[META] Re: REVIEW: End of Month Reviews - May 2004 [spoilers]

[Martin Phipps]

Jamas Enright <thad at eyrie.org> wrote in message
news:<Pine.LNX.4.44.0406012325040.3036-100000 at haven.eyrie.org>...
> On 2 Jun 2004, Saxon Brenton wrote:
> 
> >      In any case, everybody, please post your stories when your stories
> > are ready to post. If that means putting them all out together, and part
> > of the benefit of it is for me to be able to summarise everything in one
> > sitting, all well and good. 

If you see a lot of stuff posted before the end of the month then it
could be that people are using you for instant feedback, yes.

> > However, I'm very leery of the idea of
> > things being rushed for my benefit, especially as I've said I'm doing
> > this for my benefit rather than anybody else's.

The other possibility is writing part 1 of a story at the end of the
month and waiting until after the review to post part 2.  Of course,
then you'd never know if the review of part 1 influenced how part 2
was written. :D

Seriously though, I didn't think I had rushed getting LNH Europe 2020
and LNH Asia 2020 out all in one month.  I had planned to wait and
post them next year BUT I think it would be very unlikely that I would
have made changes between now and next year because I was happy with
what I had written, honest.  Perhaps you were thinking of the line in
LNH Asia 2020 #4 where Deja Dude says "I am going to have to pad this
issue a bit".  Well, that was at the mid point of the story.  Mission
accomplished.  I realise -and had characters comment in the story
itself- that the ending seemed a bit abrupt (much like the case of the
last arc as you pointed out).  Maybe what the issue needed was an
epilogue leading into LNH Forever, except that all I had at the end of
April was the title with no idea what the story would be about (except
that I knew it would involve time travel and that the LNH from 2004
would meet the LNH from 2020).  Oh well.

Speaking of LNH Forever, did you see the movie Twelve Monkeys?  Do you
remember the original Terminator movie?  I posted LNH Forever in one
month so that people wouldn't have too much time to think about it or
else, yes, the ending would have been obvious and (in my best Austrian
accent) inevitable. :)

> This brings up a question of: how often do people post (when they have
> stuff to post)?
> I am currently on every fortnight, but I may slow down as once a month is
> good enough for most comics! I have written far ahead ('cos I'm trying to
> get back into writing), but think spacing it out is a good way to go. No
> need to overload readers.

True but, let's be honest, in the past two months I have only posted a
few (overlapping) stories: the formation of LNH Asia, LNH Asia vs. the
Brotherhood, LNH Asia vs. LNH Europe, LNH Asia vs. Boba LaRocque, the
LNH facing (but not fighting against) the Dorfs and LNH Forever, which
was -in total- about 29K so it could have been 3 issues instead of 4. 
(I was thinking I would have just told the artist to use a lot of
splash pages when drawing LNH Forever and then have the story spread
over 4 issues.  Ha ha ha.)  Actually, that's still a fairly productive
couple of months.  I might not post anything for the rest of the year,
thereby giving somebody else a chance to tell their stories.

> There is also a related question, which Martin brought up last time: how
> do people know when they've written enough for an issue?
> Martin said he writes until about 10K. I used to be going for 500 lines

I feel that the size of the file is a good measure of actual amount of
content in the issue.  An issue with a lot of dialogue can be read
very quickly even though it could be well over a hundred lines and, lo
and behold, it could turn out to be less than 10K.  500 lines is a lot
to ask someone to read all at once IMHO.  When I read Saxon's stuff, I
usually stop and come back later and finish reading it, or maybe not,
prefering to spread it out over three sittings.  It doesn't mean
Saxon's stuff is boring, it's just that when I'm reading posts on
usenet I usually only intend to do so for a few minutes as a diversion
before going on and doing something more important.  I usually will
stop and come back later at a point which I feel is a natural break in
the story.  By breaking my stories into parts of 10K or less I feel I
am making my stories easier to read for people who only have a few
minutes to read usenet.

Besides, breaking stories into smaller parts allows you to cheat: the
recap at the beginning of each issue can pad the issue for you and,
just like in the old movie serials, the cliffhanger at the end of one
issue can be more easily resolved by setting the scene in a slightly
different manner from where you had left off before.  Ha ha ha ha.

(See, Saxon, Psykeye really was part of my overall personality.  Ha ha
ha ha.)

Martin