[@shylarah] [quote=shylarah] *giggles* I suspect some people might call your stuff detail-porn, then. *amused* The fact that you can't think of anyone that meets the level of detail you want is a little concerning, but if you're writing for you and no one else, that's hardly an issue. [/quote] I could tack the label 'simplicity-porn' onto anything that doesn't meet my standards of detail - if I wanted to - in the same way they'll call anything too detailed for [i]them[/i] 'detail-porn'. Those people are immature are far as I'm concerned. I can't think of anyone that meets the level of detail I want because I'm insanely difficult to please as a reader, and for reasons far beyond just my preferences for detail (just for the record). I am writing for myself, and for the people who enjoy what I'm creating -- there's plenty of these people since I've started presenting some of my ideas to the world. [quote=shylarah] I don't see too much contradiction in the two ideas of heavy-handed, but both are decidedly negative, and you used it as if it was positive when handling details, which threw me. If the details are truly heavy-handed, then I believe some editing would be in order, at least if you're writing a story. Then again, it's always personal preference, and mine tends to lie in flow. [/quote] There's a noteworthy contradiction -- whether or not something is insensitive is a matter of opinion. What if I told you I find it offensive when fellow writers don't take the time to be detailed with me so I can give an appropriate response? I seldom actually give them a hard time about it, but it nevertheless does offend me. This is actually the reality of who I am, and it creates a contradiction where the idea of being 'insensitive' and the idea of 'heavy-handed' (based off the second meaning) become not only incompatible, but direct opposites. There's only no contradiction there for people who don't want the details, which - frankly - just means that the definitions of the word were written by someone who was being [i]biased[/i], or didn't think over the detail I just mentioned. Next I suppose these people will write the word 'asshole' into the dictionary for whatever minority group they dislike. I have no respect for editors, in a similar manner to having no respect for critics (who ultimately just get payed to push their bias on people) -- no one has the right to push subjective opinions on other people as if they're facts, and believing otherwise is nothing short of having delusions of grandeur. I could be literary critic if I wanted to, and I could proceed to bash 99% of fiction for lacking what I personally view as [i]vital[/i] details (alongside other things I could criticise) for a story to be enjoyable, but that's all personal preference - as you just said - so I'm not going to do that, and subsequently I have zero respect for those who try to criticize my details for the same reason. I might have very strong beliefs and preferences, but I'm no hypocrite and my bias never dictates my statements. This is less a statement to compare us, and more a statement to emphasize why you bringing up the word 'editor' made me sigh. There's not a whole lot of difference between an editor and censor. [quote=shylarah] Unanswered questions are actually great -- Neil Gaiman, one of my favorite authors, does this well, if I remember right. Leaving things open for the reader to fill in, or making them thing, not telling them outright what is right or wrong, it's great. Then again, I'm surprised, with your focus on detail, that you would be accepting of such an incomplete picture, given how much emphasis you seem to place on each tiny thing. [/quote][quote=Shoryu Magami] Honestly, if you don't like unanswered questions you should probably avoid my work (on or off the site) entirely, because I build up a lot of stuff I don't plan to reveal immediately -- that's what foreshadowing is meant to be. Unlike many authors who lack details though, I'll eventually explain [i]everything[/i]. [/quote] I believe this is a sufficient answer for why it's not a contradiction for someone as detailed as myself to leave an incomplete picture -- it's only incomplete if it [i]never[/i] gets revealed. A lot of authors fail to include good amounts of detail even by the time their franchise is 100% completed. As for those who only read part of the series then stop, it's not [i]my[/i] fault if they get an incomplete picture because they stopped building the series of jigsaw puzzles at some point before finishing them and connecting them all. [quote=shylarah] Come to think of it, if there is a vest with four buttons, and each button is different, would you say they are different, or would you describe in detail each button, if there is no plot relevance to any of them? [/quote] Since you've pretty much opened this door for me on your own volition, I'll take the opportunity to give a (minor) example of what I mean by having a very good attention to the details. I'll leave it in a hider. [hider=Detailed Answer][list] [*] [b]Artwork:[/b] Regardless of the situation or relevance, if the buttons are meant to be different then they I'll be drawing them different. Failure to do so on someone else's part will [i]immediately[/i] make me call bullshit if the character suddenly turns around and claims they're different -- I would've noticed that detail in real life and I expect it to be visible to me or else the writer/role-playing partner has ruined the immersion for me. If the writer can't take responsibility for having four different buttons and mention/draw it as such, don't make it a part of the character at all -- half-arsing something like this is never justifiable in my eyes, since it's pure laziness. [*] [b]Something about one of the buttons could catch the character's notice or affect them (solo writing):[/b] As a writer, I'll describe the buttons if there's an observing character who could or would react to one of them for some reason, which is more common in stories - such as my own - where there are many intelligent characters with a good attention to detail and therefore would notice the buttons are different. Character interaction is as important as the plot, as well as how each character affects the internal dialogue of the others. Writing flows well if the item in question is mentioned at the first possible time it is noticed or before that, but not after it. Sometimes I might mention a character notices something weird and then later reveal what was bothering them -- that's about the only exception I can immediately think of to this. [*] [b]Something about one of the buttons could catch the character's notice or affect them (role-playing):[/b] This is actually impossible to confirm unless the fellow role-players were thorough enough with their character sheets to make it these things completely clear, or it's discussed in the OOC (which will never happen unless the person brings up what the buttons look like) so I'd usually write the details because it's always better to write too much instead of too little. If people are complaining about having to read long posts then - frankly - play-by-post isn't for them or at the very least they shouldn't be writing in 'advanced'. I'd write it to be respectful to the fact that it's a detail that the other writer might want to know for the sake of their character's reaction, and failing to bring it up at the first opportunity someone could notice it is bad writing in my eyes. [*] [b]No observer present would notice or care about the different buttons (solo writing):[/b] I'll just mention they're different (might not even bring it up if a character wouldn't notice, depending on whether the audience needs to know which is unlikely if it's not plot-relevant), but the first time the outfit gets mentioned I might specify what they look like to give a clearer image in people's heads of what the character looks like -- something I theoretically won't need to do if artwork is included. One of the reasons I draw my characters is I hate them being misinterpreted - no matter how small the way it happens - as I said before. Not writing details like this is more excusable if they're drawn in artwork. That being said, it takes about ten seconds to describe four buttons, so why not do it besides out of laziness? [*] [b]No observer present would notice or care about the different buttons (role-playing):[/b] Read my response to 'Something about one of the buttons could catch the character's notice or affect them (role-playing)' for my response here.[/list][/hider] It's entirely dependant on the situation, with relevance to the storyline itself not even being factored into the equation listed above. Assuming there's a right way to do it in every non-plotline situation is missing details in terms of the basics of realistic character interaction (unless you were including this when you said 'storyline relevance', in which case I don't think [i]anything[/i] is ever 100% irrelevant). What many people fail to realize is that good stories don't exist without good characters -- this is just one of the reasons why I'm so thorough about fleshing out and detailing my characters. If the characters feel human, the entire story will be enriched by it even just in their basic interaction when it has nothing to do with the plotline. I've seen plots that were uninteresting but the stories somewhat still managed to win me over due to the depth of the characters. Choose not to flesh out the cast - whether they're major or minor members - and your characters probably won't feel like anything more than devices used to move a story forward -- which is exactly how I view a lot of fictional characters; as tools and not characters. One of the reasons I've been complimented as a GM in the past is because even 'Shopkeeper A' feels like a real human. The main protagonist of my story disliking tight clothing/accessories is unlikely to have plot relevance, but could become the topic of a sentence of dialogue in character interaction or become relevant in their internal dialogue if they need to wear a suit at some point -- details like this make a character more believable and less a mere object to move a plot forward, and this character couldn't have been portrayed realistically in those situations by a role-player who didn't know those facts about the character like I do. This is one of the reasons I often - but not always as one thread on this site has shown - don't like role-playing characters I didn't create -- no one but me can truly role-play my project's characters, because they're [i]that[/i] human and fleshed out. I don't care who the person is, no one besides [@Ailyn Evensen] (who is working on [i]some[/i] of these characters with me now and could therefore write those characters) could ever write my characters in a way that would truly satisfy me. My examples listed above should also emphasize a basic reason why I think that whether you're describing too much or not enough about your character actually isn't [i]your[/i] decision, but is in fact the decision of [i]your role-playing partner(s)[/i], and therefore listing as many details as possible is simply common courtesy in my eyes, especially on a role-playing forum that doesn't have an OOC (or with people who don't use it). Even then, it's missing details in my eyes to not bring up matters like these in the OOC so people can react to them more realistically. [quote=shylarah] I think the biggest issue with detail-heavy things is that it often falls under the umbrella of marysues and purple prose, things which are almost always big nos -- but then, I'm talking more in a forum sense, and less a published one. *shrug* [/quote] I'm not even going to try and be tactful about this -- 'Mary Sue' is a badly defined label that's gotten so out of hand in the last decades it actually makes me facepalm each time someone mentions it. First off, being detailed and writing 'Mary Sues' have nothing to do with each other at all, but considering in this era the term 'Mary Sue' or just 'Sue' is used as a stock insult for anything someone [i]personally[/i] doesn't like, I can't even take a discussion about it seriously in the first place. In fact, 'Mary Sues' (the [i]original[/i] definition of them) are usually built around an absence of details and not from details, especially since they're born from escapism. As a concept, they're entirely subjective, so I have [i]no[/i] respect whatsoever for people who use them as a way to bash other people's characters. Remember all those elitist asshats on that first role-playing forum I mentioned I was part of? Bashing any character they didn't like - over personal hang-ups, by the way - as 'Mary Sues' was literally the [i]number one reason I admonished them and basically got the site killed[/i]. You've hit on a significant pet peeve by using that term, and no - just for the record - I've never actually had anyone call [i]my[/i] characters 'Mary Sues' (I'm amazed they were intelligent enough not to do it, since I genuinely believe most people I meet in my life are idiots), but rather because I have no respect for the whole stereotype in the first place. I can't tell you the number of people who had their characters bashed - under the two word premise of being 'Mary Sues' - that I thought had created well-thought-out and sympathetic characters, and some of these people are the ones who left the site and joined my community. Also, as I've frequently told people in the past - and a friend just reminded me that I was missing in my post at the time - there are plenty of people who would be considered 'Mary Sues' in [i]real life[/i]. So using this term to insult characters is actually the same as bashing real people. Good storytelling is realistic storytelling -- so calling these types of people bad characters in a story is ridiculous in my eyes. Like things such as 'clichés', they aren't bad when they're done right and failing to use them where they're realistically appropriate is bad writing. [quote=shylarah] Who knows, maybe you'll make a new type of story. [/quote] You wouldn't be the first person to suggest I'll end up doing that, by any means. To be perfectly blunt with you, most people who hear about my project think I'm doing something that more or less doesn't exist. I don't believe in true 100% originality -- originality is taking something that already exists and doing something unique with it, and I do this in spades. It's one of several reasons why I've developed something of 'niche' following already despite the fact that no content is even out yet. Whether people like it or hate it, my inspiration is leading me to something new. [quote=shylarah] On the topic of what to call things, I tend to dislike hard divisions and insisting on labels. Things are what they are. Do what feels right, and if you must tag it, do that later. [/quote] I have no interest in labels or tags, as my attitude towards you using the label 'Mary Sue' should've just shown. The only reason I try to describe my work is because there's a lot of people who're genuinely interested in seeing it happen and think I've got something special here. It's annoying when I can't even give a basic idea of what its format is like. Beyond that, I've got no reason to tag it and frankly I don't think about mediums of fiction when I decide how my work would be classified, although I believe the term 'literary fiction' is more appropriate than 'genre fiction' due to its emphasis on realism and philosophy - alongside it having very strong personal meaning to me - rather than being written for escapism. [quote=shylarah] And you're right, it seems we're never going to agree. I can see where people might get bothered, but eh. Doesn't hurt me any, and if it makes you happy, that's the important part.[/quote] If people get bothered, that's their problem and not mine -- they can put down the book and go elsewhere. On the other hand, if they start [i]criticising[/i] something that's all a matter of [i]personal preference[/i]? Get ready to see me come down on them like a [i]tonne of bricks[/i], pointing out how superficial and closed-minded they are. I've never critiqued a work without being requested -- I'll think it but I don't care enough to say it. My work makes me very happy, and - as I've stated earlier - it makes those who are part of my inner circle very happy too -- those are the [i]only[/i] people whose opinion I give a damn about; the people who actually appreciate what I have to offer and don't waste my time trying to convert me to whatever subjective opinion they have. Everyone else who doesn't have an interest in my work can pick something else up, in places that probably don't interest me whatsoever. With all this said, I don't expect to change your opinion for the exact same reason you can't change mine -- nor have I been trying to. I'm simply getting incredibly sick to death of people on this site (general statement) thinking they can push their personal writing hang-ups on other people, so I'm not going to hold back anymore if debates pop up. [quote=-shylarah] I've only ever heard Japan and other countries in the east use the term "light novel", usually alongside manga and anime, and I've never actually read any. I've read books in English that use simplistic narrative, and while I can't offhand remember them being called novels, I think they were just "books" or "chapter books" (or books without pictures, if you were young enough ^.^; ).[/quote] Just because you recently made a point about knowing what novellas are -- this statement is what made me think you didn't know. Like I said, the truth and context is in the details, which is why even a single word/line being added in or left out can completely change the reader's perception. [@BrokenPromise] [quote=BrokenPromise] I think the reason why light novels have simpler words isn't for a "lighter story," but because the target audience has a more limited vocabulary.[/quote][quote=Shoryu Magami] What Neko said is the most common description of a light novel in Japan to the best of my understanding -- they're usually directed at a younger audience (this is - if anything - the reason why light novels usually use less complex vocabulary), and this is one of the primary reasons that I usually [i]don't[/i] classify 'Guardian Ascension' as a light novel series. My project is complex and deep enough the a large majority of [i]adults[/i] won't be able to fully understand it, let alone the average teenager. The other official defining characteristic of a light novel in Japan is exactly the thing that makes it called [i]light[/i] in the first place -- they're usually no more than 40'000 to 50'000 words long, meaning they're significantly shorter than a regular novel. The equivalent of a light novel in America (courtesy of Ailyn for this one -- not that I didn't know this detail but I might not've immediately thought of using the word if she didn't bring it up just now on the phone) would be what's called a novella -- they do exist in the west, as previously suggested.[/quote] Pretty much the point of my quote I just listed. [quote=BrokenPromise] And a little more trivia, a visual novel without player interaction is called a kinetic novel. [/quote] There's a detail I [i]didn't[/i] know. Well, there you have it people -- 'Guardian Ascension' might be a kinetic novel series, not a visual novel series. Hopefully this'll remove any of the misconceptions people keep getting about there being interaction or routes/endings in the story, since my associates never mentioned the term kinetic novel to me before. Good detail to have since it can avoid confusions.