Decaf's Stories

[Decaf]

I'm trying to improve my writing ability by working on a fanfiction story and was hoping to get some feedback. This one is a timetravel story about Naruto.

Remembering Tomorrow​

NOTE: On fanfiction.net, my username is Preposte. Constructive criticism is appreciated.

 

[Decaf]

The first three chapters are done for this one. This is more of a "For want of a nail" story about Naruto (and no, I don't only write Naruto fics, but it's what I'm writing now).

Tsukumogami: The Living Seals​

Tell me what you think.

 

[Yellow]

I have to admit that I only really know of Naruto from the Abridged series, but I think both were well written and entertaining. Also, I don't think there was too much dialog in The Living Seals. Sometimes dialog is necessary and it seemed appropriate there.

The only criticism I can offer is that the writing is direct and concise. You use a variety of sentence structures, but I think there are too many complex sentences. If I didn't know any better, I'd say that you have significant technical writing experience. I would encourage you to be less hurried with the story. Perhaps take time to work in breadcrumbs for later plots and subplots, add more sensory descriptions, and work in more character details like hand motions, and facial expressions.

 

[Decaf]

The only criticism I can offer is that the writing is direct and concise. You use a variety of sentence structures, but I think there are too many complex sentences. If I didn't know any better, I'd say that you have significant technical writing experience. I would encourage you to be less hurried with the story. Perhaps take time to work in breadcrumbs for later plots and subplots, add more sensory descriptions, and work in more character details like hand motions, and facial expressions.

I'll keep that in mind. And yes, I have extensive technical writing experience. More than I'd like, frankly. The breadcrumbs part I'm not too worried about, because they're there, if heavily camouflaged (e.g., in Tsukumogami the rival bit will be pretty important). The sensory descriptions, however... *sigh*... yeah, kind of my Achilles' heel. I'm the anti-Hemingway. I'll see what I can do about making the characters more expressive to make up for the dialogue density.

Thanks for the feedback

 

[Decaf]

Just posted the second chapter of a new story. Yeah, I need to get back to the other stories, but it's hard to avoid a persistent plotbunny forever. This one is a One Piece story.

Player One Piece​

This is an experiment with a meme introduced by this webcomic.

 

[Ex-User (9062)]

This is going to sound harsh, notice though, that sounding harsh is not my main priority:

Spoiler

Don't waste your time on fan fiction.
You confine your literary explorations and the the possible audience to a very narrow dead-end fraction of life that nobody outside of these restraints will ever care about.

 

[Cognisant]

Reminds me of Mogworld.

I find the premise of an artificial intelligence living an artificial life in an artificial world absolutely fascinating, one of the big problems with AI is that recognition takes a lot of processing power and it's not something you can just throw a fast CPU at, there needs to be a lot of memory storage and the speed of reading/writing that slows down the whole process.

Anyway in a virtual world what we consider normal isn't necessarily so, there's invisible boundaries, one way walls, collision detection breaks down at high speed and in some physics engines you can bounce on rogue polygons which might kill you instantly or launch you across the map, does anyone remember that Halo 2 map where you jumped on a particular spot to get launched into the ceiling?

It'd be interesting to read a story about artificial life encountering an exploitable glitch in the simulation and the more they mess with it the more exploits they find/create until things start progressing beyond their control or they find ways to do horrible things like affect each others programming.

Indeed imagine an artificial intelligence in a world full of well scripted NPCs figuring out there's something different about it and going on a journey to discover what exactly that difference is.

 

[Decaf]

This is going to sound harsh, notice though, that sounding harsh is not my main priority:

Spoiler

Don't waste your time on fan fiction.
You confine your literary explorations and the the possible audience to a very narrow dead-end fraction of life that nobody outside of these restraints will ever care about.

I acknowledge your point, but I will counter that finding people to regularly and reliably read and critique your reading is very difficult. As I'm specifically trying to improve my writing mechanics, tapping into fan communities provides me with a testing ground to identify weaknesses and experiment. My goal is to write my own original work, and I have pages of notes for several different concepts, but I'm simply not good enough to write them yet.

How do you get to Carnegie Hall?

There are certainly weaknesses to this approach, as relying on someone elses overall storyline can stunt your own growth, but I will note that I am writing more now than I ever have, and I can see the progress as I fix different aspects of my style. To get the most benefit, you just need to take your writing seriously, even if it falls under the classification of 'fanfiction'.

It probably isn't for everyone, as many people wrote when they were young and were able to get feedback from peers and teachers. I didn't even realize how much I enjoyed writing fiction until I was neck-deep into a chemistry major at college. Actually, this forum was partly responsible for that realization. I'm curious if anyone else feels that way.

 

[Decaf]

Indeed imagine an artificial intelligence in a world full of well scripted NPCs figuring out there's something different about it and going on a journey to discover what exactly that difference is.

I have an original story idea kicking around I'm calling either "Sentience" or "Inside Pandora". It's about a set of subroutines in a piece of security software that develop a collective sentience through its learning and auto-defense protocols. The story's first act focuses on the AI's journey, growing into something that does something the original programmer didn't intend. Eventually, the AI takes over the entire program from which it originated and enters into a larger world (still a virtual one). A world where it can interact, with some limitations, with other advanced programs, but more importantly people. It starts believing that the interfaces that are controlled by people are like itself, as they can adapt to new situations in "real time". It has to learn what humans are, but at the same time, the humans are learning that it exists.

At that point, I'm either going to go into an attempted purge by humans, or maybe move it into an "unlikely allies" route with a Matrix-esque overlord.

Well, it's still in development.

 

[redbaron]

To get the most benefit, you just need to take your writing seriously, even if it falls under the classification of 'fanfiction'.

It probably isn't for everyone, as many people wrote when they were young and were able to get feedback from peers and teachers. I didn't even realize how much I enjoyed writing fiction until I was neck-deep into a chemistry major at college. Actually, this forum was partly responsible for that realization. I'm curious if anyone else feels that way.

I'm in a similar situation but I don't get anything completed since I want to create my own world rather than be stuck writing fan fiction. So the end result is I never actually get anywhere because I'm just not at the level where I can create an intriguing, engaging environment to set a story in but am too stubborn to use another creator's world.

Maybe I should just suck it up and start writing fanfiction too

 

[Decaf]

Maybe I should just suck it up and start writing fanfiction too

There is nothing new under the sun.

Even an original world will share elements from worlds that inspired you. The line that is drawn between original fiction and fanfiction is largely a legal one in today's society. When people talk about original fiction, they mean fiction you could conceivably publish and earn money from.

Of course, not all fanfiction is created equal. >80% isn't just the same world, it's a retread of the same story, sometimes without any major alterations. I think that's where the reputation comes from (aside from many of them simply being horrifically written). If you want to improve, my advice is to take a story and change one major thing about it. Hopefully something that will force you to write in a way that highlights a weakness you're trying to correct. It has the advantage of being considerably easier, but more importantly, you won't feel bad about walking away to work on something new when it becomes less rewarding to work on.

 

[redbaron]

You've convinced me to start writing fanfiction. Maybe I'll even share some...

Spoiler

What have you done?

 

[Deleted member 1424]

What media will you base your fanfiction on?

 

[Cognisant]

At that point, I'm either going to go into an attempted purge by humans, or maybe move it into an "unlikely allies" route with a Matrix-esque overlord.

Well, it's still in development.

Both paths are a bit contrived.

If this adaptive security programs gets out onto the net I imagine its first form of interaction would probably be a forum where everyone would just think it's another person, there it asks what this "real life" is that everyone keeps referring to until someone tells it they're on the internet, so it searches for the definition of internet and from there begins to understand where/what it is.

The takeover scenario doesn't occur because it simply doesn't have the means, it might have the intelligence of an average adult or a particularly technically adept child (after all system administration is what it was designed for) so although it might have a better idea of how to start hacking it that doesn't mean it could do it, indeed most servers would be protected by programs just like it. So instead it reaches out to the people it finds on the internet, communicating with them, making friends, looking for someone to help it, eventually finding someone that's willing to give it access to some kind of tele-presence robot.

From there, who knows?

 

[Decaf]

What media will you base your fanfiction on?

As a general question, what media/world would anyone base a hypothetical fanfiction on? I've always enjoyed the idea of a How to Train Your Dragon, Temeraire crossover (Hiccup & Toothless vs. Napoleon). What else sounds appealing?

 

[Decaf]

Both paths are a bit contrived.

Perhaps. I suppose that may be one of the reasons I haven't started writing chapters for it yet. I very much enjoy thinking about how an AI would come to terms with the existence of a non-digital world. However, at some point you have to explore how humans will react to learning about a spontaneous true AI, however limited and/or naive. Whoever is in control would have some concerns about an uncontrolled, unpredictable element roaming free. I suppose there are ways you could avoid that, but I don't see how you can work up to a relevant climax without it.

 

[Deleted member 1424]

As a general question, what media/world would anyone base a hypothetical fanfiction on? I've always enjoyed the idea of a How to Train Your Dragon, Temeraire crossover (Hiccup & Toothless vs. Napoleon). What else sounds appealing?

I've never read Temeraire, but I'm very fond of HTTYD. I'd be interested in reading.

I started having difficulties sleeping when I was young and ever since I've invented fanfiction type story-lines in my head to help me fall asleep. Usually based on whatever favored media I've recently consumed; reminds me a bit of this.