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Multitasking and online fiction authors
Sep. 11th, 2007 09:23 amMultitasking defined:
1) Replying to an e-mail that came in overnight, about a juicy job opportunity (yes yes please please)
2) Drying oneself after the morning shower
3) Eating breakfast
4) Convincing Sumomo that she really doesn't like the milk I've poured over my cereal, now move as you're blocking the monitor, unless you LIKE being called "Sumo-chan".
All at the same time.
***
Ginny will (not) like this one.
These people are, if their profiles are to be believed, a trifle older than the typical anime fanfic writer - they're writing original stories. One claims to be in his 60's
The method they're using is "start the story, then someone else jumps in and continues, then someone else adds, lather/rinse/repeat". There are some (gleefully ignored) rules at the start of some stories. The story tends to go off on all kinds of tangents and the cast of characters quickly grows. By the fifth post, you can be in a truly surrealist world. One author had to bodily drag the story back on track by making the immediately preceding post into a dream sequence.
The part that will drive Ginny bats (as in Escaborg, wanting to use on someone's thick head) is: they have the same problem with grammar and spelling as any juvenile Mary Sue.
For example:
- At the end of the meal, which is being consumed in the "dinning room", they're having "desert". This wouldn't be quite so bad except the two words are used repeatedly. "What would you like for desert?" Gobi, I guess.
- Since when did "there" become a plural possessive?
- One author has mixed up "sade" and "said". I guess Sade is singing the characters' lines.
- Some are really having a problem with punctuation. They meant to say "After eating, Robert, Mary, Judy, (etc) went out". Instead, it came out as "After eating Robert, Mary Judy (etc)". I still don't know whether to think Robert is unlucky for falling in with hungry cannibals, or that Robert had a real fun time with the ladies.
- One person is relentless in their determination to ignore quote marks. Another uses quotes only at the end of spoken passages, forcing you to backtrack. A third uses a dash at the start of the spoken passage, with no closing quotation mark. I feel sorry for the poor, defenceless quotation mark.
In their defence, one guy (one of the better authors, actually) keeps reminding everyone his native tongue is Swedish, and another is from Arizona (presumably his brains are being baked by the heat).
1) Replying to an e-mail that came in overnight, about a juicy job opportunity (yes yes please please)
2) Drying oneself after the morning shower
3) Eating breakfast
4) Convincing Sumomo that she really doesn't like the milk I've poured over my cereal, now move as you're blocking the monitor, unless you LIKE being called "Sumo-chan".
All at the same time.
***
Ginny will (not) like this one.
These people are, if their profiles are to be believed, a trifle older than the typical anime fanfic writer - they're writing original stories. One claims to be in his 60's
The method they're using is "start the story, then someone else jumps in and continues, then someone else adds, lather/rinse/repeat". There are some (gleefully ignored) rules at the start of some stories. The story tends to go off on all kinds of tangents and the cast of characters quickly grows. By the fifth post, you can be in a truly surrealist world. One author had to bodily drag the story back on track by making the immediately preceding post into a dream sequence.
The part that will drive Ginny bats (as in Escaborg, wanting to use on someone's thick head) is: they have the same problem with grammar and spelling as any juvenile Mary Sue.
For example:
- At the end of the meal, which is being consumed in the "dinning room", they're having "desert". This wouldn't be quite so bad except the two words are used repeatedly. "What would you like for desert?" Gobi, I guess.
- Since when did "there" become a plural possessive?
- One author has mixed up "sade" and "said". I guess Sade is singing the characters' lines.
- Some are really having a problem with punctuation. They meant to say "After eating, Robert, Mary, Judy, (etc) went out". Instead, it came out as "After eating Robert, Mary Judy (etc)". I still don't know whether to think Robert is unlucky for falling in with hungry cannibals, or that Robert had a real fun time with the ladies.
- One person is relentless in their determination to ignore quote marks. Another uses quotes only at the end of spoken passages, forcing you to backtrack. A third uses a dash at the start of the spoken passage, with no closing quotation mark. I feel sorry for the poor, defenceless quotation mark.
In their defence, one guy (one of the better authors, actually) keeps reminding everyone his native tongue is Swedish, and another is from Arizona (presumably his brains are being baked by the heat).
