Discussion SoYouWantTo / SeeTheIndex

For those unaware, a new LTP thread has been created to deal with this namespace.

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I don't know whether or not anyone has noticed this, but I can't ignore that many entries in the So You Want To index are highlighted in red rather than blue. Observant eyes would see this on the Tabletop RPG section, Suggested Pages, So You Want to Write a Genre, So You Want To Stand Out In a Medium, and So You Want To Write The Next Great Work.

If anybody has an explanation for this, I would love to know whether any of them can be filled in like the other pages in this index - the usual introduction, choices and pitfalls, suggested plots, etc.

Yet who would've thought fiction to have so much tropes in them? Hide / Show Replies

Hey, dumb question, should we make a section for writing "specific" fanworks, not like "So you want to write the next <Insert thing here>" But it's like "So you want to write a Star Wars fan work"

And in it, is specific things you need, like stuff inside this universe that's important, how things work, suggestions on what you could write in this franchise, etc.

Edited by TheScarletMercenary

I’m gonna make a suggestion, “So you want to make a character customizer”

Can we actually write something up for "Write a Complete Monster" than just link it to How to Be a Complete Monster? Something more professional and comprehensive.

I noticed a few items that I wouldn't mind having on the "So You Want To Write [Insert Genre Here]".

Ex: -Science Fantasy -Fantasy Americana

Also, whoever wrote "So You Want to Write A Cloudcukoolander" and "So You Want to Write A Urban Fantasy", thanks.

When will the 'write a character archetype' gonna be written? I certainly can't wait for the'write a goth'advice be upload. Or it will be me (as an editor) to write an article?

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This is getting out of hand. We have more suggestions now than we do articles and its rapidly becoming painfully obvious none of them are getting written any time soon. Perhaps someone should write a "So You Want to Write a So You Want To" to make these more accessible, or perhaps put some sort of task force together. Maybe just have rough drafts drawn up to be built off of so people who think they know better can add to and change it. Either way I'd hate to see the page become an endless list of genres with "So You Want to Write" tacked in front of them.

Edited by Wackd Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies. Hide / Show Replies

I'm thinking of dividing the main list into sub-sections because it's getting pretty long. Frex, fantasy, scifi, and romance, each based on the predominating genre in case of a conflict.

I think that this will make it easier to go through the list and find what you're looking for, and especially make it easier to see if anything new has appeared in a genre that you care about (instead of having to skim the whole list).

Does anyone have an objection to this?

Somebody hasn't actually written the "So You Want to Write a Deconstruction"? Doesn't sound like it would take that long. Then again, I'm a little too nervous to write one. :P

Thanks for playing King's Quest V!

Why isn't The Lord Of The Rings on the Groundbreaking Works list? Surely it qualifies more than most of those examples.

Any chance we could, I dunno, freeze the page and prevent more suggestions until some of these suggestions become articles?

Maybe you'd be less disappointed if you stopped expecting things to be Carmen Sandiego movies. Hide / Show Replies

I'm eventually going to get around to writing a Functional Magic how-to. Sutff I'm going to include:

• Elemental Powers
• Magic A Is Magic A
• The difference methods (Inherent Gift, Rule Magic, etc.).
• The fact that if you establish rules for for universe, you'd better have a very good reason for a character breaking them. An example is if a mage can only control one or two elements, then having your character control all of them risks becoming a God-Mode Sue. An example where this would be okay would be if [Avatar:The Last Airbender s/he is the incarnation of the planet].
• Limitations on mage's powers.
• Different magical creatures like [Physical God gods], fairies and others.
• Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards
• Examples of great series would be Harry Potter, The Dresden Files, Tamora Pierce, Charmed, Dungeons And Dragons, Discworld, and maybe others.

If anyone has some suggestions, feel free to state them. I'm also having trouble with a system of "reality warping" magic.

I just found this So You Want To Project and I kindof want to write a section about how suspense is created. I didn't find anything about that and didn't read of it anywhere in the existing sections. I kind of doubt that such a thing can be simply forgotten, so why is there no part about tension/excitement/suspense? Any reason for me not to start writing tips on this? And if I do, where can they be best implemented?

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I'm planning to make a So You Want To Write a Visual Novel page even though I, uh, haven't actually made any. -_- If someone else is up to the task, go ahead. I'll just read some of the other so you want to stuff before I start so that I'm not redundant.

Hmm, the Dating Sim section will probably have some overlap. While a Romance Visual Novel is technically not a Dating Sim, they tend to have similar plots because they are both Romance genre and they are both text heavy. I'll leave it alone.

I started the page today. I'll finish it and add it on to the index by tomorrow.

Gah, it's taking longer than I thought. I'm on the final stretch though.

EDIT: Done. Well, I get the feeling something is missing, but I'll sleep on it.

Edited by encrypted12345 Full Battle Mode

This is the best index ever!

Personally, I'm still waiting for pages on "How to Write a Satire/Deconstruction", among others, since I don't know if I can write it myself. Anyone up for it?

Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story?

Alright, so over the last three hours I have made some significant changes to this page. It's taken ten edits (the last was just for a single typo...) but it's done! Here's an overview of what I did:

- Completely reorganized the Suggestions Section. All suggestions are now in separate categories- the same ones as the existing article, in order of appearance, and all alphabetized- with most (some were existing articles by this time) of the suggestions in the first Discussion post added. It should now seem more streamlined even though there are many new ones from that post. I combined a few like Pick Your Own Adventure and Choose Your Own Adventure, discarded some like Spy Thriller- we already had Spy Fiction- and the like, but I have not actually added any suggestions of my own (well, not since the three I added months ago anyway). I made a Word document that included all works in the suggestions area as well as those in the Discussion post to help me organize and arrange things, and I've made sure to not miss anything. If it seems like I skipped something, it was either an existing page or able to be merged with another suggestion. I did not strike any out of personal taste. There were a few renames as well such as changing "Write An Animated Movie (Disney, Don Bluth, etc.)" to "Write A Children's Animated Movie" as it says what the other does without needing examples.

- To accommodate a decent portion of suggestions I have actually made two new categories for the main article.

Creator Jobs

I added this as there were several suggestions such as "Cast A Hollywood Blockbuster" or "Be An Animator" that didn't really fit anywhere else. They wouldn't really belong in the famous creators section, so I made a new one specifically for people who want to pursue these types of jobs/careers. The only one already written is "Be A Booker" but there are a few in the suggestions area, so please write those to supplement it. Those articles should detail the duties of such a job and preferably also how to get them. Some, like "Cast A Hollywood Blockbuster" imply you already have it; add how to get it anyway, while still detailing the best advice on what to do once the job is already attained that you can think of.

Story Aspects, Scenes and Large Ideas

I added this one at the very end because I realized about 2/3 through this task that there were about ten (actually eleven upon reviewing) suggestions that STILL wouldn't fit anywhere else. Many of these came from the Discussion post, but some were already in the article. These suggestions were for parts of a story that wouldn't fit in the genre section because they were too narrow; they didn't fit as entire genres OR they were too broad, like Deconstructions. The broad ones weren't confined to a specific genre, yet they were still good ideas for articles in the index. It's nice to have a decent guide to writing a Spiritual Sequel or a Deconstruction. Yet they still didn't fit as "basics" at the top of the article. I was originally going to separate these "too narrow" and "too broad" suggestions into two articles, but I felt that we've already got plenty of sections as is and I'm adding more already. In the end I figured it would work to shoehorn these into a "Just don't really fit into the basics or genres sections but still have to do with plotting." article. Notice there aren't any character suggestions in the section given; it's for plot, theme, and dealing with tropes themselves (like Deconstructions). Currently there isn't a single finished article in the section; I decided to put it in the main area anyway so people would know what that break in the suggestions area was, and also because I feel it really would be useful. As there are no existing pages here yet, please make this (and the other new section with one article) your top priority.

- I completely changed what it says at the top concerning the suggestions section (before it said to take them all to the discussion area, and that wasn't being followed anyway) briefly detailing how it's arranged. I also added a new part about expanding existing works as I know of at least one that I noticed when clicking some links to check things (Stephen King) that need expanding. I imagine there are others I didn't see as well.

All in all from the start right around 6:00 AM to finishing this write-up right at 10:00 AM (I'm in PST, just so you know) it's taken me a good four hours! I did not expect it to take that long or as many edits as it did, but it's now done. I hope you all approve of my changes, and feel free to comment or critique it, even if you think it was unnecessary (personally I think it will be quite helpful in the future but I know not everyone may agree). If there is anything you truly find to just not work, please change it. But please post about it here when you do.

EDIT: Oh, and more more thing. I also gave rather detailed notes in each of my edits. If you want to know some of the more specific things I did, I suggest looking there.

Edited by MrZAP

The following entries were zapped for being suggestions on the main page. No objections to that, but I'm listing them here because...well, because the discussion page is where suggestions belong.

• So You Want To Write An Adventure Story
• So You Want To Write An Animated Comedy (The Simpsons, Family Guy, King Of The Hill, etc.)
• So You Want To Write An Animated Movie (Disney, Don Bluth, etc.)
• So You Want To Write A Bestseller
• So You Want To Write A Choose Your Own Adventure
• So You Want To Write A Christmas Story
• So You Want To Write A Dark Fantasy
• So You Want To Write An Educational Cartoon
• So You Want To Write A Fighting Game
• So You Want To Write A Hentai OVA
• So You Want To Write A Heroic Bloodshed Movie
• So You Want To Write A High School Sitcom
• So You Want To Write A Hispanic Style Soap Opera
• So You Want To Write A Horror Game
• So You Want To Write An Interactive Fiction
• So You Want To Write A Narrative or Epic Poem
• So You Want To Write A Pirate Story
• So You Want To Write A Police Procedural
• So You Want To Write A Rock Opera
• So You Want To Write A Satire
• So You Want To Write A Screwball Comedy
• So You Want To Write A Sentai Show
• So You Want To Write A Short Story
• So You Want To Write A Side-Scrolling Platformer (Mario)
• So You Want To Write A Space Fighters Series
• So You Want To Write A Space Western
• So You Want To Write A Sprite Comic
• So You Want To Write A Space Opera
• So You Want To Write A Shoujo Series
• So You Want To Write A Steampunk Story
• So You Want To Write A Thriller
  • So You Want To Write A Spy Thriller
• So You Want To Write A Time Travelogue
• So You Want To Write A Trailer
• So You Want To Write An Urban Legend
• So You Want To Write A Visual Novel
• So You Want To Write A Webtoon
• So You Want To Write a Plot-ful Shonen-ai/Yaoi Story
• So You Want To Write A War Movie
• So You Want to Write An Adventure Game

For parts of works:

• So You Want To Be original.
• So You Want to Write A Climactic Battle
• So You Want to Write A Clip Show
• So You Want to Write A Death
• So You Want to Write A Dream Sequence
• So You Want to Write A Pilot Episode
• So You Want to Write A Wedding

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