...Is that a whole story?

Whole story! Introduce a problem while characterizing the setting, then solve the problem. Continue.

Problem is introduced.
Delegator has order it's own destruction and preservation
This ending asks the reader what would you do? and is what you do out of courage,or blind obedience?
The problem isn't for the author to solve, but pose to the audience.

As I said I would continue past this point but I feel a far more concise story is better than an unfinished one as any further and it would require me to write a screen play or series...



But writing these two stories and thinking about it I seem to have a problem where I want to create a deep story and setting it up, but then when I realize that the story is going to take more time than i want to invest I cut the story or a make it really short. In other words I seem to have a psychological block from writing things that take me more than a single session of writing to accomplish...

So I have two problems... of which one needs to be fixed...
I need to either get over stopping at one session and making things shorter than I set them up to be
OR
I need to stop setting things up to be deeper than I'm willing to write about in a single session.

I think the first is better to get over than the second considering I don't plan to be writing any short stories...
Given that I'm not really doing anything and I am creative I could write several novels by NaNoWriMo standards per month easily given the writing speed.
So the question becomes how do I force myself to actually do that?

I GET IT NOW!


Okay let me think about it for a moment.

[font=arial, verdana, tahoma, sans-serif][size=2]Alright now we can look at this in detail from a different perspective. There's a few...
"[color="#1C2837"][size=2]as it stands it is just useless info I guess"
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[size=2][color="#1C2837"][size=2]When you have a whole, you can judge what information is necessary in light of the whole. You can, for example, delete the virtual net details; this isn't used. In fact he never goes into it; he gets his message on a phone. In principle, it's not necessary to know that it's 2047. If you just start introducing things we don't have, like an omniscient AI, into a real-worldish setting, folks know it's "20 minutes into the future" and what that entails.
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[size=2][color="#1C2837"][size=2]We can also discuss the structure now.
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[size=2][color="#1C2837"][size=2]The problem is yes; the delegator ordered the protagonist to destroy it, and ordered someone else to defend it. This is a perfect conflict of interest.
[size=2]
[size=2][color="#1C2837"][size=2]However we have concision taken too far. The audience doesn't necessarily want to solve it because it's the protagonist's problem to solve, not yours or theirs. But as the writer, you have to show the protagonist solving it. If the solver is the audience, than the written protagonist character is now superfluous. And anyway, as we say, "Make things as simple as possible, but not simpler."
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[size=2][color="#1C2837"][size=2]If you were to go on and write the resolution to this problem - which you can do however (they could even have a gentlemenly discussion and agree to call a repair guy) - than it changes whether or not the details about the year and virtual net are relevant.
[size=2]
[size=2][color="#1C2837"][size=2]Looking at this piece as a whole, we can now say when we go back and look at it that we can delete this and that. But it's not enough of a whole. They need to resolve the problem, and when they do, you may stop.
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[size=2][color="#1C2837"][size=2]I'm going to think about your next post and post again shortly.
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[size=2][color="#1C2837"][size=2]But first, another seed[color="#1C2837"][size=2] for you to think about if you need one.
[size=2]
[size=2][color="#1C2837"][size=2]A mad scientist invents "meta-coffee" by brewing regular coffee, then adding instant coffee to the hot coffee. This creates a superposition of states; it's both brewed and instant simultaneously, and has the property that when given to a taste tester while also applying a 1.21 gigawatt charge to that taste tester, it opens a portal to another dimension where everything is antimatter.[/font]

But writing these two stories and thinking about it I seem to have a problem where I want to create a deep story and setting it up, but then when I realize that the story is going to take more time than i want to invest I cut the story or a make it really short. In other words I seem to have a psychological block from writing things that take me more than a single session of writing to accomplish ... I need to either get over stopping at one session and making things shorter than I set them up to be ... I need to stop setting things up to be deeper than I'm willing to write about in a single session ... I think the first is better to get over than the second considering I don't plan to be writing any short stories ...

A good short story doesn't necessarily take an hour to write, it can take a month. There's a lot of rewriting, iteration and careful consideration. But you can't let that stall your efforts to complete a first draft too much because a lot of this work, again, must be done in light of a whole. So...

The problem with your discipline may really be that you're trying to force yourself to write bits of a story that are boring, hollow or "mandatory". But parsimony is about not having fluff in the end product.

I posit that you're not making it interesting for yourself on a continual basis.

Think about fractals; it's not just a problem-solution cycle on the grand scale, it can be on the medium scale and all the way down to dialog loops. All statements and character statements should be actions and there should be something close up and far away.

Look at the meta-coffee pitch in my previous post, for example. You can easily draw some problems from it; to get into the portal, you need to kill a taste tester.

That means, for starters, there may be a dead body and crime involved. If it becomes necessary to continue opening portals, you have close up problems of acquiring more taste testers to kill. Who's doing it? Is it a guy in his basement who has to go out to hunt? Maybe... Now we have a tighter problem; a sort of a sub story where he's trying to murder someone.

That breaks down further. Problem; blood is everywhere. Problem; someone heard a noise. Problem; the powerbill game in and 1.21 gigawatts really works the numbers. Problem; must get better job to pay power bills.

If it's the authorities doing it, and having to find taste testers to kill or even conjure up new taste testers by training prisoners, you have different issues.

So there can always been some tight loop you're writing as you go, so it should always be interesting. Every night you sit down to write a few thousand words, have something interesting to be writing. If you don't like it, write something else.

About that last point, don't plot very strictly and don't be afraid to throw out your plans and go in a different direction for the sake of being continually interesting.

Also, don't worry about building depth into it. Just have a big arc and little arcs and sit down and add some continually until the big arc is exhausted. Then stop and behold; a first draft.

[font="arial, verdana, tahoma, sans-serif"]Alright now we can look at this in detail from a different perspective. There's a few...
"[color="#1C2837"]as it stands it is just useless info I guess"

[color="#1C2837"]When you have a whole, you can judge what information is necessary in light of the whole. You can, for example, delete the virtual net details; this isn't used. In fact he never goes into it; he gets his message on a phone. In principle, it's not necessary to know that it's 2047. If you just start introducing things we don't have, like an omniscient AI, into a real-worldish setting, folks know it's "20 minutes into the future" and what that entails.

[color="#1C2837"]We can also discuss the structure now.

[color="#1C2837"]The problem is yes; the delegator ordered the protagonist to destroy it, and ordered someone else to defend it. This is a perfect conflict of interest.

[color="#1C2837"]However we have concision taken too far. The audience doesn't necessarily want to solve it because it's the protagonist's problem to solve, not yours or theirs. But as the writer, you have to show the protagonist solving it. If the solver is the audience, than the written protagonist character is now superfluous. And anyway, as we say, "Make things as simple as possible, but not simpler."

[color="#1C2837"]If you were to go on and write the resolution to this problem - which you can do however (they could even have a gentlemenly discussion and agree to call a repair guy) - than it changes whether or not the details about the year and virtual net are relevant.

[color="#1C2837"]Looking at this piece as a whole, we can now say when we go back and look at it that we can delete this and that. But it's not enough of a whole. They need to resolve the problem, and when they do, you may stop.[/font]

Here's a few of the ideas for what I'd do if I were to continue...

#1. John makes a break for it and thinks he must do what Delegator ordered him to do. The other agents try to stop him. This results in an action flick where the V-net is used as one means of trying to hack in. Ultimately he succeeds in getting through and it ends with John reaching to pull the plug.

#2. The agents look puzzled and the head agent takes John with him to see the Delegator who explains the situation and explains that he sees that humanity will likely stagnate if he continues to lead them while on the other hand he has been programmed to be self preservative... thus the call to John was what he thinks and the computer is showing signs of real sentience in that there is a bit of insanity in what he has proposed. The two agents then go on a lengthy discussion of humans evolving, the chance for stagnation, whether to follow the orders or not, and whether the Delegator has suffered from the human flaw that is sentience to some degree... Now the real kick with this ending is that if I wanted to write the conclusion with a huge surprise and not leave it up to the reader I'd have the head agent shoot john then kill the delegator. a scene where both decide to follow orders and the head agent wins with the kill but has a revelatory moment.

#3. The story doesn't end but rather John sees the problem that the Delegator is and joins the "rogue agents" he was fighting against in order to free the world from the tyranny that is the Delegator all while having cool CGI action scenes in a virtual space.

i think the second has the most impact but I'm probably one of the worst people ever attempt to actually write that piece lol.

It doesn't matter who's writing it. Just don't try to force grandiosity, it doesn't work. Things are either grand or not.

Throw out v-net because you got it from other movies. In real life we have this thing called the internet and people spend way too much time on it.

It looks like you've already asked yourselves what tools the delegator has to act, and they include the guards. Both the guards and the other guy are humans who can do whatever they please.

In the original idea I had, which I'm using elsewhere, the delegator doesn't give orders, it gives requests. It pitches a task to someone else if someone refuses. It's smart enough, however, to find someone likely to do the job because it kinda sorta knows everybody.

So it becomes important to ask; what sort of person will follow the orders? Think about militias, gangs, reactionaries who don't want the good old days to end and have happy memories of being given tasks when they were children and are afraid of change and have machine guns. Everyone should want to act for one reason or another.

Of course like all intelligence, it's also fallible. If the characters who show up discuss and change their minds, the delegator might call someone else.

I was slightly kidding about the "gentlemenly discussion", but you might ask what other kind of tools the delegator has at its disposal. Does it have any robots? Who believes who?

Two tips.

1) Constantly make problems.

2) Use Google Docs. (You can share with the public and put a link up.)

It doesn't matter who's writing it. Just don't try to force grandiosity, it doesn't work. Things are either grand or not.

Throw out v-net because you got it from other movies. In real life we have this thing called the internet and people spend way too much time on it.

v-net is an extension of what the internet is. More along the lines of Internet 20.0. I didn't come up with it due to some movie or put it in there for that reason. It's because that is a plausible job in the future where there is a world of fully realized digitial avatars that act as super villains via hack the network. V-net would be slang for Virtual Reality Internet as a way to separate it from the largely text based/2D version we have now which would be incorporated within it.

It's grandiose because it is. To me it's just a stray thought that is created from a lot of information about where things are going and why and then injecting whatever concept I'm working with into those subconscious equations which then creates a reality that works... Maybe it's bad story telling, but it's far from just something thrown in trivially.

Maybe I do that because I got used to chat role play where you develop a character as you go and even though the information may be unimportant on the surface or to a story it becomes part of the character's way they think and act and perhaps it might be used later... of course if it's not it is not as if people are going to point out that you brought up information in role playing that you never used ^.^

[color="#1C2837"]"[color="#1C2837"]It's grandiose because it is ..."

[color="#1C2837"]That's fine, you're right, I was just feeling grumpy for unrelated reasons. Forget it.
[color="#1C2837"][color="#000000"]
[color="#1C2837"][color="#000000"]"[color="#1C2837"]I didn't come up with it due to some movie ..."

[color="#1C2837"]I've decided not to argue this point since it doesn't matter.
[color="#1C2837"][color="#000000"]
[color="#1C2837"]"[color="#1C2837"]you develop a character as you go and even though the information may be unimportant on the surface or to a story it becomes part of the character's way they think and act and perhaps it might be used later"

[color="#1C2837"]This is good.

[color="#1C2837"]And the dialog is very pithy and focused. In fact, having him confront armed guards who claim they're also following contradictory orders in that manner is a very good tactic to express that the machine has given contradictory orders. This minds the principle that reading is an active process. You get an A+ for that story, I hope I wasn't too grumpy earlier.

[color="#1C2837"]But let's press ahead now. You declared that this was a whole. [color="#1C2837"]Being concise is about cutting off what's not important and leaving what is.[color="#000000"] [color="#1C2837"]It's a good approach to write up a storm, then, when you have a whole, go over and cut. When you have a whole, you can judge what's important and what's not. I can see that v-net doesn't matter to the whole. It may go.

[color="#1C2837"]But there is an unrelated reason that it should go.

[color="#1C2837"]"[color="#1C2837"]of course if it's not it is not as if people are going to point out that you brought up information in role playing that you never used ..."

[color="#1C2837"]It's too big a point to glaze over; it characterizes the story as one about that. One of two things will happen. [color="#1C2837"]If reading casually, I personally would have stopped immediately on seeing "v-net" (never mind why). [color="#1C2837"]Conversely, someone who does want to read about that is going to feel cheated and may cry "bait and switch!" [color="#1C2837"]There are effective exceptions to this rule, but for now, just humor me and stay on point.

[color="#1C2837"]Read post #14 if you missed it and let's move on. New story or a second draft. Let me know if you want more seeds.

[color="#1C2837"]Side note: I rewrote this post several times before clicking "Post".
[color="#1C2837"]
[color="#1C2837"]Side side note: You might watch Total Recall and take note of how he's established as a construction worker early on and exactly how this plays a role in the movie.

[color="#1c2837"] [color="#1C2837"][color="#000000"][color="#1C2837"][color="#000000"]"[color="#1C2837"]I didn't come up with it due to some movie ..."

[color="#1C2837"]I've decided not to argue this point since it doesn't matter.
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[color="#000000"]I was debating whether to say anything about the obvious point that everyone has been subjected to matrix and that's not even the beginning of those types of things. My point is not that I'm the originator, but rather it's not one of those things that "I heard it over here so I'm going to use it here even though it makes no sense to use it here in any way or I just want to cash in on that" but yes not important.
[color="#000000"]

[color="#000000"]

[color="#000000"]

[color="#000000"][color="#1C2837"][color=#1C2837][size=2]You declared that this was a whole. [color="#1C2837"][color=#1C2837][size=2]Being concise is about cutting off what's not important and leaving what is. [color="#1C2837"][color=#1C2837][size=2]It's a good approach to write up a storm, then, when you have a whole, go over and cut. When you have a whole, you can judge what's important and what's not. I can see that v-net doesn't matter to the whole. It may go.

[color=#1C2837][size=2][color="#1C2837"]But there is an unrelated reason that it should go.
[color="#000000"][color=#1C2837][size=2][color="#1C2837"]
[color="#1C2837"]"[color="#1C2837"]of course if it's not it is not as if people are going to point out that you brought up information in role playing that you never used ..."

[color="#1C2837"]It's too big a point to glaze over; it characterizes the story as one about that. One of two things will happen. [color="#1C2837"]If reading casually, I personally would have stopped immediately on seeing "v-net" (never mind why). [color="#1C2837"]Conversely, someone who does want to read about that is going to feel cheated and may cry "bait and switch!" [color="#1C2837"]There are[color="#1C2837"] effective exceptions to this rule, but for now, just humor me and stay on point.
[color="#1c2837"][/quote]

[color="#1c2837"]

[color="#1c2837"]I'd have pulled it out as at later point if I was editing it as a complete piece (as in polished and cleaned up). I left it in mainly as a "if i wanted to return to this at a later date" and also if I were to turn it into a movie or series I'd expand on that point so I think for this it was better to leave it in. Speaking of which. I'm not polishing anything as one might describe it. This is all more or less flow of consciousness.
[color="#1c2837"]

[color="#1c2837"]

[color="#1C2837"]Read post #14 if you missed it and let's move on. New story or a second draft. Let me know if you want more seeds.
[/quote]

I'll be writing... or trying to write at least one piece a day. Not just fiction but all sorts, like tomorrow or technically today where I am but i don't count it till i go to sleep and wake up, I'll be writing on continuity and why it's important. It's the one topic that i got from the other place I asked for topics and ideas so I'll take it.

[color="#1C2837"][size=2]Side side note: You might watch Total Recall and take note of how he's established as a construction worker early on and exactly how this plays a role in the movie.
[/quote]

That was on earlier today... watched a little of it but seen it a number of times so don't really need to see it again. Anyways, yeah i get what you mean, but you know I could argue that telling the job info was a way of quickly relating the a number of attributes associated with such a position, his role within the system, and later you would have the twist of even though he's following orders from his "enemy" he's now on the opposite side of the law to a degree. It also relates the thinking of the computer. It could have called a repairman or any number of other people that could get access easier and quicker, but by choosing to call someone who's job it is to take down rogue elements the computer is shown to think of himself as rogue. Those thought did cross my mind, but the main reason is that i was planning on making it longer and using it in other ways... Even that you could derive all this information from that small chunk I'm still not sure it's good to have in there ^.^

"[color="#1C2837"]you know I could argue that telling the job info was a way of quickly relating the a number of attributes associated with such a position, his role within the system"

[color="#1C2837"]It absolutely is and I use things like that all the time, but-

[color="#1C2837"]"[color="#1C2837"]but by choosing to call someone who's job it is to take down rogue elements the computer is shown to think of himself as rogue"

[color="#1C2837"]Be careful if it can be seen as painting a character as super cool and awesome because it may feel the impression is forced and unnatural - and such off-point positive\cool characterizations be seen as a red flag to some because it can herald a Mary Sue.

[color="#1C2837"]Mischaracterization is another pitfall if you try to characterize someone in backstory or "exposition". C[color="#1C2837"]ase in point, it's suggested through actual story action that the "rogue" takes blind orders from a machine without a second thought, including a somewhat radical and jarring one.

And there is the characterization-of-the-story mentioned above. If you used a very familiar, banal term like "construction worker" it would characterize well without being noticed or establishing the movie as a construction work movie but, like Total Recall, you can still go nuts with it.

[color="#1C2837"]"[color="#1C2837"]if I was editing it as a complete piece"

[color="#1C2837"]I understand perfectly, but just to be clear, I'm asking for whole pieces so we can talk about that part cause it's supremely important. I'm personally not showing people first-drafts at all except for my reader (in this case that's me).

[color="#1C2837"]"[color="#1C2837"]I'll be writing on continuity and why it's important"

[color="#1C2837"]Good, post that too. (But try to learn how g-docs works, it's wonderful for this.)