Embry, Space Princess (X-Pac Discussion)
- Thread starter Eva
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As I've noted previously, we most likely lost Eva, a promising new writer, because people couldn't let go of a departed old one. If I need to be blunt in crushing your hopes to make you understand then that's what I'll do.
which is quite understandable. I'm also in the slot of "don't hold your breath." but I don't give up completely. No one knows Eva's situation or what's going on so I won't completely write off the person just because they upped and disappeared. It's like in the Gynomorph thread where some members were saying the same thing and low and behold Atomictaco jumps on and posts saying they aren't dead and what the situation was with them. People here dismiss things way to easily and I've noticed that trend with members here and that is that they don't tend to fly to the shy of caution but rather go past go, don't collect their money and go straight to Negative Nancy posting and doomsayers-r-us.
Think you're being a bit unfair. You can't stop people hankering after more of what hit their sweet spot, and Eva didn't pick up this project because she was massively pressured into it. Ultimately it lies with the writer to appreciate what they can and can't do, and that only arrives from experience.
Fair points, although I do think that the common sentiment of "someone else can just pick up X author's projects" like that's an easy thing, and the general forum attitude that this was a thing that needed to be done in the wake of Jim's departure, helped lead to the decision even if it wasn't the driving force behind it. I feel like we owe it to new writers to provide them better guidance about their limits, so I guess I'm at fault too for not cautioning Eva against it.
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Which is why I'm quite reluctant to go jumping into threads and saying, "Hey guys, I wanna write things!"
When I proposed a few changes to Beth's, I mentioned once or twice that I could try writing some of it (once I figure out how coding works in scenes), but the entirety of what I would like to see is beyond my ability.
I concur.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9oZUsK-_VY
I think it´s sad if people really do leave the forum out of fear of being a disappointment. (I think it´s even sadder if there were people here who´d actually hold it against someone if they failed to meet their expectations)
Just like you said, if you tried and failed, that´s okay. No one is forcing you to continue, we appreciate that you tried and we don´t hold it against you if it didn´t work out.
I'm trying to figure out how to put this, but basically I don't think we should always encourage people to try. When someone comes in and says they want to do a whole planet for their first project, we shouldn't tell them "yes, you should do that", because they can't do it. Nobody can do it. Being honest with them about their limits and saying "you should try writing something smaller like an NPC first" is more likely to lead them to become a productive content creator than encouraging them to run before they can walk.
The reason I say this is that fear of disappointing the forum isn't the only factor that can cause people to quit: in fact I'd say it's not even close to the biggest factor in causing people to quit. What causes people to quit more than anything else is when the thought of opening your Google Docs folder and putting more time into trying to write becomes exhausting. We do this for leisure, and if the act of trying to finish a project goes from leisure to actual work, most people will quit without ever thinking "I quit". They'll try to put some work in every day, then every few days, then every few weeks, then basically just stop, because it's not fun anymore.
The hardest and most salient fact is that at some point in any TiTS project you're doing work, not leisure. No matter how much you like bringing your character to life, and how much you're catering to your own tastes, at some point you will be stuck in the middle of a sex scene with no inspiration, the need for a tiresome rewrite will become apparent, the fact the PC is an amorphous blob that has to be constantly written around will weary you. That is the real sticking point - where you realise writing for a text game with big sex scenes is work, and you aren't getting paid to do it.
I've said this about encouragement before: When you most need it is when you're least likely to receive it. If you make a thread about any prospective project, almost regardless of the quality of your writing people will turn up and cheer you on, because those with similar tastes to yours will want to see Princess Tittywand in the game just as surely as you do. When you're doing the hard miles in the middle of your project and your initial enthusiasm is spent you aren't going to be getting butt-pats, because you aren't the new hotness anymore and, really, what can most people say beyond "YEs I LiEK this"? Regularly checking in with updates help, but in some ways contending with the echoing silence that follows your announcement that you have at last completed the lesbian scene is even worse. We can foster an encouraging environment or try and warn people off doing large projects all we want. It ultimately always falls back to whether or not the person has the time and commitment, and 90% of the time they don't.
No, it's the most likely. Most people come here and start making stuff when they're experiencing a lull in their real lives. Lulls end, for most people anyway. Of the aforementioned 90%, 95% of their last posts looked something like this.
Thus the qualifier "most people" will quit. This is also exactly why small projects are the lifeblood of a writer and large projects are dangerous, because the best confidence booster you can give yourself is finishing a project. Completing something proves to you that you can complete more things, and the next time maybe you try to be more ambitious. Seeing you have miles to go on your giant dream project is disheartening, stamping [SUBMITTED] on your forum post strengthens you. There's a reason I wrote so much shit for Steele Biomedical, and it's because I did it as a bunch of tiny projects that happen to all interact and collectively form one giant project.
I'm really ill so pardon me if this is nonsensical or rambling, but!
I agree with a lot of what Harpy Princess is saying, but ultimately Couch has a major point when he says that so many people bite off way more than they can chew. New writers need guidance. They also need to be able to stretch their wings and learn, but unfortunately for them the truth of the matter is that nobody has time to babysit them when they fail. Watching them fail doesn't brook anything for us. At worst, it's a waste of everyone's time. Look at that dude writing his special furry wolf-dragon alien companion. That shit's never getting in the game. Nobody's paying attention to it. It's also bad. He's just mindlessly hammering at his shit with nobody overseeing it and nobody even bothering to tell him "Hey yo stop bothering." Honestly I don't give enough of a shit to do it.
Having some sort of new writer's guide isn't the solution. Nobody reads the ones we do have. They only get linked as a slap in the face once the problem's started. A lot of fruitless projects get started regardless and it's real hard to tell what's gonna actually get done or not. Even if a project has a big name attached to it, at this point I always operate under the assumption that nothing anybody writes will ever get in; can't rely on anybody, even me, to actually finish shit.
Except Fen. Always rely on Fen. Just next year.
That being said. A lot of the problem with any writer -- be in me or Fen or Eva or whoeverthefuck -- is that we all tend to bite off more than we can chew. No amount of experience or desire or anything is going to stop the dawning horror of looking at the "Sex Menu" header and realizing, "Well, this is going to be a third of a novel. Fuck." Projects get way bigger than we ever envisioned. And we very often find ourselves working in a vacuum, never knowing if we're doing good (or good enough) or if what we're working on will even get in. I lead an entire new area project for CoC -- never even got looked at properly. Ninety percent of what I write, I just dash off without any sort of review process and assume "Yeah, gee, hope that's good." Forum's not really as great a place to get feedback as you'd think, really. 90% of "feedback" seems like yes-manning or mindless "gimme content yey" and the rest is, well, usually surface copy-editing or complaining about a lack of furries or something inane like that. Getting actual good, constructive feedback is like rare candy. Ain't nobody got time to deeply review other peoples' shit, especially for free.
Lack of review and feedback is a big thing, especially when most writers are contributing for nothing but their own passion. I do what I can, but I actually have to churn out content, too, and I'm infinitely behind where I'd like to be. Hard to get anything done *and* review 100 pages of mixed-tense grammatical hell and yadda yadda excuses.
Is there a solution to this? No, not really. We can try and cultivate promising newer writers -- people like Eva and Misty and Wsan and whoever else -- but there's nothing we can really do to foster retention beyond trying to be friendly and supportive of potentially cool people. That's sort of what a community does. But people are gonna leave. It's an issue that's afflicted writers in these games since the very beginning: writers get upset at Fen and stomp off, get too busy IRL to waste valuable work-hours writing smut for free, start hammering drugs and discover they have no libido now, get horribly diseased like Savin and/or actually die, god forbid. There's just not much we can do about it. Just... offer guidance and feedback as we can, but understand that people don't owe us their free work, nor can we really expect it. Just be happy when it happens, don't expect it when it doesn't. :/
I agree with a lot of what Harpy Princess is saying, but ultimately Couch has a major point when he says that so many people bite off way more than they can chew. New writers need guidance. They also need to be able to stretch their wings and learn, but unfortunately for them the truth of the matter is that nobody has time to babysit them when they fail. Watching them fail doesn't brook anything for us. At worst, it's a waste of everyone's time. Look at that dude writing his special furry wolf-dragon alien companion. That shit's never getting in the game. Nobody's paying attention to it. It's also bad. He's just mindlessly hammering at his shit with nobody overseeing it and nobody even bothering to tell him "Hey yo stop bothering." Honestly I don't give enough of a shit to do it.
Having some sort of new writer's guide isn't the solution. Nobody reads the ones we do have. They only get linked as a slap in the face once the problem's started. A lot of fruitless projects get started regardless and it's real hard to tell what's gonna actually get done or not. Even if a project has a big name attached to it, at this point I always operate under the assumption that nothing anybody writes will ever get in; can't rely on anybody, even me, to actually finish shit.
Except Fen. Always rely on Fen. Just next year.
That being said. A lot of the problem with any writer -- be in me or Fen or Eva or whoeverthefuck -- is that we all tend to bite off more than we can chew. No amount of experience or desire or anything is going to stop the dawning horror of looking at the "Sex Menu" header and realizing, "Well, this is going to be a third of a novel. Fuck." Projects get way bigger than we ever envisioned. And we very often find ourselves working in a vacuum, never knowing if we're doing good (or good enough) or if what we're working on will even get in. I lead an entire new area project for CoC -- never even got looked at properly. Ninety percent of what I write, I just dash off without any sort of review process and assume "Yeah, gee, hope that's good." Forum's not really as great a place to get feedback as you'd think, really. 90% of "feedback" seems like yes-manning or mindless "gimme content yey" and the rest is, well, usually surface copy-editing or complaining about a lack of furries or something inane like that. Getting actual good, constructive feedback is like rare candy. Ain't nobody got time to deeply review other peoples' shit, especially for free.
Lack of review and feedback is a big thing, especially when most writers are contributing for nothing but their own passion. I do what I can, but I actually have to churn out content, too, and I'm infinitely behind where I'd like to be. Hard to get anything done *and* review 100 pages of mixed-tense grammatical hell and yadda yadda excuses.
Is there a solution to this? No, not really. We can try and cultivate promising newer writers -- people like Eva and Misty and Wsan and whoever else -- but there's nothing we can really do to foster retention beyond trying to be friendly and supportive of potentially cool people. That's sort of what a community does. But people are gonna leave. It's an issue that's afflicted writers in these games since the very beginning: writers get upset at Fen and stomp off, get too busy IRL to waste valuable work-hours writing smut for free, start hammering drugs and discover they have no libido now, get horribly diseased like Savin and/or actually die, god forbid. There's just not much we can do about it. Just... offer guidance and feedback as we can, but understand that people don't owe us their free work, nor can we really expect it. Just be happy when it happens, don't expect it when it doesn't. :/
What a roster you referred to there. Tears in the fucking rain, bud.
I agree entirely. You went about getting into this gig in a model fashion. The basic problem is that I don't believe most new writers can be told to do the same thing. As said, nobody reads the guides and nobody listens when they're told to start small. They come here with a great idea, or they see a half-finished expansive project like this one and want to do that - not some piddling TF or sex scene for some character that isn't theirs. Jaded and cynical of me I know but encourage, discourage, I don't think it matters much. From a personal perspective you should never get too involved in the work of someone who's never completed anything, like I think maybe you did in this case.
I've been reading this thread and nodding a lot at Couch/NS' posts and in hindsight, I can't believe I didn't quit. Literally the first thing I did was write a project that ballooned into a 50,000 word monstrosity, and that was made worse by the fact I ended up getting lost midway. I think I might be a textbook example of what not to do; the only thing that brought me back initially was the fact I wanted to get coding practice, and I had to write to do so. So I started a new, smaller project and got back into it. I can only imagine from the outside I looked like any other writer on the trajectory to burning out, ha. I've actually thought about this a lot and I have to agree with Savin; some lessons can't be taught, you have to learn them yourself. This is true everywhere, but especially when it comes to people knowing their limits. There is nothing you can tell a new writer that's going to guarantee retention.
On a tangentially related note, I dunno if it's me becoming older and jaded (or perhaps just lazier), but that's sort of become my life philosophy. I don't bother trying to influence people because if they really want it, they'll do it regardless of what I tell them.
On a tangentially related note, I dunno if it's me becoming older and jaded (or perhaps just lazier), but that's sort of become my life philosophy. I don't bother trying to influence people because if they really want it, they'll do it regardless of what I tell them.
It's been proven that the vast majority of people do what they want and their minds are just there to rationalise their choices after the fact, especially those who think they're above the above.
Well, this thread sure went from zero to angst&anguish in no time flat. On the other hand awhole lot of excellent points were made and getting insight into the ways people's creative process works is always useful, even if it made me revaluate my own contribution and helpfulness. I'm sure that it's my hangover that makes the tone of this discussion seem more bleak and dreary than a funeral.
@Savin I can only repeat myself and wish you to get better and to receive as much support as you need from the 'for reals' important people in your life.
I still think that as long as it won't take too much of their time and effort, creating a topic that would contain writing tips from accomplished TiTS content creators can be worth it. The fact that it could potentially be ignored by the majority of newbie writers doesn't outweigh the good it can do. It's true that the vast majority of people can't learn and take to heart the most important lessons like 'read the rules' or 'pace yourself' without personally smashing into the consequences a couple of times. But beyond that threshold lies a lot of other issues that can be helped, and usually at that point people are willing to listen.
Lastly, if your sentiment about that NPC project wasn't, for the most part, influenced by your mood, should someone relay that to the author?
And now to cheer people up, the content of the PM from JimT I tried to link
"On the upside of that, since Eva hasn't been doing it, I've been chipping in, so now it's almost finished. So yeah, plus there."
...
"My position RE: spreading it around is incredibly nonchalant. You can keep it to yourself, drop hints or just tell everyone all about it. My position is I just don't want to come back to the forums and give people the impression I'm back writing on TiTs full time. I've got a full-time job as a corporate writer, two books to finish, and my actual life to live on top of this side project of tying up my loose ends. So it's not getting done anywhere near as fast as normal. (That said, I've learned normal is super relative).
If you want a gander, here's the link"
@Savin I can only repeat myself and wish you to get better and to receive as much support as you need from the 'for reals' important people in your life.
I still think that as long as it won't take too much of their time and effort, creating a topic that would contain writing tips from accomplished TiTS content creators can be worth it. The fact that it could potentially be ignored by the majority of newbie writers doesn't outweigh the good it can do. It's true that the vast majority of people can't learn and take to heart the most important lessons like 'read the rules' or 'pace yourself' without personally smashing into the consequences a couple of times. But beyond that threshold lies a lot of other issues that can be helped, and usually at that point people are willing to listen.
Lastly, if your sentiment about that NPC project wasn't, for the most part, influenced by your mood, should someone relay that to the author?
And now to cheer people up, the content of the PM from JimT I tried to link
"On the upside of that, since Eva hasn't been doing it, I've been chipping in, so now it's almost finished. So yeah, plus there."
...
"My position RE: spreading it around is incredibly nonchalant. You can keep it to yourself, drop hints or just tell everyone all about it. My position is I just don't want to come back to the forums and give people the impression I'm back writing on TiTs full time. I've got a full-time job as a corporate writer, two books to finish, and my actual life to live on top of this side project of tying up my loose ends. So it's not getting done anywhere near as fast as normal. (That said, I've learned normal is super relative).
If you want a gander, here's the link"
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It's great to hear that things seem to be going good for Jim.
@Savin hopefully things will get better for you too man.
@Nik_van_Rijn Nice to know he's doing well. And as I see he maybe on his onw pace without bunch of us on forum constantly pesking him whenever he log on forum acc ends (I mean now he not here so he can;t see that crybabies that want it asap). TiTS got long live ahead anyway so it not matter if it take longer for whoever finish Embry X-pack, JimT or Eve xD
To bring the perspective of those who comment on those docs, I'd like to ask you what types of critique do you think should be used when going through those submissions but are not? What would you like to see applied to your works?
Outside of obvious and objectively flawed things like grammatical errors and logical/lore inconsistencies, I rarely feel confident in making alterations and suggestions, especially if the writing in question is beyond the level I myself can reliably replicate. There are always things that I would have worded or structured differently, but by pointing them out I'd essentially be ragging on author's vision or their style. There is also the unlimited amount of 'things that I'd like you to add'... but unless the author specifically asks for suggestions, posting them is often counterproductive and rude since they would just bloat the outline of the document without helping to produce actual content.
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There are several kinds of critique that I feel would work for projects of this nature, and they break down as follows:
1) Objective -- this is critique that deals with rules of grammar, copy-editing, you spell-checking things for an author, making sure what they're writing is internally consistent (stuff like: "Hey! Your characters were doing doggy-style a second ago but there's not transition to their new position, or tense-verb agreement) and you over-all, as a reviewer and reader, making sure the author follows the golden rule of KISSing their writing all over the damn place. Most people reviewing the assorts googledocs on the forum do this, or at least try to do a bare minimum. (Making sure a writer is using parser code the right way also falls under this.)
2) Subjective -- like IVIysteriousPerson mentioned above, subjective critique deals with you commenting on an author's work itself--not the construction of it, but rather the content. Unfortunately, I've seen very few people actually do this from the googledocs I've scanned through, and those that do are either--seemingly--ignored (which is poor form on the authors if they haven't gone MIA), or they stick to regulating their critique to just asking a lot of one-note Yes/No questions. But, subjective critique isn't just that; to do it correctly, you have to engage with both the work as written and the author writing it... even if you don't necessarily agree with/or enjoy what they have to offer due to stylistic tastes.
E)(ample: I think Author A uses purple prose to much, so I can either: 1) Tell them this, and hope they improve by themselves, or: 2) Go through their work and point out specific, concrete e)(amples of the things I dislike, then stick around to politely clarify what it is that bothers me about them when/if the author asks. This allows the author to not only get fresh eyes on something they might not consider a problem of their writing, but also helps to kick-start the creative process by sometimes forcing an author to rethink and redo things.
(**The obvious caveat being that said author has to be open to criticism and rewriting in the first place.)
3) Code -- I know I mentioned code-editing as part of objective critique/copy-editing, but bear with me, here. I mention this again simply because--as both Fen and other creators of the game have said--using the parser correctly and writing around the "invisible blob," that is the PC Character in TiTs is a daunting task. I'm personally of the belief that creating a highly-specific, up-to-date guide, alongside creating templates for NPC and Monster creation that make transferring a submission from googledocs into the game a simple matter of copy-pasting, would alleviate a lot of the problems -- but that's not the point, really. The point is that more people reviewing the googledocs on the forum need/should:
A) be pointing out incorrect use of the parser.
B) be leaving comments that help authors trim back code-bloat.
and C) tell authors where they could specifically make their entries easier to code by including Z or Q tag instead of writing.
I know part of why some people don't do this is because they're unfamiliar with the parser and coding in general, however; but, again: I do believe if more people knew how to code submissions for TiTs it would alleviate a lot of stress on not just new content creators, but the game devs as well. (Though I am in no way speaking for any of them by saying that, let me be clear.)
genuflects in assumed direction of Jim and chanting we are not worthy...we are not worthy...we are not worthy.
