Episode 489 - Continuity
Jul 26, 2020
It's just Banes, Tantz and me today, chatting about the important topic of continuity! How do you maintain it, what continuity errors have you made, what continuity errors have you noticed in media? What's the difference between character continuity, story continuity and chronological continuity? - Something you notice when you watch or read a series in chronological order that was were NOT produced or meant to be viewed that way.
Topics and Show Notes
A good example of that is the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett. If you read those in the series order, say all the Witch books, Wizard books, Guard books etc as concurrent series then the “Discworld” stops making any sense because Pratchett's writing and the character of the world changed radically over the time that he was writing it. The Discworld was a massively different place in his later books from the wild, chaotic, sexy sword and sorcery spoof it started out as… in later novels it becomes a far more serious and ordered, well defined place that's basically a fantasy steampunk version of Dickensian 19th century London, with a taste of Northern England, Greece, Italy and Egypt and other places thrown in for flavour. It covers serious topics in a philosophical and humorous way, a little left wing and a little righteous. In earlier stories the world leans more to spoofs of popular fantasy tropes from Fritz Leiber's famous Fafhrd and Grey Mouser books, Robert E Howard's Conan, Anne McCaffery's Pern, JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and so on.
So that if you read them in any order than which they were published the continuity of the world won't make sense.
Similarly if you watch the Star Wars Prequels before the original trilogy you run into the same sorts of issues… Then of course there are the continuity errors you make as a creator. Usually it's because you took too long to make a page and failed to read forward over the new scripted pages and back over what you'd already done. I run into that all the time! What are your worst continuity mistakes?
Special mention of Marvel's Mark Gruenwald who looked after continuity from them in a big way back in the day (Apparently).
This week Gunwallace has given us the theme entitled “How to Half Ass a Theme to How to Half Ass Porn Webcomics”
For: How to Half Ass Porn Webcomics the Tanza Late Way - This one is a slow started but as soon as it takes off it lets its full groovy glory show, dancing to the sounds of a wiry electric guitar dressed in a batik kaftan and brown corduroy fares, incense smoke swirling around, noxious and enveloping like the sounds of this cool little tune .
Topics and shownotes
Links
Banes Newspost on Continuity - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2020/jul/22/continuity/
Featured comic:
Goddard and Grey - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/news/2020/jul/21/featured-comic-goddard-and-grey/
Featured music:
How to Half Ass Porn Webcomics the Tanza Late Way - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/How_to_Half_Ass_Porn_Webcomics_the_Tanza_Late_Way/, by Arspitzer, rated A.
Special thanks to:
Gunwallace - http://www.virtuallycomics.com
Tantz Aerine - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Tantz_Aerine/
Ozoneocean - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/ozoneocean
Banes - https://www.theduckwebcomics.com/user/Banes/
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Episode 483 - Burnt out
Jun 15, 2020
Emma Clare posted about avoiding burnout on Friday and we thought we'd steal that subject to chat about it. Burnout is something that can affect all of us, most especially when you're stuck at home with lots of time to create, funnily enough. When there's a lot of pressure on you to create it often makes you STOP creating. But there are a lot of ways to void burn out and when it actually does happen to you there are a lot of ways to come back from it and rekindle those exhausted flames of creation. How do YOU come back after being burnt out? What was your longest burnout?
Episode 481 - Fun with history?
May 31, 2020
Today we're chatting about using historical stuff in your story and knowing how to use it right! Sometimes it's good to change stuff and sometimes it's not. The thing is that you should ONLY change it if you know what you're doing and why you're doing it. A good example is A Knight's Tale- It has a historical setting and there are a lot of deliberate historical anachronisms in it, and they're all very obvious, they do not pretend to be anything but what they are.
Episode 477 - Darkest before dawn
May 4, 2020
Today on this glorious date we chat about that part in stories where everything turns to crap for the protagonists, just before the run up to the climax where they find their inner strength again and regain their powers so that the climax is even more effective than it would normally be… just BEFORE that moment. Everything is finally going well for our characters, their relationship is amazing, they have all the money they need to keep the clubhouse open, they're going to win the big game, they have the magic sword to kill the dragon with, they have the fastest car in the race, the bombs are all set to destroy the alien mother-ship, and the band is finally going to make it to the big time! ...BUT...
Episode 471 - Fantasy
Mar 23, 2020
Today we're having a chat about fantasy fiction! Mainly books and the fantasy writing that inspired us and that we love! Faves like Tolkien, Fritz Leiber and Piers Anthony! Just to define, we're talking swords, elves, armour, dragons etc, in a “medieval” context, generally European. As a subset there's native, Arabian, Asian, Mayan etc, also high fantasy, low fantasy, sword and sorcery, historical fantasy and even mythology…. And then techno fantasy, contemporary fantasy, steampunk, fantasy cyberpunk and so on… but we mainly stick to the mainstream stuff and only just touch on the weird little variations for now.
Episode 467 - Adaptions and Transmogrification!
Feb 23, 2020
The process of adaptation is quite interesting. Stories go through all sorts of changes when they're transferred from one medium to another. A lot of the time we bemoan that as “not staying true to the original” or “the book was better”, but there are many times where the adaption is really interesting in its own right, even though it's quite different from what it started out as.
Episode 466 - And then What?
Feb 16, 2020
What happens to characters after the big action scene or climactic moment? This could be anywhere in the story but it's usually close to the end. Do they process any of the things that have happened to them to lead them up to that point or do they just forget about everything and simply act as if nothing except the last 4 seconds matter? The later seems to be the trend in a lot of badly written fiction, and it's a notable trope in 80s style action films. Death of family members or lovers are irrelevant when you have a hot action star standing next to you!
Episode 465 - Planning Vs pantsing!
Feb 10, 2020
There are a couple of approaches when it comes to making a big creative project: planing it all out or working things out as you go i.e. flying by the seat of your pants. Well in reality it's a spectrum and those are the two extremes. Most of us work somewhere between those two, sometimes with more or less planning etc… I've tried a lot of different mixtures myself!
