IWT8: Science Fiction

[End Master]

Added Tim and Dream to the list. Got 9 people now, but will they all avoid SHAME? (or in Mizal and Cat's case, erase their current SHAME)

Deadline is still January 2nd, but if the past is any indication, that date will probably be extended unless by some miracle most of the participants actually finish their stories on time.

[dreamshell]

After wracking my brain for most of the month, I've finally got a cohesive storyline and setting for the contest. I'm in.

Would I be committing a faux pas to ask what sort of stories others are working on? Though I initially felt obligated to do something more original, I've since embraced my desire to write a space opera and I'm going all-out.

I've only just started on this and from the look of my "broad strokes" outline alone, I can tell this is going to be a challenge. CYOAs ain't peanuts. But I'm enthusiastic, so hopefully a little more than four months will be enough.

[Tim2000]

Thanks for the welcome And also the advice.

Do you have any recs for stories to read?

[donteatpoop]

You're in on the contest, Tim. Welcome to infinite-story. Start writing. If you haven't already, look around at some of the stories on the site to see what kind of thing does well here and get an idea of some of the ways this writing format can be used. Good luck. Get to writing.

[mizal]

Hola!

Sign right up, no worries, plenty of SHAME to go around.

e: hey cool Usoki has 999 posts. Any plans for making 1000 special? (no goatse dammit don't even think about it)

[ChubbyTeletubby]

Hi.




How ya doin'?

[Tim2000]

Hi, I'm new here. I would like to enter the contest. And hi everyone.

[mizal]

Though, I have to admit I'm working under the assumption that this is going to get pushed to January again.

[End Master]

Cool.

Just added Chubby to the list since he said he was in.

[mizal]

Lisali is a medium-sized planet in the system of Geth, with the main continent shaped roughly like a left-facing crescent. On the shores at the center of the concave is the capital city of Lisalton, founded nearly four hundred years ago when humans first arrived in their space rockets with the intent to stay. At the southern and northern points are the remains of the robot and Ewok kingdoms, respectively. With the exception of the Jawa tribes that share territory with the Ewoks, there is next to no contact with the other races. This is considered an agreeable situation for most, as in years past, all communication came in the form of war.

The humans claim all the rest of the land, though there are many isolated places that have yet to be truly conquered. North and south of Lisalton stretch the Stride-On Plains, dotted with numerous space farming habitat bubbles where most of the planet's food is grown, while the center of the planet is almost wholly given over to the Pitaao Wood, a wild, dark forest that is home to a variety of dangerous aliens--both natural and unnatural, or so the locals claim--and seems especially resistant to being settled and tamed. South of the wood and east of the plains are the Devilspace Wastes, a dry, barren stretch of rocky hills and mountains, famous for its eerie, twisted rock formations and infamous for its way of killing any space travelers who come unprepared for the harshness of the landscape.

Many superstitions are associated with the wilder lands, and there are common beliefs regarding the scientific properties of the six moons that govern the night skies, but these are things discouraged by the Brotherhood of Yoda and their space rangers, whose gold and red banners of the sun have been a symbol of justice in the land for as long as the planet has been colonized, and have a particular distrust of the old technologies.


My story is coming along swimmingly, can't wait to win this thing.

[ChubbyTeletubby]

I'm intrigued.

But...we'll see. We'll see. Maybe this will be my chance to redeem myself. 'Cause I just don't feel the love anymore.

I just don't feel the love.

And yes, I am filled with great SHAME. If I was Japanese I would have done the honorable thing and disemboweled myself long ago.

Long, long ago....


In a galaxy far, far away....

EDIT: I'm in. I was looking through some old stories I deleted and found one I had completely forgotten about!!! Pretty neat find! Im excited! This is the first time I've been excited about a writing project in quite some time! I hope it's a pleasant surprise to the lot of you!

[donteatpoop]

Alright, that's 1/3 of a page in Word out of the way.

[Usoki]

...finish on time?

Now you're just being silly. What are you going to do when we bump back the deadline? Be done? Vote on everything in a timely manner? Hah!

[donteatpoop]

Just started working on my story and it's not the one I thought I was going to write. Instead it's something I had the idea for in a previous contest that I failed to enter. Might still write the other one, but I doubt it; I didn't really have much but the basics for it anyway.

Who knows, I might even finish on time.

[mizal]

Or, another approach I meant to use that never got past bare scripting- the group of characters forms the trunk of the story, and each 'branch' of the story is just the same story told from the point of view from one specific character. You have to read all of the branches to get the full story, but the CYOA serves as a filtering plot device. It also lets you write in a very linear fashion- the CYOA doesn't actually create branches so much as it determines which character the narration is focused on.

Huh. I never thought of this but I really like it. Definitely going to have to try using it in a future project.

At this point in my current project (the fantasy one for CYS) the paths are going to be diverging enough that looping is not really an option, even though I did make use of it here and there in the beginning.

For now though the best solution I can come up with is to write out the missing main branches in a straight shot along the 'ideal' paths, then go back in and fill in the blanks with choices and side branches when I finally feel ready to tackle them. (I'm going to attempt to avoid the "went left instead of right? welp, you're dead!" situations as much as possible though because I hate those.)

I just feel so...burned out at the moment, I'm writing whenever I can but the plot is just inching forward. And I've still got this sci-fi story to think about, yeesh.