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

Just thought I'd check-in; owing to exam and essay deadlines for the end of term I've not had much time to concretise my thoughts on the new race yet - but I'll try and take on board as much of the stuff that has gone on here as possible.
Speaking of checking-in, has anyone seen Jenn lately?
As regards business, I don't know that I'm too enamoured on the idea of mutated humans - too much human gene theory, too little fantasy.
Some of the features ascribed to the vampires has interested me, although I'm not sure that I would want 'vampires' per se. Like I said, I'll try and pool some of this stuff into my new race - which I want to steep in real mythology anyway for some added resonance.
A suggestion which I have put out a few times, and which no-one has really addressed (perhaps because I've not put it forcefully enough) is that I don't believe the humans should be involved with the flying! I feel that the juxtaposition between the relativly mundane lives of men and the high fantasy elements of other races necessitates that we maintain the seperation as far as possible.
As far as the humans are a match for the air-borne races, I belive their strength should lie in technology and I would add my voice to those proposing limited (early) cannons and musketery. This is an issue which we should probably put to a vote; but I think it's important Computer that you understand that cannons and old style muskets need not have eighteenth century connotations. Modern warfare did not begin until the Franco-Prussian war (1871), or perhaps the American civil war (1860's). As far as I understand the suggestion so far, people here are advocating weapons technology circa. 1600's (eg. the English Civil War). Thus the importance of cavalry and swords is still considerable. But if we are to give the other races magic, which chance does a man with a sword stand, unless he has a certain explosive 'magic' of his own?
 
Stopping by for a moment....I've not abandoned y'all. Been busy with finals/end of term the last four weeks. ::gulp:: Should be back tomorrow, though. Still haven't read SS's piece! egads...
Anyhow...I'll be able to rejoin the fray soon. (thank goodness!)

Jenn
 
I'm just saying, that 1600s technology could hardly defend against airships swooping down from the sky. Maybe they could, I'll have to think about it.

What 'vampire' attributes did you like Sidwynspider? I wasn't intending for my vampires to be generic stereotypical things.

Anyone got any related pieces on the go?

While Sidwynspider works on the race thing why don't we think about the religion of the land.

What did everyone think of my 'god like' Avian idea?
 
The "God-like" idea of Avians is kinda cool. But, I don't want them to be actual God, only, a higher type being.

As to SS. The Aeronaughts wouldn't be using Magic. The Magic would be inherent in the metal wings. An Aeronaught would just have to learn how to "fly" the Magic Currents.

SirRob. A cannon shot into the side of the ship would hurt it. Even if it could fly.

Just thought of this. How about Runes of Flying are inscribed in a ring around the ship. Any large distruption of the Runes would cause it to lose the ability to fly.
 
With 17th century cannon it would be pretty hard to hit flying object. I'm certainly not an expert on this kind of thing but it was just my impression.

Yay! Someone likes one of my ideas. I didn't intend the avains to be real gods in any way, just naturally very powerful. Do you think they shoud have some kind of magic; I don't think they should.

Sorry, but I don't like Runes in any shape or form. They seem a little silly. I was thinking that the magic would be more of a natural force in the wind and earth.
 
i agree with sir rob here. i hate runes myself. well note hate but i only know one author who successfully used them. Mark Anthony.

the aeronaughts sound kool but as we agreed to having very little magic envolved they would have to be some sort of hang glider.

and sorry but i dont think having a ring of runes around the air ship keeping it afloat would work very well. it sounds a bit lame to me(soz)

um...i think we have quite a lot of ideas for things in the air and now we should really concentrate of more "down to earth" ideas.

also for the religion are we having one god or more than one god?

an idea...we could have maybe 5 gods four of water, fire, earth, wind and then the spiritual one (just an idea

Marc
 
Getting rid of the runes is cool by me. just an idea that popped into my head.

I like the five gods idea, but how about we have the fifth god as God of the Void. He could be the God of our "mysterious" race yet to come.

And the Wings for the Aeronaughts would be made of an extremely lightweight metal. The wingspan would be 12 feet fully extended, both sides. Their would be an inherent magic in the wings that let them catch and float on the Magic Currents.

I'll get back to you later on "down to earth".

Later days.

P.S. Extremely happy cause exams are done for this semester! Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.:D :D :D :D :D :D :D
 
Computer there wouldn't be a religion. It would be a very surprising world to have one all powerful religion.

Maybe some people would worship fire, water, wind and earth not quite as gods but as sort of The Foundations of the World, but not as living gods.

Perhaps we should think of, as an addition, a monotheistic religion.

We need to figure out what the rough shape of the land is and how its divided up. I don't want a Mordor like clone in our world, even though there might be some kind of wilderness.
 
i think we should have lke a cult that is recrutiing worshipers maybe keeping them together with a drug addiction or somethink



marc
 
holy CRAP! Sorry everyone. I've been away. very busy. And i was the one preaching for speed. I've been reading the thread and I will comment briefly on what i still think is necessary.

Vampires ---- well, if you mean blood sucking and living off blood, I don't think that is a good idea. I'm all for creating new races and creatures with elements of vampires if you want, it just seems to easy. NEW NEW NEW ORIGINAL ORIGINAL ORIGINAL!!!

Weapons --- I think minor use of weapons is good, but they are scarce and hard to come by. Perhaps someone develops gunpowder during the book and is a gun seller. I dont think the cannons on the airships are a good idea because of the opinions already voices.

The ships ---- I know I had criticized that, but i like the idea that they still be called ships but look different, ie the sails on the bottom as well. I liked that a lot.

Avians ---- I like.

Runes ---- I dislike.

Religion ---- I think the four elements and the spiritual is good, but for only one race of people, or one section of humans. I think there should be contradicting religions that have nothing to do with each other but should not be the major reason for fighting and dissagreement. I think making religions over important ends up making the story over magical in a way. But they are useful for character development and character traits, etc.

I will be going home for the holidays soon and I regret I will be away for a while again. Sorry. After that, I promise I will write something intelligent. Perhaps, I will try to tie everything we have so far into one nice post summing it all up and try to really get everyone working together (if nobody else has done it).

Oh, if you are all emailing eachother or IMing, let me know. My email is [email protected] and I dont have IM right now but I can get whatever I need if necessary. I am really down to work on this seriously after the holidays and it seems like all of you are as well. Everyone please send me an email just saying hi so that i can get you all in my adress book. (and please say who you are and what it is about) Maybe we should start an email list. Also, we should give this project a name, or rather our group a name. Not that we dont have enough to do with writing a novel and all :)

cheers. happy holidays. good writing
 
Okay then, 'down to earth' huh?
Well, as I've already made abundantly clear, it is precisely a VERY down to earth world that I want. Right back at the very start of this thread Computer expressed reservations about a historical basis, sorry but I see little real alternative.
The world we create can only be made on roughly similar foundations to our own (societal development is largely a product of material conditions and therefore it is implicit that even fantasy societies will develop along relativly normalised lines. The only alternative is to make the material conditions of life fundamentally different from anything known to Earth which would only make the final product so wierd and 'trippy' as to be basically unreadable).
I'm not advocating a historical essay here. Of course once we have looked at a pertinent history we can depart from it. But for the sake of making things down to earth, and so we can all know roughly where we're coming from, I have to stress that we need, at least a minimal, historographical basis. From this all else, technology, religion and so forth will flow.
My personal option: English civil war. Cannon (yes I know hitting flying targets would be difficult, but then wheres the fun if its easy?), a struggle between two branches of a monotheistic faith (fighting against it's centralisation). A primarily agrarian economy ruled over by a quasi-feudal system.
However, if anyone else wants to suggest a different historical epoch - which could range broadly from ancient Greece to modern Inuit culture - then here lies the real discussion in setting down the Earth bound parts of our world.
 
i like the idea of the greek one nation city states myself

as it is a joint work i think we should have a vote on whether we are using primitive cannons and such.

if you vote yes for cannons clearly state that at the start of your next reply in big bold letters please. then if i get out voted then we will use cannons.

totally unrelated to our project has any body read the fifth sorceress by robert newcomb? i think we should come up with our own race of "minions" NOT COPYING just to give a comparitive for a avian race. PLus its newest book i've read that has anythink to do with avian species.

Marc,:cool:
 
Because of the reviews I've seen, but lets not get off topic please.

I think we need to concentrate on one topic at a time which could be religion, because technology has been sorted (I think). Come on post... please
 
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What if someone again did an outline integrating and making a kind of synopsis of some of the things you've been talking about....so you could agree on some scenes - such as how it would start out and what the story would be about?

That way you would see some of the spots that need attention. Maybe some of the people who wanted to do the writing for that part could volunteer to write specific parts...

Or.... You've already agreed one character per person, why not do a sort of D&D thing and show up at a chat writing as if you were your character? Otherwise dividing up one writer per character might be hard to coordinate and I think it might be easier to just start the story at this point.

Then you could revise the story as you talked about what you wanted to happen...and you would actually be getting some of the real story written...

How long do you want to make this story?
 
Thanks for the suggestions An8el but I don't think it would work; most of us guys aren't on the net enough for that kind of thing. You have raised a good point about 1 character for each writer. I don't really want to do this, it would detract a bit from the collobaritive experience and 4/5 seperate character threads would fragment things too much. Maybe 1 or 2 central protaganists but thats the limit. We need to keep things simple and collected. As to the length of the story, it should ideally remain short. I'm not quite sure how short.
 
Yes to cannon
Okay, I'm finally off for Christmas, so lets start getting this nailed down.
I'm drawing my inspiration for the new species from, curiously enough, old English faerie myths; the idea being that there is a parallel faery universe which is not subject to the physical laws of this one: eg. gravity!!!
Obviously feel free to pick at this, but I would observe just now that this is only just to keep you abreast of where my thinking process is at the moment and you should therefore not infer too much about the end-product from this.
As far as technology, religion and the like goes on, I'll leave that to others (if nobody minds). I've made my views fairly clear, but as I'm working on a whole species I don't want to dictate the entire ordering of the world. Perhaps we should have one or two people commit themselves to working out the details of the world of men, and just have them do it.
 
Thats fine by me Spider. Any idea as to when you'll be finished. I'm getting a little anxious as to when we will actually start but by all means take your time.

School is finished now, so I have buckets of time to mull over everything, and I like your idea of assigning world creation jobs, which I'm up for but most of this would be detail filling - I still think the central issues should be decided on by everyone.

I'll start an outline document soon as soon as possible and maybe write a little.
 
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