I did a thing (and you can too)

[AvrosRaven]

I wasn't sure if there was a thread for people's writings that were KanriKyara related, so now I made this. Speaking of which, here's something I wrote (My self insert. take it or leave it, Bob ) 

Raven stepped off the plane, stretching his hands behind him.
“It’s nice to be back in SoCal… ok I barely remember living here, but it’s still nice…” he said, quietly groaning in pleasure as his muscles stretched out. His bones creaked. It hadn’t been a particularly long flight, but it was still enough to make his legs fall asleep.
“I wonder what shenanigans I’m going to get up to while I’m here…” he thought as he walked into the airport proper. He picked up his bags, then set out for Rutgers University.
The ride down to the dormitories in the Uber was quiet. Lines of trees blurred past him, and it put a smile on his face. He had always liked the natural world. Besides, seeing so much green was really nice when he compared it to Arizona, with its rocky greys and browns, and small, compact trees struggling to survive. Here, though, trees grew tall and proud, a stark difference to what he was used to. It was a nice difference though, and he appreciated it. It was a good change.
The car stopped about 20 minutes later. Raven ducked his head out of the car and took his bag from the trunk. He thanked the driver, and tipped him too. Then he ran a hand through his hair as he looked up at the building in front of him. A gust of wind swirled around his body, lightly chilling him. Douglas Garden, a place that had recently had a large uptick in tenants for no apparent reason. A sly grin creeped up his face. This was going to be fun.
Raven stretched after knocking on the door. A man, maybe late thirties, early forties, opened the door. Raven plastered on his “I love people” smile and stuck his thumbs in his pockets.
“Hello! My name is Raven, it’s a pleasure to meet you! Well, it’s not my given name, but here…” he said while he pulled some papers from his bag and handed them to the older man.
“Well, it’s nice to meet you Raven, we’re glad to have you here. Welcome to Douglas Garden, my name is Bob Shroeck, but you can just call me Bob, I suppose,” Bob said in response as he took the papers. Raven stood expectantly. Bob raised an eyebrow looking at the papers. An awkward silence ensued.
“Errrm… can I live here?” Raven asked in an attempt to break the silence. Bob jumped slightly, but smiled.
“Yes, you may. Come in, come in, we’ll just get the tenant contract ready and you’ll be good to go,” he said, waving Raven in. Raven let out a sigh of relief.
‘Well, I’m certainly glad that’s over..’ he thought before following his new landlord into the main office.
The contract signing was anticlimactic. Just a couple of scribbles later, plus a handshake, and he was officially a tenant of Douglas Garden.

[AvrosRaven]

*not me realizing that I forgot to date this* April 25th, 2017.

[robkelk]

Looks like I got the short straw.

This is a ... very-early draft of an introductory scene, before spelling-checking and consistency-checking. It took a while to go through this because the formatting is difficult to read.

Obvious issues:

• Rutgers isn't in SoCal, it's in New Jersey.
  
• Douglass Gardens is also in NJ.
  
• And "Douglass Gardens" is plural. You consistently got the name wrong.
  
• And it isn't a dormitory; it's an apartment complex.
  
• The fastest you can get to Douglass Gardens from the airport is 33 minutes... and that requires taking I-95. The Displaced Mrs. Pollifax has a description of what the end of the drive looks like.
  
• "A gust of wind swirled around his body, lightly chilling him." It's difficult to tell whether there was wind at the time, because Newark on April 25th, 2017 had a mix of windy and calm periods. The temperature was pretty steady in the low-50s Fahrenheit that day, though, so I'm surprised you'd say the wind would only lightly-chill somebody from Arizona – the temperature in Phoenix the same day was in the 70s.
  
• "a place that had recently had a large uptick in tenants for no apparent reason." The introductory story mentions that it just had a huge downtick in tenants.
  
• "A man, maybe late thirties, early forties, opened the door." I wonder who he is, because the wiki doesn't list any males in that age range in residence there. (I suppose it might be Kyusaku Natsume, Takashi Kasuga, or one of the male members of Gorillaz; their ages aren't listed on the wiki.)
  
• Bob's way out of character, compared to the Bob shown in the stories.
  

All of these are easy enough to fix in your next re-write of the scene.

Then there are the not-so-obvious issues.


First, who is this Raven guy, anyway? He's male, he has hair, and he comes from Arizona – that isn't much to make me care about him one way or the other.

Compare the descriptions of the other self-inserts and managers in the introductory story:

• Within three paragraphs of his first mention in the story, we know that the version of Bob Schroeck in the story is old enough that what's left of his hair is a mix of strawberry blond and white, he runs a forum, he takes information security seriously, and he knows Rob.
  
• It takes just as many paragraphs to learn that Rob Donaldson grew up in Ottawa, knows the area that his future residence is in, is retired because he's fed up with office politics, has needed glasses for a while, and knows Bob.
  
• Within five shorter paragraphs, we know that Cassiopée Bright speaks French, was in a dead-end job that she wanted to get out of, and is married to somebody who works at a game company.
  
• And it takes us three paragraphs to learn that Harley Waters is on the outs with his family but not because he wants to be, and loves motorcycles as long as they aren't Harley-Davidsons.
  

Compared to that, "comes from Arizona" isn't much of a hook. Give us a reason to either like or hate this guy.


Second, why put two self-insert characters in the same building?

The premise of the series says "Trustworthy natives (including the self-insert characters of the writing circle, who are outnumbered by original characters) are originally tasked with making sure these "displacees" have a place to live, but will end up taking on additional responsibilities". That's pretty clear. Locals don't get lodging unless they work in a residence; the apartments are for the displacees.

Why not start your own residence building? We have nothing written about Arizona yet, despite there being residences in California and New Mexico. As long as you don't steal anyone else's fictional characters, you have an entire state to tell stories about... and you have a couple of places relatively nearby for your new building's residents to meet.

Again, it's a start. Keep working on it!

[Bob Schroeck]

Why not start your own residence building? We have nothing written about Arizona yet, despite there being residences in California and New Mexico. As long as you don't steal anyone else's fictional characters, you have an entire state to tell stories about... and you have a couple of places relatively nearby for your new building's residents to meet.

I'll add that April 2017 is a great time to have a new residence get established -- which happens because new displacees are inbound to that area. According to our project calendar (which unfortunately isn't in the public part of the wiki) there's only new one residence showing up between early March and late May. (Not "established" or "opened" -- like a few other places it's an entire building complex that gets displaced in its entirety.)

So the process of creating a new residence is pretty simple. You don't have to work it out in this order, but it does make it easier:

1. Figure out who's living there. Who are your displacees? For both meta and in-universe reasons, they'll probably come from one or more of your own fandoms. (But like Rob said, don't poach anyone already in the setting.) Sometimes it's fun to pick characters who'll have some serious fish-out-of-water issues. And don't forget that, like Epsilon, your opinions of your displacees as real people may change from your original opinions of them as characters in a favorite story.
   
2. Remember that your displacees arrive as groups bound by their common fate/destiny. That means their enemies, if any, should also show up -- although they won't arrive in the same place or time. Come to think of it, all the protagonists don't necessarily have to show up at the same time, either -- a good example would be the characters from RWBY, who have arrived in four groups at three different times (and I'm toying with a story idea that will bring in a fifth at yet another time and place).
   
3. Regarding those enemies, don't worry how they'll tie into the overall plot. We can work that out later.
   
4. Once you know who and how many your residents are, look for a real-world location that you can, um, repurpose for your residence. Almost every residence in the project is or was a real building circa 2016. (I can think of only three exceptions to that right now.)
   
5. Check out the residence pages on the wiki for some ideas for how you want to run your residence. Does it operate kind of like a boarding house, like Blossom Apartments, the Beach House or Gulfside Rest, where the residents basically have private rooms and eat communally, and the manager is actively caring for everyone? Or is it a big place like Douglass Gardens, where everyone basically has a complete apartment with their own kitchen and the managers just make sure everything's running on an even keel and no one's wanting for anything? Stories like Rob's and the Moving Days series will give you a good sense of the different management styles, too.
   
6. If your residence is home to more than one band of displacees, how/when do they arrive? At the moment we have only one residence where characters from multiple works all showed up at the same moment, and that was mainly for the dramatic irony as they were all time travelers. In general while the first batch shows up in time for the opening of the residence, it's usually good for story purposes to have other groups show up in waves every week or two until you have your core population in place.
   

That's all the initial advice I can think of right now. I'm sure if there's anything I've overlooked, someone will add it.

[AvrosRaven]

thank you both for your inputs, i greatly appreciate it. although, when you say that "you got the short stick" it feels a little insulting. other than that though, thank you. and yeah, thanks for the inputs, will work on it later

[robkelk]

Sorry, I didn't mean to insult. That was just a comment about being the bearer of the bad news that your scene wasn't ready for prime time. It's a comment on the writing, not on the writer.

[Bob Schroeck]

Coming back a few hours later I just want to note a couple more things:

Wherever possible, we use real places, real events, real weather, and other real things like phases of the moon. All this is pathetically easy to find on the web, and most of it is available in multiple locations. For me, at least, that's part of the deconstruction aspect of the project -- everything that can be real, is real. If you can look it up, don't make it up. This is, of course, for better contrast against the fictional characters who now in the real world.

We do our best to have everything locked down, datewise, so we know what's happening when. For instance, the first six months of 2017 have something like -- Brent, Rob, check me on this? -- five major plot lines all running through them, often intertwining. By the end of June 2017 we'll be demonstrating clearly that the setting isn't static, nor are the characters.

Despite what I noted above, it's not necessary to decide upon your displacees first. I created the Beach House because I thought it was silly that it was easier for the girls at Douglass Gardens to go swimming in the Pacific (via the portal network) than it was for them to swim at the Jersey shore. So I picked a house I knew of in a town near where I grew up and said, "there, that's a residence". Then after I picked a tutelary and created the manager I figured out based on how big it was who to put in it. So you can certainly start with the building if something catches your eye or you already have something in mind.

When it comes to selecting the residents, you can find out exactly what works have already been claimed in the wiki, where we have an Acknowledgments page listing them all, along with their copyright status. Most of them also have their own wiki pages giving capsule descriptions (sometimes from multiple sources) and what elements we're using from them. There's also the Acknowledgments thread here in the forum, which holds the same information as the wiki page.

I do have to admit that I am greatly puzzled how and why you thought Douglass Gardens and Rutgers (The State University of New Jersey) were in Southern California, especially since "New Jersey" appears within three words after the first time my name shows up in the story (as opposed to the credits), and that in a bold header font larger than the regular text. And it gets repeated regularly throughout all the stories my SI appears in, such as when he tells Mamoru and Chibiusa "First, you're in Somerset, New Jersey in the United States." in Like Calls to Like.

If you're really serious about contributing to the project, you've got to understand that we have a very rich, densely-populated setting that's the result of nearly a decade's work, and you need to be aware of it all if only to maintain simple continuity. That's one of the main reasons we have the wiki. That's where you go to find out if we've already decided, say, what Akane Tendo thinks of Utena Tenjou, for instance, and where you go to make sure you don't mistake a fifteen-building garden apartment complex covering several acres in central New Jersey for a small dormitory in Southern California. Not to mention all the managers have their own pages with details on their appearances and personalities, again to maintain continuity across multiple writers and stories.

It's for exactly these reasons I encouraged you to read the wiki before you started writing. If you had read DGA's wiki page, you would not have made those mistakes. (If you had read the stories it's in, you shouldn't have made those mistakes, either, but the wiki has more and more detailed information.) And frankly, the more you read, even if it's just the public information, the better your stories will be, because you can draw on that near-decade's worth of work and use it as a foundation to build on.

Understand that we do want to see more of your writing. But you need to know about the world you're writing for.

[Norgarth]

I volunteered to be a Manager early on,  then realized I had no real ideas to contribute to the setting.

so now my SI is an NPC manager of an apartment complex that had just opened up near me (and available to house displacees that someone wants to use for a specific story but don't need long term, so I wasn't completely useless )

[Bob Schroeck]

so now my SI is an NPC manager of an apartment complex that had just opened up near me (and available to house displacees that someone wants to use for a specific story but don't need long term, so I wasn't completely useless )

Reference link. <grin>

[Norgarth]

huh, I hadn't realized (remembered?) that the Blackadder Goes Forth Crew were there.  There's a Royal Canadian Legion branch within easy walk too.

EDIT: correction, there _was_ a Legion branch nearby, it closed/merged with another branch in '22 (I think), so it's still there in story.

[robkelk]

I volunteered to be a Manager early on,  then realized I had no real ideas to contribute to the setting.

so now my SI is an NPC manager of an apartment complex that had just opened up near me (and available to house displacees that someone wants to use for a specific story but don't need long term, so I wasn't completely useless )

And we'll be seeing a two-chapter story set at that residence Real Soon Now. Unless the schedule changes because somebody else has a different story ready to publish, it's scheduled to be posted to AO3 on April 29 and May 6.

[Bob Schroeck]

huh, I hadn't realized (remembered?) that the Blackadder Goes Forth Crew were there. 

The selection of residents there has changed over the years. For the longest time it just read "Blackadder"; I think it was only two years ago we settled on the "Goes Forth" iteration. The X-Men were dropped during the retcon, and the Stargate cast got their own residence.

[AvrosRaven]

my style of writing is "do absolutely no research and let the masses correct you" at least for now

[robkelk]

my style of writing is "do absolutely no research and let the masses correct you" at least for now

With that style, you'll probably have a lot of trouble fitting in here. It works for solo projects, but not for works with co-authors.

[MilkmanConspiracy]

I’m newish to this work, but I do have a comment as a consumer of media with an interest of local history.

Speaking as someone who read a fanfic that had a scene featuring the roundabout by my place of residence, as well as a notable JRPG that featured a sign for one of the intersecting highways of the roundabout in some random fictional location, I can say that a reader familiar with an area will absolutely pick up on if you grasped the locale right in the work. It’s an incredible feeling to read about a place you know well in fiction, and a letdown if it’s described incorrectly or haphazardly.

[Norgarth]

*reads up on Forest Hold and it's Manager*
Neat.

I had been wondering why they got electricity from BC Hydro, when it was in Washington state, then I saw the map. 8P
I recall hearing that there was one of those geographic oddities over there, like the one wedged in between the provinces of Ontario and Manitoba, and a lake.

[AvrosRaven]

so what im getting is that i need to do research when writing about things here. got it. will do! and not make that same mistake.