[Gossamer's Scrapbook] The Ethereal Canyon I

[Gossamer]

A Friday Night Chat

Hey Folks!

This will be a quick little chat. I wanted to talk about internal dialog versus external dialog. I've been writing with quite a few new people lately - all fantastic writers - but one thing I've noticed is that as writers they focus on a lot of internal dialogs... perhaps more than 80% of their posts and never voice their feelings to anyone present with them in the thread. That means even if they write a ton of words, it gives someone else in the thread with them very little to respond too. Internal dialog is great, but if you then don't voice what you are thinking, feeling, or at least hint at it with actions or body language then it leaves a huge gap for the responder. It's fantastic to read at 2k post, but if there's two lines of dialog in that post, its super unbalanced.

Go through that internal dialog... that's normal... or at least it is for me because I'm constantly talking and thinking inside of my head. But once you go through the internal dialog, externalize it somehow... by speaking your mind, letting your body show your conflict or emotion... and giving other writers something to respond too!

It's all about carrying the thread and moving it forward. Don't lean on a moderator or thread partner to do that. Do it yourself. If you do, I promise people will come out of the woodwork to thread with you.

[Gossamer]

[Gossamer]

Curses & Storyseeds

Unless you've been living under a rock lately, you probably know that people in Syka are cursed this season if they choose to be. And if they choose to be, their curses manifest in a wide variety of ways and affect each of the PCs in a whole host of ways. And if you aren't cursed, and interact with a cursed person, things are probably not functioning optimally. And that might be putting it lightly.

Anyhow, I wanted to talk a bit about the curses. The reason I want to is because people are asking me specific questions about their curses and I want to simply answer those questions with a blanket response of... "It's up to you.".

The curses fall under the larger umbrella of 'storyseeds'. Storyseeds are just barebones ideas that people take and make into a whole big thing IC. I think in order for us to talk about the curses, we need to talk about storyseeds more... because they might not be something that people completely understand. Hence, I'm going to give you an example.

A storyseed might be... "You receive a mysterious gift."

That's all.... that's the information you get. It's then up to you to decide who sent the gift, what the gift is, if you accept it... what it means for your PC, etc. My job is done. I planted a storyseed and you chose to accept.

So when people ask me for details on their curses, the answer is simple... "It's up to you!" Take a general idea... like a gaping maw mouth on your stomach and run with it... what does it mean for your PC? What problems does it cause? Can only you see it? Can others see it? Can it fight so you can use your stomach maw full of teeth to bite someone's head off? Don't ask me those questions... develop the answers in thread and find out for yourself.

People didn't roll for curses, not really, but they rolled for the order they got to pick a curse in. You literally rolled a dice, let me know what your score was, and the highest score got the first choice, next highest, next choice, etc... or people could make up their own curses. I rolled low and picked third from last and last. Then I dolled out the leftover curses to the NPC population and made up a few more to fill in the gaps. And some people came in late and made up their own curses.

It's all for fun. It's all to have a good time. There are no hard fast rules.

I'm sorry if they sound simplistic. They are meant to be storyseeds that by their very nature -are- simplistic. And now hopefully you now understand why they are basic. And you'll take them and make them something complicated and life-changing.

We are coming up to the halfway point in the season. Along with developing your curses and making them an integral part of your current storyline... you should be working to solve the problem in Syka.

I am holding my PC's back because I have an unfair advantage in knowing the origins and the why of it. This is all on you folks. If no one solves the problem by the end of the season... you very well could be stuck with a real issue in the seasons coming afterward. If you write the 25K you can shed the curse... but that still won't mean something else... something worse won't be forthcoming. This needs to be solved! And hopefully, you will have a lot of fun solving it.