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Post by creature386 on Apr 13, 2019 20:43:46 GMT 5
I think you should use a text file. While I also love to make a trillion edits, a lot of people will not notice them.
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Post by dinosauria101 on Apr 13, 2019 22:14:22 GMT 5
What is a 'text file'?
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Post by creature386 on Apr 13, 2019 22:16:20 GMT 5
A word document for example where you type your story and save it before you post it here.
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Post by dinosauria101 on Apr 13, 2019 22:30:54 GMT 5
Yeah, that's probably a good idea. That way, as you said, no one would have to keep an eye out for random edits.
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Post by creature386 on Apr 13, 2019 22:35:50 GMT 5
If you're anything like me, you'll likely have to do plenty of edits anyway. But yeah, it wouldn't be as many.
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Post by Infinity Blade on Apr 15, 2019 9:12:19 GMT 5
Having read Ian Mortimer's The Outcasts of Time and having liked it so much, I've been thinking about a similar story premise, but with (sentient, talking) fossil animals.
Basically, what if two terminal Cretaceous denizens (I've had a bird and a mammal, perhaps each with living descendants in mind) are toughing it out during the K-Pg extinction event, but are given the option (by whom?) to live out each of their last several days in a different epoch of the Cenozoic (for what ultimate purpose)? When they wake up, they'll be in the Paleocene and seeing how the world has changed since. When they fall asleep and wake up again, they'll be in the Eocene, and so forth until they reach their final day at some point in the Holocene.
The problem is, as much as I'm inspired by Mortimer's story, I don't want to plagiarize from The Outcasts of Time. And as you can see not even the premise is fully fleshed out. Who or what (that clearly has to be some supernatural being to send creatures forward in time) is giving them this offer? And for what purpose? Maybe the purpose can have an extinction-related theme - after all, they'll be seeing a lot of extinction over time (including the Pleistocene and Holocene extinctions) after experiencing the K-Pg one - but I'm still not sure what to do after that. Mortimer got his story premise fully fleshed out with two medieval peasants toughing it out during the Black Death, seeing their country change over the centuries. I'm not entirely sure what I'll do.
Consider this post as me dipping my finger into the swimming pool of story writing.
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Post by creature386 on Apr 15, 2019 17:34:52 GMT 5
Who? Either sufficiently advanced aliens or a time traveling, god-like wizard.
For what ultimate purpose? The Wizard/Alien is asking for volunteers for their new scientific study.
If you take this approach, I recommend a multiversal time travel mechanism to preserve causality.
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Post by Infinity Blade on Apr 15, 2019 19:34:56 GMT 5
I have an idea for how a scientific study approach might relate to the conflict of the protagonists: they will, along the way, increasingly think of themselves and their former lives as insignificant, seeing everything change around them and future animals hardly remembering, if not forgetting that they even existed.
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Post by creature386 on Apr 15, 2019 19:40:02 GMT 5
That's cool!
If you want the wizard or the alien to be a jerk, perhaps they are kidnapped against their will and they wake up in a new world with no idea why. If you are having a "meaning of life theme" this whole "Why did I find myself in that time period" could be a metaphor for "Why did I find myself in this world at all?". At least, that's a theme I'm trying to establish for my own portal fantasy.
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Post by Infinity Blade on Apr 15, 2019 19:51:05 GMT 5
That would work too...
Maybe I should scrap the living descendants part with at least one of the two (e.g. maybe make the mammal a multituberculate), so the wizard/alien sees how they react when they learn all their lineage died out along the way.
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Post by dinosauria101 on Apr 15, 2019 20:32:40 GMT 5
I too think that could be interesting!
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Post by Infinity Blade on Apr 17, 2019 11:27:39 GMT 5
Who's ready to see my first "chapter" (can't tell if it's too short or not)? Montana, 66 million years ago
It was the dawn of a new era. The beginning of what would be a long period of new chances at life popping up and going, with new lives to replace them. This may have been going on for hundreds of millions of years now, but it was nevertheless the start of a new age.
Whose first several hours were ones of fire, destruction, and death.
This was easily the worst thing that’s happened in Hell Creek in a while. Actually, the worst thing ever. Somehow, it all started with an extremely bright flash of light from the distance, which soon became a brief quake, and a blast that obliterated everyone and everything for miles around. Many of the animals in Hell Creek, and probably most in the entire world, weren’t even entirely sure what happened; there were reports that a giant asteroid hit a peninsula thousands of kilometers away.
Hem’yoc’s biggest concern was the status of her litter. Were they deep enough underground to be safe from the constant barrage of molten rocks bearing down on the land? Their terror, assuming they haven’t been crushed and scorched by some falling rocks, must be unimaginable. And what of her best friend, Chard’maw? She was colossal, how would she find any cover from all of this? Are there even any caves large enough in Hell Creek to house a creature as large as she was? She would have to find out later, as soon as she was done weaving through the hellish landscape with only her right eye to guide her.
Trailing as fast as his two legs could take him right next to her was Flurr’dkick. As he was scurrying across the fiery forest floor, he felt a strange mix of excitement, terror, and confusion. A part of him never felt so alive from dodging fire and falling hunks of molten rock raining down from above, yet another indeed acknowledged the extreme hazards of the situation. Sentiments that may be best described by “WOOOOOHOOOOHHH!!!” and “oh crap”, two words (or variations thereof) that he consistently said as he ran with Hem’yoc.
Eventually it became too much to bear, and Hem’yoc yelled out “SHUT UP!”. “Oh come on”, replied Flurr’dkick. “When am I ever going to get the chance to run through freaking meteorites!?”. Not understanding his logic or thought process (if that’s what it could even be called), Hem’yoc briefly considered a response, but ultimately decided to let the matter go. Spotting a tree with a hollowed out base, she decided “Let’s just catch our breath in there. We’ve been running for who knows how long”. “Aww, but this is really fun”, protested Flurr’dkick. A single glare from the mammal upon hearing this response was enough to get him to comply.
The two briefly stopped inside the tree trunk, looking for any viable subsequent pathways. Hem’yoc is an adult Meniscoessus, having become an adult, mating, and giving birth to a litter not all that long ago. As tended to be the case for mammals, she is not very large. Her fur, excepting the white-ish ventral surface, was sort of grizzled, with the distal ends of her hair being light gray and the proximal ends light brown. Inside her mouth were four pointed incisors, two on either the upper or lower jaw, with these ridged crescent-shaped premolars behind them, and crushing molars behind those: she was an omnivore who could eat tough fibrous plant matter, and even bite into bones. As a youngster, her left eye was gouged out in a violent altercation with an adult Meniscoessus, earning her current name “Hem’yoc” (“hemi” having only half of her eyes she was born with, and OCular).
Flurr’dkick earned his name from his tendency to kick extremely wildly and erratically with his hind legs when threatened; although all of his species did this, he seemed to be extremely quick when he did this. He is a small terrestrial ornithurine with a tawny pelage and rather small wings (betraying his flightless nature). His leg bones were more robust and better adapted to taking stress for a ground-dwelling lifestyle than the legs of arboreal birds, and he was quite a fast runner for an animal his size; certainly faster than Hem’yoc. Each of his toes bore a reasonably developed, lightly curved claw pointed at the tip; these were what made his flurried kicks dangerous to other small animals.
The two creatures were greeted by two feathered beasts almost as quickly as they ceased running. Acheroraptor. Though not the biggest animals by any means, they were still much bigger than either Flurr’dkick or Hem’yoc. To truly cement the threat they posed, they were equipped with a mouth full of serrated teeth with sharp claws on both hands and feet (the latter, of course, having the characteristic sickle claw of the Dromaeosauridae), more than enough to tear apart any mammal or bird that lived in this ecosystem. Flurr’dkick let out a high-pitched yelp and cowered partly behind Hem’yoc at the sight of the two dromaeosaurs; these two Acheroraptor were twin brothers and were well known in Hell Creek. Maybe he could lash out with its own claws, but he preferred to avoid a confrontation, especially when there were two of these predators in front of him.
With a light sigh and an exasperated, yet subtle nervous look (masking uneasy feelings of dread), Hem’yoc asked “Look boys, is…is this really the best time to eviscerate us alive while you squeeze us under your body weight and talons?”, grimacing as she described the macabre modus operandi of the dromaeosaurids; for this reason, she was never all that fond of Acheroraptor, their much larger relatives the Dakotaraptor even less so.
“Eh, maybe not the best time, but still a good enough time”, replied one of the Acheroraptor brothers. “But…sigh…Chard’maw has been wondering where you were, and under threat of tooth, claw, and, well, several thousands of kilograms, we’ve been coerced to scout out the forest and find you”. |
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Post by dinosauria101 on Apr 17, 2019 16:21:12 GMT 5
Say, that's actually pretty good. Nice job Infinity Blade!
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Post by Infinity Blade on Apr 17, 2019 19:21:09 GMT 5
Who's ready to see my first "chapter" (can't tell if it's too short or not)? Montana, 66 million years ago
It was the dawn of a new era. The beginning of what would be a long period of new chances at life popping up and going, with new lives to replace them. This may have been going on for hundreds of millions of years now, but it was nevertheless the start of a new age.
Whose first several hours were ones of fire, destruction, and death.
This was easily the worst thing that’s happened in Hell Creek in a while. Actually, the worst thing ever. Somehow, it all started with an extremely bright flash of light from the distance, which soon became a brief quake, and a blast that obliterated everyone and everything for miles around. Many of the animals in Hell Creek, and probably most in the entire world, weren’t even entirely sure what happened; there were reports that a giant asteroid hit a peninsula thousands of kilometers away.
Hem’yoc’s biggest concern was the status of her litter. Were they deep enough underground to be safe from the constant barrage of molten rocks bearing down on the land? Their terror, assuming they haven’t been crushed and scorched by some falling rocks, must be unimaginable. And what of her best friend, Chard’maw? She was colossal, how would she find any cover from all of this? Are there even any caves large enough in Hell Creek to house a creature as large as she was? She would have to find out later, as soon as she was done weaving through the hellish landscape with only her right eye to guide her.
Trailing as fast as his two legs could take him right next to her was Flurr’dkick. As he was scurrying across the fiery forest floor, he felt a strange mix of excitement, terror, and confusion. A part of him never felt so alive from dodging fire and falling hunks of molten rock raining down from above, yet another indeed acknowledged the extreme hazards of the situation. Sentiments that may be best described by “WOOOOOHOOOOHHH!!!” and “oh crap”, two words (or variations thereof) that he consistently said as he ran with Hem’yoc.
Eventually it became too much to bear, and Hem’yoc yelled out “SHUT UP!”. “Oh come on”, replied Flurr’dkick. “When am I ever going to get the chance to run through freaking meteorites!?”. Not understanding his logic or thought process (if that’s what it could even be called), Hem’yoc briefly considered a response, but ultimately decided to let the matter go. Spotting a tree with a hollowed out base, she decided “Let’s just catch our breath in there. We’ve been running for who knows how long”. “Aww, but this is really fun”, protested Flurr’dkick. A single glare from the mammal upon hearing this response was enough to get him to comply.
The two briefly stopped inside the tree trunk, looking for any viable subsequent pathways. Hem’yoc is an adult Meniscoessus, having become an adult, mating, and giving birth to a litter not all that long ago. As tended to be the case for mammals, she is not very large. Her fur, excepting the white-ish ventral surface, was sort of grizzled, with the distal ends of her hair being light gray and the proximal ends light brown. Inside her mouth were four pointed incisors, two on either the upper or lower jaw, with these ridged crescent-shaped premolars behind them, and crushing molars behind those: she was a herbivore. As a youngster, her left eye was gouged out in a violent altercation with an adult Meniscoessus, earning her current name “Hem’yoc” (“hemi” having only half of her eyes she was born with, and OCular).
Flurr’dkick earned his name from his tendency to kick extremely wildly and erratically with his hind legs when threatened; although all of his species did this, he seemed to be extremely quick when he did this. He is a small terrestrial ornithurine with a tawny pelage and rather small wings (betraying his flightless nature). His leg bones were more robust and better adapted to taking stress for a ground-dwelling lifestyle than the legs of arboreal birds, and he was quite a fast runner for an animal his size; certainly faster than Hem’yoc. Each of his toes bore a reasonably developed, lightly curved claw pointed at the tip; these were what made his flurried kicks dangerous to other small animals.
The two creatures were greeted by two feathered beasts almost as quickly as they ceased running. Acheroraptor. Though not the biggest animals by any means, they were still much bigger than either Flurr’dkick or Hem’yoc. To truly cement the threat they posed, they were equipped with a mouth full of serrated teeth with sharp claws on both hands and feet (the latter, of course, having the characteristic sickle claw of the Dromaeosauridae), more than enough to tear apart any mammal or bird that lived in this ecosystem. Flurr’dkick let out a high-pitched yelp and cowered partly behind Hem’yoc at the sight of the two dromaeosaurs; these two Acheroraptor were twin brothers and were well known in Hell Creek. Maybe he could lash out with its own claws, but he preferred to avoid a confrontation, especially when there were two of these predators in front of him.
With light sigh and an exasperated, yet subtle nervous look (masking uneasy feelings of dread), Hem’yoc asked “Look boys, is…is this really the best time to eviscerate us alive while you squeeze us under your body weight and talons?”, grimacing as she described the macabre modus operandi of the dromaeosaurids; for this reason, she was never all that fond of Acheroraptor, their much larger relatives the Dakotaraptor even less so.
“Eh, maybe not the best time, but still a good enough time”, replied one of the Acheroraptor brothers. “But…sigh…Chard’maw has been wondering where you were, and under threat of tooth, claw, and, well, several thousands of kilograms, we’ve been coerced to scout out the forest and find you”. Just in case anyone's interested: - Here
(hyperlink) is the source for Meniscoessus being herbivorous. It's said for M. major in particular (which my character can't be, as M. major is from the earlier Campanian; I guess my character is M. robustus?), but of course, I'm sure it's a reasonable inference for the later Maastrichtian species. EDIT: after trying to do more research on what specific plants Meniscoessus might eat, I have discovered that it could probably eat animal matter too. Longrich & Ryan (2010) describe bones from dinosaurs, other reptiles, and other mammals with bite marks attributable to multituberculate mammals. One text figure shows bite marks on an ornithischian(?) rib with bite marks matched to the incisors of a multituberculate, showing Meniscoessus as an example. I think it plausibly might have eaten flesh too, or at least supplemented its diet with bones.
- The bird protagonist is based off of a currently unnamed ornithurine taxon found in both the Hell Creek and Fort Union Formations, the latter of which extends to the Danian. According to Wikipedia's page on the Fort Union Formation, a partial coracoid from the formation is identical to those found in the Hell Creek, showing that this bird survived the K-Pg extinction (Longrich et al. (2011)). I guess I can still make it so that the bird at least has living descendants.
- I more or less imagined the bird to look like in this reconstruction. Only ground dwelling birds seem to have survived the extinction, so I imagine the aforementioned ornithurine probably possessed such habits.
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Post by creature386 on Apr 17, 2019 21:08:21 GMT 5
Great work Infinity Blade!
I think the length is right. You set up the conflict, introduced your main protagonists and even included a nice cliffhanger. All you need for now. The only thing missing is a more specific description of the landscape.
I'm not sure about the POV that works best for your story. I know, it was me who recommended everyone to write in omniscient, but that was for stories with protagonists not sapient enough to get in their heads. On the other hand, omniscient might be the story that works best for your type of story. It allows you to name your species, mention some scientific detail and do some head-hopping. You are doing your head-hopping reasonably well with those gradual transitions. So, yeah, stick with omniscient.
A little tip on the dialogue though:
Start a new paragraph whenever there is a new speaker. It's confusing otherwise. The way you're doing it in the end is good. Before, not so much.
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