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what are the fastest ways to kill an SB



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Mon Nov 11, 2019 9:06 pm
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SirenCymbaline says...



I'm working on an article on bad habits (on both the player and GM side, though it's aimed at GMs) that can cause SBs to die fast.

What are the worst signs you've come to find in SBs you've participated in? What are the flaws that can caused them to die the fastest?

Vent here, and hopefully I'll be able to turn it into something useful.
Bad souls have born better sons, better souls born worse ones -St Vincent
  





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Fri Dec 13, 2019 10:15 pm
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keystrings says...



Real life getting in the way of coming up with good plans and good characters, not to mention not having the time to literally sit down and write can be super frustrating. On the other hand, a lack of understanding how long it takes to come up with ideas and what your characters are going to do is very frustrating to deal with.

A lack of communication can also be the downfall of many different SBs, even if there's an awesome storyline and the characters all seem really neat to play with. If someone suddenly stops doing something and doesn't let anyone know what's going on, then the whole rest of the party is stuck and can't get anything done further since they're good people and want to write together.
name: key/string/perks
pronouns: she/her/hers and they/them/theirs


novel: the clocktower (camp nano apr 24)
poetry: the beauty of the untold (napo 2024)
  





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Wed May 06, 2020 10:26 pm
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Omni says...



ironically, it's the same thing that killed this haha, just not posting / no communication

Also! If you're still wanting more information on this, I can definitely post more!
This account proudly supports lgbtq* rights.

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Wed May 06, 2020 10:59 pm
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SirenCymbaline says...



I'd love to hear more! No limit on length or amount of rants from the same person.
Bad souls have born better sons, better souls born worse ones -St Vincent
  





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Thu May 07, 2020 6:43 am
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SirenCymbaline says...



So um this is gonna feel mean to say but sometimes, you gotta give up on someone and move the story on without them.

Real life comes first. Always. That should go without saying.

But the key is to communicate that life is kicking you at the moment, and you might not be able to post for a few more weeks. Some people don't communicate. They just vanish. Or they communicate with vague, sparse, spread-out messages that don't really communicate anything, and before you know it it's been four months.

A lot of the time when someone holds a story back like this, nobody wants to be the one to say 'we should move on regardless,' so they don't, and the project just gets left to rot.

It's hard to find a middle ground that's fair, but I think that we'd be better off if people at least talked about it.
Bad souls have born better sons, better souls born worse ones -St Vincent
  





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Sat Jun 13, 2020 1:05 pm
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soundofmind says...



I think the ones I can think of off the top of my head right now are:

1. Lack of communication
2. Lack of planning/plotting
3. Lack of vision (or inspiration?)

The last two can really be lumped together half the time. I think brainstorming with your storybookers is key. Come up with ideas you're all excited about and want to get to - there's more motive to keep writing if you want to get to a certain point in your character's arc, or you're excited about the plot.

All of this though has to happen in conversation, so, back to number one. As much as people need to communicate about not being able to get to posts and what not, it's important to communicate about the story! Your characters! What are you liking! What do you want to see in the story? How can you all develop the world more? Etc, etc.

If you don't talk about where the story is going - and I mean, like, everyone sit down and let's figure it out type talk, then when stories hit a "lull" they'll never get past that point. It's like... collective writer's block. Someone's gotta be the tip of the spear and lead people to push through it, or pull on the help of the other sb-ers to help push through it.

Maybe I'm just a bit planner, but for me? At a certain point, stories run dry because:

1. No one is talking to me about it and hying me up. I need to feed off other people's energy, even if we just making jokes or roasting our characters and stuff
2. I have no idea where it's going

Then again... those aren't exactly the FASTEST ways to kill an SB I guess. Some of those lead to more slow deaths.

But I think if an SB has a weak plot from the start or doesn't have a lot of conflict or worldbuilding or SOMETHING to jump off from, then it'll have trouble taking off for more than a few posts.

It's hard tho, as someone who's started SB's before, finding the balance between giving people enough info so they feel confident about the limits of the world they're in and understand how it should work and overloading them with lore. LOL.

But like ya'll said... I think the main thing is communication. If you join an SB ya gotta be committed to communicating and be down for brainstorming! It's a team effort!!

ANYWAY THERe'S MY RAMBLE AS A CONTRIBUTION TO THIS DISCUSSION
Pants are an illusion. And so is death.

  








It's unsettling to know how little separates each of us from another life altogether.
— Wes Moore, The Other Wes Moore