Something Bothering you?/Daily Doldrums

[Earth Gwee]

That really doesn't make any sense, at all. Have you brought up something along the lines of a certain setting or events that take place in the story possibly influencing the design of the character? Would he not see that as valid for whatever reason, or would he have what he believes to be a stronger counter-argument for everything?

We have discussed a lot of things regarding the main character and the setting since the end of July. It's only a little recently that we decided what our jobs are. Before then, we established that the story takes place in a relatively temporal climate, at the edge of a bay leading to the ocean, starting out in a valley. I was able to create a visually appealing character design almost on the first try. He constantly insisted on her (she's a giant, humanoid dragon) having fur cover her body. Rather, it's fur that's more like needles on a pine tree, and acts as tough armor. Except she already has scales in her current design: http://th02.deviantart.net/fs71/PRE/i/2 ... 83u3si.png

The only reason he wants to make any suggestions for changes like adding fur is because he's so enamored with my Earth Gwee persona, because it's different. I've already explained that for one thing, just because it's different doesn't mean it's good. I've explained also that any thick fur or so-called "fur-scales" would be the worst thing for her to live in, in a temporal climate near the ocean, especially considering that she's supposed to have originally lived in a friggin' valley. But going back to answering your question, more often than not he tries to think of ways to validate his ideas even after I explain why they don't work or that I simply don't like them or don't agree with them. Sometimes he'll maybe take my criticism into consideration, but in the end he doesn't listen to what I have to say. He keeps wanting to push his ideas after I've already said no. He'll says something like, "God, what do you want from me?" Makes me feel like it's completely on me to make his decisions for him.

Quite. It's honestly great to think of a reason for everything, but especially in the case of a simple story, of course there are going to be elements of their personality or appearance left unexplained. Why does the character have a scarf? Maybe it was given them by their grandmother on their tenth birthday, but does the audience care? Are they going to demand a reason as to why the character is wearing a scarf? Will the unexplained scarf leave audiences as perplexed as they were during the ending of 2001?

Exactly. I mean, the amount of thought he puts into every detail is commendable, but it's not necessary because those details will only naturally come out while writing the story. More often than not the story is what dictates the details to come out if they're needed. Readers will not wonder why the character looks the way she does and they certainly won't think about the purpose for each physical trait. Like, I gave this character breasts for no other reason other than I wanted to. They don't serve the story, but it's something I wanted simply because I wanted to accentuate her femininity. My partner wants to give them a reason for being there, but in the end the reader won't give a hoot what purpose they serve. Usually, he creates entire charts with his ideas written down. He told me to read it with an open mind, but I knew right away I didn't like some of the ideas, and yet even as I told him this and I told him why I didn't like them and I told him repeatedly not to worry about the design, he believed I wasn't giving him proper feedback. He said I was shooting him down, which is far from my intention. I want to make the character work without over thinking it. But he still has a thing for figuring out how a character looks and works before writing about them, no matter how many times I've told him how unproductive that is. Obviously, he's not willing to change as much as he is willing to collaborate with me.

Your partner sounds extremely uptight and illogical, I'm assuming that's something you only discovered about him after you began collaborating?

This is something I've been discovering ever since we've been discussing ideas. Anytime I said I didn't like something, he'd say something along the lines of "I'm coming up with every idea under the sun! What do you want from me?" Other times, sometimes he would come up with ideas I genuinely liked, which was why I appointed him head writer, because I'm very slow to start writing something I'm satisfied with and I'd also be drawing the whole thing. He has a lot of story ideas, which is great. But he still gets hung up on details about the friggin' main character. We've already figured out her personality and the role she'll play, and yet this crap still happens.

[Adsolution]

Do you think he might have a very specific and impassioned vision that he feels isn't being fulfilled, and that he has absolutely no idea how to express that or explain said vision in a way you can understand fully?

It's the only justification I can think of that warrants any kind of sympathy.

[Earth Gwee]

I've never thought that, actually. He explains things as clearly as possible. Pretty much nothing is left up to imagination. He has tons of ideas, but he doesn't know how to execute them well. I've tried to help him think of ways to make things work, even if it means taking things out to better the story. He seems to want to have his cake and eat it too, but he refuses to realize you can't do that with any kind of project.

[saerleiya]

I see which short story you are talking about, Gwee.

The traits of a character can have a good importance in a long story or a big universe in order to reinforce his cohesion with it. But the point is not as relevant for a short one with a world a bit 'shallower' than usual.

And right now he's not taking my criticisms to heart. He just continues to defend his ideas even though they just don't work and I've told him at great length why they wouldn't work.

He seems to have a very affective attitude about this story. It's harder to accept constructive criticism this way. Receiving criticisn abotu your work shows people care about what you've done so far and genuinely want you to improve.

Rather, it's fur that's more like needles on a pine tree, and acts as tough armor.

She would look like a hedgehog that way. Armor for dragons? Tough scales, organic/osseous plates, and a few other things. Well, you can be innovative, but this idea sounds weird to me on a dragon :/.
I guess that because it's a short story, you have probably explained him that you were trying other designs than the previous furry one you were using for Earth in her dragon form. You still like to put fur at the end of the tail and give your characters hair.

Readers will not wonder why the character looks the way she does and they certainly won't think about the purpose for each physical trait. Like, I gave this character breasts for no other reason other than I wanted to. They don't serve the story, but it's something I wanted simply because I wanted to accentuate her femininity. My partner wants to give them a reason for being there, but in the end the reader won't give a hoot what purpose they serve.

The average reader that I am exactly thought that way about Nilla's design. Breasts are always a good way to accentuate feminity, because they are fairly recognizable.

Do you think he might have a very specific and impassioned vision that he feels isn't being fulfilled, and that he has absolutely no idea how to express that or explain said vision in a way you can understand fully?

I've never thought that, actually. He explains things as clearly as possible. Pretty much nothing is left up to imagination.

Well, if you are creating something to be good, you gotta drop stuff at some point, even if you happen to care a lot about it. I would prefer to say that he doesn't know how to get rid of some ideas he really likes or to implement them in the story so it can feel good here or there. It also depends on the ambiance of your story? Is it serious, adult, eerie, funny? Some ideas just don't belong there because they are simply out-of-sync with the ambiance of the story. And if your partner has tons of ideas for a short story, a lot of them will be hard to execute or to implement into it because otherwise it would be too long or completely overshadowed by others because of the length of the story: you can't have meaningful stuff everywhere if you don't have time to explain it or to make it look like it belongs here.

[Shrooblord]

When I start writing a story, I usually think of a single event that happens. I describe the scene, the characters in the scene and what they're doing. From that, a setting emerges. And from that, characters that fit the setting. As the story progresses, the setting changes, and I get more ideas about how to develop the character. I feel that a story's character should evolve alongside said story. Of course you can plot everything out if you like - and sure, I too do that to a certain degree - but in the end, letting things in the care of your great imagination will yield far more exciting results. But everyone works in a different fashion, and if you want to work with this guy, you'll have to find a way that works out for both of you best, not best for either but only one of you.

[Earth Gwee]

Except I've told him many times that plotting out a character's design before ever working on the story is not productive. Many collaborative projects have proven this. I've told him many times why it's unproductive, yet he still continues to be nitpicky. Hell, I've given him Pixar's 22 rules of storytelling and, while he says he agrees with those rules, he's still doing this. The truly unfortunate thing about this is that he's been operating on that bass-ackward mindset for a long time and I don't understand why. I just can't work with someone like that. Obviously we both want to see this project shine, but no matter how hard I try to make him understand that his method is unproductive with any project, collab or no, he still falls back on it. Now anytime he talks to me on Skype I feel bad that we've hit this wall. I honestly just want to pick up my character and leave, find someone else who knows what they're doing.

[Shrooblord]

Sorry, Gwee, that sounds like you may have just hit a point where you must go your separate ways.

[Earth Gwee]

It might come to that if my partner doesn't step back and look at things more objectively. If it does, I'm more than willing to take my property and leave.

EDIT: I just chewed him out. I am absolutely done working with him.

[Shrooblord]

Sometimes it's better to say goodbye rather than hope for improvement from their side. I, too, have learned this recently.

[Earth Gwee]

The thing is, now he has apologized, yet he doesn't want to give up on the project. Honestly, neither do I. I want to see my characters grow. And I've told him I want to take my characters elsewhere, but he's told me he's going to rework the plot, which tells me he's gonna give me a new rundown, effectively going against my wishes. Goodie. Can't wait for that.

[Shrooblord]

Then just tell him no. If he apologises but then continues in exactly the same manner, he's not genuinely sorry.

[Earth Gwee]

I will. Because by going against my wishes and saying we both need to cool off, it makes everything I said feel completely invalid. I may be misconstruing, as he has said he has no intention of hurting me in any way. Still, the fact that he's going through with it means to me that he doesn't respect my feelings.

[saerleiya]

When I start writing a story, I usually think of a single event that happens. I describe the scene, the characters in the scene and what they're doing. From that, a setting emerges. And from that, characters that fit the setting. As the story progresses, the setting changes, and I get more ideas about how to develop the character. I feel that a story's character should evolve alongside said story. Of course you can plot everything out if you like - and sure, I too do that to a certain degree - but in the end, letting things in the care of your great imagination will yield far more exciting results.

Interesting, I'm working a bit like this too, although I tend not to write it and just keep it in mind until something cohesive emerges from my brain (I mean, cohesive in terms of what is related to the story: plot, ambiance, characters, and position into the story). It's actually quite hard to find inspiration sometimes, as everything must have a meaning in a plot, whether it's here to describe one your characters, setting the location, defining the ambiance, or focusing on the main goal behind the plot of your story. Like, most of the time you won't try to describe a place in its entirety in one shot because it will simply become boring (looking at you, Emile Zola, with your 20 pages description of a 19th century shop >:(...). You'd rather keep only what's interesting for the next few pages/the next scene happening there, and move on until you need to describe another part of it. It's not a real drawback actually, I don't think a lot of people are fond of fully describing something because the longer it goes, the more challenging and tiem-consuming it is to keep it interesting for the reader: You can't re-use some styles, pronouns, nouns, etc...because you already wrote them a few lines before.

I'm not having only a single meaningful event, however, before I'm starting writing. I prefer to say I'm starting only when i have the backbone of the plot: a group of important events defining the story in itself at almost every level I talked about right there : overall ambiance, story plot, character's personality, main goal...and action of course .

My point of view, though...problem is filling the blank, and it can be quite big: if you know your story can fill several books if it happens to be written down completely (one day in a few years...), a blank can become a whole 60 pages of writing or more. I've only begun a "short" story and it's already 17 word pages long in Word's Calibri 12. How long will it be at the end, I have no idea XD.

[Shrooblord]

About the meaning thing, I find that when I write, the meaning finds itself. I write things and they tend to fall in to place (on purpose, mostly, but by accident a lot of times too). I don't go in thinking 'I need to know where this is going' but rather write, and while I write, see the things happening in my mind, which gives me more inspiration to write what's coming next. I do have random ideas throughout the day when I'm not physically writing though, and I will note those ideas down and use them to write my next bit or to work towards the part of the story where the ideas become relevant.

And in describing scenes, I'll usually give a vague description at first - 'the hall they entered had four pillars holding up its dome roof, whose glass ceiling made sunbeams dance on the office seat before them' - and then get more detailed if that's important - 'as he approaches one of the pillars, he notices it's covered in reliefs of tiny dancing people, worshipping some god he can't place.'

[saerleiya]

About the meaning thing, I find that when I write, the meaning finds itself. I write things and they tend to fall in to place (on purpose, mostly, but by accident a lot of times too). I don't go in thinking 'I need to know where this is going' but rather write, and while I write, see the things happening in my mind, which gives me more inspiration to write what's coming next. I do have random ideas throughout the day when I'm not physically writing though, and I will note those ideas down and use them to write my next bit or to work towards the part of the story where the ideas become relevant.

It's good to start with that...the main issue however is that if you spend your time not thinking about the main direction of your story, you are actually following a pattern designed by your brain and based upon your own conscious and subconscious experience. Our brains are designed to take shortcuts by default: if we don't think about what we do sometimes, we don't really control it, and sometimes we need to do so.

That's...not against you. I just realised I was doing the same thing most of the time about creating a story. Or maybe it's simply my subconscious working for me in the background until it finds something which 'clicks' into my mind...weird.

And in describing scenes, I'll usually give a vague description at first - 'the hall they entered had four pillars holding up its dome roof, whose glass ceiling made sunbeams dance on the office seat before them' - and then get more detailed if that's important - 'as he approaches one of the pillars, he notices it's covered in reliefs of tiny dancing people, worshipping some god he can't place.'

I found an expression for that: 'description while moving'! \o/.

I'm actually doing something else for the description of a house, but it took quite some time as I had to create action specifically designed for me to be able to describe it in a very fluid, dynamic way. Therefore it would be more like 'description while acting'. Or I'm just talking nonsense, and it is the same. It's only that I have to move through several rooms because I can't describe the entire house without the character moving, as I prefer to describe the environment around people if I happened to focus on them in the last few sentences.

[Shrooblord]

\It's good to start with that...the main issue however is that if you spend your time not thinking about the main direction of your story, you are actually following a pattern designed by your brain and based upon your own conscious and subconscious experience.

I usually know the ending of a story the instant I start writing it. The joy is in the journey towards that ending, all events in some way leading up to that one supreme moment where everything converges and finally, it's over.

[Adsolution]

I just fuckin' hate this world. And the human worms feasting on its carcass. My whole life is just cold, bitter hatred. And I always wanted to die violently. This is the time of vengeance and no life is worth saving. And I will put in the grave as many as I can. It's time for me to kill. And it's time for me to die. My genocide crusade begins here.

[Earth Gwee]

Uh, considering this is the Daily Doldrums thread, I'm having a hard time telling if you're serious or not.

[Rayfist]

He's fucking around, we were skyping and I told him he should quote something from the game Hatred to see the reaction people got. It was pretty hilarious and we were both dying.

[Earth Gwee]

Oh, okay. Good. Had me worried for a minute there. Don't do that again, you bastards! XD