Terracotta: Our Lost Kingdom General Board

[Aldersmaine]

Apathy? Who's apathetic? Not me I can tell you that. Things are gonna get worse. This election season is fucking dangerous, basically, everyone will be pissed no matter who is elected.

And while yes the president isn't an end all be all anything... this election is a lose-lose because the people are so up in arms, and the politicians use this to their advantage.

[Aldersmaine]

I do think it's going to get better.

It's just going to suck along the way. lol

[Quaddy]

People being up in arms is the fault of the people and their ignorance. During the American Revolution, for example, while our educated were writing documents and trying everything they could to avoid war, the illiterate masses (and they were most definitely illiterate at the time) were burning people in effigy, tarring and feathering people, running them out of town on a rail, destroying property, and otherwise being a bunch of nuisances. The Tea Party (so vaunted amongst their namesake that clearly doesn't understand what the original was all about) was the single most peaceful act of rebellion the Americans engaged in. Why? Because the intellectual elite made sure it stayed that way.

We are a nation that fears being kept at a disadvantage, of not understanding what's going on, but rather than educate ourselves and, thus, dispel our ignorance, we vilify the intellectual elites and intellectualism as a whole. This has been true for as long as America has been a dumping ground for the people no one in Europe wanted (the religious nutjobs, the criminals, etc etc). Our Founders feared a tyranny of ignorance far more than the tyranny of the King.

Buuuut I've put on my historian hat now. Just don't get me started on the Civil War. You think my essay above was bad? I wrote a 25 page paper on one Confederate raid and the impact it had on Abraham Lincoln's reelection in 1864. And it had 2 pages of endnotes and 26 sources

[Aldersmaine]

I've never been good at essays... dislike them lol or at least dislike writing them.

[Quaddy]

I write them quite well, actually. As you might have noticed.

[Aldersmaine]

Oh yes, you write good essay, lol. I made them nice myself but it took a lot of effort to be at all interested in the majority of things i was asked to essay about.

[Quaddy]

I have to say I was quite fortunate to never have to write an essay for math or science, which were really the only two subjects I wasn't a huge fan of in high school and college. I didn't have to do it for my Latin courses either, which is probably fortunate as there was no way I was writing an essay in Latin. So, for the most part, it was political science, philosophy, literature, or history. Occasionally, I wrote something for anthropology. The most fun was when I got to write legit literature assignments on Batman: The Dark Knight (the Miller comic) and Batman Begins (yeah, the movie). That was pretty awesome.

[Matt]

Yeah.... you're definitely lucky not to have had to write an essay in Latin. Those things are biatches worthy of the furies. The horror the horror!

Anyway, we in Britain see Mitt Romney as a grendal type creature who sets an example of What Not To Do. This is along with Chuck Norris and most close-minded, ignorant Republicans (this is not to say that all republicans fall into the same category as the Rominator). As a Brit that just returned from NC, I can similarly add my two cents and say that the day that man gets into power is the day I move to Hong Kong. Anyone who can have such a black-and-white, narrow view on a country as extreme as America shouldn't be able to lead a party - he's more naive than my 13 year old cousin.

On the other hand, just to reply to your original point - I'm fairly certain that Romney counts as the American Voldemort and you can call for political asylum in the case of his miselection.

[Aldersmaine]

Lol, like I said. Doomed.

[Mynt]

I wonder what this board used to be about...

[Aldersmaine]

Ditto Mynt, ditto.

[Matt]

All about sausages and squirrels I believe.

[Quaddy]

I distinctly remember something about pigeons, as well...

And, actually, the American Voldemort title belongs to the governor of my state. Seriously, look at his picture and envision him without a nose. Do it. Actually, it looks like someone already did it.

my.firedoglake.com/jimwhite/files/2010/11/Scottdemort.jpg

The governor of Florida, ladies and gentlemen. Who cut the budget so much we didn't have enough money to pay the bills. And then gave out tax cuts to corporations, took money promised to education and gave it to medical companies (namely his own), and deregulated the medical supply field so much he can basically retire and circumvent the laws that got his company sued for welfare fraud in the first place.

Voldemort in the flesh.

But we were actually talking about dragons, weren't we?

(Used the wrong link. Oops. NOW it's Governor Voldemort.)

[Quaddy]

Word to the wise: do NOT move to Florida. Visit. Go to Disney/Universal/Busch Gardens/Sea World, the beach, Key West and Cape Canaveral. And then leave. Leave and only come back if you get a coupon in the mail.

Oh, and do go tubing down the Ichetucknee River. It's beautiful, relaxing, and you get a great tan. But, seriously, get out of that area of Florida as soon as you've done that and high-tail it back down to Theme Park land.

[Matt]

Fine fine. Grindewald.

[Quaddy]

Grindelwald it is.

[Mynt]

Guys, feeling a little like a failure here.

I want to add to your campfires and be part of the crew and the awesome. But all that comes out is X and his life (occasionally Cowboy and his life) which might not make any sense to some of you.

Does anyone have and good focus techniques or... stuff?

[Quaddy]

Ah, yes, I understand. Because I totally get both X and Cowboy.

Outline everything you want to do for X and Cowboy so you don't forget it. At least get it out. But do it quickly, just a rough outline so you don't spend too much time on it.

Then do the same for your other campfires/stories. Figure out what you want to happen in your addition (I'm crazy, so I actually act out a lot of my additions...well, at least the dialogue. I pace my room, speaking in different voices, and I can typically remember what I say pretty well...but I am weird like that), spell it out. It might not be fun, but it'll work. Do not actually try to write anything for the addition at this point, if that makes sense. It's kinds of like drawing a sketchbook for your addition--general blocs only here. Then, when your entire addition is outlined--what is going to happen, whom your character is going to meet, where they're going to go, etc--go and read what everyone else has written to get yourself into the feel of the campfire.

Sometimes this won't work and you'll still want to write for Cowboy/X/any other character taking over your psyche. Sometimes you'll want nothing more than to just put something down on paper that you'll hate, just to get it over with. And that's what you do here. You write it down. Force it. Even if the words feel like lead, just put it down. Then go back and write for X or Cowboy or whatever else is itching to come out. Write a scene. JUST a scene, mind. Don't write yourself out for the day because you have to go back to your addition now.

Edit. Edit that addition that you probably hate. Take some of the creative energy that you've built up from writing for X and apply it to Sera. Or just take all that experience you've gained over the years and edit the old-fashioned way: one line at a time.

That usually works for me.

[Aldersmaine]

Is Cowboy and X something I should know about? lol

[Matt]

Cowboy and X are what you first rambled about Beast: "I want to add to your campfires and be part of the crew and the awesome. But all that comes out is X and his life (occasionally Cowboy and his life) which might not make any sense to some of you."

Quaddy has a very particular method - most of us do - but my point is, YES you have to force it out. You need to keep writing or you'll go no where. But I think it's equally important as a 'focus' to think about all the other characters in the life of 'Cowboy' or 'X'.

For example, you say that you just end up writing their life - that's all a story is - but the storytelling is knowing all the details of a life and only choosing the good bits. So maybe you have this amazing scene for when Cowboy meets Cowgirl for the first time - that's great - but you probably don't need to follow him from the stables into town into a pub into a pubtoilet into the pub out of the pub and into her arms. You can have him walking out into the street and meeting her, feeling woozing from the alcohol etc. You choose your moments. You did that in your last addition pretty well anyway.

The other key point is this: you know the life story of your character and what makes him/her who s/he is. A lot of that is going to be pretty dull to everyone but you. Do you need to know that Laras Nikolao went through a stage where he became addicted to various illicit hallucinogenics after a failed lab experiment in his second year as a student? No, of course not, that's only relevant if that particular temptation rose again but there's no real need for it. Sometimes backstory explains a character, most of the time it makes a character and as a writer you need to focus on the present and how things effect them in the present rather than writing about the past.

[Quaddy]

Well, Matt, Mia would definitely like to know that Laras was addicted to various illicit hallucinogenics after a failed lab experiment in his second year as a student. If only to shove it back in his face as "everyone does stupid shit, so shut up and stop being an ass about it" at some point in the future.

Knowing what I know about Cowboy, that Cowboy-meets-Cowgirl thing is kind of hilarious.

(Cowboy and X are Mynt's *characters*, if you know what I mean, beast. The ones that are always there in the back of your mind, always picking the absolute worst time to jump forward. And when you do go back to write for them, it's kind of like sinking into a warm tub because you know them so well. Bob Kane had Batman, Brubaker has Captain America, I have Mia, etc.)

[Matt]

Yeah well imma sleepy kind of creature at the moment and I have no idea what to make of any of that. Also I think I mistyped a lot of crap in that last post. Woozing.

And Mia isn't going to know because it's irrelevant right now. She also doesn't need to know about his preference for Ethopian coffee or the fact that he still has the first pen he ever learnt to write with (despite the fact that the nib broke off). She probably will never learn that he bought his violin off the black market (it was a much coveted prize that was stolen from the Czech Ambassador) or that his favourite book is The Song of Names by Norman Lebrecht.

[Quaddy]

Hrm...of course Laras would call it irrelevant. Then again, not many people know that she's fully ambidextrous, that her favorite composer is Camille Saint-Saens (Carnival of the Animals is her favorite piece), or that she has a taste for fine whiskey. Most people know she had a bad fever when she was young (tabloids and whatnot), but not many people know it settled in her ears, so now she has very acute, very sensitive hearing. Fireworks are actually painful for her.

Her favorite book is probably Robinson Crusoe. She's got a thing for adventures.

[Mynt]

Okie dokie! (The Cowboy-meets-Cowgirl thing is hilarious to me too xD)

I'll try outlining and bashing it out and see what happens. A lot of my issues stem, I think, from my inability to plan ahead. Things just pop out.

Anyone can learn about X and Cowboy in my port, though a lot of things have changed since I did those sketches. (I took some good advice I got from a certain quirky writer friend of mine to actually get a feel for Cowboy instead of running around going "holy shit, how does he react to things!?").

[Quaddy]

You have a quirky writer friend?

Wait...

You only have ONE quirky writer friend?!