Aspirations II
From whence does this urge to write a novel come? you may ask.
(Okay, you probably didn't ask. But I'm telling you.)
I like to write. Since 1999, I've been active on a near-daily basis in online play-by-post fantasy RPGs. The writing tends to the choppy - no more than a few paragraphs at a time, usually - and it's collaborative. But it's been my creative writing fix for, damn, over a decade now.
(And if I may say so, I've gotten rather better over time. I read my old stuff and flinch. I read my more recent stuff and then read it again without pain.)
But it finally seems to be failing me. The most recent game I've been in is "no really, no dead yet" - except when there's no posting for over a month, it's really dead yet. Sometimes I've seen games come back from that, but not often.
Stepping into the gap, I've been chronicling my third Dragon Age: Origins run in snarky, chat-based format. It has moments of fourth wall breakage, contains no scene descriptions, only occasional action markers, and no "voice over direction." It is a giant wall of dialogue that would make no sense to anyone not already familiar with the game, the plot and the characters. (cmccurry and aemccurry, you might find it amusing.)
I'm about 2/3 done with the game and the chronicle is running 12,000 words. Of just dialogue. Based on someone else's Bog Standard Fantasy plot.
Surely I can put that energy into something less derivative.
(Okay, you probably didn't ask. But I'm telling you.)
I like to write. Since 1999, I've been active on a near-daily basis in online play-by-post fantasy RPGs. The writing tends to the choppy - no more than a few paragraphs at a time, usually - and it's collaborative. But it's been my creative writing fix for, damn, over a decade now.
(And if I may say so, I've gotten rather better over time. I read my old stuff and flinch. I read my more recent stuff and then read it again without pain.)
But it finally seems to be failing me. The most recent game I've been in is "no really, no dead yet" - except when there's no posting for over a month, it's really dead yet. Sometimes I've seen games come back from that, but not often.
Stepping into the gap, I've been chronicling my third Dragon Age: Origins run in snarky, chat-based format. It has moments of fourth wall breakage, contains no scene descriptions, only occasional action markers, and no "voice over direction." It is a giant wall of dialogue that would make no sense to anyone not already familiar with the game, the plot and the characters. (cmccurry and aemccurry, you might find it amusing.)
I'm about 2/3 done with the game and the chronicle is running 12,000 words. Of just dialogue. Based on someone else's Bog Standard Fantasy plot.
Surely I can put that energy into something less derivative.