Fanfiction Lounge

[Bay]

I think I'm the only one here who is okay with Serebii. XD There's quite a lot of fics there I like and I was able to be friends with a lot of people there. However, I missed many of the old authors there that left and the new authors seemed to try to have their fics like Saber's. :/ I'm still active there, but not as much as before due to me losing interest in Serebii a little and real life stuff.

I too think it's a good idea to have seperate threads on bigger topics. It's cool that we're discussing stuff here, but sometimes if I want to go back to a specific topic, I have to go back 23838383 pages. XD For instance, I remember one time the discussion of what happens to the Pokemon if someone goes jail and I want to go back to read that topic for the ending of NE. The end result is I was trying to find that discussion for two hours with no luck. -_- I then said screw this, I'll just come up with something and end it there. XD

 

[Jelly]

Yami Ryu's reviews amuse me, actually. Her problem is she doesn't take into account the experience of the writer she needs to read 'reviewing and you'. Then the newbs cry because they can't handle such harsh criticism. Honestly, though, in the last few days, I've seen at least six crappy OT stories beaten down by Yami Ryu in exactly the same manner.

 

[Misheard Whisper]

That's a good point, Jelly. You sound like you're somewhat experienced. Do you have an account on Serebii?

 

[Citrinin]

By the way, whatever happened to Fanfiction of the Month? I see some really old threads around (for example, at the bottom of the page). Was it abused or something?

 

[Venia Silente]

And I haven't been here for how long...?

What is your greatest weakness as a writer, whether in fanfiction or in general? (Other than writer's block)

Maybe that I'm, like, too flamboyant, and something like, that.

Also my overuse of comma if you haven't noticed.

But seriously. When I first began writing non-technical things, I realized I greatly lacked in the general description department, using too many or too deep words to describe stuff and somehow missing a more obvious and simpler way to describe things every time. A particular instance when I wrote something about a body in a bed makes me laugh sometimes (heck, it's good that I didn't write it as a "corpse").

With regards to the subject of the flood of "idea" or "query" threads, I can safely say that I am amused at how many of these topics exist here, in particular the "Complete my Idea for ¢2" kind. I'd rather see fewer deeper threads, really. But one particular thing that calls my attention is that, sometimes, one of these request for help is well versed, provides enough information, or shows that the authore has actually given it quite some brain time, and most spectacularly, it ends up here in the Lounge. If I recall correctly the whole Zombie Apocalypse Pokémon Stuff idea began right here about 10 pages ago; I myself am guilty of asking in deep about a Pokémon's perception of human beings. It is fun when such things happen because they kinda bring the Lounge back to life from Fainted Status when it has goe too much time... untouched.

Now, that said, I completely support the idea that the Lounge is more of a conversational place (what with the Chainsaw Chanseys, Doogie Howser, the Lounge Musical, etc). It is good to have some subjects debated here in a very light manner; if any subject, idea or proposal that is well developed before asking here requires asking back, then it's time for a subject-specific thread.

As for posting ideas or requesting help about things that will never, or at least not very soon be implemented, there are not many things to do unless we see the actual discussion taking place (be in the thread or outside of it). I've seen some threads that are very obviously a question on a subject that will never be implemented, yet they end up having a purpose because the topic trigger a particular kind of discussion or inspire the author to try another prespective and do another kind of work. I myself took one of the latest opinions in my own idea thread and decided to try and integrate it with the story I am currently writing. It'll take quite some time to see the light (Elusive Goals is projected to have 20 chapters, the actual Indigo Tournament battles begin at Ch.8), but still.

So, answering the questions...

All that whole thing said, I... kinda don't support the idea of banning idea threads. I would like something like a "thread warrant system": overall, lighthearted discussion takes place in the Lounge, if the poster of the Original Problem and its reviewers decide the idea has particular merit or the discussion may be long or deep enough that it would either monopolize the Lounge or be dragged because it is too specific, then a specific "idea thread" is sanctioned. Yes, way slower and it may be mod-dependant, but between that and a threadyard I have already made my mind 42 times.

1. To you, what function do these idea threads serve?

To me idea threads allow for laser-guided, specific and efective help when the problem warrants it. Which seems to be the minority of threads, of course.

Some discussions will become long runners, others require a level of depth and further reporting that may and will interfere with the more normal, light operation of a, well, normal and light thread. So a special-subject threas is required.

2. Keeping in mind your answer to #1, do you think it's necessary for these threads to exist?

I completely do, albeit with certain limitations as stated above.


It essentially boils down to what Valentine said:

The awkward thing is that we've got so many things going on at once. For example, Kanto Lover was looking for advice about her snippet, but she was only addressed by two people, while the rest of us focused on a bunch of other topics (namely the bold ones). Maybe she was looking for only two opinions, but on the other hand, maybe it's okay to encourage people to branch off of the FFL and form other threads. Given the number of responses people make to the idea threads, I think we'll see it, even if it's one of those "I have a snippet" bits, and at least there, we'll have more room to form a conversation with the OP and help her through things like that.

(emphasis added, not that it is any bad, but it plainly stated the reason for a particular idea becoming a thread, as per in-forum definition)

Depending on the majority's answer, I might come up with another experiment.

I love when you experiment with us, Valentine... :cheeky:

To cut down on the stickies in the Lounge, you could compile all the "guide" threads into one.

That's quite a good idea and I would like to help, seeing that at some point I was forcibly appointed as an Apprentice "emerency Scarlet Weather" which means I should be contributing to the Lounge... Don't Ask, it was a weird thing.

Oh curses, I previewed and saw I have been ninjaed at least 4 times...

I too think it's a good idea to have seperate threads on bigger topics. It's cool that we're discussing stuff here, but sometimes if I want to go back to a specific topic, I have to go back 23838383 pages. XD For instance, I remember one time the discussion of what happens to the Pokemon if someone goes jail and I want to go back to read that topic for the ending of NE. The end result is I was trying to find that discussion for two hours with no luck. -_- I then said screw this, I'll just come up with something and end it there. XD

That's also one of the things I don't like about the Lounge. if you want to look for something, it becomes quite complicated unless you have a good previous impression of what the subject was about, and even then it becomes complicated because of the way the subjects are discussed - deeply and sparsely at the same time. A subject that was first discussed at page 295 can trigger no comments until page 300, and even then as a secondary subject inside another in a post, and then be sparsely discussed in about three or four posts until page 340. Some other times a very specific subject is brought about in page 301 and some good comments are made in page 303, but you have to read all through because the subject is encased, or "sandwiched" in between two larger and softer pieces of bread subjects that are also treated more lightheartedly in every post. Try and search the thread for "Sentret" or "airborne", come on, I dare you.

If something can be done about that, like a "Fanfiction Lounge Table of Contents" (and I'm shooting myself in the foot here, see above) for at least the last year, then that would be quite fun, although I'm still not sure about its usefulness (and where would it go to begin with?).

By the way, whatever happened to Fanfiction of the Month? I see some really old threads around (for example, at the bottom of the page). Was it abused or something?

Now that's a good question. I've not managed to fully understand what happened here, although I remember the matter was discussed here in the Lounge at some point. Search for it if you want, it can't be farther that 80 pages behind... :D

Now, what does this Writer's Area (the forum section in general) need in my opinion?

* a dedicated light discussion thread (like this one).
* a better distinction between actual writing discussion (plots, devices and tropes) versus an actual Pokémon discussion (Leagues, myths, canon(s), ...). Maybe, and I feel I am overstretching the problem, two separated threads for those particular kind of distinctions.
* (eventually, once people has been educated) a dedicated examination where people can for certain subjects (how to tackle a specific subject, for example their approach to the Storage System, yes, it was done here, somewhere between 200 and 100 pages ago. Feeling Google-lucky?) and have a short and active answer, be lead or referred to an adequate thread where that stuff has already been deeply discussed, or both. Integrated search systems are just not semantic enough.
* a coffee machine.
* a system that will keep me logged out until I finish my thesis.

Once upon a time, way back in December 2007, a moderator of this section by the name of "Hanako Tabris" thought that the writing guides deserved a rewrite because of how disorganized they were.

Many many more! months later, the current moderator of this section took a look at the guides for this section, and saw how outdated they were.

LOL's...
Just lol's.


About the Serebii FF mods / reviewers...

I'll make no comment here, sorry. Although I'll say when I first came here was because I decided that PC looked more amicable when compared to Serebii, and the first people who welcomed me kinda... contgratulated me on my choice. I still created a Serebii account afterwards...

And speaking about that... My Serebii UU account...

Also, since I know I am going to be ninjaed...

Cracked nuts to you all... :D

 

[Astinus]

To cut down on the stickies in the Lounge, you could compile all the "guide" threads into one. I've seen them do that across other forums.

Once upon a time, way back in December 2007, a moderator of this section by the name of "Hanako Tabris" thought that the writing guides deserved a rewrite because of how disorganized they were.

Many many more! months later, the current moderator of this section took a look at the guides for this section, and saw how outdated they were.

The fics referenced in the first guide are horrifically outdated, and unless some young author really wants to go searching for five year old fics, that's not good.

I'm really not liking the category of "overused" Pokemon.

-Oneshots (stories with just one chapter) should be at least 1400 words long

No. Absolutely not. There are many short stories out there that work when they fall under 1400 words. (I personally have many like that myself, and if I tried to stretch them out to reach that "at least" amount, it just wouldn't work.) Besides, that automatically discredits the drabble form for stories, meaning that if a drabble writer sees that in our guide, it makes them not want to post their work here.

-Don't use "said" without adverbs. "Said" is the most boring verb in any Fanfiction.

Again: No. Absolutely not. I personally don't like adverbs to "perk up" writing. Context should be used. Also, this leads to many young authors thinking that they have to use such gems as "he jerked out" and "she ejaculated" as dialogue tags, which is worse than "said".

-Always have descriptions! This is not a movie. Your readers rely on your words to "see" what's happening. The more detailed your story is, the better.

-Never dedicate an entire paragraph to descriptions… descriptions are important, but do not let the story come to a halt for the sake of descriptions.

One thing to do when you're doing descriptions is to use a Thesaurus. If you don't have one at home, you can use Microsoft Word's Thesaurus.

Again: No. Absolutely not. There will be no thesaurus abuse.

Colors often represent many ideas behind it, especially on an original character's clothing

Sometimes, though, a green hat is just a green hat because that was what the character was pictured wearing when they appeared in the author's mind.

Oh, and yeah, like Oni says, use the Thesaurus. Many times, it has helped me. Green became, for me, which has extended my vocab by miles, verdant, lush, emerald, jade... get the point?

Please oh please. Who cut the cheese, right? Again, green is green, and we're not interior designers here. We don't care what shade of green something is that a character is wearing.

The parts that say that scenes that take place in X weather are the exact same in terms of symbolism annoy me, since I personally wrote a fanfic that was fluffy about two characters caught in a heavy downpour, which according to the guide means:

Heavier rain

- Dark feelings and mood
- Weeping
- Terror, panic (fear of lightning)
- Gloom and depression
- Brooding
- Passion and anger

I'm not going to go through the various guides to reviewing in the first writing guide, since that's not where my knowledge lies.

No... Prologue are meant to be short and quick, nice and easy. Prologue is the reverse of the fanfic chapters. Fanfic chapters got a generally preferred word length minimum, while prologues got a word length maximum. No reason for any prologue to last more than 500 words approximately

I'm getting annoyed at the "word count" parts of this guide. The prologue for the book series that taught me the most about writing starts off with a prologue that is well over 500 words. It's at least three times that much, if not more.

When a script fanfic is written nicely enough (almost impossible in a fanfic skill level of writing though)

...

Then there's a whole list of nicknames that for Pokemon that are all in Japanese, which leads to possible foreign language misuse.

There's no disagreement with the first post of the first writing guide until the last few posts of the second page.

And the second guide has been deemed as wrong/inexperienced in some areas by the original poster of the guide.

By the way, whatever happened to Fanfiction of the Month?

Mod got lazy. Not a lot of interest from the people.

I can say that the July FFotM, if my laptop hadn't died, would have made Val the member with the most sticky threads in this section.

 

[Misheard Whisper]

Serebii was the second major forum I joined. This is the third.

As for Kanto Lover's request, make that three. I didn't post here because I gave her feedback over MSN.

Ninja'd while reading solovino's post. Astinus, you're right, we need a revamp. I'd be willing to help. And I would so vote in FFotM.

 

[Citrinin]

Hmmm, if there are that many problems, Astinus, then I think there definitely needs to be a rewrite. :O Or at least an edit.

 

[Feign]

The parts that say that scenes that take place in X weather are the exact same in terms of symbolism annoy me, since I personally wrote a fanfic that was fluffy about two characters caught in a heavy downpour, which according to the guide means:

I don't usually describe the weather in my writings (unless important), but I do like Pathetic Fallacy XD.

 

[Astinus]

I'm thinking that there would be a community-written guide. We all have our areas of expertise that make us all different from the rest. So why don't we all get together as a community and work towards making a general guide that will be the ultimate in ultimate guides?

See, what I'm thinking, is that whoever wants to write a guide gets to volunteer their services to write a guide on what they're good at (dialogue, characters, description, research). They get checked out by the others to make sure that things are up to snuff, then the guides get written. When done, they get shared so that comments can be made, advice can be added/taken out. Then they get posted in a lovely sticky guide that has a table of contents for easy reference.

This way, there's only one guide. It's not all over the place, and not one person is doing all the work.

Does this work for everyone?

Edit: Thank you, Feign, for teaching me about something I have never even heard of before.

 

[Misheard Whisper]

I love using the weather. Like the first chapter of Shattered; the weather is beautiful, setting a positive tone. Then the characters start talking about the cyclone in Johto (fun), which makes you wonder whether something bad is happening.

EDIT: Ninja'd. And yes, Astinus, that sounds like a wonderful idea. I recommend we put Reviewing and You in there, for starters. That's one guide which will never be outdated.

 

[Feign]

I'm thinking that there would be a community-written guide. We all have our areas of expertise that make us all different from the rest. So why don't we all get together as a community and work towards making a general guide that will be the ultimate in ultimate guides?

See, what I'm thinking, is that whoever wants to write a guide gets to volunteer their services to write a guide on what they're good at (dialogue, characters, description, research). They get checked out by the others to make sure that things are up to snuff, then the guides get written. When done, they get shared so that comments can be made, advice can be added/taken out. Then they get posted in a lovely sticky guide that has a table of contents for easy reference.

This way, there's only one guide. It's not all over the place, and not one person is doing all the work.

Does this work for everyone?

Edit: Thank you, Feign, for teaching me about something I have never even heard of before.

Thanks :)

I could definitely help out :) (on a side note, I remember providing a post on how to write a proper argument in another forum, dunno if it would be useful here).

If anyone else wants to know about Pathetic Fallacy click on the link you just read.

As for the example I said, the weather in a story incorporating Pathetic Fallacy would mean that the weather would reflect the opposite of the current tone in the writing. So the day would be sunny when someone had been murdered. Or a couple got married during a hail storm.

This is in its basic form, Pathetic Fallacy tends to get into Romanticism (not to be confused with Romance).

The most fun literary device I'd love to use, but do not have a chance to use, is Poetic Justice.

 

[Bay]

I can say that the July FFotM, if my laptop hadn't died, would have made Val the member with the most sticky threads in this section.

Astinus, you know Val will love you for that (and more). :P

And also for the community guide thing, sounds grand. :) Hm, I might want to do a guide, but not sure what I'm good at/what I want to write about. ^^;

 

[Citrinin]

The community-written guide sounds like an excellent idea. ^_^ I'm 100% for it.

 

[Misheard Whisper]

I can expand on my post in the Reviewing and You, about respect for writers/reviewers and consideration of genre?

 

[liveitout]

I'm thinking that there would be a community-written guide. We all have our areas of expertise that make us all different from the rest. So why don't we all get together as a community and work towards making a general guide that will be the ultimate in ultimate guides?

Coincidentally (or probably not), people in the roleplay forum have been talking about doing this exact same thing. Must be the season for cleaning out old guides. Unfortunately, it hasn't quite got off the ground. I'm going to watch how you guys go about making a collaborative guide it and copy your method, if it works.

 

[Citrinin]

Yes, the logistics might be a bit tricky, but we know from things like Wikipedia that such endeavours can be highly successful.

Possibly we could have two threads: one for posting ready-to-be-reviewed guides (or partial guides on topics), and a commenting thread for making suggestions. Then, once there's a general consensus that we have enough content, we could begin to amalgamate, eliminating redundancies and tidying up the format.

Just a suggestion.

 

[txteclipse]

Holy crap. This place exploded while I was gone. Look at all this important business being conducted! Sparknotes of what I think: idea threads=cool if not used to let other people write your stories, writer's guide revamp=also cool. I'll try to help, but I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a very dependable person when it comes to things like that. I'll still try, though.

 

[JX Valentine]

Astinus, you know Val will love you for that (and more). :P

You imply that I don't already sleep with the mod.

I mean, what?

Seriously, though, thanks guys. ♥

Also, supporting the idea of a community-written guide and possibly the two-thread idea. I say possibly because on the one hand, it'll keep the guide thread from getting cluttered, meaning we'd have less of a chance of accidentally drowning a newer, smaller guide in comments to a larger one. On the other hand, there's a slight problem with confusion, but if there's no confusion over the idea that the guide thread would be a work in progress and that the guides there aren't necessarily finalized or our Bible, then this one won't be an issue.

I'm definitely going to help out here with whatever guides people don't want to write and with critiquing.

 

[Giratina ♀]

Yami Ryu much?

Yami Ryu. Yikes.

I think that people over there just can't take lighthearted stories very well. You know, like not necessarily 'comedy' but not overly-serious either. And since those types of stories are the only ones I seem capable of writing, a few days after joining Serebii for the main purpose of ficpostery and maybe spriting I just kinda grimaced and said, "I'll wait until the rewrite."

Woah. Okay, big post jump.

As for the fic revamp idea, I think that could be very useful. Even though some of the points you responded to were really just opinion versus opinion, a good rewrite every once in a while never hurt anyone. If you want to keep the old thread around just for archives or something, I guess we could do that as long as someone edits the beginning(I think mods and admins can do that?)/responds to the thread saying that there is a newer version, for those of us who have a preference to keeping up-to-date.