I tend to write down stories first in long hand on A4 sheets, then I read them through and edit them on the paper and then I type them up and they kinda get changed further.
Often they will end up very different from the way they started, it really depends upon how the story flows and how it evolves.

As far as proof-reading goes I am fairly tight on it but I know I can be a bit lazy. Thing is I find that no matter how careful I am I still find mistakes sometimes months later...!

*slinks back in*

I have a problem. This has been holding me up for ages and I'm not sure what to do.

How do you go about writing action sequences? I avoid them when I can, but at times it's necessary. Part of my problem is when I read an action scene, I have a very hard time processing what happened. I'm not sure why. Maybe I'm too visual? But it generally takes me several times to grasp what happened (or I just skip to the end and watch for signs of what happened, like a deep cut to the leg when the opponent used a sword or something.)

Or when can they be avoided? Obviously reading:



isn't exciting. And skipping to the end:



can only be done so many times, right?

I have run into this also. I worry about my description not fitting the bill, simply because I know nothing of how to use a sword or axe or bow. Since there is a great deal of violence in the game, and hence most fan fics, avoiding it doesn't seem practical. I think being "too visual" could be an asset rather than a handicap. When I need to add a little action, I visualize the events, often repeatedly. Almost like watching a movie over and over. Then I keep that vision and just describe what I "saw". You could certainly get away with doing it all as you showed in your second example. I guess it would depend on how important the action scene is to your story or character development.

Some research on weapons and tactics will help. The internet is loaded with that info. Watching martial arts films can help too. I'm not a fan of them, but techniques are displayed very well, and this helps with visualization.

Hope this helped...

I have found that Arma is an excellent source of information on Real Life swordfighting. Talhoffer Longsword: Armoured and Unarmoured is an excellent article to start with on longswording (which is to say sword fighting). So is A Brief Look at Stances.

Hurstwic has a good page on Axe Fighting as well as Sword and Shield Techniques

Here are some nice slow motion axe moves

Something to keep in mind about real life longswording, is that most fights were over in seconds. Typically the first passage of arms was the last. Because it is all about skill, and when a poorly skilled person meets someone better, they typically die straight off. If you watch the various videos made by historical reenactors, or look through the ancient fighting manuals, you can see how that happens.

Look through the videos and other things, and just copy some of the things you see. It is not plagarism, but how longswording really works. Just like a series of chess moves, or a dance routine.

A few RL longswording moves I have used are:

A simple move that pins an enemy's sword against your torso, leaving them exposed to a counter:


A skeleton uses a morte strike, Vols counters by by halfswording to parry. Vols would have been disarmed if he had tried to hold on to his sword with both hands when the skellie pulled his sword down.


Tadrose succeeding with the morte strike disarm

Oddly enough, I was going to suggest asking Subrosa... ...

Nevermind... ...

Another thing I thought of, is to picture it playing out...Like in a film or tv show...Who does what, and where they end up...Like choreography...Then just write out what you could "See" then refine it...That's how I work anyways...

First off, a general guide I put together on writing combat scenes. It's tailored towards Mass Effect, is completely unhinged and if you're particularly attached to the fourth wall your head will probably explode, but the general overview may have some useful advice in it for you.

As for the specific problem of the fight scene and how it goes, try a bullet pointed list or something like that. Try treating it as a problem with a desired solution, that problem being a bad guy and maybe additional hazards and that solution being their defeat, with weapons, skills and circumstances to hand being tools; in the example you gave, Miranda has the problem of a murderous ogre, and the solution of killing it in self defence.

Of course, the key thing to remember is that the ogre is viewing this situation in exactly the same way; it has a problem (it's hungry, and it's potential lunch is going to fight back) and it also has a solution that it wants to reach (it wants to kill its potential lunch and then chow down). This means that combat becomes a series of actions, counteractions, counter-counteractions, counter-counter-counteractions and so on, and as a writer you might well find it useful to break these down into turns, sort of like in a pen-and-paper RPG.

To use your example with Miranda dealing with an ogre, you could basically plan out the scene like this.

Problem: Ogre
Detail on ogre: Very big, very strong, slow and clumsy. Armed with a large wooden club

Tools at hand
Miranda (able to move quickly, good with a sword, but probably not going to survive even one hit from an ogre's club)
Miranda's trusty sabre
Terrain; dry roadway running through a wood. Potential cover and concealment in the trees

• Ogre steps out onto the road before Miranda, brandishing its club and roaring
• Miranda sees the threat, and trying not to panic, steps back out of its reach and draws her sabre
• The ogre takes a step forwards and swings its club in a wide arc at her to try and swat her down
• Miranda dodges back, the club whooshing past her
• The ogre is thrown off balance by the force behind its swing, and stumbles forwards, shoulder first
• Miranda darts in to try and hack at its shoulder in order to try severing a tendon; the ogre is too tall and is beyond her reach, and instead the blade slices into the ogre's bicep
• The ogre is enraged by the pain and turns back towards her, knocking Miranda sprawling as it smacks her with its forearm
• Miranda is on the ground and winded. She misses a turn
• The ogre raises its club overarm and swings down on Miranda
• Miranda rolls out of its way
• The ogre grabs Miranda by her ankles and lifts her up, dangling her head down.
• Sabre still in hand, and at just the right height, Miranda stabs it in the crotch
• The ogre drops her and falls to its knees screaming. It misses a turn on account of it never being able to make ugly little ogre babies
• Miranda scrambles to her feet
• The ogre continues to wish it had never been born
• Miranda slashes her sabre across its throat and puts it out of her misery. She walks away, cleaning her sabre as explosions detonate behind her, but does not look back as true badasses never look at explosions

Obviously, there's still a lot you'd need to do to make that a fight scene, but putting a skeleton of the scene down on paper when you're not sure what's going to happen is a very good way to figure it out.

Jackie, you’ve reminded me of Elmore Leonard’s rule number 10: Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

Another resource I am pretty much continuously re-reading is D. Foxy’s Of Blades, Fights, and Assassins. As a beginner I can’t recommend this guide enough.

One thing that helps me (especially when there are more than two combatants) is to write out everything that everyone does to make sure I have the timing plausible. Then I just don’t use the parts that the POV character couldn’t see or wouldn’t notice. (For example I use very few of my outline notes about footing in the actual scene, but I know in the final edit that it’s right because I spent time figuring it out.)

I also go out in the garage and smack Bob the punching bag with Mr. Grits’ practice swords. That helps me a lot. A yardstick and buddy (standing on a chair for the ogre) work well, or in a pinch a yardstick and a shirt on a hanger hooked over a door. I didn’t get the whole blade angles thing until I tried it.

This part is personal preference, because I try to write things that I would like to read. Once I’ve done a bunch of research and learned all kinds of things, I try to let my new knowledge inform the scene rather than intrude into it. I cut a lot of details out in editing so that the scene reads as quickly as the fight.

Yes- to everything everyone else has said. And now- as is my nature- to answer a question with a question:

How much detail do YOU want in the action scenes?

Because writing is about choices- what to include, what to leave out...

It can become a character trait even- I know a few times I have had my character simply say, "I don't want to talk about it" in reference to a particular fight.

Also- "less is more". It is OK to keep the descriptions simple- they can still be vivid. (Mustard's example is excellent in that regard). Provide just enough information so that the reader's imagination can fill in the rest. That does two things- it avoids 5 pages of "then Miranda parried in quarte" -AND it draws the reader in. Instead of being a passive consumer of your words, the reader becomes a participant.

Think about the details that MATTER- to you, to the character, to the reader. Include those and leave out the rest.

I agree. Too much description - of any kind - can just bog down the story and make your reader bored. That is why I mix up RL longswording with more generic descriptions like this: A moment later it turned, and cleaved one of the skeletons that stood beside it in two. Valerius' meteoric arming sword swept out a moment later, and smote the other into dust.

I try to use the RL depictions as highlights. Then the generic stuff to fill in the rest.

I hate long sword fighting scenes.

Also, dont be afraid to allow your character to get injured. I like to challenge myself and have them get injured and go ,"Quick! How do we recover from this?!"

This definitely. It's important to always have in your mind that your character can, and should, get hurt. It makes things more interesting - as Ms H says.
One of the very earliest stories I wrote had Niamh dying in it, and she regularly gets a pasting.
Writing about a flawless character who is superhuman is the same as playing a game on God Mode, it gets boring for both you and reader Very Quickly.
Flaws, failings, and the ability to get hurt are just some of what makes things more "Real" and more interesting.

Also, try to push yourself outside of your comfort zone by writing about events and situations which you would not normally think of or explore, sometimes your own discomfort or awkwardness will come across in what you write and can actually make a situation much more interesting to read.

As an aside, this is how my writing process inevitably starts... Written Words - "Patriarch"

Fighting/action scenes! Well I had the same problem writing them..BUT I asked guest writers who actually LIKE writing stuff like that to help me out...this adds a nice twist I think..of course you have to be comfortable with someone else "help you out"

My two cents (If I still have the right to say ANYTHING in this thread)

This is something that I've always found somewhat of a "maybe maybe not" thing when it comes to writing. A super-powered character can, in fact, be very interesting in a combat scene, but what's important is to pit them against super-powered opposition; I've written pieces with skyscraper-sized war machines battling it out whilst toppling entire cities, but as both sides were of roughly equal power levels it ended up reading with the same intensity and excitement as, say, a swordfight between two human combatants of equal skill.

If your two antagonising parties are of a superpowered disposition, there are two other things that I always feel should be kept in mind;

1. Make it stylistic. I've always had a soft spot for the Wuxia genre from Asia, partially thanks to my own interests in martial arts, but while the fight scenes in them are spectacularly over the top, when they work, they work very well thanks to the fact that they can be absolutely beautiful and incredibly exhilerating; the cinematography, choreography, movement and music are used in a manner that is generally uncaring for realism and instead is focussed on using violence between two or more antagonists in an artistic fashion. Whilst film and writing are two very different genres, you can apply a similar principle; make the writing poetic and the prose detailing the combat beautiful (and delineate the divide between pose and poetry as well hooray!).
2. Make the power cost. If your character is superpowered in a setting where nobody else is, put a price on those powers. Make that awesome spell shorten the mage's lifespan whenever it's cast, force the warrior to sacrifice something truly dear to them that's completely irreplacable in order to gain the sword that will enable them to single-handedly defeat the armies of Lord Darkness and restore peace to the land. At risk of blowing my own trumpet, Almeria from Madgod looks on paper to be a stupidly overpowered character (partly because I wrote her as a tribute to characters from Wuxia films and so I could indulge in a little Wuxia-esque stuff of my own); she uses a potion that enhances her strength to inhuman levels and speeds up her reactions to a degree where she perceives the world to be moving in slow motion, and she has a magic, self-aware sword that aids her in fighting. But on the other hand, that came with a price, and the potion is highly addictive and is slowly killing her, whilst her sword became self-aware only after she trapped her sister's soul in it by accident.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on how it can be done, and it is one of those Your Milage May Vary things, I guess.

Also, a tip when writing fight scenes is to bring the enemy of the protagonist to live. Of course you can support how your protagonist is a skilled combatant and slayer of giants, etc. But no one is truly invincible. Show his/her fears, and the enemies fears through to physical visuals such as sweat and trembling and mistakes or vocal threats, etc. Add emotion in the minds of characters and not just "So he blocked, and parried and lunged and flipped and stabbed."

I've done this mistake before of dwelling too much on the fancy and not balancing it out on characters, which helps drive the story more than anything. What are they feeling during this battle? Fear? Sadness? Anger? Their weaknesses against an enemy? Ah, and surroundings! As a wise man once said.

"Always mind your surroundings."-Ra's Al Ghul.

Or, as an alternative...You could simply invent new and fun ways that your God-powered hero can turn a hapless bad-guy into a pancake...

But that's boring. If your action scenes are boring, you're doing something wrong.

Maybe so, but you're doing them your way and not wasting your time doing something that you haven't got your heart in...

Whereas if you're writing the characters as they turn out as in the games we're playing then that's a damned sight more honest and fun, in my opinion...

Besides, isn't writing simply a personal artistic expression?...If everyone else wants to play by those...Rules...Fine...

But if I'm happier having my characters do what they do, then I'll be doing what I can to make my writing enjoyable to me?...Isn't that more honest to myself?...

It may be honest to your self, but it's dishonest to the rest of the world; the primary power of art is its ability to reflect truth in the world, and simply altering the order of the world in order to suit a personal vision and to make it nicer is not only dishonest but is, in fact, a perversion of the nature of true artisitic expression. The primary reason why human beings express ourselves artistically is not so that we can shy away from or gloss over the bad things in the world, but so that we can rally a call to arms against the evils of the world and thus fight them, and nobody will listen to the call of a liar.

Just throwing in my 2 cents as a reader.

I personally find very detailed fight scenes distracting. I form the scene in my imagination and too many details just wreck that mental image. The best fight scenes I've read provided just enough detail to fuel and direct my imagination and were by far not the most detailed scenes I've read.

Several things....

Rules... um the question becomes whose rules? If I am writing my story, yes, I make a sort of contract with myself to abide by certain guidelines for my characters and for my world. And I abide by certain conventions of grammar and form so that my words are intelligible.

But any idea that there is some Style Guide for All Fiction- no.

And that is especially true for me. I write my stories mostly for my own enjoyment. I post them here because I hope other people will like them too. I strive for an internal consistency- but I never lose sight of the fact that I am writing fiction and fiction about a video game at that.

That means I can indulge in- to quote from one of my favorite movies-"If this isn't the way things happened- it should have been." (The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean).

Does that make it somehow "untrue"? Well sure it does. The story of my actual life is something that would bore me to tears to write and that no one would read. Athlain (or Athynae or Bryn) can act in ways and say things that I only wish I could. If they reflect the reality of my world, it is through the lens of a fun-house mirror, with most of the flaws and the dull bits polished away.

If I want real-world truth, I don't look for it in fan-fiction. What I do look for, and what I have found- in abundance- is writing that holds my interest, that makes me laugh, makes me think, makes me cry, and makes me wish I had written a great deal of it.

To close where I began- with rules. Because I am not a professional writer, there is only one rule for the stories I write here: "Have fun doing it. Else it is not worth it."

Jacki, everyone has given you good advice. It's up to you to distill it and decide how to go from here. . .

Do you really want to write detailed fight scenes? Or do you rather want to skim over them and dwell more on the aftermath?

In my own writing, I go case by case. Did I write every single Oblvion Gate Julian closes? No - just the ones that matter to the progression of the story. The ones that I did write were usually the landmark ones - the Great Gate at Kvatch, the one with the Huzzah!-spouting Dunmer, the one with Burd and the two Bruma guardsmen, and of course the final one at Bruma where we recover the Great Sigil Stone.

I take pretty much the same approach with the fights. Just the big ones get the details, and I dwell less on the technical stuff than I do on the internal battles that my protagonist fights at the same time. Those are much more interesting, as one's greatest foe is one's own self.

I admit that the fights in Sancre Tor scared the crap out of me. How am I going to write these and do justice to the Fab Four that Destri Melarg was gracious enough to let me borrow? I turned to the author of the missive that Grits recommended (and I do second her recommendation). He was gracious enough to help me flesh out these battles and make them realistic without getting too technical (I'm not too familiar with fencing terms, and I believe most of my readers aren't either).

So my advice to you is to not be afraid to push the envelope, to step out of your comfort zone once in a while, but also don't be afraid to ask for help from others. You already asked for help here on this thread, and you got it in spades. Jacki, now it's time for you to stretch your boundaries, not only for your character but also for yourself.

For me, this says it all. It is the only reason I write. My wife says I have reached epitome of geekdom and can't believe I find it fun. But it is! Having others read and enjoy it is just gravy on the potatoes. If I didn't find it fun, I'd quit in a heartbeat. I know I'm veering off the fight scene topic, but this meant something to me.

Yes, because Gene Roddenberry's somewhat utopian version of the future failed so spectacularly didn't it?...

Sorry, but all that above just sounds pretentious...

It's up to the individual how they write...

I'm not out to make money...Just to stop myself going mad...

Like Treydog said, we share it because we think others might enjoy what we do...I'll share my over-powered heroes when I'm done...And people will read or not...But I know that I've done what I wanted, and how I've wanted to...

People should stop feeling like there's only one way to do things else it's boring...Boring to you, fine...Excellent...

If more respect was given to the fact that people are actually trying to write rather than the technicalities of what they're writing...People might hang around longer...

As the cliché goes, give them points for trying...

While I think your points on the technical aspects are all valid and correct, I also think if doing all that is no fun, then you should absolutely do whatever you want to do...

I write for fun. I really don't care for all of the technical stuff, but improving ny skill makes it enjoyable to me.

You can't tell lately by my posts, but that's because I'm too tired to watch what aim writing XD

I'm gonna agree with McB. Do something because you enjoy it. Otherwise it becomes a chore and it's no longer an outlet. If you're good at it, great! Of you enjoy it as well, even better! Even of you like writing and suck at it, still, that's great! Good for you for doing something you enjoy!

I think that most people would agree that the bottom line is it should be Fun, for you the writer, in this context. We can all give you advice about what We would do and what We think that You should do, but in the end it's up to you how you distil that or indeed whether you take any notice of it at all!
(if you are writing for money then I guess it would be different in terms of how you looked at your writing).

If you improve and learn as a result, well then that's a great bonus.

Edit: oh duh, that will teach me to read posts properly! Sorry Ms H didn't mean to almost completely duplicate what you said!

In the Mustard / McBadgere debate, I'm afraid I must side with McB as well. Marvel and DC Comics have made a fortune publishing works that contain "God-like" characters. The reason they have made a fortune is that the readers enjoyed it. Fiction is full of untruths, hence the word "fiction". Superman can get shot with every bullet on the planet and walk away from it unscathed. So "God-like" works. It's all in the presentation. Now one might argue that Superman does have his weakness to kryptonite, a fictional mineral designed to humanize him, but that comes right back to presentation. And if that is the story that a writer has fun presenting, so much the better.

This is going to sounds like a massive Politician cop-out but after having read what's been written after I wrote the "superhuman" bit, I think that really the answer lies between the two, and that it's all about context.
You're right TSG, it's about about presentation, you're right McB, it's about fun, and you're right Colonel, it's about balance and yeah being true, but that's a subjective thing - certainly here and now.
If in having Super-Khajiit stomping on Cities for chuckles that's you doing what you want then arguably that's as right and proper as carefully working up a logically-consistent, flawed antiheroine - (I can't imagine who I mean here... )
As said, none of us write this for money - (though gods know I'd love too!) - if we did then maybe considerations would of necessity need to be different but as it is it comes down to what you yourself feel comfortable with and how you can justify to yourself.
If others like it and you can benefit constructively from that then that's cool as well.

Me?
I like my characters flawed, like my heroes; which is why I always root for The Big Black Bat is The Dark Knight Returns, and I'm a BIG fan of Marshall Law!!
But it's all opinion, in the end...

There's so much good writing of types and descriptions on this site that there's more than enough of viewpoint to go round, and that's just as it should be.

Time to pick brains again. I am sure this is a researchable question, but asking the authors in here is research, isn't it? This regards naming locations and how to treat the text. When you refer to a location, such as an inn or a store, do you -

* Italicize the name - The Sleeping Giant Inn
* Place the name in quotes - "The Sleeping Giant Inn"
* Just capitalize the words - The Sleeping Giant Inn

- or any combination of the above?

Thanks in advance for your replies.

I think the capital letters are sufficient for place names. I usually use Elements of Style to check such matters, but I just discovered that I have misplaced my copy.

As Grits says. A simple capitalization is sufficient for proper names of places. Also, per the Chicago Manual of Style (my go-to reference)- the initial "the" does not need to be capitalized- although it can.

e.g.- We spent a pleasant evening in the common room of the Sleeping Giant Inn.

I just capitalize.

Re the capitalisation of the word "The", I think the rule is to do so if it's actually part of the name. If the sign outside says "The Sleeping Giant Inn" then the name includes "The" and it should be treated that way. And note the reason I quoted the inn's name, and do the same!

I'd use italics in a few cases, too. Such as

The tavern's name was The Sleeping Giant Inn, and it lay near the Silver Road.

You need something to set the name apart, and italics do that appropriately. Especially when "The" is part of it, and you need to make that clear.

Two things where I'd like to hear how other people handle them...

First: money! And how much it's worth. Writing fic often involves figuring out prices for items which we aren't given in-game. Do you guess? Do you have some sort of conversion method (1 drake is X dollars/euros/pounds/etc.)? Do you spend around an hour Googling the amount an average labourer was paid in drachma in 5th century BC Greece and try to approximate that with drakes so you can figure out how much the Tamrielic version of Tyrian purple dye should cost?

...no, I didn't end up doing this just the other day, it certainly didn't prompt this question. Why do you ask.

(Also, how do you handle things where the economy doesn't quite make sense? I'm currently pondering how to deal with the fact that an enchanted amulet worth 400 drakes could, in-game, only have been enchanted with a filled soul gem worth 50000 drakes. Guys, I think I figured out why enchanting services in Morrowind cost incredible amounts - it's the only way for them to make any money at all.)

Second: what to write and what to leave out.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, because it's been nagging at me more and more that I have almost an entire novel's worth of words written and yet I've barely scratched the surface of my plotting for this story - and, more to the point, not that much has actually *happened* yet. :/ I am relatively sure an editor would faint at the sight of this thing. I'm also pretty certain that there are a bunch of scenes in the earlier chapters that could probably be cut (among others my habit of starting with Adryn waking up and ending with her going to bed - one I am *really* trying to break - is a sign that I need to learn some things about pacing), and that I could really do with a good way of figuring out what to skip. And, related to this, good ways to timeskip and segue.

On the subject of money, I had to throw out the prices in the game and completely start over from scratch. What I did first was create a system of coinage, then I decided what the monthly wages of the basic rungs of society were. Then once I knew what people earned for a living, I started looking at goods and services and assigned values that would be affordable to the people at the varying levels of society.

For example, here is my money system for Cyrodiil:
******************
Money
A reman is a copper coin. 16 remans are worth 1 drake (or 4 remans worth a quarter drake)
A drake is a silver coin, and the basic unit of currency. It is sometimes cut in halves or quarters.
A septim is a gold coin, and is worth 10 drakes.

******************
Monthly Wages
Unskilled Laborer/Farmer = 100 drakes
Skilled Laborer/Artisan = 200 drakes
Guild Mage = 400 drakes
Legionary = 100 drakes
Centurion = 1000 - 4000 drakes

******************
1 day docking fee for dory at IC Waterfront = 2 remans
1 meal at a hot food stand = 4 remans (quarter drake).
1 loaf of bread = 2 remans
1 pot = quarter drake
1 dish = 2 remans
1 oil lamp = quarter drake
1 mug of ale in a tavern or food stand = 1 reman
1 glass of house wine = 2 remans
1 jug (half gallon) of cheap wine = half drake
1 jug (half gallon) fine wine = 5 drakes
1 set of lower class clothing = 2 drakes
1 set of middle class clothing = 5 drakes
1 set upper class clothing = 20+ drakes
1 bath at bathhouse = 2 remans
1 night at cheap inn = 2 drakes (The Lonely Suitor, Five Claws, Grey Mare, Inn of Ill Omen, Olav's Tap and Tack)
1 night at decent inn = 5 drakes (Bloated Float, Wawnet Inn, Faregyl, Gottshaw, King and Queen, Luther Broad's, Newlands Lodge)
1 night at excellent inn = 10 drakes (Merchants Inn, Silverhome on the Water, All-Saints, Jerall View, Oak and Crosier)
1 night at luxury inn = 20 drakes (Tiber Septim Hotel, Cheydinhal Bridge Inn, Counts Arms)
1 month rent for cheap apartment = 40 drakes
1 month rent for middle class apartment = 80 drakes
1 healing potion = 20 drakes
1 cure disease potion = 100 drakes
1 steel arming sword = 200 drakes
1 mithril sword = 500 drakes
1 steel mace = 30 drakes
1 steel spear = 10 drakes
1 Dwemer/Elven sword = 1,000 drakes
1 glass/ebony sword = 2,000 drakes
1 glass/ebony battleaxe = 1,700 drakes
1 longbow = 10 drakes
1 recurve bow = 2,000 drakes
20 arrows = 5 drakes
1 suit leather armor = 15 drakes
1 suit mail armor = 200 drakes
1 suit plate armor = 500 drakes
1 suit mithril armor = 1,000 drakes
1 suit dwemer armor = 2,000 drakes
1 suit elven armor = 2,000 drakes
1 suit orcish armor = 2,000 drakes
1 suit miran-talurn armor = 4,000 drakes
1 suit ebony armor = 5,000 drakes
1 suit glass armor = 5,000 drakes
Coach ride from IC to Chorrol/Bravil/Cheydinhal = 40 drakes
Letter from IC to Chorrol/Bravil/Cheydinhal = 20 drakes
Learn a Novice level spell = 20 drakes
Welkynd Stone = 100 drakes
Varla Stone = 500 drakes
Average farm = 20 acres cost 4,000 drakes to buy (produces enough to feed six people with animals. 640 acres = 1 square mile)
Entrance to the Arena = quarter drake


For the second question - What to leave in, what to take out? I ask myself "Does this drive the plot?" If the answer is yes, then it needs to stay in. If it does nothing to advance the story, or otherwise illustrate the natures of the characters, then it is cut. Obviously this all depends on having a very clear idea of what your plot is, and what your goals are. For example, if you are writing a romance, then the romance itself between two (or more) of your characters is your focus. We need to see everything that effects that romance. What we do not need to see is our characters at work, going to their sister's birthday party, feeding their cat, etc... Unless those things are tied to the romance. For example if your characters meet at a work, then we need to see that. But OTOH we do not need to see every other working day that has nothing to do with the romance.

Here is my two cents...um...drakes...um...septims...worth. Please bear in mind that I am a novice writer with no training what-so-ever. It's one of the reasons I love this thread.

Regarding money - I am assuming that you want to write about buying something that isn't for sale in the game. If I were to try this in my writing, I would completely wing it. I would think of something comparable in-game and work from there. SubRosa has devised quite the system. I don't know if she has modded that system into her game (I am guessing she has because she is that good with modding). But for me, that is a heck of a lot of work and winging it is easier.

Regarding what to edit out and leave in - I would echo SubRosa to this extent. Plot and Character Development, IMHO, deserve all the detail the author deems necessary to convey them. So edit those with care. Right on the heels of that would be keeping the reader interested. This is an area where I have worried myself as well. For example, it took me 7 chapters of 1,300 to 1,600 words each to get from the chopping block in Helgen to Riverwood, and I was scared to death that I was dragging the story out. But to my relief, the readers enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it, and complimented the level of detail.

Of course, everything I have stated depends on what you are writing. I have taken the easy route, because I am not a trained writer, by just doing a "game-play" narrative, with short detours into back story.Others here are far more accomplished at coming up with very creative stories that use the game as a setting only. But that's my two (insert coin type here) worth.

What would the maximum of words for a short story be, for those who care to answer? In your opinion, of course.

Money: I like the game’s gold Septim along with the slang terms “drake” and “duck” (for the dragon that appears on one side of the coin). To make that work I shrank the game’s big coin down to about the diameter and thickness of a fingernail for a single Septim. Then I added different sized coins for increasing denominations. For me using only gold coins anchors the story in Tamriel. I want the reader to embrace that they are in a different world (not Earth).

I also tossed the game’s prices for my own. I did not want to complicate money by splitting the Septim, so I made it worth less. For example an apple might cost four Septims. There are few things worth mentioning that cost less than one Septim. (Who buys one eighth of an apple?)

Keeping a scale is important for my own consistency, but I try to avoid mentioning specific prices in my stories. If something costs a month’s wages rather than writing the figure I’ll simply say that the merchant quoted a price equal to a month’s wages along with the characters’ reactions to show if the price is appropriate or not. That saves some head-scratching for the reader and gets straight to the point I’m trying to make in the story. I prefer to provide the context and then let the reader infer the rarity and relative value of things. (And that’s also what I prefer to read.)




Hollow, I think of a short story as one I can read in a single sitting. (Which happens only when my entire family is in another state.) Maybe around 7,000 words? I’m getting that number from the approximate length of three of my own updates since I know how long it takes me to read them.

The following is from Wikipedia -

Determining what exactly separates a short story from longer fictional formats is problematic. A classic definition of a short story is that one should be able to read it in one sitting, a point most notably made in Edgar Allan Poe's essay "Thomas Le Moineau (Le Moile)" (1846). Interpreting this standard nowadays is problematic, since the expected length of "one sitting" may now be briefer than it was in Poe's era. Other definitions place the maximum word count of the short story at anywhere from 1,000 to 9,000 words. In contemporary usage, the term short story most often refers to a work of fiction no longer than 20,000 words and no shorter than 1,000, or 5 to 20 pages. Stories of fewer than 1,000 words are sometimes referred to as "short short stories", or "flash fiction."

As a point of reference for the genre writer, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America define short story length Nebula Awards for science fiction submission guidelines as having a word count of fewer than 7,500.

Kazaera- except for one venture into valuation of items in my current story, I have rather ignored money. That is a character-based choice, because Athlain is more or less a "rich kid." He never thinks about money because it has always been available.

For Adryn, I can see how she would have a very different perspective. Beyond that- the suggestions above are all good- find the one that fits your vision and style and adapt it as needed.

Pacing. Um- well, to be honest, I have not ever felt as if your story "dragged, lagged, flagged" or anything similar. To put on my old editorial hat, I would want to read everything all together (which is not a bad idea- makes note to self).

In this thread especially, you will see references to "character-driven stories". And yours is definitely one of those- most of the "action" takes place in Adryn's mind and or soul- in her life. In some of the best stories I have ever read, nothing much "happens"- externally- but within the character, there is tremendous movement.

If you feel strongly that you are "not getting on with" the plot you have in mind fast enough, consider which details are not needed. Which brings us to one of the strengths of fiction, the ability to "time-shift" at will.

How you indicate that you have done so is again a style choice- Adryn has a distinct personality and a strong voice- how would she say it?

"What happened over the next several days doesn't bear thinking about- so I don't."

"If you want to know what happened after that- too bad. It's none of your business."

Or you can indicate a "break" or "shift" with either a chapter transition (it that is appropriate) or using typograhy. I use a line of 5 or 6 asterisks centered to show a break- others do something similar with other non-alphanumeric characters.

Thanks everyone for the feedback! As treydog very astutely pointed out, I can't skim over money very well because it wouldn't be in-character for Adryn (who has had some hungry years in her past, never to mention a thief's eye for estimating value), so I need to think of something else. I find it reassuring that two writers whose stories I very much admire have chucked the in-game prices and substituted their own. I really prefer to base my writing on what we're given in-game, but it looks as though I might need to go that route to make things make economic sense! So it's good to know I wouldn't be the only one.

I've also already started using different currency items, because after spending too long reading stories where one septim was one hundred drakes it threw me out to reread my own /o\ and then I edited so that drake coins are copper and ten-drake coins are silver, with septims being gold. I might also end up adding in fractions of drakes, because I think if anything I've scaled the story so that one drake is more valuable than in-game!

Thanks also everyone for the advice about pacing! It's definitely given me something to chew on. I've struggled with "cut only what's plot-relevant" advice in the past, because I'm not really writing for the plot? I mean, there is a plot - it's the MQ! (With... major adjustments.) If I were writing for the plot, I probably wouldn't be writing. I'm starting to realise that the issue may be that I need to figure out what exactly I am writing for, and make sure the scenes advance that...

(There's also the issue that I don't actually always know which scenes are going to be plot-relevant in advance! As I get further into the story I find I do a lot of... leaving dangling threads in scenes that I can pick up later if necessary, not really unfinished plot so much as being able to use past events to trigger/tie into new plot. For instance, I wrote Adryn's epic flower-picking adventures for the hilarity, and later for the purpose of introducing Ervesa - but then that gives me a lot of characters, events, and new knowledge/skills on Adryn's part I can pick up again later. It turns some of these will seriously impact the next few chapters - but I didn't know that when I was writing them.)

And thanks treydog for the kind words about Adryn, which I find reassuring. It's sort of - on the one hand, there's things like transitions and timeskips and me ending up writing something I can't wait to get over with so I can get to the next fun scene, which is most likely a sign I need to figure out how to segue straight into said scene. (I do generally end up tossing the entire force of Adryn's personality at things like this to make them less boring.) On the other, there are scenes like Ajira and Adryn gossiping or doing alchemy which I very much enjoy writing and without which I don't think the story would be the same, but which fail the plot-relevance test. I find myself worried I should be cutting those... because if I should be, then not only should I be cutting scenes I really enjoy but it means my intuition is off. It sounds like you think not!

There is but ONE important thing here: ALWAYS LISTEN TO TREYDOG! Always! What he says...RULES! If you do..you can't miss, I promise! This is the ultimate TRUTH....so there

Some snippage



THIS. You know the story that you want to tell- even if you don't know "what is going to happen." Most of us- at least the ancient dachshund contigent- already know the MQ quite well. What YOU get to do is show us how Adryn reacts to it. A number of others have done the same with the Oblivion start- taking a familiar sequence and turning it into something new.

If you took out Adryn bonding with Ajira, you would cut out the heart of the story- which is Adryn herself. The night at Desele's still makes me laugh- but did it "move the MQ forward?" No. Was it absolutely brilliant and essential to the story YOU want to tell? A resounding YES!

What do folks here use to determine the size of their post? I find that if I cut and paste a section from a large file I have no idea how big a chunk I'm getting. Saving it to a local text file gives me a rough idea, but only if I have a yardstick file to compare it to, as the value is bytes, not words, or anything relevant.

I don't use (or like) MS Office, or I could look at a word count in Word.

About 42 kb is right around 2000-2250 words. It depends on what else you have in there besides words (example: Bolding/Italics will stretch it out some, hence the difference in word count for the same kb)

I think if you're going to post fic routinely, you need the technology to know your word count. And the technology is pretty simple.

I shoot for an episode word count of around 1500 words. I confess that when I read a post that flirts with or exceeds 2000 words, I tend to skim.

In fact, I find that if an episode is particularly important and meant to be powerful, that quite a bit shorter is more effective - even to the tune of 800 words or less.

If in doubt, I generally break updates up into smaller posts. The only exceptions I've made is when breaking an episode would lead readers to undesired erroneous speculation and the required answers to preclude that are necessarily very late in the episode. Complex but very rare, I've found.

I copy and paste into a word count site.

Lol, we've all been there,

Example: Your last post (story only, not the comment acknowledgements or note at the bottom) was 2896 words = 49 kb

I usually try to shoot for 42 kb or below; 2000 words or below.

(by the way, a blank sheet is between 18-20 kb)


Anytime you want to check one, feel free to PM it to me and I'll check the word count and send it back if you want to do that. No problem at all.

Well, that's why I'm asking. The technology is simple, but it only seems to be included in elaborate packages that do a lot of other things I don't want done. I googled for a word-counter application, and found none that do only that. There were a few that would run as plug-ins to other software, but nothing stand-alone.

I'll probably break down and write a Perl script to do it. If I can remember how!

Spell-checking comes with Firefox, so I see the wiggly red lines when I post. That doesn't mean I notice them all, especially when there are a lot of names being flagged. And it took me some time to get it set to English, rather than American.

P.S. I just saved the last episode as .rtf (from Wordpad) and it was 17kB, - I usually post 10kB or less. What did mALX use to get 49kB?

Do it!

I try to aim for 1200 or so. I've posted longer episodes and regretted it later.


EDIT: Word files are bigger?