3.4 KiB
[D] Rationally Writing 33 - Review of Pokemon: OoS (Spoilers to Ch. 43)
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Author: u/DaystarEld Pokémon Professor*
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Score: 17
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Created: 2017-05-20T20:38:32
Post:
Comments:
u/alexanderwales [+4] Time flies like an arrow (3 hours later)
Re: past tense vs. present tense (as discussed in this episode), it's hard to get actual studies that even confirm that past tense is more common in English fiction, let alone trying to find a study that indicates why that might be the case. Nevertheless, there are some (annoyingly gated) studies that indicate past tense is more common.
Though there aren't studies (that I could find) there are a lot of opinion pieces from authors and professors of literature. "Present tense is immediate and past tense is reflective" is all well and good to say, but I would like it to be back up by something more than simply intuition. I think the biggest argument in favor of writing past tense is that the majority of prose fiction is written in past tense, which makes readers more familiar with it, but it somewhat depends on your storytelling style and what you aim to accomplish with it.
u/serge_cell [+3] (9 hours later)
Is transcript available?
u/DaystarEld [+2] Pokémon Professor (10 hours later)
Sadly no, they'd take at least 4x as long to write than the episode length, so we've never done them. Not a fan of the audio medium? :)
u/serge_cell [+2] (17 hours later)
Nop, neither audio nor video. Low bandwidth channels.
u/DaystarEld [+1] Pokémon Professor (21 seconds later)
Hey everyone, based on some listener requests, this week we're discussing each other's writing, starting with Pokemon: The Origin of Species. The review of Alexander's Dark Wizard of Donkerk will be up in a couple weeks.
Enjoy!
u/AmeteurOpinions [+1] Finally, everyone was working together. (55 minutes later)
Pokémon expects a hundred to a hundred and fifty chapters? That means we're nearly a third of the way though. Huh. By that point in Worm, the story was deep into the Slaughterhouse 9 arc.
u/DaystarEld [+3] Pokémon Professor (an hour later)
Yeah, though in retrospect that was all still rather small potatoes, you know? Like, compared to where the story went, that was all little more than set-up.
u/Flashbunny [+2] (7 hours later)
There was a pretty major timeskip in the middle of that too.
u/AmeteurOpinions [+1] Finally, everyone was working together. (16 hours later)
I think the best way to articulate my problem is that I feel like I am reading a story about three careers instead of characters with three goals. This aspect makes it seem like the story will remain on its current course for the next forty years (and possibly in real life?) which makes it harder to get excited for whatever is happening in the present arc. I've also never played a Pokémon game, which may actually be the bigger impediment now that I think about it.
u/DaystarEld [+2] Pokémon Professor (22 hours later)
Understandable, but I think I can safely say without major spoilers that the status quo is not how the whole story will go.