Oolite Bulletins

Relax. We're enjoying the read. Have confidence in yourself, your characters and your story.

Sometimes we read without commenting. ( Perhaps we feel our first comments don't need repetition, elaboration or editing, eh? )

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"I shouldn't have taken off in this crate without more ammo..." Sergeant Knox - Star Blazers

Apologies, Its hard to know how well things work with just my words recording the action. I get to "see" the whole scene, but you guys just get the poorer more "distant" reflection of my words. I dont know how well it translates.

I literally havent written a story since school, and I left school a long time ago. Even at school when I wrote it was just to fulfil the requirements of the teacher, not the same thing. Confidence will come with time I guess.

Just worry that people who enjoyed one part might find what they liked had gone in the next part as each has been so different... The first one was someones minor annoyances with stuff he has to deal with every day, and a bit of daydreaming, the second one is frenetic action, then the 3rd one is a bit of history and dialogue its all very different. People who liked the action and the initial setting might not like a "used car sale" although I prefer to think of it in terms of an "enthusiasts" used car sale. Some more depth of emotion there than just transport. Its more than a business deal, or at least it is when I see it. I dont know if my mere words can carry that across to a foreign mind. The guy whos selling it Loves his ship, hes killed it hes fed up there despair there, hi thinks a lot of the ship but hes tired of space hes tired of the hassle and wants to settle down somewhere quiet... Its a wrench to let it go its a kick in the teeth he will only get peanuts for it because of his own meddling etc etc. But I dont know if my report of it carried that across or if it just came across like arthur daily?

Im wanting to explore Nathans history his personality his connection with his ship and crew and then come back to the matter of the Q-Bomb. I'm hoping to have that Q-bomb "mean something" when I come back. I really dont know what will happen when I come back or between now and then. I actively try not to make any decisions and let it happen when I sit down to type the story. I think its more entertaining for me that way to "see what happens" To be fair the story has no plot, theres not really a "story" there or a mesage, or a purpose, its more of a journal, a report of what happens in my head.

Enjoying and looking forward to more of the same (or different) and your parts are more substantial than mine for Lazarus (a starter rather than a canope)

I write all the time, I blog, I bare my soul on the forums, it's all writing, that feeling of "will they like it?" never goes away - nor should it.

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Oolite Life is now revealed here

OK 4th part up, and spell checked .

This one managed to be completely derailed from what I had expected courtesy of the ingame gazateer pointing it to an attempt at humour...

Some lines are "temporary" awaiting replacing with proper dialogue when Ive got a copy of frontier running in front of me - as a section nods towards that game.

Unexpectedly over the last few days the story's plot, theme and at least a possible destination have been revealed to me, sadly none of them make an appearance in this weeks effort.

Hm, I've spent too many years writing progress reports, proposals, business cases, pitches, and what have you... so excepting a pitch, I don't care if they like it as long as it's timely and of necessary and sufficient quality.

This is why I post to forums so much... maybe I need a blog.

You see - project management is bad for the soul!

OK I felt Part 4 was too short an introduction I extended it to 4.1 Which I hope builds up more of a picture of the two characters and their relationship.

My wife has informed me that my written humour doesnt live up to my "live" humour ah well at least shes honest about it.

I like, I am intrigued and I am looking forward to the next instalment!

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Oolite Life is now revealed here

Well you didnt have to wait long Not sure how much of you're intrigue this clears up but hopefully it gives you an idea of the direction the story is taking the "form" the story will take.

Hoping theres still plenty of unanswered questions still to answer. Im not sure how many more installments there are to this one. Now theres a count down time Im going to have to be carefull about that...

So, Nathan's quite good then...

"I'm not sure"
"about multiple lines"
"of speech from one person"

Sometimes I think it's alternating conversation and its slows the pace of the story as my brain works it out.

Liking it lots. Looking forward to the next instalment.

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Oolite Life is now revealed here

Sorry Im not sure of the best way to seperate out lines of dialogue, trying to figure out how to show lines of conversation with short pauses between and slightly seperated topics.

Im trying to keep the lines "easy on the eye" trying to get the pace of the sentances right as well" rather than having a paragraph of speach all at once.

Have you got any suggestions on the right way to handle what Im doing here. Im kind of thinking of it along lines from a script, but it doesnt read so well as a story. I think overall Im trying to go for a "movie" type presentation of events, hence handling memories and past events in present tense as thats how it would pan out in a movie.

As for Nathan I dont think he's "heroically" good. Certainly at this stage he has potential, What he just did was get a break, it was a gamble that could have just as easily been his death. Apart from the necesity that he had to survive to get to the beginning of the story. Even in the Earliest part of the story (the last part chronologically) he has close calls.

The "good" player will of course rarely let their shields take such a beating against any single ship

I think the "elite" pilot mis read a situation nearly leading to a "press space commander" it can happen to any of us, even if we have multiple elite badges

I was looking for a reason why the hyper critical Hera chose to stay with Nathan, she had to be given a reason to trust her life to his hands. She values her own skin quite highly

Right apologies Part 6 is a short one, mainly because my day at work is nearly ended, however I think its left things dangling nicely, I might get time tonight or tomorrow to make a 6.1 or it might be Wednesday...

OK part 7 is now up, but it really is dissapointing. I think in finding the theme and storyline Ive managed to leave the roots behind

Somehow now that I know whats happened Im concentrating on telling that, and leaving behind my "reality in space" roots that was supposed to be what it was all about. I think im going to completely rewrite the last 3 parts. To try to put some more realism in the characters and less movie fayre and stereotyping.

What Im not sure about is how to go about doing this I would like to show the difference between the original draft and the reworked idea but the first post is getting long enough as it is...

<edit - OK Im going to continue first drafting here and leave this as is for the draft here - then in a weeks time I start a holiday during which Im going to completely edit, tidy up and straighten out the whole story and turn it into a pdf and link to that at the top of the page. This way both the first draft including this last train wreck and the finished story will be in one place>

Part 7 is there you can get a rough gist of whats going to happen, but I think the whole lot needs bining, Nathan is getting to cocksure, Hera is becoming a footnote and mr big is straight out cliche, with no depth... I think I need to understand these other characters better before I can take things much further.

Originally these very "real" characters were driving the storyline, now the storyline is driving some characters who have become rather 1 dimensional.

<edit 2 realised I hit the post size limit Im going to have to break the story down into parts I think, and have a first draft PDF\pdfs and a finished article PDF. Doing this will tidy up that first post to make it readable and then I can have some explanations on whats happening there.

Ive Identified the point where it all went wrong as being the introduction of elite pirate. at that point Nathan and Hera took a back seat to the storyline, Daddy Hoggy rang the alarm bells and I wasnt hearing them, but I do want to preserve this mess up and perform a public post mortem largelly for my own interest and to pick up some valuable lessons in the process, other writers input would be welcome>

When did space action become space bar noire? Oh. Right. In part 7.

I view part 7 as either a necessary evil used to provide background for some element of the story, or as something that is contrived, cliche and unnecessary. However, it is not my story.

I remain curious to see where the story is going.

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"I shouldn't have taken off in this crate without more ammo..." Sergeant Knox - Star Blazers

Part 7 was an attempt to explain why they were being pursued in the opening events, it wasnt a random pirate attack, they were being hunted for a reason. Im sticking with that idea but not the route taken to get there.

I thought that reason should be a "bad" decision, perhaps a dark influence from Hera's mercantile nature leading Nathan towards a more callous career. I dont think it sat right with the opening scene which is chronologically later where Nathan is not a callous killer, he's fighting in self defence. He isnt celebrating deaths.

Unfortunately Ive take the wrong path here, the easier path, once I knew where things were going, Ive tried to make the story head to that point.

I think I need to think long and hard and come to a far more natural reason both for Hera to stay with Nathan past their initial agreement and for Nathan and Hera to be in their current situation... The easy thing to do would be to rewrite the part where hera made it a temporary arrangement, but that doesnt feel right at all. It feels to me that the early introduction helps define Heras personality her motivations etc etc.

I've written myself into a corner, which I have to get out of. Im sure its essential so I wont just erase the situation. Chapter 7 in its current form will be ditched but contains a seed of some sort of what will happen in that time frame. I think it was an attempt at a necesary evil. But I think in this case the cure is worse than the disease. Of course it shouldnt even have been called part 7 really , as its actually just an extension of part 6, each "real" chapter starts with the current time line progressing, after chapter one each one then goes to a flashback of Nathans life. I should called the part 6.1 but that wouldnt save a direly bad chapter

Overall what I like in this story is the concept of the main storyline taking up just seconds of time, literally . The whole "main story" will be a flash in the pan. With "how they got there" being drip fed in between those few seconds. I like the format of starting with a space battle, and from then on give couple of seconds of real time, followed by a memory coming to mind for Nathan which helps fill in the characters and how they got to this situation.

Looking forward to Part 8!

Now I know what the word count limit for a single posting is - thanks for that - I shall keep it in mind for Lazarus!

You do some odd grammatical things, but the story is excellent

Note though you don't seem to be able to decide on the spelling of the hero's surname!

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Oolite Life is now revealed here