RE: Critique and Advice; the treadmill of adventuring.
07-04-2016, 07:29 PM
(This post was last modified: 07-04-2016, 09:09 PM by ☆ C.H.W.O.K.A ☆.)
Okay, I got the message: You all really really want me to update Jerks In Time. Thy will be done.
Obviously, I stand on the opposite side of the maxim not to use time travel. (Maybe it cuts differently for an adventure where time travel is so ingrained in the premise that it's in the name and the whole impetus for its being?) I really, really love time travel stories, unreasonably so! I've read almost all of this site, multiple times, despite it's no-fun-logic-only, one-right-answer attitude.
I think the mistake that makes a time travel story instantly confusing is having, from the perspective of the reader, the future influencing the present. Instead, what I'm doing is following the "leading edge" of the time travel, from absolutely square 1, so it's always the present folding back in on the past and we're never really lost on what anyone's motivations or experiences are, or EXACTLY how the ramifications of their actions play out. You might think this is a semantic point, since one man's past is another man's present in time travel, or maybe you think it ought to have, somehow, happened "all at once" under a fixed-time model or something. But I'm really just saying to keep the audience informed! Looking back on the past from the perspective of the present, everything's a known quantity, but looking into the future is inherently a mystery. In ANY writing situation, if you've underinformed the audience, you've confused them. An attentive audience can be dazzled by an intricate farce with more moving parts than any time travel story, it just relies on the author's ability to make facts, motivations, personalities, and goals clear. Conversely, the audience can lose the trail of even a rudimentary story if the author fails to emphasize (or worse, even include) the proper information at the proper time. That's almost certainly more important than outright logic. We'll see how this strategy holds up if I ever have to leap over much larger periods of time...
At the same time, I'm not going to sit there and explain to the readers how my implementation works, whether via narration or a character who's Really Smart or having the main characters just somehow KNOW what's going to fly and what's not by guessing and being at least 95% correct. I'm just going to show my simple rules at work and leave the characters stumbling around in the dark because they're idiots and it's funny.
But then, this is the critique thread, not the "ramble on about how ding-darn great your own method is" thread, so before I start talking more about my approach to writing this to the point of spoilers (and believe me, I did before I deleted it from this post,) I'll throw it to the thread: How do you like my adventure, Jerks In Time? Not just its approach to time travel (which really hasn't stretched its muscles yet with just the one jump,) but the whole thing.
edit 2: ok you guys are right
Obviously, I stand on the opposite side of the maxim not to use time travel. (Maybe it cuts differently for an adventure where time travel is so ingrained in the premise that it's in the name and the whole impetus for its being?) I really, really love time travel stories, unreasonably so! I've read almost all of this site, multiple times, despite it's no-fun-logic-only, one-right-answer attitude.
I think the mistake that makes a time travel story instantly confusing is having, from the perspective of the reader, the future influencing the present. Instead, what I'm doing is following the "leading edge" of the time travel, from absolutely square 1, so it's always the present folding back in on the past and we're never really lost on what anyone's motivations or experiences are, or EXACTLY how the ramifications of their actions play out. You might think this is a semantic point, since one man's past is another man's present in time travel, or maybe you think it ought to have, somehow, happened "all at once" under a fixed-time model or something. But I'm really just saying to keep the audience informed! Looking back on the past from the perspective of the present, everything's a known quantity, but looking into the future is inherently a mystery. In ANY writing situation, if you've underinformed the audience, you've confused them. An attentive audience can be dazzled by an intricate farce with more moving parts than any time travel story, it just relies on the author's ability to make facts, motivations, personalities, and goals clear. Conversely, the audience can lose the trail of even a rudimentary story if the author fails to emphasize (or worse, even include) the proper information at the proper time. That's almost certainly more important than outright logic. We'll see how this strategy holds up if I ever have to leap over much larger periods of time...
At the same time, I'm not going to sit there and explain to the readers how my implementation works, whether via narration or a character who's Really Smart or having the main characters just somehow KNOW what's going to fly and what's not by guessing and being at least 95% correct. I'm just going to show my simple rules at work and leave the characters stumbling around in the dark because they're idiots and it's funny.
But then, this is the critique thread, not the "ramble on about how ding-darn great your own method is" thread, so before I start talking more about my approach to writing this to the point of spoilers (and believe me, I did before I deleted it from this post,) I'll throw it to the thread: How do you like my adventure, Jerks In Time? Not just its approach to time travel (which really hasn't stretched its muscles yet with just the one jump,) but the whole thing.
edit 2: ok you guys are right