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pezI'll try to describe this without it all being a massive jumble.
People who read stories can be very unforgiving.
By that, I mean when people read a story, they'll pick things out and ask why it "doesn't make sense" (more on that later), that something isn't explained enough, that the characterisations are off.
On the contrary, when things are expressed as drawn art, it seems like most can be forgiven: "I don't think Dave would really talk like he does in that speech bubble or reaction to Rush in such a way, but the pictures are pretty ♥ so I'm a fan of this artist anyway."
As someone who can only write, that is really frustrating.
About the making-of-sense: when I write in a "fantasy" setting I can happily accept that things don't map to the world as we know it. For example, I have no problems with saying that there are telephones and trains in the TLR world. So what that some bits of the game look unmodern? The ideas don't actively contradict with canon, and canon has things like visistones and researchers in white coats and teleporters. Also, I don't mind saying something like "they invented the car only 100 years ago, but now everybody travel by private hovercraft." It doesn't matter to me that after inventing the car, they need to have invented technology-A and technology-B before they can actually get to the hovercraft and that'd take way more than 100 years, because their world is not my world. I also don't mind saying that they have internet and computers but don't have TVs. It doesn't need to map.
But if I actually wrote that, what would the reaction be? And if that was drawn as a manga or doujinshi, what would the reaction be? I suspect that people would still recognise it as a "plot hole" in both cases, but in the drawn format they'll go "ah well, doesn't matter too much" and read on whereas in the fic format they might stop reading altogether.
Another way to describe it might be "imagine if Weiß Kreuz was a novel". Would it still be nearly as popular, what with obvious plot holes so huge that one can drive a car through?
I talk about this now because I'm trying to write a story and I'm stuck on how much making-of-sense it needs to be, whether a story can be just told as it is, without further explanation carefully weaved into the prose so that it's unobstrusive and doesn't disrupt the pace. I'm also wondering how long someone would stay with me until I get to "the point" - Dave won't sound like Dave for perhaps half of the fic. In fact he'll probably end up sounding more like Qubine. But there is a reason for it. Must I add a note in the beginning asking people to stick with me, or not bother? Usually I don't worry about these things and I see having to add extra notes as a bad sign. But this story is a pretty fun one and I would very much like it to be read, and not want someone to close the window within the first 2000 words saying "she writes Dave all wrong, she obviously hadn't even played the game."
Your views?
People who read stories can be very unforgiving.
By that, I mean when people read a story, they'll pick things out and ask why it "doesn't make sense" (more on that later), that something isn't explained enough, that the characterisations are off.
On the contrary, when things are expressed as drawn art, it seems like most can be forgiven: "I don't think Dave would really talk like he does in that speech bubble or reaction to Rush in such a way, but the pictures are pretty ♥ so I'm a fan of this artist anyway."
As someone who can only write, that is really frustrating.
About the making-of-sense: when I write in a "fantasy" setting I can happily accept that things don't map to the world as we know it. For example, I have no problems with saying that there are telephones and trains in the TLR world. So what that some bits of the game look unmodern? The ideas don't actively contradict with canon, and canon has things like visistones and researchers in white coats and teleporters. Also, I don't mind saying something like "they invented the car only 100 years ago, but now everybody travel by private hovercraft." It doesn't matter to me that after inventing the car, they need to have invented technology-A and technology-B before they can actually get to the hovercraft and that'd take way more than 100 years, because their world is not my world. I also don't mind saying that they have internet and computers but don't have TVs. It doesn't need to map.
But if I actually wrote that, what would the reaction be? And if that was drawn as a manga or doujinshi, what would the reaction be? I suspect that people would still recognise it as a "plot hole" in both cases, but in the drawn format they'll go "ah well, doesn't matter too much" and read on whereas in the fic format they might stop reading altogether.
Another way to describe it might be "imagine if Weiß Kreuz was a novel". Would it still be nearly as popular, what with obvious plot holes so huge that one can drive a car through?
I talk about this now because I'm trying to write a story and I'm stuck on how much making-of-sense it needs to be, whether a story can be just told as it is, without further explanation carefully weaved into the prose so that it's unobstrusive and doesn't disrupt the pace. I'm also wondering how long someone would stay with me until I get to "the point" - Dave won't sound like Dave for perhaps half of the fic. In fact he'll probably end up sounding more like Qubine. But there is a reason for it. Must I add a note in the beginning asking people to stick with me, or not bother? Usually I don't worry about these things and I see having to add extra notes as a bad sign. But this story is a pretty fun one and I would very much like it to be read, and not want someone to close the window within the first 2000 words saying "she writes Dave all wrong, she obviously hadn't even played the game."
Your views?
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no subject
Date: 2010-05-23 10:08 am (UTC)Reading a fic, I think, is a bit more interactive for me than reading a manga, just because you can often go deeper with the written words than you can with a picture. I think people are definitely more critical.
XD I don't know what my exact thoughts on this topic are yet, Pez. But this is an interesting point to bring up. I'll think about it.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-23 09:10 pm (UTC)I don't really know which way is "good", but I'm leaning towards just writing it the way it is in my head and if people give up reading then people give up reading...
no subject
Date: 2010-05-25 08:45 am (UTC)It's best to write things the way you want to write them, because at least then you'll be happy with how it turns out. =D Have fun with it, Pez~