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I'd like to become a professional writer in the next decade.

7 (29.2%)

Less than videogames.

6 (25%)

I am a professional writer.

3 (12.5%)

More than my health.

2 (8.3%)

I'm not sure.

5 (20.8%)

More than videogames.

0 (0%)

Not at all.

1 (4.2%)

Total Members Voted: 24

Voting closed: April 23, 2012, 11:42:36 pm

[Krelos]

@Supermikhail

Thanks for the input, you pointed out a few things I hadn't thought about. I definitely have a tendency to jump straight to action.
Though I must say, I'm not sure what you mean about the Hollywood swordfighting, since it takes no more than 10 seconds for Barden to be defeated the first time. I mean, I know what you're saying, Hollywood likes long duels, but I'm not sure I could have gotten Barden out of the way much faster without pretty much killing him instantly... maybe.
The whole "hell of a headache tomorrow" thing, wasn't meant to be funny, so that was surprising to see you say. Though, giving it more thought, it didn't really make sense for him to say that, given the situation. And for that matter, it really didn't make sense for Barden to have ordered Meyers to go for help at all since the two of them should have felt confident in taking the one enemy and... yeah.
Turns out the whole piece is more flawed than I thought. Ahh practice makes perfect.

I'm not sure if its considered 'proper' to reply to a critique like this. I just like to discuss everything that isn't immediately clear.
You give good advice, thanks!


Now for my amateur critique of your precog short!

I thought it was quite good, and don't really have much to add. I'd agree with mendonca in that more of a look around the environment would have been an improvement, and there were a couple places where I found it not so easy to tell who was talking. Also, there was a place near the end where the phraseology felt strange "The smile wearing which he intended to greet his long-time rival" but I get the feeling that it's just a word omission error.

[Supermikhail]

@Krelos: The only way of replying to critique we won't accept would be "You assholes, I spent two months of my life on this, and it's not good enough for you!"... So, your reply is perfectly nice, and it's good that you yourself see the places where your story could use improvement.

Whereas... Well, thanks for feedback, mendonca and Krelos, although I'm a bit stumped as to how to use it.
The problem with exposition is that the shop is where Mr. Quay spends every day, and as the narrative is his 3rd-personal, then it would be awkward for him to describe his surroundings.
Then, dialogue. I've run myself into a corner with my perfectionism, it seems. I just don't feel that any more dialogue tags can go in there. If someone could point out to me where exactly there is ambiguity to who is speaking, I'd be very grateful.
However, I edited it slightly (just in two points), and that phrase Krelos pointed out, well, originally it was this way - "The smile with which he intended to greet..." but then I thought that, when you're on the phone, the person you're talking to kind of can't see your face, and hastily edited it to something that made sense to me in a half-asleep state. Re-edited now to what makes sense to a person fully awake.

With that said, eagerly awaiting Fishbreath. I feel like I can take on another prompt.

[Fishbreath]

I'm not going to try to come up with another one until the end of the weekend, since I'm off to see the sights in Novgorod.

I do intend to have something written for the current prompt; I might try and hammer something out in the very near future. Slightly longer-term, I think I'm going to expand on the last bit I posted here; being a bit of a naval history buff, my aim with the whole universe was to support a space navy which can be related to my all my favorite eras and tactics, and I think I'd like to show it off some more. I'll probably end up putting them here when I finish them and then running them at Many Words near Christmas, when my Lägraltvärld buffer will be nearly empty and I'll need some time to rebuild it. Hopefully I can pick all your brains to make it better than it would be otherwise.

@Supermikhail: There's nothing wrong with being descriptive in third-person. The metaphor that just hit me is video games: third-person can be like, say, Gears of War, where the perspective is basically first-person with different pronouns, or like Baldur's Gate 2, where the focus is much further back, or somewhere in between. The important thing is that you can move back and forth along the scale if you don't do so too often or too jarringly—if you've focused on one character for the whole of a novel, and then suddenly change at the very end, people might get angry (or might regard it as a stunning use of literary device, but you can never predict critics), but if you're momentarily pulling the camera back, as it were, to describe a setting, I don't think you'll hear many complaints. It's even easier at the beginning of a piece, since there aren't really any reader expectations.

[bjlong]

Hey, look a prompt post!

Spoiler: Shorter than it looks (click to show/hide)

The head juror stood up in the drab courtroom. It was a little comforting, this massive, important trial being treated as routine, given the same walls, the same colors that looked two shades too gray. He read from the paper, "We, the jury, find the defendant, Tim Corbis, guilty."

The defendant, Tim Corbis, only smiled his cool, smug smile. All according to plan.

"Miss Jacobs?" asked the prosecutor. She had forgotten his name already, but it wasn't like it mattered. He was the lawyer every lawyer pretended they were--successful, good looking, with a full head of hair and a custom suit. His smile was the kind to send butterflies to the stomachs of every woman--which was probably the most awkward sexual metaphor ever, now that she thought about it.

All she could think about, though, was the voice of Tim. "Fat cats and their servants, all of them. Don't bother with them, they're nothing to worry about." "Yes?"

"Are you ready to go testify?"

"Sure," said Miss Johnson, tiredly getting to her feet.

---

"Now, Miss Johnson. He surely wouldn't have come up with that from nothing. Someone had to believe him, too. So, Miss Johnson, I ask you. Do you beleive that he was right?" asked the defense attorney.

Miss Johnson, robbed of her first name, said, "Yes."

The defense attorney said, "Then, I submit to the court that this witness is delusional, and her testimony should be stricken from the record."

"Objection," said the prosecutor, giving Miss Johnson a look that said she had just lost the case for him.

Tim was sitting at the defense table, rocking back in his chair. He had worn the one suit he had ever owned, a faded black suit that had too-thin lapels and wide cuffs. He had folded his handcuffed hands behind his head, and was coolly surveying the room. There was an air of such casual flippancy to him, that he seemed the only normal part of the room. In a room full of citizens, of prosecutors, of working stiffs, a mob boss was the only normal one. He winked at a female juror who was clearly disgusted by him. She sneered and looked away, gossiping with her friend. Tim shrugged a good-natured shrug as the defendant tiredly explained that hurt their chances. Tim smiled and flippantly said, "Hey, man, like I give a shit. Your courts are goin' to screw me anyway," loud enough for Miss Johnson to hear as she entered the room.

The jury saw a tiny woman on the stand, being sworn in by a big man. She wore greys, which fit in perfectly with the desaturated wood grain of the courtroom. They saw her shrink behind her hands as Tim waved hello, a wide grin on his face. "Hey, hey Emily! Hey! Hi!"

"...hi," she muttered back, concern on her face. She seemed so small compared to the rest of the proceedings.

"Miss Johnson," said the prosecutor, "What is your relation to the defendant?"

"I work for him."

"And is your position one of importance?"

"Yes. I often help in the planning stages."

"The planning stages of what?"

"Stings. Hits. Deals. Anything that requires planning."

"And you can attest to the defendant's personal involvement?"

"Yes," said Miss Johnson. "Tim... the defendant was personally involved."

Question after question after question, laying down guilt brick by brick. Then the defendant stood up. "Defendants? Who cares? You get caught, you're gone, unless you've got a couple hundred thousand laying somewhere."

"Miss Johnson. What is your job, exactly."

"I'm a planning specialist. I plan."

Tim, feet up on the table in front of him, said, "She's my seeing-girl, my... whachacallit... seer."

The judge piped in, "Defense, control your client."

"Yessir. He'll behave." Tim gave a wide smile, in response. "So, Miss Johnson. My client says you were his seer. Is that true?"

"He beleives that, yes."

"Now, Miss Johnson. He surely wouldn't have come up with that from nothing. Someone had to believe him, too. So, Miss Johnson, I ask you. Do you beleive that he was right?" asked the defense attorney.

Miss Johnson, robbed of her first name, said, "No."

Tim sat up.

"I only humored him. He was always a violent man--I didn't want to let him know that I was just making really good predictions. He might have killed me."

Tim looked a bit concerned. "Bullshit." His voice was even, but had the ring of worry.

"It's true," said Emily. "I'm so sorry, Tim."

---

She had seen this before--this devastation. When the gangs wanted Tim out, he would sic his dogs on them, and they would wreak havoc. She had seen chaos like this before--a practiced artistry. Tim hadn't ordered it-they would have found her traveller's checks otherwise--but it was his dogs, doing what they were trained.

The first thing to do was to check the house for a hitman. She did that by walking, unarmed, through the house. Only afterwards did it hit her that that might have been a bad idea.

What if Tim wanted to send her a warning? A nicety, telling her to get out of the country. She had testified against him, and made him upset. For a moment, she considered running. But she decided, at the end, not to be afraid. Tomorrow she would replace the lock. And the door. And maybe the couch.

"I lied," said Emily.

"Oh," said the prosecutor. "About what?"

"I do see the future."

The prosecutor said nothing, but his eyes gave her the message. "You need help."

"You don't have to believe me," said Emily. "I just want you to understand."

"Okay." He started playing with one of the many toys on his plush desk like he would hide behind a shield.

She gripped her purse. "When I was a kid, a bunch of kids would try to hit this one kid until he bled. You know the story--poor kid gets beat, noone does anything. I saw where it was going to happen once, and so I waited in that spot with a stick."

"What happened?" asked the prosecutor, trying to move this along.

"I got the piss beat out of me," said Miss Johnson. "But you have to do what's right, no matter the cost."

"Very noble of you," said the prosecutor, shooing her away.

---

he head juror stood up in the drab courtroom. It was a little comforting, this massive, important trial being treated as routine, given the same walls, the same colors that looked two shades too gray. He read from the paper, "We, the jury, find the defendant, Tim Corbis, guilty."

The defendant, Tim Corbis, only smiled his cool, smug smile. All according to plan.

[Supermikhail]

Hm. That's a bit confusing. Also the triple dashes don't fit - the tempo is a really straight narrative.

Oh, I see where you were going! But you didn't get there. It's all confusing, and the fact that you switch italics on and off seemingly at random doesn't help. If you only did precognitions (and all precognitions) in italics, that would be great help. And the dashes could separate precognition from reality.

And, now that I comprehend, it doesn't seem so surreal. Sad.

You know what, on the other hand, if you got rid of dashes and italics, it could probably stay surreal, also edit some confusion, and it'll be gold. Right now it's a nice effort.

Confusion: What was Tim's grand plan if Mrs Johnson ditched him? What did Tim do with his dogs and what did his gangs have to do with it?

[bjlong]

I might get rid of the dashes, but I'd rather keep the italics, otherwise the story might be impenetrable. Maybe I could put little flashes of precognition in the middle of the dialogue, so that you really get the feeling of being lost in time, like Emily is, or maybe the current surreality works for the time being.

As for the confusion, I'm not 100% sure what Tim's grand plan was, but it involves him getting out. That's all I really cared to plan out. Dogs is an admittedly confusing figure of speech for toughs or brutes or whatever. I should change that. The flashforward you're referring to is supposed to show retaliation against Emily by the gangs.

I might actually expand this into a full short, if I can figure a few things out about Tim's plans, his motivations, and maybe a few more characters. As it is, it's a bit sparse on characters.

[Supermikhail]

Today in the news we've got an author comeback.

Spoiler: "Chains Of Loss", a sci-fi/fantasy serial novel by Talanic (click to show/hide)

The prophet Sheralys has had a finger in every pot for the last five hundred years. However, things are finally coming to a boil, It looks bad but she’s finally in a position to summon the right Hero to straighten things out.

Enter Derek Kazenushi, cyborg . Derek may not recall getting a ship or the possibly tragic fate of his home planet but, somehow, he’s managed to now have a care in the world, until he crash-landed on the wrong one. Now he's stuck on a warped world of fantasy creatures, magic, and ruins.

He doesn't have much time to sit around, though, Thanks to Sheralys, he’s been dropped in an area owned by hostile aliens. Fortunately, she also sent him a human companion – a young woman named Mycah. He's as strange to her as she is to him, but the two forge a careful friendship as they dodge orcs, fight vampires, and deal with the disastrous consequences of Derek's naivety.

Because Derek's never had to work for anything in his life. He doesn't understand cruelty, neglect or starvation. He has to learn fast, and decide carefully: which of his ideals can be kept, and which will get him killed?

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Last time, the author wanted to publish his novel, but now is approaching it differently. That is, posting his novel on the Internet not to get it published, but to get noticed by a publisher. It seems to be a very good approach unless you consider your novel the ultimate pinnacle of your procrastinating career.

Of course, a novel is required first, and I wonder if there is a practice of sharing and criticising novel outlines. Because, you know, it's much handier to correct logic blind spots when outlining. Well, when many writers work on a series they do share ideas and critique outlines, but with an aspiring writer it's different. The writer in question is me. So, what do you think about criticising an outline?

[Fishbreath]

Precognitive protagonist/character voicing exercise:

Spoiler: On Second Thought (click to show/hide)

There's going to be a fight here tonight.

I can tell you this because I'm a diviner, and to prove it to you I will proceed to say everything you're about to say, right when you say it.

Do you really expect me—

Alright, that was just a lucky—

Surely you can't do it three—

Stop that!

Satisfied? Good.

As I was saying, there's going to be a fight here tonight. He's going to start it—no, the one with the horned helmet. It'll be over a girl, and it's going to get worse. Turns out that the one with the helmet is in a gang, but nobody around here likes them. Weapons will be drawn, limbs will severed. A few people are going to die.

I'm telling you this—yes, I'm going to answer your questions before you ask them, and if you keep on interrupting we'll never finish. As I was saying—excuse me for a moment.

---

And then he moved to the next chair round the table, and not a heartbeat later did the one with the helmet toss his mug at this bloke what was making eyes at his girl. He missed, and right where the diviner had sat went his mug! I tell you no lie—spirits take me if I do!

---

As I was saying. I'm telling you this because it needs to be heard. I saw the whole fight, from beginning to end, in perfect clarity. Yes, of course that's strange, or else it wouldn't be important! The answer isn't fun, and tell me what the first word that comes to your mind when I say "bar fight" is. Go on, let's hear it from your own mouth. Chaotic it is! A diviner can't normally look too far into a chaotic future. They're events upon events upon events, and if we're wrong once the whole picture falls apart later on.

No, the drinks don't figure into it. Here. This coin. If I toss it, I can tell you with every certainty which way it will land. A coin toss isn't chaotic in the least: I flick my thumb, the coin tumbles, uninfluenced by the outside world, and lands heads.

A fight is different—speaking of, you'd be well-served to count to three and duck—because what happens next depends on what happened before. Olaf the Oaf throws a punch at Magnus the Mad, there, and then what? He hits, and Magnus reels, and can't hit back before Olaf hits him again. What if I saw Olaf miss? Everything after that one mistake is wrong. It happens, diviners making mistakes, and more than you'd think from the stories you hear about us.

But that's a story for another night. This morning I saw everything with perfect clarity—every wagon stuck on the road, every drunk facedown in a snowdrift, every snowflake precisely in its place. I saw this fight start, I saw myself stay out of it, and I saw it kill me anyway.

In my defense, I did say it was important. When a diviner sees everything as clearly as I have, there's a reason: fate. The spirits want me to die here tonight. There is a single way to beat fate: you stare it in the face and say to it that you will not yield.

---

He got up and charged into the fight, and it was a sight like none I've seen befre. I don't know how to say it. It was like—hm. I guess he did know exactly what they were going to do before they did. They didn't lay a hand on him the whole fight, even after they all turned on him 'cos he was beating them all so bad. They weren't enough to stop him, and he dusted off his hands when everyone else was on the floor in pain. That's when there was this *twang*—and spirits take me if he didn't find a crossbow bolt sticking out of his chest!

---

The diviner started, his reverie brought to an abrupt end, and shuddered. He looked out his window at the cloudy sky and the dingy snow, made all the more gray by the predawn light. He shuddered, and could not say it was because of the cold; perhaps, he thought to himself, I'll stay at home today.

In the spirit of prompts, I wrote this over the course of about 30 minutes. There are probably some glaring errors.

[Supermikhail]

@Fishbreath: Yup, once again, I'd say unnecessarily confusing. Take for example it starting in second person, but in the end turning out to be a familiar third-personal. But then it was finished in 30 minutes, has a plot, a beginning, a climax and and ending; and even a twist. And no typos or other errors. Commendable, sir, truly commendable.

Interestingly enough, there's an event in my life going on right about now that's connected to ESP. I can't recall what started it, but there's a girl that's on the same course as I am. She claims to have had a paranormal experience during a previous term. A poltergeist would come in the night, walking noises and all, and press on her chest. I sort of lightly made fun of her, but I'm not really a skeptic or non-skeptic, I just read a scientific book on the research into paranormal, sponsored by the US government, and the author sort of convinced me that there's something out there.

Ah, I remember, the girl had an unpleasant lab assignment, and the apparatus which she was supposed to use, broke right before she was going to start. The technicians couldn't do anything. Anyway, I sent her a link to test her ESP, hopefully, she's received it and tomorrow or the day after tomorrow I'll know if I should wear a lead cap (you know, my great novel ideas and all).

Oh, and I had a heart shape appear on the surface of ammonia nitrate I synthesized that day. I can only think someone brought a poltergeist to the lab.

[Fishbreath]

New prompt time! There are three reasons for this:
1) Bump us back above those [epithet]s at the Engravers Guild
2) Promote irregularity and chaos in your day to day lives as they pertain to this thread, thereby forcing you to check back at random-ish times to see if anything new is going on
3) Give myself an excuse to wax loquacious about the direction this thread might think about taking in the near future

Prompt (inspired somewhat by bjlong's response to the last one):
Write about one event from the points of view of multiple characters. Bonus points for larger numbers of points of view.

Waxing loquacious:
I think I said something about this earlier on in the thread, but it strikes me as though it'll be very difficult to keep up the momentum we started with if we don't do something beyond prompts (which are fun, but time-consuming, and, for all I said up above the prompt, difficult to get into unless there's a regular schedule). Since we can't thrive following the post-your-current-sketches model (unless a lot more of us show up), I propose we shift gears. Up until now we've mostly spend our effort talking about specific pieces of each others' work; let's instead go meta and talk about writing as a craft.

So, one topic in particular has been weighing on my mind of late, and that one's worldbuilding. How much of it do you do before you start writing stories? Is there such a thing as too much? Is there such a thing as too little?

I guess I'll answer those myself first. Honestly, I'm probably more of a worldbuilder than a writer: I very much enjoy the challenge of putting together a bunch of little ideas into an internally consistent world. I tend to go about turning them into stories in two different ways, for which I have examples: Lägraltvärld, the setting of Many Words, is probably the world I've turned from idea into setting most efficiently. It started as a list of the mages' guilds I came up with as an exercise to see how far I could plausibly subdivide things while still remaining identifiably cliched, and grew from that after I thought to myself, "I wonder if this would be better with faux-Viking names." From there it turned into a setting for my homebrew RPG rules system[1], and after that campaign I thought to myself, "I like this world, and I think I can make it more distinct than it is now." At that point I started writing the stuff going up now at Many Words, and that's about that.

Then there's Nexus, from which the war-in-space short came. That's been something less of a success. I started thinking about that world six or seven years ago, and the only element that's still recognizable is names of planets (which are beginning to look increasingly out of place, but I don't like to change the names of things). It settled to something near its current form two or three years ago, and despite being the deepest of the worlds I've built so far[2] I haven't really produced any great length of story from it. I can't say exactly why, although I think it may have to do with the fact that I want to get all the niggling little details about travel times and detection ranges and the like right before I make plot points out of them, and that takes time.

There's also Wann Tsir, which is (at the moment) a venue for a constructed language and little else. Eventually I want to post about that, but I need to work out the phonology first.

Anyway, I'd say there's certainly such a thing as too little worldbuilding, particularly if you're trying to write something of reasonable length. It might just be me, though, since I tend to let my stories grow organically—Many Words is only planned in the very broadest of strokes more than a chapter or two ahead—and having a lattice for them to grow on makes it much, much easier. Despite the fact that I'm an unrepentant over-worldbuilder, I think there's such a thing as too much, too; Nexus is one of those times when I would have been better served by simply writing stories and letting the details follow from that, and I have the feeling Wann Tsir will end up that way too. C'est la vie.

So there's me babbling for a little while. What do all of you think?

---

[1] Which turned out to be barely playable due to all the dice involved, and only failed to be unplayable because I was able to make things up on the fly.
[2] There's a list of warships by name, hull number, and commissioning date, detailed technical statistics for one class of warship with two others on the way, and detailed histories for one and a half wars rattling around on my hard drive. I'm kind of hung up at the moment on a question of mathematics and physics; I'm trying to figure out at what range a starship is detectable by infrared detectors, and it's bothersomely difficult for me with my lack of physics background. >.>

[Supermikhail]

News by headlines, for the lack of time.

At some point in the future I'll have to write an action scene - like fight scene, with swords and guns. And I don't know how and if I'm going to accomplish that with any grace.

I firmly believe that not enough worldbuilding may leave you quite heavily (even disastrously stumped) somewhere along the road, because of physical impossibility of some event.

Also, visit this thread (especially a couple of latter pages) for a sample of my (not only) worldbuilding efforts.

The girl about whom I wrote in my previous post turned out to be not an ESP to any measurable extent. Disappointing and relieving.

Many Words definitely could use some tension, nothing's happened for four issues already. Although, speaking of world building, I must commend Fishbreath on naming of institutions and terms - if nothing else, they definitely give the world a serious, living feel.

On that note, I feel that I'm finally on the verge of obtaining the holy grail of writing - I looked carefully at the best works I could find around me and found a certain relationship - the first page always contains dialogue. What's more, I'm pretty certain that, if measured, the ratio and distance among the narrative and the dialogue would be in some approximate numerical relationship. So, what I'm saying is that a good work of fiction uses changing pace.

Finally, back to worldbuilding. I haven't really been able to keep on developing worlds, they usually just have a few cool ideas, and I'd say that the story has always been more important for me, but probably I'm just unorganized.

Anyway, nice prompt, Fishbreath, and thanks for bumping.

[Supermikhail]

Well, another try.

I decided that best source of inspiration is personal example. So, look guys, what an awesome poem I've made!

"There once was a man who died.
He didn't leave children behind.
Nevertheless other people
Believed he was their sire.

They wore their belief like a cross.
They wore crosses to show their beliefs.
They killed in the name of their faith.
They suffered and said they were blessed.

As long as they had their cross
They'd not have the fear of death.
They knew not if they had a way
But called their ignorance bliss.

I am an atheist. - Why?
I'm not going to tell you because
I don't want to foul your mood."

I have also come up with an idea for a reply to the prompt, so if I manage to cramp it into the today's reply schedule, I'll post that, too.

[bjlong]

Fishbreath:

I like it!  The main precog conflict, in my mind, is one between destiny and free will. You successfully treaded the line--the protagonist was slapped down for trying to bash his way through destiny, and then decided instead to try avoiding the fight. It's equally possible that he succeeded or didn't, and that's what makes the plot beautiful.

However, I have to agree with Supermikhail--you don't gain anything by excising a clear narrative voice. The only other thing is the question of why you have the diviner prove his status--are diviners not well known? Are they not trusted? The audience will just accept the fact of him being a diviner without the intermediate steps when he dodges the drink.

In any case, this is a very good flash. I'd have to do a close reading to find more stuff to polish.

As for your questions about worldbuilding, I usually start writing as soon as I have a general idea of the setting--the tech level, the feel, the main features. If there's a feature that requires rules (i.e, a magic system or a computer program), then I'll have to write the rules before I write too much about that feature. But generally, I'm more concerned with pen hitting paper early and often, and I'll edit the details later, mostly to make the details fit the plot, which is probably a bad habit. But so far, I've been able to make things consistent, if only because I know a lot about the types of settings I like to write about. I do try to think about world-building questions, though, especially when I've got spare time away from <WRITING IMPLEMENT>.

Also, how did my prompt piece sorta-inspire you for the current prompt? I must know.

Supermikhail:

So, for action scenes, I find that the best ones have a clear sense of what's going on at the time, who's fighting, and what the stakes are. If the reader is confused about any of those, it's generally not an effective fight. If you've got a good sense of what is happening spatially, that'll help a lot.

As for your poem, I have to preface this with some personal business--I'm a Christian, so I was kinda offended by the poem. That's not bad unless you decide that you want a poem that doesn't offend people. I'll try to keep the writing and the personal stuff separate.

First, you're writing in something much like free verse. However, you end up using iambic trimeter in a few lines, pretty regularly, which gives this incredibly jarring contrast--like a nursery rhyme thrown into people talking about the Middle East. This might be useful if you backed up the tension with some kind of ironic call to a nursery rhyme, but otherwise it keeps you from developing a good rhythm.

Second, you verge on the banal several times, and completely cross over with the lines "They wore their belief like a cross/They wore crosses to show their beliefs." You say things with merit, sure, but you take a dictitative mode of saying these things, instead of putting them in verse form, and then on top of that, the things you say come across as if they don't have nuance. For poems, you have to tickle people's brains immediately--your first line has to start building up to a conclusion, start throwing interesting ideas and pieces of language down.

Finally, I should talk a bit about the structure of your poem. Your first stanza is pretty good, though the final line is a bit jarring, which I'm not too sure is effective. It sets up the action for later in the poem, so it's good. The second and third stanzas are where you need to start using the drama to throw around interesting tidbits, but you start losing the sense of drama, I think. Your final stanza, where we get the cathartic end, performs its job admirably. I suppose I can't tell if this is not enough drama for your poem, but I definitely feel like you could have a steeper arc, make some more incisive and insightful claims.

[Fishbreath]

@bijong:

1. I don't really have a reason (or an excuse, to be a little more honest) for the way it was written, beyond that it started that way. By the time I got to the first interlude, I realized I probably should've done it differently, but I had a little bit of investment already, and I think that throwing out work is against the spirit of a writing prompt.

2. Re: proving it. It doesn't come across here quite as well as I'd like it to, but the gimmick of diviners is that, by and large, they're huge jerks (which I think is a perfectly reasonable response to being able to see the future). For that reason people tend to regard people claiming to be diviners suspiciously, and a simple demonstration is an effective and appropriately obnoxious method of proof.

That's not the whole story, though, since some of the diviners with stronger moral centers end up becoming as much paragons of upstanding citizenship as their colleagues are paragons of mischief and vice, but that's a piece for another prompt, I think. >.>

3. Re: worldbuilding. Details to fit the plot isn't a particularly bad habit, I wouldn't say, as long as you don't contradict yourself about important things. That may be the largely-unplanned serial writing talking, though; I would say it's probably not quite as healthy if you're thinking things through long-term.

Certainly, though, it's better than my habit of only coming up with rules when necessary. Pretty much everything I go into detail about in Many Words was previously only a collection of ideas bouncing around in my head; that includes magic, or at least every part of it I didn't need to worry about when writing the RPG rules. That turns out to be more than I'd thought, since given my choice of characters the workings of magic are as important as its results. Oops again.

4. Re: inspiration. The dueling characters were what did it; I kind of wondered what it would be like if we were to dive into the minds of the two main players, and from there I wondered what we'd produce if I asked us to do something similar.

[Krelos]

I do a ton of worldbuilding.
I'm planning multiple novels all based in the same world and in a few different (possibly 4) time periods.
I currently have more than 10000 years of history with detail increasing as it grows more recent, 10-20 nations (depending how you define 'nation') with varying governments and religious organizations, magic system with 4 different kinds of users, almost 20 made up plants and animals with details and description, 6+ different sentient races, 3 immortal villains, 12 semi-deities, 5 continents with half finished maps (only the map of the story area is near-done) and more than 100 named places and people.
I've been working on it for about 6 months in solid worldbuilding mode, though I did finish a 12000 word short story last month as well. I'm almost to the place where I'm going to start on 'solid' outlining (as solid as an outline can be..) and beginning the real writing of books.
Before I do that I'm planning another short story which will probably turn out about as long as the last one, I hope, at least.
I'm sure I'm not done adding more to the world, ideas keep coming so I'll keep adding, so long as they are compatible with what I have already. Worldbuilding for me is very freeing, the more I know about the world the easier it is to just write the story and not worry about what should be happening, cause I've already thought about that and know what should be happening. Worldbuilding makes it easier (for me) to make the world seem real. It also helps me to keep from contradicting myself or breaking the rules of the world I'm writing in.

The link to the fantasy writing rants on the first page of this thread has been very helpful. Most of what she says I knew already, but I've improved several things based on what she has to say.

I think I may do a story for the latest prompt, though I think for the setting I'm picturing, four is the most viewpoints I can drum up.