Style & Prose

[V_Translanka]

Okay...Maybe I'm not getting this exactly...But heres a few questions...

It's been said that the story will be written "In Character". I assumed this meant some kind of 1st person narrative from the eye of our created characters...

Although, as seen with ZeaLitY's post so far in the Introduction thread, it is a simple 3rd Person (Omni) Past Tense...And the talk of "In Character" seems to simply mean writing the story rather than talking about forum stuff (OCC or whatever).

So how is it written? What tense should we adhere to? I'm guessing we follow ZeaLitY's example (it's a good style and easy to use)...But I just want things cleared up for the record...

[Symmetry]

3rd person, preferrably. Personally, I hate it when people write entire stories in lst person.

"In character" just means not to rehash what you plan on doing in the story thread or talk about the awesome sandwich you're eating right now. We want those threads to be as clean as possible, not full of crap to sort through just to read content.

All comments about the story itself can be addressed/noted in another thread.

[ZeaLitY]

Yeah, part of the glory of this project is that everyone can represent a different style of writing they bring to the table. I write like that mainly, so that's my style.

[Leebot]

Well, there are three common perspective for narrative. The official names are:

1st Person

3rd Person Focused

3rd Person Omniscient

1st Person is obvious. 3rd Person Focused operates like 1st person, except from a technically 3rd person perspective. It allows insight into the thoughts of one character, only, but may switch characters between sections and chapters. I assume this is how we intend to do this project. 3rd Person Omniscient allows insight into all characters at any given time. In modern literature, 3rd Person Focused is preferred, followed by 1st Person. (Aside: There's a fourth style used for scripts that doesn't allow any insight, but this is a different type of literature)

I noticed that ZeaLitY's piece was primarily 3rd-person, but had a single 1st-person pronoun slipped in--"in regions beyond our senses and wildest fathoms." Unless you plan to tell the tale from the perspective of someone in particular, I'd advise against this. I'd recommend replacing "our" with "humanity's."

[V_Translanka]

other proper pronouns would be anyone's or anybody's

[YbrikMetaknight]

I think this should be third person focused, preferably all stream of consciousness.  Stream of consciousness just works very well for this type of thing.

[Aitrus]

One thing I thought I should bring up, and this seemed like a good place to do it:

Chapter Names.

I've been giving my chapters more descriptive titles, as have some of the other writers.  However, many of them are simple location descriptors.

Should we go to a standardized system, and if so, which one?

[V_Translanka]

Maybe I'm blowing my own horn here, but I like how I combined the two versions by using both Locatiatory title & a regular kind of title...

Really...I don't think it matters either way...As long as the location is explained within the scene, I don't think it's exactly necessary in the title, but the other way is mostly for artistic liscence and is completely necessary...

Accepted Rule: It doesn't matter...heck, the first (ZeaLitY's) scene wasn't even titled originally...It's all a melting pot of authoring talent...

or something...

[Symmetry]

I tend to suck at coming up with titles, so I like the idea of leaving it up to the individual authors. But, I'll certainly try to come up with something to title my scenes with.