings.

Re: themes

#46

For the sake of newcomers, just want to say that the finalised decision for issue 1 is that the theme would be shape-shifters. If that doesn't inspire you, don't worry, write what you feel like and we'll see about inclusion of that into subsequent or concurrent issues.

Re: themes

#47

Just thought of another "theme" that is so simple it hurts!

I'm sure this has probably been mentioned by someone already but...

"Shared World"!!

Now, that doesn't mean there has to be a 10 day, 4 hour a day, brainstorming session to create an entire "world" but could be something as simple as...

The world is destroyed after the "event". An hour of co-brainstorming and bam, authors go off to write their versions/visions. Similarly it could be something like "aerial adventures" (we're all writing stories involving flying ships, cloud castles, what have you.) Or "Stranded on Uranus" (everyone comes up with their own stranded on a planet take. Etc...

Was just thinking this because the first ePub stories are so disparate despite the shape-shifter theme.

OR!!! We can take it to a whole other level with a "Thieves World" type of anthology! Or Decathros!!!111!!!

Anyhoo, brainstorming while waiting at kids bball practice.

Re: themes

#48

THIEVES WORLD WOULD BE AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!(Only one issue thou)

Re: themes

#49

Theives World needs to wait until we are more advanced in structure and more involvement, it is a VERY advanced undertaking, Issue 4? a LONG way off

DIBBS ON THE BARBARIAN!!!!!!!!!!!!(Oh and a Wizard)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!