Next piece of the jigsaw to find and put into place: Who does perform the kissing? What kind of authority does this?

I could, sort of, propose you something, like it's Ravennin's own father who, after disinheriting him, is compelled to embrace and kiss him, as a sign of his acceptance by a council or something of equal power where he would be outnumbered, and that simple kiss is what Ravennin has been thriving for throughout his life? NOW you would have your real emotional climax, because all the story would be constructed around that single idea and moment. It's not about an egg, it's not about society, it's not about becoming a family. Deep within, it is about being kissed as an equal by his father.

I think it sort of makes sense, now.

Ravennin has been doing it only to get the kiss his father has always refused him and which couldn't be refused in the light of latest events.

Lieann would have done it anyways, alone or with other dragons, just to measure up his own power, against that of his older brother.

Merru would have done it, simply because it was a challenge, and there was nothing he liked more than a challenge, and also because Attranath was in it, and he had a soft spot for his "master".

And Attranath would have done it because there was no helping it, he was part of the "aristocracy" or any other predestined "-cracy" you wish to use, and he HAD to succeed in his task. Only, at a point, the pettiness of his older brother threw him out of his group, and he knew that their father would be disappointed, because it would be either one or the other of his sons which would be successfull. So for once, he felt like he could do it, because he had found someone with more brains and strength than his brother, and believed firmly that he could gain his father's approval, like Ravennin, without ostensibly destroying the esteem that was to be taken to his brother.



And you're right about the high deadborn rate. Only, the reason of the trial should be to hatch an egg and nest it until successful birth, precisely because of the high death rate. The very core of the trial is to find which group is most apt to procreate in large numbers. The quickest on the draw, if I may say so, will be the most successful. And they prove to be fastest and successful. At which point, their fathers will be forced to accept them as equals, despite the obvious flaw in the group of there being no female to hatch, simply because they have managed to go without females altogether.

You're very clever, Mare!!

Why, thank you for saying so! ;) Personally I think if I was really clever I would have gotten plot all sorted out by now...

As for Ravennin's father, hmm... I was thinking that he's the type of person who's never going to change his mind. And him being forced to kiss Ravennin when he didn't want to wouldn't mean anything to Ravennin, it would be like cheating. So maybe instead the kisser should be one of the other semi-villainous characters, maybe someone who quit being friends with Ravennin and Attranath when they got outed, but has decided to be friends with them again with this proof that they are normal in their own way.

For the infertility itself, instead of stillbirths I was thinking the infertility would be a failure of conception, with no eggs produced at all. Because that would provide more reason for brothers and sisters to share mates - even if they couldn't have any children of their own, they could at least help raise their nieces and nephews, who are still somewhat related to them.

But what is the cause of this infertility? Should it be magical, genetic, or environmental? Magical would make sense in the context that the solution to it is going to be magical, but environmental would also fit with the book's theme of adapting to changes in one's environment.


Something else I was thinking about - remember when I said I made an outline of the first chunk of the novel, but I wasn't happy with it? (I think I said that in this thread, maybe... o.O ) I think I figured out why I wasn't happy with it. I was looking at some note from a year or two ago, when I started putting together the concept for the novel, and I found some lists of scenes and tropes I wanted to put in it because they're really fun. Less than 1/4 of these actually made it into the synopsis and plot outline! I'm not happy with it because all the fun stuff is missing! So I guess now I'll sit down with the outline and try to work these things in somewhere, maybe they'll provide nice twists here and there.

Are you teling me that you are trying to write a story, just to see some funny scenes you imagined some years ago being used at some point?

Now, I've got a pretty good idea of why you can't find a plot. You don't want to write this story, you just want to see these scenes... Ok, maybe not as such, but something on the subconscious level is telling me that you don't know how to handle the problem because you don't know what the problem is. And you're not ready to give in anywhere, because to you, it seems fundamental that EVERYTHING you imagined would be cool in such a story should be in, no matter what it takes to put it in. SO what you get in the end is a heap of loosely related ties knotted rather than weaved.

As for the character wich should perform the kiss, you're right, If it was Ravennin's father, Ravennin' wouldn't be pleased. Therefore, I think another solution could be that all the other groups' leaders would have to perform the kiss, in a sort of "medal awarding celebration", in which all the "losing" alphas would have to show their respect to the newer clan leader, by kissing him, sort of like in the Mafia, where you kiss the ring of the don, or in Church, where you kiss the ring of the archbishop... I think that THIS could give both Ravennin and Lieann enough satisfaction, while Merru and Attranath would be pleased to belong to this winning group, and be part of the victory over Society. Through this immense victory, they have given hope to some other homosexual dragons that their innermost being could also exist in this society, while not living entirely up to the "great expectations" of their forefathers.

Okay, bar this one last sentence, it sounds crappy...

Ravennin's father would boil with rage, and do his uttermost to find a gap in the rules of the trial which would rule the group out, but once the other leaders have kissed him, there is no turning back. So I think that the climax of the story should be the kissing the dragons, precisely.

And you should work on the reason why there is a low birthrate. You had imagined earlier (or was it me? can't remember...) that they would be a dying race. Maybe evolution has ruled them out, because there was a reason for them to disappear. Remember "Reign of Fire"? The dragons fed on ashes, and when there wasn't anything more to eat, they would go to sleep for a millenium or so. Maybe for them, there is no sleep to go to? I'm not saying that they should be starving, only that there should be something in their biology that should have started ticking some time ago, and made them come close to extinction.

Can't think of a reason for that. Maybe some strange disease which kills most babies while still in the egg? Maybe there is a bacteria or something that likes to eat the shells of eggs? Therefore all oviparians are doomed to extinction in les than two generations? And the dragons have to go viviparians real soon? And they don't know how to, until Merru? They would be magical viviparians?

Ok, enough of that. Sleep on it and tell me what you think tomorrow... See you!

I don't think my outline suffers from not being well-woven, and I don't think working these fun scene ideas in will cause that problem either, I understand that every scene has to contribute to moving the plot along; carry its own weight, as it were. What was making me unhappy was that the story as outlined isn't the story I want to write; not quite, anyway. My hunch is that working these scene ideas in will actually improve the outline, but even if the outline's quality stays the same it will improve my motivation to write the story. An essential factor, don't you agree? ;) It would be pretty lame if we did lots of work to come up with an outline and then I didn't feel like writing about it.

But let me explain what I mean by fun scene ideas, and maybe you'll agree that they can be worked in easily. I wanted a scene where somebody loses a bet to a beta male and Merru steps in to rescue them. I wanted a scene where Lieann is afraid of Merru because some badguys have placed the two of them together with the intention of Merru hurting Lieann. I want to have some funny scenes involving dragons in heat and alpha males reacting to heat-scent, because otherwise there's no point having heat cycles in their biology. Same thing with dragons inebriated by muskfroth and Merru unaffected by it. I want to have a scene with Merru grooming Attranath, and another with Merru grooming Lieann. I want Attranath to wear a collar and Merru to dye his feathers black so he is mistaken for a real alpha male. And the list goes on.

I must have misunderstood your plan, I thought you wanted to involve comic scenes, for the sake of having these comic scenes in your story, which made les and less sense to me. Sorry for my own stupidity...

But all the scenes you described me where not comical at all! They were full of meaning, and merely gave an insight at the way the dragons act and react, and why Merru cannot ba a dragon, because he doesn't react in the same way. Nothing strange here, and the comic effect is only a byproduct of the situation.

As for your problem, for I really think you DO have a problem here, there is nothing that can be done. As far as I understand it, you love writing, but don't know what the hell you should write. SO you cling to the idea of unveiling the big picture at one point, and allow yourself to dream about it by notes. You sincerely have no idea of what your story is telling apart from the love story and the society things, and that puts you to bogus, because you sense it is one great story. Only it has no facts to evolve from. You DO have glimpsed at some facts within the story, but don't know what they mean and how they relate, because there are too many prerequisite. Too many things you have wished previously, and feel need be included.

It is okay, with me. But you're not one of my characters, and I can't decide for you what you should think. People have a habit of thinking along a single line of thoughts. Those who can do it along more than one become either writers, and tell stories, or politicians, and tell stories anyway. I am desperately trying to find that or those lines of thoughts, but it's like trying to find the forest hidden by the trees. Or trying to make sense of the movie by simply seeing a number of pictures, and nothing is supposed ot be in its right place. It's more like trying to assemble a jigsaw in the dark, and not knowing if all the pieces are there. If we are to assemble ALL the pieces together, and make them a complete image, I think that, at least, giving us some light could be a good idea. And possibly counting the pieces too.

Since this thread was originaly about a mind monolog experiment, which was more or less quickly abandonned to the profit of this four-handed creational process, I propose that, just for a while, we go back to the beginning, and try to make sens eof the way a story is created for you. When I know how you think, I may be able to think about it like you, and fill in the gaps, by adding something you haven't thought about previously. I admit that, so far, I have thought about putting into places the pieces of the jigsaw the pictures of which I remembered, but the gaps had to be filled, so I either invented some, or cut some others in order for them to fit. And the problem now is that when you accepted those cut pieces, the jigsaw could never be complete again, because there would be another gap somewhere else. This is a NEW jigsaw being assembled. And something else must be cut again to fit in the holes. New facts. A new series of facts going from point A to B to C and ultimately D, since you want this progression.

So this time, I would like you to ARGUMENT, EACH TIME, the progression of the story. We are going to prune together what should and should not be there. First progression Point A to Point D. Beginning and End. Even better: Start with the premises, and give me the end, the goal you are tending to. You tell me why you chose this particular setting, this particular set of characters, this particular ending, this particular scene, everything. If you can't tell why you have chosen such a feature, then it can probably be removed from the plot. And we're "back at the ol' drawing board" with a lighter burden.

Good luck, and I hope I am not being too directive, but this time, I am beginning to be bored with feeling my way to somewhere, and not knowing where you are leading me to. Once again, I apologize for my harsh words. And I hope you will want to keep working on it, it has been thrilling and keeping my brain going for the past two or three months, I am not willing to give it up now.

Thank you for the time we share.

"As far as I understand it, you love writing, but don't know what the hell you should write."

Hmm. I would say that I have small ideas about what I should write, but they don't naturally add up to any sort of plot structure. This is a problem, but I was under the impression we had almost solved it, since I do have an outline of a plot structure now and it does at least half of what I want it to do, tweaking and fine-tuning should be able to get it to most of what I want it to do.

But, I'm always happy to explain how I think. There are a heck of a lot of premises and themes that have gotten woven into my novel concept, but I'll try to list the main ones.

1) What is love? Love is friendship + passion + commitment. This is something of a mystery to me because I am by nature a calm person, not a passionate or (possessive) one, and I have something of a fear of commitment, and the clear line that other people seem to see between friendship and attraction is very blurry to me. So I wanted to explore these mysteries and this equation with a novel. Merru is much like me in that he is calm, sees no difference between a friend and a casual lover, tries to avoid commitment and responsibility, but needs to finde love to be complete. Attranath has a strong instinct for commitment which Merru studies and admires, and his innocence and vulnerability compel Merru to take responsibility for him. Lieann is passionate and possessive, and these traits call forth and answering passion and possessiveness that Merru didn't know he had. Ravennin has the strong instinct to take responsibility as a leader, which relieves Merru of the burden of being a leader and allows him to take his true role of being an advisor/teacher/mother type instead.

2) Responsibility, commitment, and posessiveness all have to do with freedom. I chose to make Merru a construct who was treated like an animal, and later will be captured and/or blackmailed by Lieann, because these scenarios give me the opportunity to explore what sorts of freedom Merru has and needs. Lieann is also an interesting example of a type of freedom because while the other three characters worry about being diplomatic, Lieann knows he can't please anybody anyway so he is free to just say whatever is on his mind, insults and all.

3) I think the biggest cause of problems and unhappiness in our society is that people are sheep, who don't even realize how their freedom is crippled by the social prejudices and preconceptions they have been taught, and which can inspire others to violently deny and condemn anyone who doesn't behave 'normally' and 'decently'. Lieann and Merru show two different approaches to trying to fight these prejudices and free Ravennin and Attranath from their crippling preconceptions.


How's that for a start?



Also, I don't understand what you mean by "I would like you to ARGUMENT, EACH TIME, the progression of the story." Could you please give an example? I would like to do this, it seems like it might be useful, I'm just not sure what you actually want me to write.

I definitely do want to actually damn well write this novel, and I'm glad that you want to keep helping. :)

What I meant was something along the lines of:

"I have decided to write a story about four guys overcoming society's prejudices. I definitely feel it should be guys, because there is actually much prejudices against homosexuals in out society, and since I am interested in Shoujo Manga, I thought I could write something involving some soft sex scenes convincingly enough to make it worth reading. I think it is my forte.

Why four? Because of the group dynamic I am intending to use, like a waltz or something of a square dance (swap-your-partner-hop-si-do...) Plus I have this image of my protagonists. Most of their character is already drawn out. There are still some reactions I miss, but I plan on finding out what they would think in such and such situation.


Why they should overcome prejudices? Well, this is the basic of the story. It culminates in them overcoming the prejudices. (can you tell me what prejudices and how they do that?) Not yet, sorry. But am working on that.

Why should they be prejudiced by society instead of a group, or their very situation? Well, since I went the homosexual way, I think it was the easiest way of doing things: They are prejudiced by society for being homosexual. Period. (Maybe you could explain WHY they are prejudiced for being homosexual, eh?)

And I have decided it would be a dragon society. Why? Well, because it wold add a more alien landscape to the story. If it was about four guys in manhattan, everybody would overlook it. Moreover, I love Fantasy, and want to dig into this pool. But to make it interesting and easier for me to introduce the reader slowly to the world, I want to make one of the characters a human, newcomer to this world. Maybe give him a dragon shape, i don't know yet. (Is the dragon shape important to the ending?) Yes probably, because I want them to be homosexual, not zoophiles... (Ah, yes, sorry...)"

Well, sort of thing.

Ok, now, let me discuss what you've been saying...

Quote: 1) What is love? Love is friendship + passion + commitment. This is something of a mystery to me because I am by nature a calm person, not a passionate or (possessive) one, and I have something of a fear of commitment, and the clear line that other people seem to see between friendship and attraction is very blurry to me. So I wanted to explore these mysteries and this equation with a novel. Merru is much like me in that he is calm, sees no difference between a friend and a casual lover, tries to avoid commitment and responsibility, but needs to finde love to be complete. Attranath has a strong instinct for commitment which Merru studies and admires, and his innocence and vulnerability compel Merru to take responsibility for him.(what are the reasons of this compulsion? Why does he feel compelled to do so?)Lieann is passionate and possessive, and these traits call forth and answering passion and possessiveness that Merru didn't know he had. Ravennin has the strong instinct to take responsibility as a leader can you tell me what kind of instinct, do you think a natural born leader should have and that is NOT found in anybody else in this group? , which relieves Merru of the burden of being a leader and allows him to take his true role of being an advisor/teacher/mother type instead.

Quote: 2) Responsibility, commitment, and posessiveness all have to do with freedom. I chose to make Merru a construct who was treated like an animal, and later will be captured and/or blackmailed by Lieann, because these scenarios give me the opportunity to explore what sorts of freedom Merru has and needs. Lieann is also an interesting example of a type of freedom because while the other three characters worry about being diplomatic, Lieann knows he can't please anybody anyway so he is free to just say whatever is on his mind, insults and all.

Ok, so that gives you Liean's behavior throughout the story. Does that help you see how he should react to help your story unfold? Then can you figure to WHAT he has been reacting, in order to get where he is supposed to be?

Quote: 3) I think the biggest cause of problems and unhappiness in our society is that people are sheep, who don't even realize how their freedom is crippled by the social prejudices and preconceptions they have been taught, and which can inspire others to violently deny and condemn anyone who doesn't behave 'normally' and 'decently'. Lieann and Merru show two different approaches to trying to fight these prejudices and free Ravennin and Attranath from their crippling preconceptions.

GOOD!! This gives you ONE more natural behavior for your characters, which means that you now intimately know both Merru and Lieann. But you said that there were four. How are supposed to evolve Attranath and Ravennin? What is it that gets them going? How do they talk? What are their personal goals, and their personal ways of pursuing them? How will they be changed?

Quote: Also, I don't understand what you mean by "I would like you to ARGUMENT, EACH TIME, the progression of the story." Could you please give an example? I would like to do this, it seems like it might be useful, I'm just not sure what you actually want me to write.

What I meant is that you should be able to tell WHY the things are happening. As I said earlier in this thread, litterary causality is NOT an option (it happens THIS way instead of a more natural or easy one, because I need this as an aftermath...)

Tell you what. Let's pretend you are a coroner and you have to make an autopsy of your world building, what will you find in it? What was the previous state of your society? And the previous? Where do they come from? How did they evolve into society? What were their ancestors like? (yeah, I KNOW we've been through this already, but maybe we've missed something, and I'll feel all the better for putting it together once again.) Why do they live the life they live? why are they prejudiced against homosexuals? Why do these four young ones have to meet in the first place?

Oh, you want me to give a rationale for each of my worldbuilding choices. Ok, I can do that. What I originally thought was that you wanted me to post my current chapter outline and analyze it chapter by chapter to see if I was happy with it and if not, what should be tweaked to make me happy with it. I want to do this too, although I should probably get more than 14 chapters (out of about 45) of the outline typed up first. ;)

Okay why 4 male characters? There are several reasons for this, but they add up to the fact that a gay romance story is more esthetically pleasing to me than a straight romance story. (The individual reasons adding up to this are: I have difficulty thinking of female personalitites as romantic. Because of this I am much more motivated to write male characters than female characters. When I am at the bookstore I am always frustrated because there aren't enough gay romance novels to read. Because I have read more gay erotica than straight erotica I am more familiar with how to write it. I know there is a fairly large audience of women who love gay romance novels because I've met so many of them in varius anime, science fiction, and fantasy fangroups - it's an underexploited market where I could make a big name for myself. I decided to go with fairly explicit sex scenes because that's what this audience wants and I enjoy writing them. I decided against doing a bisexual romance because these work better with groups of 3 characters than groups of 4 characters, and because the market for these is actually much smaller than the market for a homosexual romance.)

Also, forbidden romances in general are fun, and prejudice against homosexuality is a good way to create forbiddenness and study the issue of the difference between what is socially acceptable and what is morally acceptable. Prejudice against homosexuality is an excellent choice of prejudice for exploring how preconceptions cripple people and why it is urgent to free your mind from these preconceptions and instead pursue what makes you happy. It is great for this for several reasons: Loneliness and sexual desire are one of the strongest possible character motivations, as well as being inherently enjoyable to read about and symathetic to most readers. Homosexuality is a behavior expressing an instinct one begins to feel as a young adult, rather than a condition one is born into. So the characters' conscious struggle with it and adaptation to it makes prejudice against homosexuality better to write about than prejudice against race, gender, etc. And homosexuality does not harm anyone or have much effect on anyone who does not choose to participate in it; prejudice against homosexuality is motivated purely by people's fear of anything different, so it's a good example of a prejudice to argue against because you don't get bogged down in wondering whether it might be beneficial or self-defensive to be prejudiced against it, as you might if you wanted to arge about, say, drug use instead.



Now I'll answer your questions about the characters. :)

Quote: Attranath's innocence and vulnerability compel Merru to take responsibility for him.(what are the reasons of this compulsion? Why does he feel compelled to do so?)

Merru believes that because the universe is not inherently kind and fair the way it should be, it is the duty of humans to work to make it as kind and fair as possible. So since Merru is intelligent and good at seeing the problems that keep people like Attranath from being happy, it is his civic duty to do what he can to help them solve their problems. But Merru is a free agent and his own happiness comes first... UNTIL he becomes friends with Attranath. Since Attranath gives Merru his loyal friendship, Merru must in return take responsibility for helping and protecting Attranath. (It's the same as with Lieann and passion, only Merru and Lieann have an equal relationship whereas Merru and Attranath have a big brother/little brother relationship.)

Quote: Can you tell me what kind of instinct, do you think a natural born leader should have and that is NOT found in anybody else in this group?

While Merru takes responsibility because someone ought to and he's good at it, even though it wears at him, Ravennin thrives on having responsibility, giving orders, protecting others. So Ravennin's instinct is to take responsibility and give orders, and what he wants in return is people to be grateful for his leadership and want to be possessed by him. This, in turn, is what Attranath excells at - being possessed, being a loyal helpful follower who needs protected and admires his leader. So Ravennin and Attranath are evolved further in relation to each other, as a dominant/submissive pair.

They are also further evolved by my desire to present characters who demonstrate a complete spectrum of masculinity: Ravennin is a man's man who prefers actions to words, Lieann has a masculinely aggressive personality in a feminine body, Merru has a gender neutral personality in a masculine body, and Attranath has a feminine personality in a mediumly masculine body. In some ways the novel is intended as a Men's Studies book, like many of my favorite sociological science fiction novels were intended as Women's Studies books.


Okay, now I'll go back to working on my outline for a while. ;) Tell me what else you want me to explain my reasons for. The clan-based society maybe?

Well, I think we covered the bases with the clan society. More or less. Maybe we should see that again. But most of all, I would like you to tell me where everything begins. When it begins. And if possible, why it begins. You made it clear for the characters, now, I would like to make it clear for the rest of the world. There are supposed to be more than four characters in this story, so how are they related to the four main characters, and what are THEIR personal goals in this story?
Are they an opposing force to one or more character? Are they bystanders? Are they competitors (opposing force, but not prejudiced against them?) Tell me more about those secondary roles, and what part they should get.

Well, there are more than 4 characters, but none of the other characters are Primary characters; they don't evolve during the course of the story, and their goals aren't particularly important. The purpose of the secondary characters is to represent a cross-section of dragon society. (Lol I'm thinking of Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_) The function of society is mainly to watch the characters and comment on their actions. These comments are often embarrassing, sometimes condemning or misleading, and occasionally insightful or spurring a character to a resolve. Society may also give orders, mainly to Attranath and Ravennin, provide settings such as a training exercise or a party, and be an obstacle by withholding approval until the climax where it is compelled to give its approval. So, in general Society doesn't take any actions, it just talks.

Society's characterization is that it likes tradition, pomp, and order, and is family-oriented and protective of children. So it fears anything different because it might be a threat to the things Society is protecting.

I haven't firmly decided on the specific characters who will make up society, but Ravennin's big sister will probably be a voice of reassurance and wisdom, as well as an example of motherhood, and there will be an arrogant bossy conservative alpha male relative or two who will criticize Attranath and/or Ravennin and try to make them be 'normal'.