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[Ozarck]

I've been batting the idea of turning the Einsteinian Roulette game into a novel for a while.

So I am going to give it a shot. I am writing it up in this google doc

Feel free to stop by to post comments, and feel free to discuss all things novel related here in this thread.

PW's discord

[Imic]

 

[Ozarck]

been a while, but I am starting to add content again.

if you have a character in this game, this thread is a good place to describe them and anything you want me to take into account regarding them, including if you want your character left out of the book, or if you want their name changed or basically anything else you want me to pay attention to.

I won't promise i'll get it right, if I even get that far at all, but the more feedback I get, the more likely I will keep pushing through.

[Leodanny]

Can I be the proofreader?

[NJW2000]

Any character I played was fundamentally a coward, though this sometimes forced them into acting recklessly in a way that could be mistaken for courage.

[Ozarck]

Can I be the proofreader?

Sure, proofread away. I hope others will as well. Bear in mind that I am not putting out a polished form any time soon. My first goal is to just get content - to write and write, even if it is bad or inconsistent. Hopefully it won't be terrible enough to require major reworks, but I'm sure there will be tons of editing to do.

Any character I played was fundamentally a coward, though this sometimes forced them into acting recklessly in a way that could be mistaken for courage.

thank you. I will keep this in mind.

Leodanny's request regarding proofreading reminds me that I should put out a sort of road map for how I plan to write.
This is a rough draft of that road map:

• Generic focus of the book.
  We've discussed three options for this: storycentric, character centric, and episodic. Each has it's positive and negative aspects.
  
  • episodic writing would preserve some of the mission oriented feel of the game, and would probably focus on the curiosities encountered and individual mission highlights over character or plot.
  • Character oriented focuses on the personalities involved and their development throughout the game. The trouble here is tat characters come and go, and I'd have to pick one or a few to be the central focus - probably Steve, Milno, and one or two other long term characters introduced later.
  • Story Mode gives the book a larger structure within to work and a flow - a sense of movement. Characters and curiosities, and some of the unique writing might fall to the side though. This is the method i intend to follow howver, as I feel it's the best framework for a novel of this kind. There will be important, major characters, and the missions will serve as the path through which those characters journey. It's more about degree of influence on the writing decisions rather than considering one aspect the absolute and the other aspects disposable.
• Important Themes
  this is basically just what kind of mood is the book setting
  
  • 'Moral' nature of the universe.
    The in game universe was a sort of dark grey, but with a strong undertone of hope. Things were falling apart, governments were corrupt or inept, people died in droves with little concern given to their lives at all. Yet, the protags fought through it all, often living in spite of the odds, or even in spite of reality itself, and something positive came out of the mouth of destruction. This is my interpretatuion anyway, and i hope to keep that flavor, though I personally tend toward a less dark themed universe.
  • level of absurdity.
    the game allowed, even encouraged a lot of silliness. I intend to tone this down a bit so the uninitiated reader can take the story and characters seriously. I do hope to keep the dark humor and some of the wackiness preserved though. I'd like th ebook to be funny, though I am not sure I'll be able to preserve that spontanious lighheartedness, and worry that my attempts at humor will fall flat. In the end, if how I handle the humor doesn't work, I'll probably lower the comedy value to keep it from being unpleasant, confusing, or tedious.
  • I had something here, but it has slipped my mind. I'll edit this in later if I remember.
• Writing Phases
  
  • outline the story and develop the characters
    this part is done, mostly.I'm more or less keeping the basic outline of the game's progression and the basic crew roster
  • get content written
    this is the stage We are currently on.
    
    • here it's more about taking the events of the game and interpreting them in a prose format. I'm less concerned about grammar and flow, character development and personality, or descriptions of the settings or technology/magic involved. I am mostly trying to a) get into the habit of adding to this text consistently, and b) trying to get the skeleton of the story set up. We can add the meat once the skeleton is there. of course, some bits of meat will come in this phase as well, but overall this phase is going to be bare bones.
    • with 27-30 missions, If I average one mission a month, we can expect this stage to take roughly 2 1/2 years.
  [li]Add the meat
  Some of this will undoubtedly be done well before I finish writing the skeleton of the story. As we go, I'm sure certain points of interest will catch the imagination and I'll sidetrack into soem character development, or setting stuff, or minor events. But hte primary meat filling part I intend to work on once we've gotten the bare bones of the story in. I'm not sure how well I'll stick to this separation, but that's okay, s long as content gets added.
• Review and reaction
  Once the main lines of the story are put togetehr and I've got a decent amount of content, I intend to take a break and have us all review what has gone in to this point. obviously we'll be reviewing and discussing along the way, but this will be the starting point for a more formal editing. We'll discuss what works and what doesn't, where we might need to make major changes (hopefully not TOO major) - what needs cut, what was left out, where astory arc needs refined, rewritten, or discarded, where a character needs more properly fleshed out (or properly skeletized).
  This stage will probably be a lot of work, and will feel much slower and less interesting than the content writing part (unless my pace remains as low as it has been). But this stage is pretty important and can make or break a work of fiction.
• mechanical editing
  Once all the major work is done, and only tweaks are left to the writing, we look at grammar, syntax, spelling, word choice, and so forth. Time to polish this ... work of art.
• ?
  Once all this is done, we consider what to do with this steaming pile of awesome. present it to a publisher? sell it in installments as a web novel? offer it for free, with donations accepted? bury it and never speak of it again? The possibilities are endless.

[/li]
[/list]

[Kedly]

Dude! Ozarck this is awesome!

[Ozarck]

Thanks! that word of encouragement motivates me to add content! Gonna get to that tonight, at least a paragraph or two.

[Radio Controlled]

“Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter."

[Ozarck]

Well, okay, but the newsletter is mostly about pickles.

[TankKit]

Oh hey, this is still going on. Sweet.

[Ozarck]

Five and a half pages long so far. I'll add some tonight, after I sleep a bit. Feel free to check out the google doc and make comments. Bear in mind it is still very much 'in alpha'

[Xantalos]

w

whaaaaa

interest happen

I feel like if you're going to have any one character as the person we follow for most of the novel then Milno's probably the best option for that, he was pretty much the longest-serving PC, one of the only ones (or maybe the only one) to ever get to 10 missions completed, and had more of a character arc than most, one that ended up involving the Armory Master at that. Plus his dry snark and practicality make for a good fit with the wacky yet bleak tone of the ER-verse.

Though perhaps a good way to structure it would be having each mission follow one or more viewpoints depending on how many teams the participants were split up into, but focusing on the most influential character for each mission - ie perhaps Faith for the first mission since she did that bodysurfing thing, someone else for the next one, etc etc.

[Leodanny]

Ya mean Feyri?

[Xantalos]

...yes. I never mixed those names up before, especially during important missions when it was probably a good idea to know people's names.