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#50
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Re: Apocalypse: Valhalla's Darkest Hour
9. Brunak with the WoA abililty. But he rolled all Blanks eventually. Great story!
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#51
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Re: Apocalypse: Valhalla's Darkest Hour
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~TGRF. |
#52
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Re: Apocalypse: Valhalla's Darkest Hour
Indeed, and one I personally wouldn't mind seeing a sequel to eventually.
But one Apocalypse at a time, right? ~TAF TAF was the Storyteller... in THE ENEMY'S LAST RETREAT |
#53
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Re: Apocalypse: Valhalla's Darkest Hour
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But who knows? ~TGRF, developing novel 3 of 4. |
#54
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Re: Apocalypse: Valhalla's Darkest Hour
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Customs here Master Set IV/Assault in the Mournlands. William099 is Lord of Blades... in THE FRACTAL COMPLEX |
#55
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Re: Apocalypse: Valhalla's Darkest Hour
Just finished rereading this story. As good as ever. It ends with "that's a story for another time" please and maybe? :P lol
Customs here Master Set IV/Assault in the Mournlands. William099 is Lord of Blades... in THE FRACTAL COMPLEX |
#56
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Re: Apocalypse: Valhalla's Darkest Hour
Quote:
Quote:
~TGRF. |
#57
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Re: Apocalypse: Valhalla's Darkest Hour
I really have no idea what caused me to write Apocalypse (or AV as I call it). The urge popped into my head one day and never left. That doesn't mean writing it was easy. As I mentioned in the Author's Note, I have forty-seven pages of failed drafts. Whether any of those drafts will see the light of day, I cannot say. I recall some of them as being pretty good, and some of them as being pretty bad.
One thing which I do have is three chapters. These three chapters originally opened the fan fiction, and were much later replaced, once I finally knew how to write the tale. They started out strong, but by chapter three I was treading water, trying to figure out what I had done wrong. Despite that... they actually turned out pretty good. Aside from the fact that they led nowhere. These three chapters paint a different picture of Mike. They occur right when the zombie apocalypse is beginning. No one understands what is happening; fear is everywhere, and the civilians are being evacuated to the East, to the coast...
Spoiler Alert!
Chapter Two to follow... ~TGRF, who has not forgotten the rest of Ragnak's drafts. |
#58
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Re: Apocalypse: Valhalla's Darkest Hour
Nifty intro to what probably would've been a much different tale, TGRF. While we're on the subject of behind-the-scenes content, I had a question regarding your opening post:
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~TAF TAF was the Storyteller... in THE ENEMY'S LAST RETREAT |
#59
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Re: Apocalypse: Valhalla's Darkest Hour
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I think the original desire to write AV came from the setting. There's something about an isolated group of people surrounded on all sides by endless mindless monsters. It brings out the best, and the worst, in people. In all honesty, there are a lot of ways to do that, but zombies are likely one of the easiest. I wrote AV at the worst possible time I could have. It was right at the point where I realized that my old process for writing no longer worked, and I as yet didn't know what did work. So there was a lot of missteps and a lot of procrastination which led nowhere. A lot of ideas about what might work were floating around, virtually all of which proved to be wrong or useless. The biggest effect this had was on the theme. I'm sure you know that I like to create my tales based on a central message, which I call a theme. Because AV was inspired purely by setting, there was no theme, meaning I had to invent one and hope it fit. It didn't. Neither did the next one. Nor the next one. Ultimately, I never found the right theme. I found one which enabled the tale to work, but the fact that it wasn't quite a perfect fit made the whole tale forced as I wrote it. You can see this in some areas - especially everything between Mike's hijacking of the transport to getting into the building. So that got everything off on the wrong foot. From there I was staggering along with the development, trying out new ideas and old ideas side by side. I now know that the character was seriously under-developed - only after recently trying to help someone else with developing characters did I realize how much I had failed to do (side-note: Don't be afraid to help others just because you don't have it down: writing an answer often points me in the right direction). Then came the dreaded stakes. I had been struggling with stakes a lot before this. I never got the 'escalation of stakes' idea for some reason. It didn't help that my whole idea of stakes was flawed due to misreading something back when I was developing my Feylund series. If there is something that AV did do correctly, it was actually escalating the stakes. I watched some TV episodes which escalated the stakes endlessly and perfectly, and without really knowing how, was able to incorporate the same thing into AV. The key phrase was: "everything gets worse". The characters never succeed directly; they always run into new problems. I was able to do that in AV, particularly in the final scenes in the building. Ultimately it came down to poor planning on a shaky base. By the time I was finishing AV, I was more than ready to start on my next fiction. As for zombie stories on a whole... the exact meaning of my words eludes me (that's the problem with not explaining yourself). I think the tendency with zombie stories (and take this with a grain of salt, as I am in absolutely no position to critique them, having read none) is to rely on the zombies too much. A zombie story is just like any other story. You still need all the parts. I think authors can get caught up with the zombie action and start to short-change the story, the characters, and the rest of what the novel needs. Usually the only purpose of zombie stories is zombie-action. That's not a purpose. That's mindless entertainment. Ultimately, the novel is pointless. If I'm going to write something, I want it to actually have weight. I don't want to write something to amuse someone for an hour, after which they never think of it again. I want to cause the reader to remember what he read, and mull it over long after it's over. Those are the novels that stay with you. I tried to do that with AV, with limited success. Ultimately it was based on zombie-action. But it had a story. It had a theme (however convoluted). It even had a twist on the zombies in an effort at originality. It failed at some things, but it succeeded at others. Hit and miss. The fact that it came out after Red didn't really help my mood towards it, which is probably why I just spent way too much text downplaying it. At the end of the day it worked. Shakily and not as good as it could have been, but it worked. ~TGRF, who will admit that an infinite series of sequels is well within the realm of possibility. But it will likely stay in that realm. |
#60
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AV: Version 2, Chapter 2
I've located the drafts (which is surprisingly well organized considering all that was going on at the time). It appears to have everything I ever wrote for AV in it, so it should be easy going from here.
Chapter 2 of 3:
Spoiler Alert!
To be continued... ~TGRF. P.S. After glancing through the drafts, there's some good stuff in there. Unfortunately, a good portion of it is chapters taking place after content which for some reason isn't there. There are a few alternate chapters to the actual thing that got posted - but those were deleted for good reason, and likely won't see the light of day. There are also several alternate openings, though this current one is the longest. |
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