Tiana Calthye

This is what I was saying. But what I meant was, really, action only for action's sake IS bad, and if your story is getting slow and boring maybe you should rethink the story and or realize that character development can happen through action too. As long as the action is providing something for the story rather than "suddenly Obi-Wan whipped out his sword and dueled Yoda while they discussed Kamino"... well... then by all means, have your action. Conflict is much greater than just the swords clashing, though. The hunt, the run through a facility, hiding, plotting out the action... those five moves can be stretched out into a chapter long conflict. This is why you'll never be a beta reader. Who are you? You're another writer with experience of your own to share. We don't come out knowing all we can about writing. It's not just about enjoying it, but growing as well to be happier with your craft. I at least am never satisfied and would never be without those who knew they could tell me what I could change.

I think it's simple: action should be tied to the story so there is no balance that needs to be struck. If the action is just there for action's sake, cut it. If the story is lacking in action, question your characters and see where you can improve the flow of the story. But when it comes to this specific, SPECIFIC question, there is a mathematical solution! Why yes, the work of literary creation is tied into math. It's 1+2. Action. Reaction or context. These can be used interchangeably, of course... you can have two contexts, or two reactions, and the context can come before the action. By mixing it up, it doesn't seem formulaic, but you will find success by working with a 1:2 ratio in action sequences. This keeps your story from seeming too "laundry list of actions" and from seeming too "bogged down in character thoughts". So let me write some bullshit. So that is how you balance it: with math. Secondly, you use the infamous rule: Show, don't tell. Show your characters reacting to the immediate action. Don't muse about might have beens and what ifs and nevermores, you just got stabbed. Then from there we all know we're going to see Luke's REACTION, as he looks from Vader to the plunge into the pit (CONTEXT), and lets himself fall (ACTION). You could write it by saying: You're telling the readers what you should be showing them. You should be showing the readers the emotions going through your character's mind at this moment, using the context to show them how he feels. You'll note in this one since it's not an immediate action sequence, I've drawn out the context a bit further to give more emotional depth to our character. Please note that you can add even more context to a single action to deeply invest people in the emotions, but for a quick action sequence the 1:2 ratio works best. This brings me to the final point: buildup and emotional payoff. This is done by flipping the emotional table. This can be done in a small scale... via chapters or even parts of chapters, or a large scale (the entire story). A good rule of thumb though, is to have one big change like so per scene. The scene starts happy? (Bilbo has a birthday party! Yay! But then he disappears at the end of the party and leaves forever.) Flip it to negative. The scene starts negative? (There is a big fight in the mines! Frodo gets severely injured. But he had a mithril vest on so he survives!) Flip it to positive. Or you can flip it to even more negative! This allows you to string out an emotion over a series of scenes and add reader impact when you finally do flip it around... you can have a series of happy chapters go from happy, to happier, to ecstatic... and then suddenly PIRATES INVADE THE CITY AND THE PRINCESS IS CAPTURED! Or you can have a series go from negative, to bad, to worse, to all your friends have been captured, to Han Solo has been taken away! to "Darth Vader is your father!" BAM. Things just keep getting worse. By slowly drawing out the emotional payoff from scene to scene, but making certain that by the end of your scene the table has been turned (ei: things don't stay the same by the end of the scene) you make for an interesting scene to read, you compel your readers to keep on going, and you can make even more reader impact when you finally flip things to the opposite side of the scale... because you've gotten your readers emotionally invested. Really good action scenes will milk this for all its worth because the flip is usually directly caused by your hero's actions. By making the change a direct cause of the protagonist, or external factors directly effecting the fate of the protagonist you make the scene satisfying for your readers. Change shouldn't always be because of things outside of the main character's hands, by making sure that change is always brought on by the choices of your leading characters you keep the action in their hands and let the readers get caught up in their story. Please note that I took the "steps" for this and converted it to a more PG-rated Star Wars themed tutorial but I did take the three steps to balancing action from a tutorial I found elsewhere. It just happened to, ahem, be a tutorial by a yaoi smut writer so I don't feel comfortable putting it up on here with our site's PG rating. So I wrote my own version.

It's a short story. You're basically asking me to spoil the whole thing! Fortunately you asked at THIS page... no, it's not what I'd consider to be a revenge story. I'll answer your question after the page because the answer spoils this page. "One woman survives the apocalypse. As she makes her way through the ruins of her old world, she discovers she's not the only survivor, and the truth about why only she survived." It's an origin story for the (SPOILER!) Maldlahin of Fire (they're like, elemental gods, kind of?), so it was made as a side story to my main comic. Any readers of my other comic likely recognized her by this point as being "Fire", so in a way my posting just this here is like the Phantom Menace without the OT. In my mind it's more of the tale of how she chooses to deal with what happened... just a small personal vignette about anger, grief, and fire. (It may be telling that I wrote it at a point in my personal life where a few relatives and a family friend all died in rather quick succession.) Brendo: Haha, my quick updates have lured you in! Thank you for the compliments on my art.

This sounds like a threat... I suspect this is a shoe-in for next year's Awards, or something... bad might happen.

Oh, it's nice to see you back! Good luck with this challenging story concept and it'll be great to see where it goes.

Oops! Well, it's still Friday here. I kind of ended up away from my computer all day, but on the plus side, I'm now the proud owner of FLAG TAPE ORANGE LIPSTICK which looks amazing thankyouverymuch. Thank you for your well thought out comment, JJS! If by the time this story is done you still like my unusual dreamy surrealism I'd definitely suggest you check out my other comic... while it's less developed as it really was my "developmental comic", it definitely contains a lot more dreamy surrealism... what can I say, painty dreamy surrealism is kind of my personal speciality. In fact, dreamy is absolutely the right word...

It's guest art for another comic so I won't post it here, but if you want to see it, visit mysteriesofthearcana.com tomorrow... well, in around 3-4 hours... for when the update goes live. It's otherwise a fairly PG-rated kiss. Yes, Ben, I've learned from your wise influence on my person to use my talents for 666 wholesome goodness.

About forty minutes ago, I was drawing lesbians making out. For money. Take THAT.

Everyone. Wait, no, that's not true. One person doesn't.

Narciel, thank you. The font is actually my own personal font, designed for this comic. Brendo, no worries, I'll change the title when it's done! Ami, thank you!

In my experience not splitting characters ends up with a far more disjointed and messy narrative, Narcil. You refer to EU, and while I'd passionately say "well, of course", but... EU is done book by book and the disparity between chapter by chapter is inevitably going to be visible when it comes to different writer's styles, especially if there's more than a couple of writers. If chapters are split between say... two writers, who interchange chapters (A does Anakin, B does Obi-Wan) and likewise, POVs (chapter 1 is from Anakin's POV, chapter 2 from Obi-Wan's POV), especially if the main action splits up for a while a la Attack of the Clones, I think it would come out okay. I'm sure you'd agree that there's a very obvious difference in voice from writer to writer, and that different writers clearly have more passion for certain characters. But if there's ultimately say, 7 people who want to work on it, the difference in handling characters from chapter to chapter is going to show, plus everyone will want to write that final epic scene... and it's inevitably going to stick when one person has to get their chapter back... and doesn't. The big difficulty in the requirement of interchanging chapters is splitting up the action fairly to best take advantage of different writer's strengths, as well as the inevitable wait. With the commitment being much smaller in scale (working a few paragraphs at a time at most!) it allows for more rapid evolution that can be sustained if one writer drops out, and it does not make a fractured narrative. You're imagining RP (and if what I were imagining was RP as well I'd cringe as well. There are some masterful RP posts out there but they are not written with narrative best kept in mind... though the duel between Furion and HJP in the battle stimulator was a riveting read and I'll be going to see the outcome all right). RP is written with no prior agreements, but when you write with someone with the agreement that "this scene is from Anakin's POV and so I'm not going to inject any thoughts but only non-personal observations on behalf of the scene" and likewise the agreement of "and in this scene, x and x will occur" all it does is lend consistency. Nothing's stopping either writer from going on into a description of action between clones fighting things, or describing a pretty sunset, and if you're on a roll, why stop? But when Anakin stops to think Man, this place sucks it's because that writer injected that there. But in short, I think the real killer of the chapter concept is going to be the requirement of a 4-8 page chapter before the next person in line can step up. Any shorter and it becomes RP posts and the problem you speak of resurfaces when it's put together. But I think of people like Ben who have trouble updating more than once every few months, and know that a more rapid-fire solution helps keep the literary ego from surfacing. Also when there's people like you and JJS who haven't been around in a long time, well, I see a lot of oldbies vanish back into the dust. This is just my experience, I've done no small amount of co-writing and my opinion is very much colored by what I've seen happen with chain stories. But I think the answer is going to be "we'll take a majority vote based on who writes it". I'll go with what the majority of the people who want to be involved want to work with (I'm just hoping I can sway people! Character by character is fun if you've never done it before.) and if it ends up being just you and I, Narcil, I'll do chapter by chapter for you. Either way, this is why a detailed outline must be made and agreed on before any actual writing occurs. Too much nattering otherwise. Either that or we can just throw all this out of the window, I'll write an intro and we cross our fingers. Back on the plot topic: so who is Padme? Someone from Alderaan? Do we need to make a new planet just for her? I prefer the slight battle for affections rather than SRSBUSINESS Obi. Though we don't want to go soap opera, because that's one of the things I felt ruined the action. I don't know how people felt about Padme the Action Babe/queen but I think it needs to go either one way or the other... not both. Heck, she could be a Jedi or a clone for all I care! A clone! A little bit of Stockholm syndrome/falling for the enemy going on maybe, eh, eh? If we plan to use her I think we'd better define her, and if we plan to not split characters, we'd better define the character revamp well. That's the thing, of course, we're not just writing the character as-per-canon anymore... but we're revamping these guys. Anakin's now a pilot in the Clone Wars who happens to be really Force sensitive unless someone has a better idea. Ob-Wan's a young Jedi Knight who's young and reckless and gets caught up in the action. Sound about right?

I was going to make a quip about abusing caffeine and then I recalled that much like today, my circumstances involved being rather sick and hyped up on a drug cocktail consisting of Dayquil, Gravol, and Advil for the greater good and I was writing while feverish and sleep deprived, so, well, I was pretty much as high as I'm going to get. I'm glad you answered your Force-ghostly summons. Yes, Ami, it was fun.

Wellp, it's been almost a year since there were Chicago gangsters. (Yesterday, I was all like "Bennnnnnnnnnnn... Bennnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn... Daaaaaaaaaagobaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..." in fond memory.) So what else would I do except update this monstrosity. There was more, after all! Why this one is hilarious: in canon, Hellion is the head of the freaking Order and also bloody Order himself, which makes him one of the most important people in the known galaxy besides... like... Fen. He doesn't need muscle to make people listen, he has a bloody army of psychicly charged crazies to make people listen. Moresby... is a cook. (and oh yeah also his guardian but beside the point.) <><><> “Hey hey, look.” Moresby adjusted the mounds of sample chocolates that he had stolen from a street salesperson, shifting them between his arms. “You got a bag? Something I can put these in?” “Oh here, let me adjust my corset,” Raiyn said, as they burst out of Fen’s place with their car, shards of glass flying everywhere and a couple of random naked women rolling out from beneath the limo. “Not that kind of bag!” Moresby yelled. “There’s plenty of room!” “You’re gonna melt all my chocolates!” “Only if you let me!” “Come on!” Moresby elbowed Hellion. “Let’s get out of here. Too many spyglass hazards.” Hellion adjusted his muscles. “Right, boss.” “Where’d our driver go?” Moresby glared down the street. “Driver!” Hellion hauled one of the naked women over. “Here, she can drive, right, boss?” “Yeah, well, she hasn’t got our car!” “I don’t have my license on me either!” she complained, shrugging off Hellion’s arms. “I sure hope not,” Moresby muttered. “Okay, man, hail a cab and we’ll steal it.” Hellion waved at a taxi futilely for a while. None of them stopped. Eventually he sighed and removed one of his strap-on muscles. “I think they know we’re Chicago gangsters, boss.” “Then stop looking like a thug, damn you!” “Just hold on,” Hellion snapped, “and I’ll go undercover.” He peeled off his layers of pecs and abs and put on his suit jacket. “Okay, good.” Moresby peered down the street again. “How about that cab there.” Hellion waved nerdily at the cab. The cab slowed, skidded on some of the beer that had spilled out of Fen’s lobby, and smashed into a street lamp. The spyglass chandeliers on top of the street lamp quivered and then smashed down onto the cab. The driver ran out screaming. “Oh hey, that looks like Fen,” Hellion said suspiciously. “Maybe the fact that we’re standing in front of his lobby had something to do with the fact that no cabs are stopping, you think, boss?” He waved at the naked woman. “Here, carry my abs.” “Myeahhhh, could be.” Moresby shoved his sample chocolates into the cab’s trunk. “Okay, let’s get outta here.” Hellion climbed into the back and squeezed over beside his abs and the naked woman from Raiyn and Dion’s assembly of assorted assistants. “Right, boss.” Moresby scowled at their continued lack of driver before clambering into the driver’s seat. He removed the bling from around his neck in order to be able to see out the window better and began backing away from the street lamp. There was a rather signifigant dent in the front of the taxi, but it would do. At least there was no smoke pouring out of the engine, though Hellion suspected that it would only add to their sheer badassery. He nodded, stroked his abs thoughtfully, and then began strapping them back onto his noodly nerd arms. “Why the hell was Fen driving a cab anyway,” Moresby muttered to himself before glancing back to Hellion. “Pay attention! You’re strapping your biceps to your stomach.” “Oh. I wouldn’t know. I don’t normally have them, boss.” “Yeah, well, get some medical diagrams or something.” “Yeah, well… your mother.” “Yeah, well, shut up.” “Yeah, well, LAMP POST!” “Aw shiiiiiit.” Moresby smashed into the post, and the cab’s engine promptly began to pour smoke. “I suppose we’d better call a tow truck for that, boss.” Hellion paused a moment. “And steal it.” “That’s right. Who cares about this cab.” Moresby phoned up a tow truck. The naked woman, neglected and forgotten, peeled open a chocolate and began to eat it.