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Re: world introduction: verlyria

Posted: 28 Jan 2018 21:02
by elemtilas
I have to say I like the variety of these peoples!

What can you tell us about Butterfly warrior? Or his tiny companion?

Re: world introduction: verlyria

Posted: 28 Jan 2018 23:20
by fruityloops
elemtilas wrote: 28 Jan 2018 21:02 I have to say I like the variety of these peoples!

What can you tell us about Butterfly warrior? Or his tiny companion?

The butterfly is a young boy from the Tigris river tribe, named after the human made river in the garden. He raining to be warrior but wishes to see more outside of his garden home. Of course, his father forbids him for leaving as the outside world is dangerous. The boy's name is like by the way.

The small fellow on the right is milli skyheart, a damsel fly aviator. Her wings use to work until an accident took away her ability to fly so she had to rely on a plane made from scraps in a junkyard. She is not the pine's champion and is in another series I'm making.what I mean is that line is for the prequel and milli is for the main series.

Re: world introduction: verlyria

Posted: 29 Jan 2018 02:43
by Axiem
This is my opinion of the butterfly people picture: 😍

I love your style.

Re: world introduction: verlyria

Posted: 09 May 2018 15:55
by fruityloops
newsflash: verlyria got a name change. it's now called Ookraia to better fit the theme. That, and i'm reworking my setting while thinking of doing some very short stories for the sake of interest.

Re: world introduction: Ookraia

Posted: 09 May 2018 21:14
by fruityloops
a lot of people requested that I do some short stories out of my conword so i went ahead and did a few. Each of them has a context explaining what’s going on as my writing style tends to be vague and very dialogue heavy. Expect many “saids” and short bouts of action.
Climbing along the rock ledges of a cave, a strange humanoid cricket creature in a mask and loincloth turned down their head towards a pool of water below their feet. A few rocks under their feet chip off then fell in.

“I’m telling you this is suicide” a masked being made of green, translucent energy materialized besides them. “Just turn back and neither us will get hurt.”

“Tis but a mere spirit” chirped the mask man as they crossed over a gap leading to another ledge. “You may know many things but you know nothing here.”

The spirit scoffed at them. The masked man had quite sturdy legs and a build ideal for leaping, as evidenced by how long their legs were. Yet, the cave itself dwarfed their small form. the open ceiling looming above them like a watchful eye, the bright moon itself being it’s eyes. They climbed down each ledge, each getting shorter the farther down they went. Finally, they climb down near the pool. Rocks of various shades of blue shine below the pool’s surface.

the masked shaman grabbed enough stones for their two pairs of arms to carry and headed for a ledge in a cave wall. Just before they got on, ripples on the pool’s surface appear. The spirit shifted to a shade of yellow green. “ I told you this was suicide.”

A mountain of slime burst from the pool and hopped in front of the masked man, sending them flying into a protruding rock. The spirit fizzles out as the staff lands inside the pool of water .The creature’s big, lumbering body moves to face the shaking cricket man it’s large yellow eyes stared deep into theirs filled with a deep hunger.

The creature croaked “ why do you come? Do you not know what happens to fools that come here?”

The cricket, now on their knees and propped by by their hands, gazes upon this mountainous creature “perhaps? I can assure you great beast of the pools that I steal nothing from you.”

The slimy creature narrows his eyes, the bumps on his back becoming additional eye stalks to inspect the intrubing shaman. One of the eye tentacles sees a spare stone in their sack and pulls it out. The creature brought the stone in his line of sight.” then explain this!”

“Hm. well, I do wonder where I put that.”

The great beast puffed out his throat to seem larger than he already is “don't lie to me, little bug! Are you trying to steeeal my stooones?!.”
Materializing again, the spirit appears beside the shaman in a gathering of green dust.” do you have to be so indignant,wanderer?”

“there are moments where you lie and moments when you die,” the wandering shaman replied softly back to the “foolish” spirit “. “and I’d choose not to die but to lie.”

“Answer me, puny bug. Did you or did not steal my stones?!” yelled the creature, who puffed his chest even bigger, revealing glowing green acid swimming in his stomach. Some bits of it spilled near the shaman but thankfully, barely even touched them by an inch.

“I did not.” the shaman spoke calmly, not averting their gaze from the now pulsating beast. “But perhaps a deal could be made.”

“I take no deals from mere bugs,” he huffed, his bloated up throat swaying about. “ I would rather eat you whole then strike a deal.”

“Oh but surely you wish to keep most of your stones, yes?” the cricket slowly got up, standing on their feet. They eye the spirit besides them. “Just give me a moment”

“You going to do it?” spoke the spirit.

“You get the staff and leave as soon as the beast in distracted.” shaman whispered to the spirit. “ please do trust me.”

He turns back to the creature, who’s currently deflating his size to something less egregious. He croaks again “fine...what is this deal?”

“I will keep only a small fraction whereas you, great beast, can keep most of stones” as the two exchange quips, the spirit slowly moves towards the water’s edge.

The spirit slowly glides deep into the pool. There, the staff lied on the bottom of the pool, guarded by tadpoles. They scattered away when the spirit glowed a bright green near the staff. He grabs it before surfacing above the water.

“So...we agree?” said the shaman, clasping his hands together.

nThe creature scratched his chin. “ i suppose it’s fair but i better not see you steal those stones from me again. Understood.”

They bow to their knees“you have my word.”

“Here! Take it,” yelled the spirit, tossing the staff back to shaman. They quickly grab and took a leap to the air with their powerful legs. They knocked the beast on its head, dozing it. They went for his back and jumped on it. The leap gave them a good enough boost the fly straight out of the hole of the cave, leaving the great pool beast the bellow below.


“You’re still a fool, young shaman” said the spirit.

“You are are too,” said the shaman.

Landing on a dirt path surrounded by tree sized flowers, the shaman found the time to pull out one stone. Their hand rubbed against the the stone until it glowed a green sheen. They then entrenched a symbol which glows along with the tattoos on their body. Content, the shaman puts the rock back to their sack and the spirit fades away once more.

“Good bye, good friend.” he said, about to head on the path to nowhere.
Context: what you just read was a shaman searching for stones to be used to create Xeistones, magical rocks that can do alot of things depending on how it’s made. There’s a special kind found in great frogmouth where the mutant frog guardian, Churakubwa, guards moonstones. They’re said to possess great power, enhancing spells channelled through them. it's rough around the edges but i'm managing a bit after years of barely writing prose.

Re: world introduction: Ookraia

Posted: 16 May 2018 15:49
by Axiem
No one else has provided feedback yet; I will.

So, this is difficult to read, just on a technical level. It looks like you're at least aware of the rules regarding capitalization and punctuation—especially in regards to dialogue—but you're applying them so inconsistently it makes it harder for me to read. While yes, typographic conventions are totally arbitrary, they also help guide a reader to make it more clear to them what's going on; like most rules in writing, you shouldn't ignore them unless you really know what you're doing. A good guide for standard publication-register English typography can be found at Practical Typography. Consistency is key.

The use of tense is all over the place. You should pick a tense (generally past or present) and stick with it. There are pro's and con's to each; I would probably recommend past, because that's the more traditional tense used in fantasy/science-fiction (although present tense is all the rage right now). Consistency, again, is key. It's much more difficult to follow action if I can't figure out how things are temporally related to each other.

I'm also confused on who the narrator is. The narrator uses words like "strange", indicating a subjective position, and the descriptions of various things are as though written by someone on Earth describing some other world, rather than something organic in that world. Finding the position of this voice and making that consistent in terms of description, characterization, and information-revealing will improve it. My recommendation is to find a narration that doesn't have any particular commentary on what's going on beyond what one of the characters perceives it to be (I believe this is known as "third-person omniscient" or "third-person limited"; I've always struggled to completely understand the difference between the two).
my writing style tends to be vague and very dialogue heavy
To me, this is an immediate red flag. I don't like reading things where it's difficult for me to figure out what's going on. I recognize there's a lot of leeway for style, but the reader not being able to follow what's going on is going to almost always be problematic.

Though, on that note, when something is "dialogue-heavy" without much description of action, it's known as "Talking Heads Syndrome", and pulls the reader out of the story. (To be fair, this is a problem I also struggle with in my own writing)

You say to expect a lot of said's, but in practice, you don't actually use very many of them; you're instead using a lot of synonyms in order to avoid it. There is a style element here, but the general recommendation these days is to just use "said" except in rare circumstances; readers are conditioned to jump over "said" without thinking much about it, whereas the synonyms tend to call more attention to themselves. Over-use of them tends to strike me as either amateurish writing, or of low-quality pulp fiction written to appeal to younger children.

Contrawise, you don't need to use "said" all the time; you can have sets of dialogue where you don't tag anything (you start to do this in a couple of places). Consider something like:
"I'm not sure that works," Susan said, gliding the knife through the first tomato. "After all, haven't they found life on Mars?"

"Not quite." I fidgeted on the stool. I never did like chairs without backs.

"But what about that rover? Uh...Curiosity? Opportunity?"

"Enterprise."

"Like the starship?"

"Like the starship." I shrugged. "Conspiracy theories abound."

With a smooth motion, Susan slid the cubes of tomato onto the waiting casserole, and started with the next one. "Well, I think that's just ridiculous."

"It is," I said with a nod. "But what can you do?"

"I'll activate the transmogrifier after dinner." The next thunk of the knife sounded louder than the rest.
The thing is, the reader should never be confused about who's speaking, and the context of where they are and what they're doing should be apparent. (Notice that despite the fact that I never actually said where they were, a lot of readers are going to assume the narrator and Susan are in a kitchen of some sort, because I'm grounding it with the image of Susan dicing tomatoes, and the narrator fidgeting on a stool). Though forgive the terrible quality of dialogue; that's completely off the top of my head (I don't currently have access to my own pool of writing).

Now, I'm not a published author or anything, so feel free to take all of this critique with a grain of salt; though I think you'll find similar pieces of advice from other portions of the Internet that cater to writers. And on the whole, they're not major things that completely revamp your writing or anything; but a few small changes here and there will, in my opinion, really improve the quality of what you're producing without interfering with the creative aspect of writing. You have good ideas, you just need to refine how they get presented.

Re: world introduction: Ookraia

Posted: 17 May 2018 17:20
by fruityloops
Axiem wrote: 16 May 2018 15:49 No one else has provided feedback yet; I will.

So, this is difficult to read, just on a technical level. It looks like you're at least aware of the rules regarding capitalization and punctuation—especially in regards to dialogue—but you're applying them so inconsistently it makes it harder for me to read. While yes, typographic conventions are totally arbitrary, they also help guide a reader to make it more clear to them what's going on; like most rules in writing, you shouldn't ignore them unless you really know what you're doing. A good guide for standard publication-register English typography can be found at Practical Typography. Consistency is key.

The use of tense is all over the place. You should pick a tense (generally past or present) and stick with it. There are pro's and con's to each; I would probably recommend past, because that's the more traditional tense used in fantasy/science-fiction (although present tense is all the rage right now). Consistency, again, is key. It's much more difficult to follow action if I can't figure out how things are temporally related to each other.

I'm also confused on who the narrator is. The narrator uses words like "strange", indicating a subjective position, and the descriptions of various things are as though written by someone on Earth describing some other world, rather than something organic in that world. Finding the position of this voice and making that consistent in terms of description, characterization, and information-revealing will improve it. My recommendation is to find a narration that doesn't have any particular commentary on what's going on beyond what one of the characters perceives it to be (I believe this is known as "third-person omniscient" or "third-person limited"; I've always struggled to completely understand the difference between the two).
my writing style tends to be vague and very dialogue heavy
To me, this is an immediate red flag. I don't like reading things where it's difficult for me to figure out what's going on. I recognize there's a lot of leeway for style, but the reader not being able to follow what's going on is going to almost always be problematic.

Though, on that note, when something is "dialogue-heavy" without much description of action, it's known as "Talking Heads Syndrome", and pulls the reader out of the story. (To be fair, this is a problem I also struggle with in my own writing)

You say to expect a lot of said's, but in practice, you don't actually use very many of them; you're instead using a lot of synonyms in order to avoid it. There is a style element here, but the general recommendation these days is to just use "said" except in rare circumstances; readers are conditioned to jump over "said" without thinking much about it, whereas the synonyms tend to call more attention to themselves. Over-use of them tends to strike me as either amateurish writing, or of low-quality pulp fiction written to appeal to younger children.

Contrawise, you don't need to use "said" all the time; you can have sets of dialogue where you don't tag anything (you start to do this in a couple of places). Consider something like:
"I'm not sure that works," Susan said, gliding the knife through the first tomato. "After all, haven't they found life on Mars?"

"Not quite." I fidgeted on the stool. I never did like chairs without backs.

"But what about that rover? Uh...Curiosity? Opportunity?"

"Enterprise."

"Like the starship?"

"Like the starship." I shrugged. "Conspiracy theories abound."

With a smooth motion, Susan slid the cubes of tomato onto the waiting casserole, and started with the next one. "Well, I think that's just ridiculous."

"It is," I said with a nod. "But what can you do?"

"I'll activate the transmogrifier after dinner." The next thunk of the knife sounded louder than the rest.
The thing is, the reader should never be confused about who's speaking, and the context of where they are and what they're doing should be apparent. (Notice that despite the fact that I never actually said where they were, a lot of readers are going to assume the narrator and Susan are in a kitchen of some sort, because I'm grounding it with the image of Susan dicing tomatoes, and the narrator fidgeting on a stool). Though forgive the terrible quality of dialogue; that's completely off the top of my head (I don't currently have access to my own pool of writing).

Now, I'm not a published author or anything, so feel free to take all of this critique with a grain of salt; though I think you'll find similar pieces of advice from other portions of the Internet that cater to writers. And on the whole, they're not major things that completely revamp your writing or anything; but a few small changes here and there will, in my opinion, really improve the quality of what you're producing without interfering with the creative aspect of writing. You have good ideas, you just need to refine how they get presented.


for point of view, yeah i agree and thank you for that and will keep that in mind if i ever did another draft of this thing (which might be never). the reason it's kinda vague is because well, i lack a mind's eye. i have hard time visualizing things unlike other people because of a brain injury. the effects are noticeable in my art and writing most of the time though i could manage some time ago. now a days, i think it's getting a bit worse.

enough of that though, i agree the draft needs some work. I posted the warning for good reason, i kinda lack self confidence when writing this. eventually, i may never do that ever again just to avoid setting red flags off. for the nouns not getting capitalized, i have a hard time remembering which thing to capitalize which not capitalize, which might take me way longer to master than say, sticking with a tense and going for it.

thank you for your feedback, although it may not make the several drafts any better than before ^^. note: i tend to self critique myself a lot, so forgive me. and that example you showed me is great but again, couldn't visualize well because of brain injury.

Re: world introduction: Ookraia

Posted: 17 May 2018 19:30
by Axiem
Ultimately, it comes down to practice, practice, practice.

I sometimes go back to things I wrote like, 20 years ago, and cringe from how bad it was. But it's also nice to see how I've improved over time. It takes practice, practice, practice. And beyond that, read a lot of fiction; read advice to writers; find people who will read your writing and critique it (if you can; this is a thing I lack). But above all, keep writing.
fruityloops wrote: 17 May 2018 17:20 i lack a mind's eye
I had a friend in college who was one of the best artists I've ever met—and she was colorblind. It meant that she had to spend extra time working and figuring out how to cover for it, but she was still able to do great art despite that limitation.

Even if you can't visualize things perfectly (I certainly can't!), you can still learn how to string words together to provide meaning and context for people who have better imaginations than you or I.
i have a hard time remembering which thing to capitalize which not capitalize
In a nutshell, here are the rules in English:
- Capitalize the first word of a sentence
- Capitalize the word "I" (the first person singular nominative pronoun)
- Capitalize proper nouns, which in practice is the names of people, places, and languages. In the event of uncertainty, that's what google is for.

There is also a tonal thing in writing where capitalization adds a certain tonal emphasis, but you can probably ignore that from a fiction perspective.
sticking with a tense and going for it.
This is largely a thing where you just decide what person/tense the story is in, and then go back and check all the verbs. Tedious, but doable.
i tend to self critique myself a lot
Welcome to the creative arts, where we're typically our own worst critics :) There's a reason I've yet to share much of what I've done with Mto.

Re: world introduction: Ookraia

Posted: 20 May 2018 04:19
by fruityloops
Image

The Hopaki are a race of Orthoptera-like beings. they live mostly semi-nomadic lifestyles, moving across Ookraia in search of greener grass or better water sources. this is most notable in the desert-dwelling tribes of hopaki. A few of them have the ability to turn into or develop into a locust, a berserk form that will eat anything in the line of sight. Legends say the trait came about as a sort of curse put on the trickster god hilapanzi. Whenever he feels a great hunger, a transformation will occur that transforms him into a locust.

groups of hopaki consist of offspring, a few members that are unrelated, and a duo that are usually a mated pair. They don't care for their young as the moment the nymphs hatch. they're only taught the customs and languages as their survival skills are instinctual.

Re: world introduction: Ookraia

Posted: 18 Sep 2018 20:13
by fruityloops
new update: i'm in the middle of redoing a few things again and doing new info dump. this not as long as before but i thought came over me when i wanted to do this....slik moth caterpillar work forces. one of the more darker concepts but hey...they got to get good clothes somehow. my silk moth people at least.

Re: world introduction: Ookraia

Posted: 18 Sep 2018 21:43
by elemtilas
Silkworm slavery . . . interesting!

Q: can we see a good / finished image of the Butterfly people you showed us the sketch for? I think I like them best of all so far.

Re: world introduction: Ookraia

Posted: 19 Sep 2018 12:34
by fruityloops
i lost the image some time ago due to a computer virus but i did get a flash drive and made some pictures showing a few races and things.

Image

Image

Image