[user]@Ellstar[/user], [user]@clarevelyn13[/user], [user]@Kelpies[/user]. I am wondering if you would like to turn The Library Character Chit-Chat to make a Storybook. If yes I would like help managing it because I doubt I'll do a very good job. I am also wondering if we do it whether we should keep our current story and characters or make a new one?
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job." -Douglas Adams
Eh, I'd like to do it considering the route it's already taken now (we already have the basis of an actual world, an interesting conflict, a good set of characters, that sort of thing) but taking all that into consideration it still has the tone of an ordinary chit-chat. For one, everyone doesn't feel connected yet. The existence of lion characters need to be balanced out by the existence of other anthropomorphic characters so that it makes sense, we still don't know Faerwin's storyline (@Kelpies though fair enough it sounds very interesting, I love how you're developing it right now) or Cal's and S' storyline for that matter, and everything seems like a mess.
If I were to arrange it, I'd probably scratch what we have now and try to make the basis of a story that starts at the core of the conflict--currently, between Ervial and Orville. That's probably the thickest conflict right now, all things considered, and we could definitely connect it with the Cloud City story arc. What if Orville is actually the one controlling the dark creatures? What if Orville is actually controlled by the dark creature, and Ervial doesn't know it and just assumes his once good brother went insane?
TL;DR: Right now, I see an interesting story coming along, but I don't see anything connecting the story. Everything is as a chit-chat should be--disconnected portions from different stories hastily cobbled together to enhance the writers' ability. If we were to make it into a storybook, I assume it has to make enough sense and everything has to have proper building to a satisfying conclusion prior.
"For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief."
Okay, so, I sound pretentious right now so let me get this straight--I am pulling this out of my a** right now. I am doing this basically off of my limited knowledge of storybooks and stories in general, so take my word with so much grain of salt it'll give you heart disease.
Also, on the topic of managing, I think all of us can have a say. Unless you already have a world in mind, and you want things to end a specific way, I say we all worldbuild until we reach a story that we can all agree with.
"For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief."
I support worldbuilding for a while- I've been in a few SBs that have no clue where they're going and then they never end until everyone forgets to post and it just ceases to exist. I'd like for us to have a clear idea of where we're going before we actually start Storybooking.
Also, I could provide Flaerwin's backstory. She's very sensitive though- she doesn't like to tell people about her origins. Right now however she simply seems to be a human- albeit with a lot of fears and a little too much upper body strength.
Also- there needs to be a connection between the characters. Like something going wrong on all of their worlds that brought them together. I know where Flaerwin came from but I don't know how she got to the Library...
We are who we are, and if someone has a problem with that; that's their problem not ours. *** I do believe that insane is the only way to go.
A) Where do we want the story to start (if we're not directly starting from the Chit-Chat) ?
In this one, I think we ought to start with all the main characters getting to the library, but we still need to have one central character to connect them all. (This central character has to be relatable, down to Earth and inevitably the most ignorant one of the team, the person who forces the other characters who are "in the know" to tell them what's going on. As far as I can tell this character can either be Lionel or Faerwin, as both are relatable and relatively ignorant to the plot.) In any case, we start with the central character(s) asking what's happening and why they're here, and then we move on to the bigger storyline with the Two Twins.
B) How do we connect everybody and everything?
This is important. On one hand, we have a literal lion king, on the other we have a witch, on the other we have an exiled Story Thief, on the other we have two representations/subversions of good and evil, and then we have the currently unknown boy and girl. These things do not blend as well as they should. Adding one more anthropomorphic character might fix the problem that, hey, there's a lion in the team what is happening here, but it's sort of unshakeable that these all feel...fanfiction-y. As if some fanfiction writer read a bunch of popular novels of different genres and said, hey, what if they were all together in a library trying to get out? Now, I see a possible way out with the Nebulous Dark Creatures, as they can easily be the reason why Orville, S, Lionel, and Preax are there, but depending on what happens I don't know how they connect to Cal and Faerwin. The good thing is that it's a nebulous fantasy trope, so it's believable that this sort of thing actually affects the main characters.
The mechanics of the library is a little more complicated. This is my personal opinion--the fact that we have an entire library of books, AKA thousands of portals to other worlds, and remain solely focused on going to Cloud City isn't fair to me. We can explore all the other worlds associated with the library, and yet we only go to one place. That doesn't stick with me a bit, actually, but I think it's just me. In any case, we do need to figure out how to show the mechanics of the library other than, "Oh, it's because S/Preax/Orville/Ervial said so."
C) I had other questions, but its 4 AM and I need to sleep. G'night for now.
"For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief."
Goodnight. What I was thinking is they are each confronting some sort of darkness in each of the worlds they come from. The central meeting point is the library- and then there's a place of origin of the darkness. The darkness could manifest itself in different forms according to the world and it's laws.
Like in Lionel's world, there're the Nightshades. Flaerwin's world, there can be the deranged minds of the other experiments.
But if my idea has any basis- there needs to be a central connector. It could be the ignorant one of the group- or they could all be connected by similar hardships in each of their worlds.
Just a suggestion. Don't mind me...
We are who we are, and if someone has a problem with that; that's their problem not ours. *** I do believe that insane is the only way to go.
I'll be honest - I'm kinda lost in what's going on right now. And Cal seems kinda to be left in the dust of it all...I still have to catch up on reading some of it though. If we are going to ever develop this into an actual "Storybook," I just want to say I've never actually been involved in one before. I'm still pretty new here, but I wasn't sure if all Storybooks had such long posts? If they do, that's fine - I don't want to hold you guys back or anything. I'm open to different ideas about plot development too.
@clarevelyn13, yeah, I sort of noticed you disappeared all of a sudden. Basically the chit-chat was supposed to be a normal thing where any new character could come in and interact, without being tied down by a universe or a set of rules. But now we've taken it a little too far because:
1. We now have two creators of the Library, Ervial and Orville, both with dubious purposes for its existence, 2. We have several important conflicts, one being the Darkness in @ty7lucky s storyline and the other being Orville's dangerous tendencies in search for a good story, 3. We have what looks like a solid universe established with specific limitations, and a set of themes as well.
Which isn't really like the Chit-Chat, because now the people who want to walk in have to know these three things before going in. It defeats the purpose of the Chit-Chat, but does veer into the Storybook mode (basically, a huge collaboration roleplaying game made to create a book). However, Storybooks are time taxing, and I think we can understand if you're not willing for that. However, it can be extremely fun to participate in and at the very least is good writing practice with a bunch of other people.
"For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief."
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