Phantasy Star Cave Message Board

I've just attained all the criteria to begin Alpha proofreading of my fanfic... and it probably falls on the very fringe of the term. I nearly wet myself when I realized that I'm gonna need to do the HTML tags on ~60 chapters if I don's collate some, so I wish to accelerate the remaining portion of the writing process. Once I complete my own first proofread, I need another person to help proofread once I reach my beta stage. I already lined up a person who knows my mind but not PS, and I want a second person who knows nothing of me and lots about PS to concurrently and independently edit. I will warn you now that it primarily uses original characters, as the original concept was "What if Sega kidnapped me and forced me to create the script for a new PS game?", which was later converted into a narrative out of a personal hatred for vaporware; I directly utilize 1.5 characters from PSIV (I made a couple fundamental changes to the psyche of one by killing him off and breaking his connection to reality before the story starts). I also left a massive cliffhanger so I may eventually get around a large Writer's Block, if I make a second story. I refuse to make promises that even this gets released.

The primary focuses I wish to have are Grammar, improvements to the action sequences, matching of canon and certain other resources(with a controlled amount of disinformation), and complete eradication of any potential cryptomnesia. I'm extremely paranoid of the cryptomnesia. I also could use ideas to replace my current placeholder names.

Sixty chapters is a bit steep for me, but I'd be glad to help with specific questions of canon and replacing names, if you'd like.

Word count as of Version Alpha 0 is 65,465; 351,074 characters. Some of the chapters are only 1 page of 12 pt text, but I'm mostly concerned with the potential cryptomnesia. I'm actually paranoid of it, since it's almost impossible for me to personally detect it since I typed it.

SIXTY CHAPTERS!?

HOLY CRAP, THAT'S HUGE!!

Normally I would jump right in and help out a fellow fanficker, but at 65K words, it would take me forever and a day to get through it. It's not due to lack of interest, it's because I am the world's slowest reader.

High-five, Tanith! I'm also quite a slow reader.

I'd be willing to do a couple chapters at a time. I can even HTML it as I go if you'd like.

I guess it's a good thing I never told my outsider how long it is...

I guess I'll dial up my alpha reading in the grammar and consistancy, and break the story into smaller packets once I'm ready for proofreaders. Meaning is obfuscated by fragmentation, right?

I'm currently timing my first read-through, and I can see the effects that my unorthodox planning method had. (to minimize strain on my limited imagination without overdosing on sugar and caffeine, I made extensive use of Chaos theory, along with intentional cross-synaptic activity to generate extra input for the brew, and a touch of Game theory to facilitate long-term forecasting. I can almost smell the math.) My original forecast reported an approximate length of 270-350 pages, but my formula crashed at a certain event, forcing me to dump my current seeds and core, and causing a cliffhanger that I sense will be a cause for negative feedback. I decide that I'll continue regardless of this prediction.

EDIT: I just stopped watching the clock after 12 hours of reading, and only reaching page 123. I'm delaying my beta reading a little so I can try some changes to the formula- I don't think anyone deserves to be forced to wear a business suit.... Black Sword, I'll PM you a list of character profiles to get your thoughts on better names for my characters, as soon as I finish my first read through to build them. I could've sworn that I had some questions on canon info a few days ago, but I only find myself wondering, "What color would I call Darky 3? It's too bright for a teal...."

carlsojos wrote:I guess it's a good thing I never told my outsider how long it is...

I guess I'll dial up my alpha reading in the grammar and consistancy, and break the story into smaller packets once I'm ready for proofreaders. Meaning is obfuscated by fragmentation, right?

I'm currently timing my first read-through, and I can see the effects that my unorthodox planning method had. (to minimize strain on my limited imagination without overdosing on sugar and caffeine, I made extensive use of Chaos theory, along with intentional cross-synaptic activity to generate extra input for the brew, and a touch of Game theory to facilitate long-term forecasting. I can almost smell the math.) My original forecast reported an approximate length of 270-350 pages, but my formula crashed at a certain event, forcing me to dump my current seeds and core, and causing a cliffhanger that I sense will be a cause for negative feedback. I decide that I'll continue regardless of this prediction.

EDIT: I just stopped watching the clock after 12 hours of reading, and only reaching page 123. I'm delaying my beta reading a little so I can try some changes to the formula- I don't think anyone deserves to be forced to wear a business suit.... Black Sword, I'll PM you a list of character profiles to get your thoughts on better names for my characters, as soon as I finish my first read through to build them. I could've sworn that I had some questions on canon info a few days ago, but I only find myself wondering, "What color would I call Darky 3? It's too bright for a teal...."

EDIT2: Okay, I lied. ~18 hours for a complete read through, plus note taking. I hope to have the story cut into 1-3 chapter files for proofreaders, once my mind recovers a bit. I'll say when they're ready, since it's a bit too late for me to hide under a rock now.

I guess I'll dial up my alpha reading in the grammar and ]consistancy, and break the story into smaller packets once I'm ready for proofreaders. Meaning is obfuscated by fragmentation, right?

Loving the irony, Einstein.

My first reaction is "What irony?", but I think you are referencing the conflict of consistency vs. obfuscation, am I correct? I simply mean that I am trying to keep the exacts of the story in a limited amount of hands until I'm ready to hide under my rock again, after the story is released. I don't know how the story will go over with my unorthodox conclusions, but my lack of a consistently coherent thought process, combined with my preference of logic over imagination, plus an inspiration of "What if Sega let me make the storyline of a PS sequel?", adds up to my primarily negative predictions on the work's reception. I've already sourced a couple people to proofread my entire current version, but afterward, I plan on sending single chapters out to people in here, to try to improve certain points that I've already noted as problematic. I'm not sure how familiar the audience here is with technical fields- particularly electronics, orbital mechanics, or medical terminology. I extensively utilized my knowledge of the sciences to help power the plot, in lieu of a reasonable imagination.

I really miss my rock, but I don't want the story to rot, either, so I continue to proofread regardless of my fears.

Calm down, dear! It's only a commercial!

Actually I was highlighting your misspelling, and then you had to do your "I'm an intellectual" routine on me.

Didn't mean to sound crazy. I just have a tendency to articulate further than I should, hence my ability to develop blank stares on even the brightest of my college professors.

That, and I'm out of caffeine.

I just caught myself screwing up royally. I decided to reuse the head info from the other stories on the site to accelerate putting my story into tags, but I noticed about 11 chapters in, that there are more link tags than I'd have thought, that utilized the info of the story I ripped the tags from. I know what the CSS links do, but what in the world is "up up"? Could somebody point out what all the link tags do for me? I'm using a template file to save on typing, and I don't want to fix my mistakes 60 times over. It was bad enough when I hand typed the entire nav bar's code in my author's note, before I remembered that I could cut & paste from Firebug. I feel like a complete dunce, now.

The link element is for more than just stylesheets. It also allows you to specify your document's place in the website hierarchy.

"up up" is a new construct introduced by HTML5, which means "2 levels up in the hierarchy".

With this information, the web browser can offer more navigation options for the page you are on, most commonly in the form of a site navigation bar. It is disabled by default in most (if not all) web browsers, though.

Read more.

Okay, I thought the Base tag was used for that. If Link can define the tree, then I can see how the story title could fit into that. I'll have to manually set them, anyway, since they seem to point to the next/previous chapter and such. Thanks.