So...Just for the sake of argument...I mean, I'm talking about a friend here...Of course...Not me...Nononononooo...

*Cough*...

So, if you've not written a word for three or four months...And - possibly unforgivably - not thought about it either...

Do you...

Try to jump straight back into the two things you were working on and hope you can pick it up and somehow manage to remember what the hell you were aiming at in the first place?...Risking that you can avoid the frustration effect of not having done anything for so long, spoiling it...

Or...

Do you write some other stuff, trying to get a run-up so that you can jump back into the others at full writing speed, hoping the previous journey has shaken something loose?...Besides other marbles...

Ta...

I write what I am inspired to write. So my advice is to think of what makes you want to write, and do that, whatever it might be.

I agree with Sage Rose. Also, when I am ready to pick up again, I re-read what I already wrote to get the juices up and running and to get my mind/imagination back into the world building I've already done.

Speaking of which, that's something I've got to do right now . . .

McB, as one of your *cough* "friend's" avid readers I would encourage you to write anything, anything at all that catches your imagination and might fuel the fire. I’ll read it. I think of short stories and fragments as brief trips to an enormous, magnificent world. While I’d love to take a multi-novel world tour, every short visit delights and inspires.

Thanks ladies... ...

*Cough*...I mean...My friend sends his thanks...Um...Yeah...

It's that inspiration thing...And the focus thing...That'll be the downfall...Too much distraction and all that...

We'll see... ...

My thanks... ...

Hey matey! If it's any consolation, I'm in the same boat. Except it isn't 3-4 months, it's a bit longer. So same boat, but mine has holes that are leaking...

Just write something. Anything. I started writing a piece that was dialogue. The first lines were,

"So, what the bloody hell do I write about? There must be something rattling around in this excuse for a brain that could be interesting. I could write about coffee. Coffee's good. What's the TES version of coffee again? I like coffee anyway, so maybe my enthusiasm would shine through."

And I waffled on for about 2,000 words until I got onto song titles, and one song title pricked an idea, and I scrapped my stream of c waffle and started thinking about that idea.

Though I still think TES coffee has potential... An alchemist and a magic bean...ahh, the possibilities.

WB anyway!

I had something in mind and I am not sure if anyone here has ever tried it. I realize in stories we can, of course, alter the time in hours, weeks, days months and even years. There's a certain pace I wanted my story to go but I don't want to spend a day out of the week building up to get to that point, and I confess I'm not even sure how. I can only go far when writing about character psychology and there's not much going on besides the plot.

My question is would it help to time-skip from point A to point C? You know how some writers here write, "Previously in 'story' . . . well, would it be wise to add that and write an update on what's happening in the story as a time skip? For example: "In the past few days Rorge met up with Salow Mal to discuss skooma . . ." and then write an entire episode dedicated to that? Instead of adding new things, base the episodic summary on previous events as well. The readers would already know Rorge and Salow had previous agreements that would lead up to this moment regardless. You know what I mean?

Thoughts?

Thanks!

Another option is to try the reverse. Start later in the chronological order of events. Then show the earlier scene through a flashback. One advantage of a flashback is that it can be as long or as short as you like, and convey as much or as little detail as you want as well.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Sep 23 2014, 01:22 PM

Gotcha. Thanks Sub!

And I'm back again, because, well, you know. *Shrugs*

Do you ever get the feeling that you could be writing your character's story without even playing the game?

Because that's the problem I'm having. Tarvyn's story has a few fixed points built into it, and at this point it kind of feels like I'm just playing to fill in the gaps between them.

Which of course makes it impossible to get into the game.

So, any advice?

Stop playing?

I'm serious, it may be for the best; you're writing prose and Oblivion is a game. They're two different forms of storytelling media, and because of this they simply aren't going to gel together sometimes. They both have different limitations and advantages, and it's just not possible to translate a story from one medium to another. If you know what you want to write, I'd recommend just going ahead and writing it without bothering with playing the game at the same time; this is supposed to be enjoyable, after all, and if you're finding you're no longer having fun with the playing side of things it might be best to cut loose and run free.

If you want an example of this, check out Subrosa's Teresa of the Faint Smile if you haven't already; it cleaves pretty close to the game's events at points, but it also does its own thing and the story benefits from this instead of suffering.

Also, go read it anyway. It's a good story.

At least break the dependency of the story on the game as played. Play to get more ideas, not to determine the plot. Use the game to test whether a scenario is "realistic", and exploit the quirks it throws up for extra credit.

I can't offer much else, as my own stories here have been written specifically to be accounts of the quests in my own mods. That's meant following game-play as closely as possible, which we're telling you not to do! However, I've play-tested those quests so many times I can pick from the variety of results, and describe the best as a single story, and embellish with more dialog than actually exists, and the motivations of the characters as revealed by their thoughts. I tried to distance myself from the player character as much as possible, too, by narrating the story from another character's view. It didn't last, but it did work for a while, and Clark had a lot more fun than the player gets!

I agree with the others. Forget the game, write your story instead. The game cannot do that. Only you can. Include whatever you want to that is in the games. Throw out whatever you don't want from the games. Change whatever you like to suit the world of your story. Because in the end, what you write is yours, not Bethesda's.

Ditch the game and just write the damn story!

The game is meant to inspire, not dictate, the story.

Though Julian's story follows the MQ in TESIV, the chapters that depart from the MQ (such as Chapter 15) are some of the best chapters I've written. As for Cardonaccum, there is no game that inspires that story, just one sentence in the Lore and Destri Melarg's excellent Interregnum.

I personally tend to avoid the game story. When I write my own characters, they have their own history and story within the game world or should I say the lore world. I don't make them to be the Champions of Cyrodiil or Neverarine or Dragonborn. In my opinion, it takes away some form of uniqueness to them since everyone else in the forum would have a Dovahkiin character or a Champion of Cyrodiil who also met Uriel and closed Oblivion gates.

Like others said what you write is yours. Do what you want.

I like the game world. In my stories there may be events and characters in the games that are mentioned. I can have a person living in Cyrodiil during the Oblivion crisis. He or she doesnt have to play a major role but they can be alive and living in that time period and even contributing in certain stories. In the end your imagination is limitless. You can create different scenarios that do not have to do anything with the Oblivion Crisis or the Dragon invasion or anything. For example, one of my character is a farmer who is also a hunter living in Cyrodil and adventuring. He doesn't follow the main quest because I placed him in a period a few years prior to the Oblivion Crisis.

It doesn't take away from a story if you don't revolve it around an established one.

Arising from comments on Clark in Skyrim:

Acadian mentioned that he hadn't done the letter-carrying quest between Anneke/Verner in Darkwater Crossing and Sylgja in Shor's Stone. I'd picked up on that quest as it relates to one of the game world's anomalies.

Sylgja had a fall in the mine, was healed, but still complains of difficulty walking, but healing magic always restores the player completely. Likewise, you can choose scars at chargen time, but can't pick them up as the game progresses. You wonder how anyone developed a scar with instant healing just a cast away.

Getting blinded in one or more eyes at chargen also doesn't appear to affect vision at all, but that's a whole extra layer of complication. The fact that anyone didn't rush to get their eye healed (or do it themselves) is just unbelievable. It's not an injury you don't notice.

How do you account for game-play discrepancies like this in your stories, or do you just avoid them?

My thought is that if an injury is not given magical healing, then once it heals naturally, nothing can change it. While the PC always starts with a self-healing spell, not everyone else does. Nor do many other people have spells to heal others. So magical healing is probably not available to everyone.

The other thing is that magical healing may not be all that great. Its efficacy might be based upon the spellcaster's medical ability. So while a novice mage might be able to heal a cut, that does not mean it would not leave a scar behind. It might look exactly the same as if it has healed naturally over time.

My own take is both. Not everyone knows healing, and not everyone can do it as well as everyone else.

I like to address these issues when they come up so that wondering about them isn’t a distraction for the reader. I’ve gone the wrong way a few times and at least once accidentally wrote a glitch into my story, but I’m learning!

The first thing I do when a contradiction comes up is discard any notion that what is true for the player character must also be true for everyone else in the world. For example I don’t assume that every person can use Flames and Healing just because all players start off with those spells. When things in the game and in the game’s books conflict with the player’s experience I would probably use the NPC experience rather than the player’s for my story. That way I hopefully won’t have “because it’s a game” situations in the story.

Healing is a subject I’ve thought about a lot. The way I see it is that healing magic accelerates the body’s natural process of healing rather than shazaaming the wounds completely away. That accounts for scars, blind eyes, persistent injuries like Sylgja’s and Aelwin’s in Oblivion, and things like missing limbs. There’s also medicine used in one Oblivion quest, which suggests to me that not all diseases can be insta-cured with a potion. Oh, and I suppose that the injuries completely healed away in the game are a result of no locational damage. Imagine the uproar if half of the screen went black for the rest of the game if your character lost an eye!

Also it seems to me that while gold is readily available to the player, not everyone in the game is super rich. That makes me think that selling things like dead peoples’ clothing is a player-only privilege, and gold must be harder to get in the actual world. So maybe not everyone can afford a potion every time they get hurt.

Then there’s poor skooma addict Wujeeta who only needs one healing potion to kick her habit. She gave one of my characters an expensive jeweled ring as thanks. One would think that if she couldn’t stroll into the nearest dungeon and pick a potion up off the shelf she could at least trade that ring for one. I have to guess there’s a because-it’s-a-game factor at work and ignore at least part of this situation. The answer that makes the most sense to me is that the game does not represent a real economy, and also that healing potions are not found lying around everywhere free for the taking. My character sees them everywhere because it’s a game, but they’ll be disappointed if they think things will be the same in the story.

I agree with Grits on that one. There is a big difference when it comes to the game world and the lore world

My take on Wujeeta is that she's too weak from her addiction to go dungeon-diving for potions. She'll also get sticker-shock from the prices any merchant would want for one. If she sold the ring and tried to buy a potion, she'd come up short. They know she really needs it, so they'd ask for an arm and a leg. And potions aren't lying around where she goes in Riften. The player can find them easily, gets a better deal from the merchants, so it's a fair transaction for her, even if it looks like a bargain for the player.

But next there's defence. I got interested in the physical versus magical defence debate back in my first Oblivion mod, where I needed to justify the Bear Riders' outfits. The bears were the excuse for no plate, mail or leather below the waist, and Oblivion divided cuirass from greaves, making it easier. Experimenting in game play suggests that using spells works as well as using armour, even if you're not playing a mage. The perks you don't invest in Light or Heavy Armor trees can be put into Alteration, with almost equal effect (magic caps a little lower, but not by much). I'm now finding that characters who just don't bother with either, and advance offence faster as a result, can be viable, too. Kill them before they can hit you again!

That's giving me pause when I'm trying to have characters choose rationally what to wear. The housecarls are initially outfitted in steel, and have skill in heavy, one-handed and block, so it makes sense for them to stick with what they know. Except Rayya has two Scimitars, so can't block, but is skilled in it! So I'm writing her as questioning that training, and looking toward Light Armor, or even Alteration spells. Clark uses spells, and dresses like a merchant. Gilda does stealth, and her leather is for looks (and fortify carry!) more than combat. Skyrim doesn't penalise mages who wear armor (except to limit the use of both physical and magical defence at the same time). Oblivion reduced all spells' effectiveness for armor-wearers, which I preferred, I think.

It's beginning to look like looks and comfort are the deciders. So why would anyone but a "uniform" wearer choose armour?