Random Questions Thread

To the first, it depends heavily on the characters and their situation, I'd say; there is no single answer here.

To the latter, that may depend on the tone and pacing of the work, I suspect: in some stories, it might well provide a bit of down-time; in others, it might just be insufferable padding.

So yeah: in both cases, the answer is: it depends!

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Dec 17th 2023 at 7:01:04 PM

I like a nice sprinkle of small talk in my stories (sometimes I don't know how to make the characters shut up) but yeah, a lot depends on context and intent. Some characters may get chatty to distract themselves or calm down from something, others may entirely refuse to talk. Sometimes small-talk can be the breather your audience needs, or sometimes it can break the pacing.

Well, I asked first to see if there was a general consensus regarding this.

Here are the specific circumstances in this case.

Three people. Two women (23 and 19), one man (33). They are not related to each other. Just part of the same "Tag-Team", so to speak.

Location: A steamship in the middle of an encompassing ink ocean. Dark dirty wool-clouds coating the sky. Not a sound but the waves hitting the ship.

Time: Continuously dark. Distinction between day and night practically gone. Only light-source being a lantern behind them and the sporadic lightning ingraining through the clouds above.

Time they've spent there: Long enough for the clean-shaven man to have grown facial hair beyond a stubble.

Mood: Damp, dark, foreboding and depressing. There is not so much to do when the crew of the ship can run it by themselves.

Why they are there: To save the ship's cat from the incoming end of the world. They just have some problems with finding the little shade, that's all.

Relationship between one another: One rookie being tutored on the "job" by the other two who are more experienced with situations like these timelines.

They have zero idea what lives in the Ink Ocean. Just that there is something there circling around the ship on a distance.

It's silence.

How would small-talk between these three be received here in this case?

I would probably assume that it's a sign of nerves, being uncomfortable with the darkness and the silence. Or it would be Casual Danger Dialogue where the presence of chatter clues you into the fact that the characters aren't that scared — or are just good at covering it. I think it would depend on who starts talking first.

It would depend, I think, on the personalities of the characters: some people are inclined to small-talk, others to silence.

For example, if they're all introverts, then they might clam up under such circumstances, while if they're all extroverts, then they might become more chatty.

But even that example is overly-broad: some people might become more garrulous than normal under pressure—while others might become more quiet. Or the characters might have a desire to distract themselves, and resort to talking for lack of anything else.

etc. etc.

I suppose that, if there's a general principle here, it's perhaps this: a question of the form "what would these characters do in this context?" is only really usefully answerable by someone with a close impression of those characters.

(Although there may well be exceptions to that, of course, as tends to be the case with general principles!)

As a matter of writing... again, it's going to depend on what you want here. And, perhaps, the content and tone of the small talk.

A little talk could lighten the mood—or reinforce it, depending on what's said and how it impacts the characters.

Silence could be depressing, or it could be stoically strong, depending on presentation.

And in terms of flow, it depends on the overall flow of the book, and where this scene fits within it, I feel.

This◊ is Toyota Trueno, but can anybody tell which year and which style is it?

The picture is from a wallpaper place that didn't label it well...

Edited by Nukeli on Dec 17th 2023 at 11:02:18 AM

My best guess is that it's from somewhere between the 70's and 80's. Have you tried reverse image searching the picture?

I've tried reverse image searching other pictures before but it doesn't work. For example, there was one drawing i knew was on both tumblr and deviantart, but none of the reverse image searches i tried was capable of finding the deviantart post. I can only assume it was because the images had different names.

Also it'll propably only actually work if the exact same image is properly labeled on some other site, which i doubt. "Similiar images" section may not even show the right brand cars. Google's Captchas aren't very capable at image recognition either.

Edited by Nukeli on Dec 17th 2023 at 11:56:10 AM

Is there no list of all toyota models for comparison?

Maybe, i don't know. But those kinds of lists generally don't list different styles of the same model (or even year appearances, sometimes cars' looks change a bit between years) separately.

Wikipedia says the model was manufctured 1983-1987, but i don't know if the one in that picture is from 1983, 1984, or a later year. Or what subtype it might be.

Edited by Nukeli on Dec 17th 2023 at 12:08:29 PM

Thanks for answering my question: I will have to think further on it for a bit.

...

Does it really matter in-story what precise model of car this is?

Does one of the characters mention it precisely or something in order to identify the owner of it?

Or is it for the audience?

What's stopping you from just going with "Toyota Trueno"?

Edited by Trainbarrel on Dec 17th 2023 at 5:21:49 PM

Yeah, there's no reason with being vague if you don't know exact details. If you don't know these things and can't Google them, it's safe to assume most of the audience won't know either... and probably won't care about such specific details.

Of course, you could just avoid referencing exact brands entirely and just describe the car to the best of your abilities. Paints a better image anyway.

I have another question somewhat related to my previous question.

How many times should an idea make you think "I'm going to hell for this..." before it's time to go back to the drawing board?

I need to know if that specific car existed in 1984. So it kind of does.

I think you might need to ask an expert on cars on a car forum for this one.

Update: Have you tried google "Toyota trueno 1984" in images?

That way, you'll get a car of that specific which definitely existed that year.

Edited by Trainbarrel on Dec 18th 2023 at 1:29:46 PM

So I'm wondering how to handle a yet-uncertain aspect of my story.

During the Final Battle the Big Bad brings out an army of "ghost/zombie" versions of a number of dead characters to fight the heroes. I have a number of ways the counteract this (apart from the intense fighting they do with these things) but one of these hypothetical methods poses a bit of an issue.

One way of dealing with this is to have the ghost of one of the four protagonists (who died much earlier in the story) help the heroes free a number of ghosts from the villain's control so that they can assist in the battle. Here is the problem with this and where I am wondering what to do:

The "afterlife" is largely unaddressed in this story. It is kind of explained, at least enough to provide reason for why ghosts are a thing, but beyond that it is left very vague. There are a number of deceased characters who would want to talk to the people present during this time, but I can't think of how to carry on these conversations without addressing the elephant in the room of...well, where have they been this whole time until they were summoned?

Is there a way of...having these now fully sapient ghosts talk to the heroes without really going into the whole afterlife thing?

Edited by Swordofknowledge on Dec 18th 2023 at 3:03:00 PM

1-In Islam, you don't go directly to heaven or hell after you die (Though this is a strongly held misconception).

What will happen, is that you will stay dead until judgment day, when everyone is resuscitated, judged and sent to his/her final place.

Maybe your world's mythology can work like this too, and if so, those zombies will have nothing to tell.

This, of course, should be explained and forshadowed long before the finale.

.......................

2-Another option is that the Zombies/ghosts are forbidden from talking about the afterlife to mortals in any detail.

Similar to A Christmas Carol in which Marley is very vague about the specifics of his torment, when he talks to Scrooge (though it is implied it is not pretty),

Or how Death in Discworld categorically refuses to discuss the afterlife with mortals.

......................

3-A third option, is that the spell that brings people back sets their memory to the moment they died, so they simply don't remember anything after.

....................

4-Finally, there may be no time, maybe once the villain's mind control breaks, they disappear immediately without having time to say much, behind "I love you" or "don't worry about the afterlife, focus on the present one" or something.

Edited by jawal on Dec 18th 2023 at 9:30:17 PM

Or, alternatively, this:

There is no afterlife for them to speak about since they aren't actually "ghosts" to begin with.

They are just another aspect of this Eldritch Abomination's nature, fragments of the main villain using the eldritch-properties of its body to recreate these people from genetic memory of its being.

Driven by singular thoughts sporadically flickering through the main villain's brain.

Meaning that the one they are trying to convince, is actually the tiny microscopical fragment of what is left from the main villain's humanity, assuming the shape of a former protagonist.

These "ghosts" have no knowledge of any afterlife since they have never even spent a second there in the first place and only just came into existence due to the main villain's move to make them in the first place. They will also vanish from existence all together without even seeing it then either as they are figments of the imagination belonging to an Eldritch Abomination.

Could this approach solve your problem?

@ Jawal and Trainbarrel: Thank you both for your ideas and help!

@ Jawal: That's interesting, I didn't know that about the Islamic belief in the afterlife. Considering how the story works and the way the "afterlife" is, I may go with the third option you listed (that they were brought back with only the memories right before their deaths) but that they also have a good grasp of the situation, so they aren't entirely confused. It might be a middle ground that preserves the mystery of things. Also, the situation is dire, so I suppose they wouldn't be doing a lot of philosophical talking anyway.

@ Trainbarrel:

In a weird way, that kind of is what's happening here. To explain—-anyone who is "connected" to this Eldritch Abomination (i.e. every werewolf since it is the origin of their powers) has their souls/memories stored inside of it when they die instead of moving on to whatever afterlife awaits humans and other supernatural beings. So now that the main villain has become this creature, he recreates copies of what those werewolves looked like in life based on the memories of their appearance, powers, fighting styles, etc.

So based on that, I guess I could play on the idea that while it is technically the dead person, they would have no conscious experience of what it was like sleeping inside of that monster, just a span of "nothingness" before they were pushed back into the world.

Medicalish question: How long is the time it would take for someone who received a life-threatening gunshot injury to the belly to recover to the point to be dismissed from hospital?

Can that even be recovered from?

I thought gunshot wounds to the stomach are considered fatal injuries and not survivable.

Edited by Trainbarrel on Dec 19th 2023 at 6:27:54 PM

Belly, not stomach. That is, a large injury of the intestine.

It is impossible to give an exact estimation since that varies from case to case, but if the intestines are bleeding, then that person will need surgery ASAP.

Assuming all goes well and there are no complications, the person may be discharged from the hospital after two months or at least six weeks.

However, total recovery (if possible) may take years or even a lifetime depending on the case.

For the record stomach wounds are very much survivable. It was much rarer before antibiotics obviously but pretty much every gastrointestinal tract wound has very similar (and generally treatable with modern medicine) complications.

Does anyone have any tips on filling out worldbuilding docs and write down the details about terminology and setting and building upon the worldbuilding I do? I tend to struggle to get down the complex details beyond the basics when it comes to my worldbuilding of my stories. I use Google Docs FYI.