Read Thread

Find proofreaders here, useful resources, and share opinions and advice on story crafting.

Episodic to Epic?

3 years ago

I'm not much for forums, but I'm still pretty new at the interactive choose your story format so I wanted to ask for advice. In the setting I write in, what I've mostly done is episodic slice of life style things. There -is- a continuity but it's a very loose one, and the POV will switch often. What I'm trying to wrap my head around now is how to convert all this into a proper flowing EPIC story, the kind you all seem to prefer here. All the small interactions I like to include need to lead somewhere, but it's not possible to make it a new path with new endings every time. And that's just one of the things I'm struggling with in plotting these. Any advice from the veterans? I really admire what I've seen of this site and I want to find a way to bring this setting that's been in my mind forever into reality, in a place where people might even read it.

DerPrussen

Episodic to Epic?

3 years ago

I'd actually advise that you start out with several shorter stories. If you look at the profiles of the authors that write those epics you will see a number of shorter stories along with the occasional Epic. If you delve deeper into the writing workshop you'll see a number of authors that showed up to the site, talked about writing an epic, then got burned out and never showed up again.

I'd suggest that you start writing the slice of life stories you've come up with in small portions where you only have one POV. Switching POV isn't popular here and is difficult to do well in a CYOA. This will leave you room to improve your writing with editors and also lets you use future or previous characters as Easter Eggs.

TalesByTheFire

Episodic to Epic?

3 years ago

I can see the reason in that but the truth is I write nearly every day so I don't see getting burned out as being a problem. What I lack is focus and the ability to pull everything together into one complete story. The format of these stories is almost the opposite of how I write, what I do comes out episodic and with a focus on character interaction without a lot of consequence, a bit like a sitcom. But I have created a new game just for practicing with, even if I doubt I'll ever publish it. The advanced commands interest me, it looks like I can track character relationships to trigger a fight or a more intimate scene.

Mizal

Episodic to Epic?

3 years ago

There's a lot of middle ground between Slice of Life and an epic.

I wouldn't say that you absolutely shouldn't do a POV switch, but it may complicate things for you a lot. I think the reason you don't see them often here is more due to them being a headache for the authors than for the readers.

TalesByTheFire

Episodic to Epic?

3 years ago

Perhaps epic was the wrong word, but yes a more middle ground solution seems to be needed here. One thing I did forget to mention is that I'll be writing these in the third person. In my opinion POV switching comes much more naturally that way.

TalesByTheFire

Episodic to Epic?

3 years ago

Thanks to the two of you who replied. It may be there's just no simple solution to the trouble I'm having with plotting these, I'll just had to wade in and see what happens. Having looked over more of the stories here I at least feel much more confident now, there's such a wide range of them and I don't have to be the best of the best starting out, just better than the worst!