Stories in your stories

Just a random question.

Do your stories have some other form of fiction, like myths, books, TV shows, movies and such?

In one of the stories I'm working on the main characters listen to radio shows and watch TV programs that were actually made for and by one of the other races in the story, who have way better technology and thus better quality programs. But it's kind of interesting because through the shows you sort of get another perspective on that race though their stories. Which are the typical romance-type stuff and action stuff. It sort of gives them more humanity, because—well, not most—but a lot of the villains are from said race, (though there are heroic characters from said race as well).

edited 19th Dec '11 9:19:48 PM by NoirGrimoir

Yes, I like to flesh out my world by giving it's people something to entertain themselves with, and stories have always been useful for that. My characters grew up listening to the tales of the knights of old, like The Five of Derek-Troy, or "Mad" Casey. One character really took the old legends to heart and tries to mimic them. Its very important to her character.

It's a film that begins the conflict in my story, actually. And one character's journal becomes a best-seller after its published posthumously.

Why do you ask?

edited 19th Dec '11 9:11:50 PM by Parable

That's a very interesting and effective way to use Show Within a Show.

edited 19th Dec '11 9:11:23 PM by dRoy

Um... yes?

One of my main characters is a travelling bard, so yeah. But most of them are adaptions of real life folk stories/myths. Like I'm pretty sure Orpheus' trip to the underworld will be included somewhere.

Yep. The opening page of Reclamation is actually an account of a creation myth. . . which is then immediately dismissed as utter bullshit by the narrator.

May I read the excerpt, if you don't mind?

edited 19th Dec '11 10:18:04 PM by dRoy

Does it ever come up again?

edited 19th Dec '11 10:28:34 PM by NoirGrimoir

In the beginning, before time and space, there was the Chaos. Through this immaterial realm roamed the Incarnations, masses of the basic physical elements and spiritual concepts not yet named. Where a Physical and Spiritual Incarnation touched, they left behind a Spirit, which had both a solid form and a driving force, but no true mind. Where these met, they created hybrids, possessed of two elements and emotions. When every combination had formed, every element and every concept contained within one vessel, all was complete. The High One had been born, a being immeasurable to our minds. It took forth the components it had ascended from and created the world, the sun, the moon, and all living things. It made Humanity, its perfect creation, and it created the Synagogue, to teach and guide the human race, to protect them, to watch over them. And we carry our duty to this day, and some day you will too."

The monk completed his speech to the new wave of initiates.

It was bullshit, mind you. To give the man credit, he believed wholeheartedly believed it, but nonsense given a shrine is still nonsense.

The plot of the book is about the Synagogue. So yeah. A lot.

edited 19th Dec '11 10:31:12 PM by Exelixi

Who is the narrator? Why was he listening?

edited 19th Dec '11 10:37:32 PM by dRoy

Yvonne, listening because he's hiding in the room, because he's attempting to take something very important from the head cenobite.

Ah, so he's a thief?

Kind of. Not often as significant material.

At one point, Innocence Lost was going to have a long poem running across the length of the book, with one line per chapter, but I gave up on it because 1) I'm shit for poetry and 2) there was no way I could make the poem long enough and keep it coherent.

Damn tab key.

Anyhow, this poem was actually supposed to have been, in-universe, written about one of the main characters, but I split that character and significant changed the plotline, so that also didn't help the idea...

edited 19th Dec '11 11:02:27 PM by USAF713

Roy: He's a lot of things. "Thief" is one of them.

@Exe - Ah, I see. Can you tell me what the other things are, if you don't mind?

Depends on what he needs to be. He's been in Iris' employ for a good two decades, and Iris has rather diverse plans.

So he's kind of like a multipurpose mercenary/elite soldier?

Stroke alchemical abomination, yes.

No, but now that you mention it that's something I should start thinking about. It's an interesting way to expose a culture.

And I have to say, that's a rather unusual creation myth.

I hate to be a wet blanket, but a lump of indigestible exposition is not at all an unusual way to describe a culture. I can't recommend it, either, since it is a good way to turn your reader off right away.

I didn't misread. I disagreed.

edited 20th Dec '11 12:51:02 AM by AManInBlack

It appears you've misread. I said that it's an interesting way to expose a culture. I also said that as far as creation myths go, that one was unusual.

Also, one should be careful when making affirmatives about what is "indigestible" and what is not. Different people have different ideas about what's digestible. As long as it has a clear relation to the plot, I don't think spending a paragraph or two on a folktale or myth is an unforgivable sin.

one parable about a man, from an advanced industrial age region of the world, who shipwrecks in a land that's yet to catch on. He falls in love with a regional authorities daughter. The authority takes advantage of this and convinces his daughter to ask him to build whatever they needed. In his love he would create all manner of machines and devices from weapons to aircraft, all in hopes that he would one day please them enough to be allowed to marry his love. one day, when the land is at war and needs a weapon of untold power, he is asked to build one. The night before he would have finished it he dies of exhaustion. Because of the leaps and bounds he made they had no understanding of what he had built and therefore could barely maintain what they had, let alone finish his ultimate weapon. The kingdom falls and young woman wrought with guilt takes her own life.

No, bro, that was misreading. The two of you are talking about radically different things.

Also, nine sentences is just barely pushing the upper norm for a paragraph.

Yo dawg, I heard you like stories, so we put a story in your story, s- *shot*

In any event, I have a flashback at the beginning of a story I'm writing, being told to a third party as a "tale from the past", but it gets cut-off at a decisive moment. Everyone in-universe believes that one of the characters in said flashback did something unspeakably evil at that point, but the end of the story then proceeds to show the rest... and it turns out he didn't, someone else did and pinned it on him.

There's also a creation myth that turns out to be a well-disguised lie, down to a false deity appearing. That said, at the moment, it merely appears in my story plans and has not yet actually been written in.

edited 20th Dec '11 1:49:19 AM by burnpsy