@jonas
Active 1 week, 3 days ago- Rank: Chosen One
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I find that it is kind of difficult to actively try to make a story idea less cliche. In my opinion, execution is more important than the ideas themselves, so it’s definitely possible to work with concepts that are somewhat cliche without it feeling cliche.
It has been a while since I read anything from your story, so I probably don’t remember enough to offer specific advice, but I can give some general thoughts.
(It’s also really hard to write about people with powers without making it really cringe and cliche.)
I definitely understand what you mean here (although for some reason I would have a hard time describing why it can feel cringe or cliche.) If you want to keep all the races having powers, then my best advice would be to really think about how the powers interact with everything around them. What do people use them for? How do they affect the user’s relationships with others and society in general? People having magic powers would have significant effects on their society, and I think the more you can nail down concrete details, the more realistic it feels and the less cliche.
I am gonna miss the powers because they were so fun! But I’m just trying to figure out how to make my book less cliche lol
I would say that you should keep them if you feel like they add something to the story/setting, but if they’re just there because they’re cool, then it might be best to get rid of them. This sort of goes back to what I just said about concrete details. If you can make the powers feel like an integrated part of the setting, then I think they do a lot to make the world seem more alive, even if they don’t have very much plot relevance.
If you really want to keep them, I think it’s definitely possible to make them not feel cliche, but as I see it, you could also do without.
As for your overall goal of making things less cliche, I think you can apply the same idea to anything that seems cliche to you: think about how everything interacts with everything else in your story. I think that things tend to feel cliche when the reader can think ‘oh, they just did that because that’s what other stories do.’ If all the elements of your story are interconnected on a deeper level, then it stops being as much of a problem. Cliches are generally not well thought out, so when something fits really well with other elements of the story, it seems like you did it because it made sense and not just because you were copying what other stories do, even if it is a common trope.
Did that make any sense? I think I started rambling a bit there. Hopefully that helps.
@highscribeofaetherium @keilah-h @whalekeeper
Update: In case anyone was wondering, since it’s been a while since I posted ch1, I am still working on chapter 2. It has been slowed down by unforeseen difficulties that I’m trying to solve, and the fact that I had to delete a few pages that weren’t good as a result. It might be a while yet, but once I solve the issues I’m having, things might move faster and I hopefully will start getting chapters out more frequently.
Thanks! I will tag you when I post a new chapter.
You will find out more about the gods eventually, but it’s not much of a spoiler to say that, yes, they are humans. The term “god” is more than just a title, but they’re not thought of as gods to the extent that the Greek gods were irl, for example.
What does each color do in your system?
You’ve seen most of the colors at this point. There’s a total of nine: three primary colors, three secondary colors, and three “values” (black, white, and gray are not technically colors so they are referred to as “values” instead.) Each color is paired with its compliment, which has an opposite effect.
Green:Â A green line acts as a conveyor, moving objects that are touching it.
Red:Â A red line acts as a barrier that strips momentum from objects as they pass through.
Blue:Â An area enclosed within blue lines becomes liquified, turning into a malleable viscous liquid.
Orange:Â Orange lines improve the structural stability of an object they are painted on.
Purple:Â An area enclosed with purple lines has the effects of gravity reduced.
Yellow:Â An area enclosed with yellow lines has the effects of gravity magnified.
White:Â White lines, uniquely, can be drawn in the air. White outlines manifest solid material to fill them. The substance is light, durable, and colorless but disintegrates after some time.
Black:Â Black outlines destroy matter within them, dissolving it into black vapor. They can only penetrate a few feet into a surface.
Gray:Â An area enclosed with gray lines nullifies magical effects within it. Any other color lines inside are destroyed and a person loses any Color that they have absorbed. Gray is the only ability that has no counterpart.
III. Venice is close actually. Florence is the actual inspiration. Next chapter should have a more complete description of things since we won’t be so high above everything.
4. I will try to catch that next time.
f. Lyre-in. Like the musical instrument but with an extra syllable.
VII. I’ll try, I’ll try!
Oh, thanks! I do have some people already signed up for feedback, but I won’t say no to more.
Access granted. There’s nothing there quite yet, but I’ll tag you when I get something posted.
Due to being behind and the fact that I have a busy weekend, I’m just going to push my writing schedule back a week, so I should have the first chapter done this Monday. Not a great way to start, but I’ll just have to work with it.
I tried to give you access ahead of time, but if it says you can’t just request editing access and I’ll change it to viewing access after that.
Understandable. It’ll probably take everyone a bit to get in a good rhythm.
@loopylin @highscribeofaetherium @grcr @whalekeeper @elishavet-pidyon @koshka
Reminder that today is our goal for sharing first chapters (or just word counts, or whatever, depending on what exactly you’re doing.)
I personally am a bit behind where I wanted to be, but I will hopefully get things posted by the end of the day. I don’t want to get off to a bad start.
For those of you who will be reading my work, I’m planning on putting it in a google doc which I can share with you. I’ll create a discussion thread for it soon.
Yeah, that’s understandable. However you want to do it is fine.
Maybe it does make the most sense for everyone to just join that group, since I believe everyone who is participating said they were okay with using email.
Great! No problem!
@everyone
Here is a link to a google doc that has a chart showing the feedback set-up. This got a bit confusing, so this will serve as the definitive version that you can go to. Each person in the top row will be giving feedback to the people below them.
h ttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1DnDLQjwwp2iScwehVqcurtlMMl361HuicUDWw287CK8/edit?usp=sharing
Here we go. Some slight rearrangements (sorry for tagging people again)
@whalekeeper : Koshka and GRCR
@highscribeofaetherium : GRCR and Jonas
@elishavet-pidyon : GRCR and LoopylinThe three of you can ignore what I said above.
That work?
Whatever feedback, I guess. People might ask for something specific, but other than that, it’s up to you. I’m just trying to set things up so that people can be motivated to write and have people to talk to about it, I don’t care exactly what people want to do.
Ok!
You had put down that you were just going to share word count, but it’s totally not too late to change it. Give me a minute to straighten this out.
@koshka @whalekeeper @loopylin @highscribeofaetherium @elishavet-pidyon @loopylin @whalekeeper
Okay, I have divided us up into who will give feedback to who. This is split up as well as I could so that everyone gets to read something their interested in, but other than that it’s random.
If the data I’ve received is accurate, there are actually only four people who plan on posting chapters for feedback: Loopylin and Koshka (who both plan on only posting some chapters), and HighScribe and myself. As a result, we have plenty of people for giving feedback.
I thought two was a reasonable number of people for each person to give feedback to, so I went with that (although we can rearrange things if anyone wants to do less or more.) This means each person who wants feedback gets 3 or 4 people to read their writing. Without further ado, here’s how things ended up being split:
@koshka giving feedback to: HighScribe and Loopylin
@whalekeeper giving feedback to: Koshka and Jonas
@grcr giving feedback to: Koshka and Jonas
@highscribeofaetherium : Jonas and Loopylin
@jonas (me): HighScribe and Loopylin
@elishavet-pidyon : Koshka and HighScribe
@loopylin : HighScribe and JonasI’m completely open to changing these if anyone happens to have any problems with it.
@ellette-giselle and @theducktator , you originally said you would be willing to give feedback to other people but didn’t end up filling out the second form. If you still want to give feedback, you still can, but we do have enough people that if you don’t want to anymore, we’ll be fine.
