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Story Ideas & Discussion Thread


Terk

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Anything is potentially a good idea (or equally, potentially a bad idea) depending how much you enjoy it and manage to develop it. The forum is often littered with interesting starts to stories that then get abandoned because the writer can't work out how to continue in a satisfactory style or to the same standard - that is no bad thing - some people enjoy reading those even when they are just a few posts. One of my main problems with writing stories here is that I can often come up with good ideas for a story start or can write a couple of high quality posts to kick off a story, but then I know that I can't maintain the standard so I give up and go for a story more on my level!

As far as branching out goes, I prefer to stick to the tree trunk mostly in writing my stories. I'm not a particularly good writer in many aspects, but I have found a niche (albeit a standard niche if that isn't a contradiction) in which I feel fairly comfortable writing my stories and I tend to stick to it with just a few experimental and adventurous posts.

I'm considering buying a new laptop when FM09 comes out because my current one is 3 years old and wasn't top of the range when it was new so it will never handle FM09's 3d match view and may be too slow for the game in general too. If I do that my story-writing enthusiasm might be ignited because I will have two laptops and can dedicate one to the story writing and the other to playing the game so I don't have to keep task switching and causing FM to go slow (which it tends to if I have anything else open at the same time) as I do at the moment - few things dent my enthusiasm for writing a story more than that!

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  • 3 weeks later...
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I have an idea for a story floating around in my head but I'm not sure how to implement it. Is there somewhere in the forums where I can post the beginning of it, when I have a chance to start writing, to gauge interest/recieve tips on my writing style before I start posting all of it.

P.S. I'm really sorry if this is the wrong place for this type of thing. It just seemed like the post liely place to get help.

Cheers in advance.

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  • 4 weeks later...

What are people's thoughts on different languages in stories? If, for example, you had an English manager managing in Spain, would you put all speech in English even though it is spoken in Spanish? How would you differentiate between Spanish and English (if, for example, the character went back to England to visit ma and pa, would they be speaking as the Spanish characters do?).

I was thinking I would have the foreign languages in their own language unless the manager has a decent grip of them, to indicate the unfamiliarity of the language, and then as they become fluent, make the speech in English. And if I had a foreign protagonist, I would have their own native tongue as English, and do it in a similar style. I wouldn't translate the bits I put in another language: I would leave it up to the reader to decide whether they want to do that for themselves or leave it a mystery (of course I wouldn't have extensive passages of foreign language).

What do others think?

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That's what I'd do, too. I've used French and Italian, both briefly, in There's no time like the present. I simply leave the translated phrase there, and I don't post what it is in English- partly because doing so may have led to be receiving an infraction!

If you have two Spanish guys speaking together, obviously that should be in English if you're telling the story from their viewpoint.

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We've had foreign language stories before on the forum. I can't remember the rule Raptor set tbh, but we did have one way back when I was still important here. There really isn't a single thing wrong with having parts of direct speech quoted in its original language if you feel it adds to the story and if anyone got an infraction for that it would be another nail in the coffin for this place. What you do have to take into account though is how many of the people reading your story would actually be able to understand what was written.

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I can't remember now cos I'm going senile, but did we not at one point even consider having a best foreign language story? I think it was mainly at the time when we had a lot of Dutch users and I'm nearly certain someone did post a story in Dutch or German or something like that.

Speaking of which, does anyone know whatever happened to Bjorn?

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if anyone got an infraction for that it would be another nail in the coffin for this place. What you do have to take into account though is how many of the people reading your story would actually be able to understand what was written.
simply leave the translated phrase there, and I don't post what it is in English- partly because doing so may have led to be receiving an infraction!

I think what SCIAG meant was that the foreign sentence was a bit explicit: posting it in English would get an infraction. :)

How many non-native English speakers are there for that to be a valid award?

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm juggling five, but I'm only posting one. The others will be posted in due course (ie when I have a new computer and There's no time is nearing completion).

canvey, I'd recommend you get one going, then another going, then another. Keep going as long as the stories don't suffer. Be at least five updates ahead (a rule I've started to break recently with all the stories on the go) so that you can continue to update.

If the stories are going to be of a similar length to mine, 10-3's, or even copper's (how he gets them that length...), then I'd recommend sticking to one. Faramir successfully keeps so many on the go because he doesn't post great long updates. If I had seven stories with 1000 word updates on the go, I'd update about once every two weeks if I was lucky. If you have the additional commitments (updating the sign ups, for one) then it will be very hard to have three on the go, and you'll need to run FM, which isn't a worry for my stories as I've already ran ahead. When I was trying to run a sign up, both suffered due to the lack of time. Like I said, increase the work load gradually and stop before you are feeling strained.

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Yeah, a sort of staggered technique was going to be the way I would do it.

I generally like to play a season before posting the opening post, so with one post per story per day I should always stay a good deal ahead of where I am posting. My posts, from what I've written so far, tend to be between 400 and 800 words.

Thanks for the advice. I thought SCIAG2 had retired gracefully after you rediscovered the original?

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Yeah, a sort of staggered technique was going to be the way I would do it.

I generally like to play a season before posting the opening post, so with one post per story per day I should always stay a good deal ahead of where I am posting. My posts, from what I've written so far, tend to be between 400 and 800 words.

Thanks for the advice. I thought SCIAG2 had retired gracefully after you rediscovered the original?

Had a keylogger, didn't want to risk this account being hacked (though I can't see why someone would want to hack it tbh). All fixed now though.

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A question of policy. Is it considered acceptable to go back and edit earlier posts in a story?

It looks as if I have the ability to do it, and Id like to go back and add a few lines to the first post in my story.

I would guess that fixing typos or formatting errors would be ok, but this is more of a rewrite.

I think it would improve the post, obviously, but on the other hand we don't want constant rewrites going on , leaving readers confused about what version of a story they are reading.

Anyone have any thoughts on this? Is there an FMS policy?

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Mytton, I have done it to fix typos. No policy that I am aware of but I've always felt it's up to the writer to make sure the story is as it's supposed to be before posting.

On the positive side, I'm really happy to hear you care enough about your work to consider such a step. That's a good thing.

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It's not something that changes the subsequent story. Just a neat way of starting it that I wish I'd though of sooner.

It's frustrating, but as tenthreeleader rightly says, it was up to me to get it right before posting. In that spirit I'll leave it as is.

In truth, this case is probably somewhere in the grey undefined area between a simple fix of an error like a typo (acceptable) and a rewrite that changes the flow of the story in a way thats unfair to the readers (unacceptable).

I'm grateful for the responses, which helped me get this clear in my mind. In fact, even while writing this I've had an idea of how I might be able incorporate the bit I wanted to add, in a later place in the story instead.

I guess others here will find themselves with similar situations, so it was probably worth bringing the subject up for discussion anyway.

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I'm grateful for the responses, which helped me get this clear in my mind. In fact, even while writing this I've had an idea of how I might be able incorporate the bit I wanted to add, in a later place in the story instead.

Good man. That's what the good writers do anyway :)

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Would anybody be offended if I posted a story which involved a lot of death? Do we have any rules against that sort of thing?

Yes, it will be related to football, in fact it revolves around football, but in the update I've done so far there's been four deaths already (though tbf I don't think that rate will be maintained).

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Would anybody be offended if I posted a story which involved a lot of death? Do we have any rules against that sort of thing?

Yes, it will be related to football, in fact it revolves around football, but in the update I've done so far there's been four deaths already (though tbf I don't think that rate will be maintained).

You can kill as many people as you want, I'm pretty sure I still hold the record for the most deaths in stories, but Raptor holds the record for the most gruesome death when Mark Frosts son was crucified. (Although John Stevens cooking a baby is probably pretty close ;)). In other words, there is nothing that hasn't been done before :p

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