Need writing friends for long series!

[twilight24 323]

So my idea is that in a land far away from Ponyville, there is a rare group of ponies that can turn into humans and back into ponies. They are teenagers and philleys, but adults are fine. Anyone interested?

[SongBrony 419]

This actually sounds like a cool idea. How would this work? Like we each do a chapter? And how do characters work? (I've already come up with a number of ideas)

[BlossomBloom 48]

Yea this sounds really interesting and fun! I need a project on the side of my other writing haha. So how would this work? I have a few ideas as well. and I think it would be cool to see everyones different writing styles in each chapter. Or maybe all just as a group?

[SongBrony 419]

Twilight, you should post the way we will be writing this in the original post. That way everyone who comes here to write will know what's to be expected and how things will go.

[twilight24 323]

I can do that. Okay, I have enough writers. We will each write a chapter, since they're is three. Each can have up to 6 characters, since I have six. The setting is like Ponyville, but they journey to far and dangerous landss on search of self-discovery to find Darkmoon, the half-sister of Princess Selsta, Will  the journey be worth it, or will all fail?

[BlossomBloom 48]

oooo I've never tried adventure fics. I hope it turns out well for me So when do we start?

 

(ugh fillers sorry. I just had that one simple question ^)

[Standard User 2,127]

I probably can't contribute chapters regularly enough to be of any use to the team, but I'd love to be an editor and possibly give ideas and suggestions. 

[Starstream 182]

 

@@BlossomBloom

@@twilight24

@@SongBrony

 

 

So how does the character division work? Because with 6 characters and 4 writers, do we all put in one character with Twilight putting in three? Do we all just throw some characters on the table and pick the six favorites? What's the plan?

 

Also, am I correct to assume that the characters are to be unaware of the existence of human beings as a species? Considering that they are merely ponies who can take the physical appearance of humans.

 

 

 

I probably can't contribute chapters regularly enough to be of any use to the team, but I'd love to be an editor and possibly give ideas and suggestions. 

Offer accepted and greatly appreciated... At least for me, can't speak for the others though.

Edited December 13, 2012 by Zhinzo

[SongBrony 419]

Have you finished your chapter? I need a place to start so I don't mess anything up.

 

@@BlossomBloom

@@twilight24

@@SongBrony

 

 

So how does the character division work? Because with 6 characters and 4 writers, do we all put in one character with Twilight putting in three? Do we all just throw some characters on the table and pick the six favorites? What's the plan?

 

Also, am I correct to assume that the characters are to be unaware of the existence of human beings as a species? Considering that they are merely ponies who can take the physical appearance of humans.

 

(By the by, hello to Blossom and Song, I'm the third wheel. )

 

 

 

Offer accepted and greatly appreciated... At least for me, can't speak for the others though.

From my knowledge we each choose and create our own characters. He has 6, I have 2, and you can choose anywhere from 1 or 6 for you to write about. But check with Twilight since it was his story idea in the first place.

[twilight24 323]

I am a pegasister!! XD And the other person in this project, BlossomBlue, has 5 so this 13 all together. Give me time, as I am trying to create my characters AND type the story this weekend.

[Starstream 182]

@@SongBrony

@@BlossomBloom

@@twilight24

@@Kolth

To kind of repeat (blatantly copy and paste with some minor adjustments) what I said to Twilight in a private conversation before.

6 characters each is an awful lot, you must be able to make each and every character:

- unique and distinguishable from the others.

- relateable, or fun to read about.

- memorable.

- have a personality (and a backstory is not the same as a personality).

 

And to qoute Gwenio from fimfiction (check out his stuff, he writes some awesome stories):

 

Furthermore, people can only really keep track of seven things; therefore, if you really have more characters than that that are (approximately) equally deserving* of being tagged as a major character, your story most likely lacks focus and is more an anthology of related stories and you should really consider break some parts off into separate side stories.

 

 

And 7 or more characters is not just a bad idea for a writer to write about and a reader to take in, also from an adventurer's viewpoint it is not a great idea. To elaborate, let's take two common sizes for parties, which are 3 or 5 party members.

Parties of three are optimal for travling, they are nimble, agile, and barely need any time at all to debate on any possible issues within the party.

Parties of five, while not as fast as a party or three, they have the added bonusses of versitality (by the merrits of having more members) and are generally just stronger as a whole, and by that I mean stronger diplomatically as well as physically.

Parties of six fall just outside of the range of comfortable, but this can be excused if the party has a compotent and charismatic appointed leader, and/or a support party member who doesn't put a strain on the active members.

I assume you might be able to see what I'm headed at. A party of thirteen is just too much in my opinnion. You're better off reducing the party size to six, saves you (and us) and the readers a lot of energy, and doesn't deduct from thom the natural credibility of the party's situation.

Just my two cents, do with it as you see fit. 

---

Edit:
As a corollary and to further demonstrate my point I'd like to offer this. Let's say I told you a story about this adventuring group of ponies, Light, Garland, Frionel, Matteus, Onion Knight, Cloud, Harvey, Kain Highwind, Golbez, Terra, Jester, Strife, Lockhart, Silver Mane, Squall, Lagoon, Ultima, Tribal, Kuja, Meg Ryan, Manly Man, Yuna, Dolly, Prishy, Hunter Pirate, Judge, and finally Lightning, chances are you probably don't even remember how I started this sentence before listing the names of 28 different characters. And if I'd ask you to recall as many names as possible,

you'd probably (subconciously) look back to check by the time you finished reading that sentence, because naturally you couldn't remember all of them.

 

 

Now I will grant you that in total you'd "only" be dealing with 13 characters. So let's remove 15 names from the list, and to throw you a bone, I'll remove what are probably the least memorable names, so now we're left with:

 

Light, Cloud, Terra, Jester, Strife, Silver Mane, Ultima, Tribal, Manly Man, Dolly, Hunter Pirate, Judge, and Lightning.

There, the 13 most memorable names are left, does that make it any easier? Well, yeah... but not a whole lot. As far as my point goes, you'd probably still not be able to remember all of them without putting effort into it. And as far as putting effort into remembering trivial stuff while reading goes, trying to remember a character's name can draw you right out of the emersion of the story, and I take it you're not aiming for that to happen.

 

Going back to the adventuring side of things, you need to have 13 different characters, who each behave uniquely enough to be remembered while being similar enough to eachother to not get into constant arguments with each other that slow the pacing of the story down.

 

Of course you can say that you're just going to avoid writing about those conflicts, but why would the honor and valor obsessed Light and Judge not complain about every single thing the morally disgusting Hunter Pirate does, and Manly Man, being the gentleman that he is, will try to break the argument up, only risking getting himself involved, Jester and Dolly poke fun at the whole situation, cracking jokes and pulling pranks left and right, somewhere down the line they insult Tribal, who gets angry at them for who-knows-what-was-insulting-about-what-they-said, Cloud flies off to leave everyone to argue while getting some sleep, Strife somehow figures this is all his fault and sits in a corner while blaming himself, and somewhere down the line you just forget what started this all and why this even matters.

My final statement?

Make things easy for yourself, keep the character count to a minimum, that way you can flesh out each character more, give the reader more time to relate to each of them, force out more creativity when they end up being stuck somewhere as opposed to just getting the pony who has the right talent who could get them out of the situation, make conflicts more concise and emersive, and most importantly, have the reader remember who they are reading about.

Edited December 13, 2012 by Zhinzo

[twilight24 323]

I agree. That is why I am limiting to 7 each. Thank you for your concern and consideration. It was much appreciated. I'll start the story this weekend. And again, sorry for offending you!!

[Starstream 182]

sorry for offending you!!

This is neither the time nor place to bring that up, some things are better left in the closets they were taken from, if you understand what I mean. 

 

Also, with seven characters each, and three people in total, you have an even higher limit of 21 characters, unless I'm misunderstanding something.

[Standard User 2,127]

@ - well said. While every writer contributing to this project should have the opportunity to include a couple of their favorite OCs/etc, too many would become confusing. With ~3 authors, I would say the upper limit for number of characters should be around five. Fifteen major characters, plus main antagonists and other non-protagonist characters, should be MORE than enough to tell a good story.

 

(I feel like I just paraphrased what has been already said...oh well. Five hours of sleep does that to people.   )

 

@@twilight24 You said you'll be starting the story this weekend - when do you expect to be finished with the first chapter/portion? 

Edited December 13, 2012 by Kolth

[angels_gal 204]

I tried to do this  on a previous board and it completely fell apart do to lack of organization after the first three chapters .  however i agree six characters is alot.  to keep track of. 

 

I want in however and will do my best to create either one or two characters.

[twilight24 323]

Thank you all for your support, advice, and two cents. So this board is closed But, maybe after this project, I will start other projects later you can join, But this may take awhile. Thank you for offering your services!!