Authors Co-operate together to produce a short story/stories

I don't think we've reached our limit for participants yet IaNo, although others may take a different view. Your certainly more than welcome to contribute anything you like to the project by way of suggestions or submissions, and perhaps an external eye may offer greater objectivity.
The project hasn't really gone very far beyond the discussions you can see posted to this thread (my one, lame, part notwithstandng).
As we havn't really began the process of writing proper yet, how we will organise things is still pretty much up for grabs; although I think we have agreed that in terms of structuring we will work chapter about (like a complicated chain letter) and let the narrative flow fairly organically.
As a final point, for both present participants and anyone else interested in joining up, I would urge you to commit some of your thoughts to type in order that we can get going. Whether it's short stories, mere scene sketches or just a couple of schematics, maps and the like. By amassing a corpus of foundation materials we can draw them together to form the foundation of the world. Thus whilst I included the character of Benedict of Guillame I'm not really proposing that he should be a central character to the tale, but just as a background person. Indeed, the province of Guillame may never recieve more than a passing reference in the full story, or perhaps not even be mentioned at all. The point is that it gives us a base to be going on with.
 
I have no trouble with Iano joining, as long as he contributes in some way, even if it is as an outside reader.

On another note, my story is coming along nicely, i should have it done by this weekend and posted by Monday. ;) here's to hoping.:rolleyes:

BTW, Spider, my storyline actually conflicts with yours. In mine the Islands were created to escape oppresion on the land. The people were running away.

Just curious, but how would the Islands maintain their Overlordship if they needed large amounts of supplies from the land and depend on the Airships to bring it to them? Just something to think about and work on.

Thank you
Rob
 
As I suggested earlier my conception sees the islands as feudal overlords of the means of production on the land. In part this is because I don't see how things can grow on the islands (given the freezing temperatures at altitude) and the fact that if they are above the clouds they will lack rain. Accordingly raw materials are more likely to be produced on land.
In addition, to script it otherwise would remove the potential for conflict between land and sky, if both were self-sustaining why should they ever come into conflict.
Of course, having the islands as government does pose the problem of how the islands, being distanced from the land maintain their control. However, it is a well known prinicple of contemporary warfare that control of the airspace tends to be decisive. Imagine an armada of sky-ships raining down molten death on the population for failure to meet their supply quotas. I think they could be made to behave.
Also, this reflects for me a deeper political significance eg. the control of the third world by the Western powers. Consider the impending war with Iraq, the West will secure it's interest in the crucial oil supplies not by a land war, but by aeriel bombardment.
Indeed patterns of domination always tend to be by a smaller but tactically advantaged force eg. the Roman Empire, the British empire and so forth.
This said, I will of course read your suggestions with great interest, these are just my thoughts on how to work things. Your idea of the islands being a result of the people running away from the land is an intriguing one; this would certainly add pathos to a creation story.
 
just saying that i have been writing ideas and stuff down but mine is like descriptions of the different aspects of our world. It will be finished within a few days i promise!

cheers,


Marc

p.s. Everyone whop has msn messenger please say. I have it for a start. It would be quicker to get ideas across to each other. I added i fink sedray-on onto my messenger but he mite not have it?:confused: For people who don't have messenger this is not an attempt to make you miss out on anything.
 
Messenger is good. Perhaps we should use one person as a list contact...so that each e-mail gets sent to everyone involved. Any pertinent IM conversations can be copied and sent, if necessary (and, again, pertinent).

Sorry that I haven't been able to work much on this recently. As anticipated, I am currently very much bogged with classwork (have only the spare time to work on my primary project). Will respond to Sidwyn's contribution as I can.

Cheers, all. :)
 
Computer, i have MSN Messanger, but i somehow lost my internet access at home. I could do it at school, but at what time?
 
I dont have msn messanger. can i just download it somewhere? let me know. Im ready to participate in any way.
 
Where is everybody? Nobody's posted for like two weeks. I'll be done my story by Sunday. Sorry about the delay, school and work has been insane. End of Semester you know, lots of big projects.
 
well sod it here goes(wat i wrote so far)


Our collaborative World

One big continent with lots of small ones dotted about. We can focus the story around the main continent and branch out in other stories to the other lands and continents. Suitable names for the main continent:
Nagia
The Land
The Sage Lands
Krimlon

The Floating Islands could only be situated on the coast, quite rare to see, as the land isn’t widely travelled. I.e. people from the Middle of the Continent don’t really see much of their costal land. To the “mid-landers” the tales of the Floating Island are strange and sort of a Legend.

Air Ships
Work best on the coastal regions due to the air currents they get off the sea. Flight further inland is expensive to fuel so there aren’t regular flights there.
Ships are very large but are scarcely manned though you would expect them too be overcrowded due to there size. Much of the space is taken up with the machinery and magical apparatus that keeps the ship “afloat”. It wouldn’t be very interesting if it were just a normal ship and magic from the magus kept it afloat with just mental power. Also the strain on the magus keeping it flying all by himself would be near impossible.
The Crew consists of a team of magic users leaded by a Magus. The ship is the home of the Magus and his apprentices and family. Every crewmember has some sort of magical ability and uses the ship as their school as well.
Small cargo holds, the ships are suited more to the carrying of small expensive items. They are generally used for the transport of valuable heirlooms and magical artefacts but that service is the only one granted to “Land-lubbers” many of their service is provided basically to the Floating Isle the ship belongs to.
All air ships are completely different to others therefore they are unique. They are passed down the family line or whoever the Magus who owns the ship wished it to go to when they die. So this means the different Magus Family’s on the different Isles have fierce competition over who haves the best ships with the best magical and mundane defences and attacks and so on.
A Main part of the ships are the life pods. Which are small baskets stocked with life saving equipment. Its roughly five men to a life pod but this varies with the ships. When launched the life pods top part unfold and a magical spell is created inside this unfolding part (bit like a hot air balloon) A vacuum is created inside which safely lowers itself to the ground, the spell expels when the pod reaches the ground. The ship is very magical but like we agreed a lot of magic was needed with the Air Ships but after the Floating Isles and Air Ships magic becomes a small detail. (For a while at least.)

The world has no vast government powers, there are no big nations but each continent is ruled by different nations. It is all split up, there are no gigantic armies, I’ve found that using smaller armies makes battles better, more realistic and open to a lot more detail. This notion was introduced to me by reading Katherine Kerr’s books all about Deverry. A lot of the lords had little armies this makes each man a lot more valuable.

War

The weapons in this world are kept to swords shields maces etc. No gun powder yet. So no muskets and artilleries. (lol I hate modern warfare anyway!)

In battle warriors ride horses but as there are little armies there are only a limited number of horses. Horses are too valuable to ride into battle, so before a battle all warriors dismount and fight on foot wherever possible. Obviously the circumstances might have it that the warriors are desperate enough to win that they may take a risk and ride their horses into battle.

So as horses are scarce the battles follow a “rough” guideline. Many nations value Honour above everything else. So in battle they await each other at a battlefield. If any initiative leaders and generals decide to exploit the weakness of following a guideline in battle then they tend to become outcasts and after a battle in which they are victorious they often return home only to be shunned and get exiled. This often ends in the army becoming mercenaries but take the suicide missions so they can somehow gain back some of their lost Honour.

Races

I like the idea of having Dwarves and Elves in our story but I also want to create new races. No race will have magical traits, thus making each race as realistic as possible.

Dwarves
Generally tend to be of small stature but sometimes the occasional tall dwarf would be born but would often turn to self-inflicted exile. They live in mountain regions and live in Clans. There are different clans. Highlanders, Lowlanders. Etc. They do possess skill with working iron and stone and are a hearty people. They are considered the best mountain fighters but they haven’t fought any major wars in about fifty years so they are not all there cracked up to be.

Elves
Generally tend to be tall and lithe, they are a graceful race. There is a lot of different type of elves. You have the wood elves, the mountain elves (yes not only race that can live in mountains.), Gypsy elves and high elves (They consider themselves above all races, they believe that they are the superior race on any matters. And last you have the Fair Elves. The fair elves are a sort of priest race. Their entire sect tends to be into priesthood. With only a few of their kind have left to see the world and abandoned their ways.

well thats wot i got so far!


marc:D
 
any plot so far?

any ideas about plot. protagonist, antagonist, problem that needs to be solved?
 
not to burst any bubbles, but i keep seeing commercials for Treasure Planet. It looks pretty terrible to me; I don't know what you all think. It just made me wary of the whole air ship thing. I dunno.
 
Well, I for one thought that Treasure Planet looked kinda cool, but you also have to remember that the ship floats between worlds, not islands.

As for Computer, i was sort of hopping that this would be one story in which it was just humans, no other sentient species, who lived in the world.

I like the idea of Airships being homes to Mages, but how about this: The Mages had to take to flying Islands to escape persecution on the Mainland. Once they realized that there needed to be trade and communication between the Islands they built the Ships.

I still like the idea of the Ships belonging to the Mage and his family, but how about the Mages belong to an Air Guild, seperate from the Islands, but performing a valuable service.

As well, I sort of liked the idea of the ships floating on Currents of Magic. This would still require machinery but would put it more in the hands of the Current and the skill of the Pilot Mage to navigate the Magic Currents.

Just my take on things.

I have a lot to work on right now, so i'll come up with plot, protagonist, antagonist and problem/s that needs to be solved
 
Se'dray-on, are you mocking me? I was just trying to help. I think that starting with some of the major characters would be a better idea than starting with all the political, magical, and scientificl aspects of the world by making it more character driven. LOL. looking back, that was your recommendation, wasn't it? Excellent idea. Everyone start working on a character. I say a few. You can kill all of mine, I don't care! We should all concentrate on different groups of people and flush them out a bit. I also like the idea of starting the book in a "Pug in Feist" way where the reader learns about the world through a young magician's apprentice who is taken aboard a ship to be trained.

As for the floating ships: I don't know, something about it just bothers me and seems a far to simple and illogical form of transport. Ships are made for water. Why should we make airplanes that look like old ships when we already have airplanes. I understand that they haven't developed any airplanes, but it seems like magic that allows boats to travel in the sky would be a far more complex thing to create than a simple aircraft, unless of course the magic currents are just natural to the world and not created. My question then is this: What happens when a person falls out of an airship. Obviously, they wouldn't fall to the ground, because the ship doesn't, but they wouldn't drown because there is no water. Is that what the "special magic device" that takes up almost the entirety of the ship do? Keep it afloat? Also, how do the ships get down from the sky island level at which point they would be essentially sinking? And how do they rise?

I like the floating island ideas though, especially that they are not just floating on their own, but that they contain the floating rocks and they need to be anchored. This should have a major part in the story with some anchors being cut and the islands floating indefinetely away and the air seamen trying to save them or something.

I completely agree with the humans only thing. This doesn't seem like a story for elves and dwarves at all. There are enough kinds of humans to make things very interesting. I do think there should be animals invented, perhaps a large translucent jellyfish that floates through the magical cloud air sea.

Just some ideas. I'll be away for a while. After the Holidays we should all really try to organize this as best we can if it's going to happen. And you can see by my writing, even here, that editing is not my strong point. I don't write very traditionally, my works are in a very rough style with little care for proper structure, etc, which wouldn't lend itself well to genre writing. So count me out for the editor; Everyone else get in line!
 
ok so just humans then...

has ne 1 else wrote nefink ??

if its small just copy and paste it into a reply like i did. we need to hear ALL people's view who r in on it.

about messenger....pirate jenn i've never spoke 2 u online yet u have been added. cud u plz list some "rough" times of when u will b online.

im hoping to get this into the next stage but to do that we need every1's view and ideas. The project isn't going quick enough for my liking ...

i have a science test 2moz and then next 2 weeks i have mock tests but after that im putting more into this project.

i want to get us into the writing stage asap


i get bored easily when im writing so when we do start writing could it be fast replies?

sry if im being bitchy but we don't have no sence of urrgency whatsoever.

ne way....



...If somebody falls over board while on a Flying journey then they will fall and die on the floor. just because there are magic currents doesnt mean they're gonna float like the ship. an example... if u go paragliding u use wind currents but if u were to come out of the glider you would fall and die just because there are wind currents and thermols doesnt mean they are gonna hold you up.

remember tho every1 else has different styles of writing as much as i love Fiest i dont think it would work for us all if we all followed iano example and do it as a viewpoint from the eyes of an airman.

i also suggest we each have one main character each. you do the char details. for example my char could be just a lwoly deck hand on a ship. Iano's char could be the Magus in charge of the ship my char is working on. That would mean me and Iano would have to send each other deatils of the ship so each part we individually write is about the same ship.

is that clear to everyone...also try to be inventive in ur char roles...it would be pretty boring if all the main chars were just lowly deck hands wouldn' t it???

again as norm if ya don't agree with what i just said say so and offer a compromise.

kool,
cheers 4 listening,
marc

p.s. i wouldn't mind going up for editor!!!:D
 
Looks like we have some good ideas. I'll be busy until after New Years - College Exams, Family - you know, stuff like that. But after New Years I think we should crack down on the idea. I would love to be editor, but definately won't have enough time. So someone else is going to have to do it.

Other than that, good work people. I think if we all get along and offer reasons for our ideas and comprimise we can do great.
 
i went a head and produced my character sheet details. this will be my main char in the story. It is mine plz don't "nick" it...cheers(this is my layout feel free to copy it if u want or not????)

My Character Development


Character Name: Marc Landor.

Age: 21 Nationality: Unknown

Description: Very tall (6feet 6 inches), brown hair, broad shoulders, and very strong, commoner, clean-shaven face, Green eyes. Short hair. Kind but has hardened face. Calluses on his hands from his sword work and his time as a Seaman on board the Fairy Mother Ship. He has a dry sense of humour and most of the time is very tactless. He speaks his mind and it would have helped him in the past to not speak his mind at certain points. Spurns the nobility and how they think they are above other men because of there birth. He believes that a man should be judged on his actions instead of how he was born. He knows there are many able people out there who are not given a chance to prove themselves because of being of a lowly station.

History: His Mum died when he was six and his Dad became a drunk. Shortly after his twelve birthday his Dad was killed in a brawl. After that he left his home city of Ankapoor. He roamed the hills for a year he became wild and savage. A passing sword master pitied him and made it a goal to change Marc. He “tamed” making him Human again. He taught him sword craft and how to survive in the wild. He gave marc an identity. After being “humanised” he left the sword master and sought work on a ship. He found work on the ship the Fairy Mother as a cabin boy he was only fourteen. He steadily progressed and became a normal deck hand. He had saved a lot of money, as he saw no need to go spending all his wages in port getting drunk. He is also an exceptional gambler and in the time he was aboard the Fairy mother he needed nothing for comfort. He was strong and healthy he had no drug or drink addictions and had plenty of clothes. He needed for nothing. For a commoner he was considered wealthy in other commoner eyes. He saw himself and comfortable.
On his eighteenth birthday he started to experience strange visions. He began to see himself working on a strange “star ship” in these visions he saw somebody whom he felt attracted to. In his visions this “man” controlled forces he couldn’t imagine. He decided to seek out a priest. He spent time conversing with the priest who was convinced marc possessed some aspect of magic. After this marc decided to leave his ship. The crew were very fond of him by now; he had made a few good friends with his time there but now he thought it was high time to leave. He spent time wondering seaports. On his twentieth birthday he tried to control some of his strange feelings. After a while he actually managed to levitate himself off the floor. It hadn’t lasted very long but he had done it. Shortly after a fabled “Air Ship” came into port trading for oil. He sought work on the ship. But he was not considered, the crew on this ship all were of a magic family, they working in their school and didn’t see the need for outsiders trying to work for them. Intended as a cruel joke they lowered the ship just out of reach of Marc and said if he could somehow get onto the ship they would grant him work. This angered Marc and he reached inside himself and levitated sic feet into the air and grabbed hold of the rail and clambered aboard. The crew were so shocked they never said a word but just sent him to the magus of the ship. After a strange interview he was welcomed onto the ship and into their lives. He began to be schooled in controlling his powers and the working of the ship. He stays on there the story comes and finds him when he is only twenty-one and progresses with the people from sff-world.

Skills: He can use many different types of sword and has more than a basic skill with each different type of blade. Sadly the sword master didn’t bother to teach him the use of other weapons i.e. an axe, mace and flail. He can operate an air ship with the rest of the crew. He can fend for himself in the wild and in cities. He is independent and intelligent.

Magic: He possess a basic skill in control of his body. He magic prowess may rise some more but he won’t become a powerful mage.


cheers for this,

laterz,
marc
 
In response to IaNo's comment on the 'ships' not actually being ships, I would have to say that I agree with him. Thoush no one actually suggested that they would bear much of a resemblance to sea bearing ships.

I strongly suggest that they should be of a different shape. Perhaps the people of the world might call them 'the craft' or something along those lines. I have no problem though with calling them ships, the word seems quite suitable.

I think this is something we should think carefulle about as a large part of our ideas, story would be based around the ships. Any suggestions for what form they would take.....

By the way, computer, your character seems a little stereoptyped. Sorry about that but he struck me as a little too heroic...
 
ok sir rob can u plz explain to me whats wrong wiv my char and what i could do to make it different.

just tell what you think is wrong about it and i'll have a think over it then i will do sumfink wiv it.


cheers for pointing it out



marc
 
Originally posted by computer
ok sir rob can u plz explain to me whats wrong wiv my char and what i could do to make it different.

just tell what you think is wrong about it and i'll have a think over it then i will do sumfink wiv it.


cheers for pointing it out



marc
Click to expand...

Make him five foot ten, not the best swordsman in the world, though he ahs guile which helps him, doubtful motives, Loving Parents, though he is still a bit of a cad. He ends up on the ship because of stupidity, say gambling, where he is kept as a concubine to the female magus of the ship.

Sorry for interjecting on your process, couldn't help myself.
 
OK, should I take it as a bad sign that my sample piece received basically no comment at all?
I will try to pull something with more pace together soon, but given the amount of Uni work I've got on just now 'soon' could mean during the holidays.
A lot of interesting ideas have been batted around lately and I think we'll really need to consolidate them and definitivly decide issues one way or another.
If I could just put my oar in (no pun intended) as regards the air-ships, I do not see it as being logically inconsistent that they should have more in common with sailing ships than aeroplanes. Planes are self-powered and their design largely reflects aerodynamic considerations. As I don't think anyones suggesting that our airships should have jet engines, then there is no reason that they should look like planes. Furthermore, if not powered by engines it seems quite reasonable that they should effectivly be sailing and therefore would have more in common with a galleon. The interesting feature is, not being half-immersed in water, they could have sails on the top and bottom of the hull. I think that it is counter-productive to consider this in terms of what they look like in relation to real vessels, but that we should be thinking: if the magic did exsist, how would we build such a ship.
Also Marc, I'm afraid that I have to agree with SirRobb about your character proposals. Even if you don't want to follow the precise path suggested by kegasaurus, I think you should take from it the point about trying to 'dirty' the character up a bit.
 
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