# Reposts



## the Jester (May 13, 2006)

Is anyone else editing their reposts as they repost story hour updates that were lost in the recent incident?  I never have the time or inclination to go editing after I post under normal circumstances, but since it's already written, I've been going through, cleaning up, expanding, etc. my lost story hour posts.

Anyone?


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## el-remmen (May 13, 2006)

the Jester said:
			
		

> Is anyone else editing their reposts as they repost story hour updates that were lost in the recent incident?  I never have the time or inclination to go editing after I post under normal circumstances, but since it's already written, I've been going through, cleaning up, expanding, etc. my lost story hour posts.
> 
> Anyone?




Yep, that's why it is taking so long and I have already edited these all once already.


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## the Jester (May 18, 2006)

Bump- anyone else??  Or are nem- er, I mean, el-remmen- and I the only ones??


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## Redwald (May 18, 2006)

the Jester said:
			
		

> Bump- anyone else??  Or are nem- er, I mean, el-remmen- and I the only ones??




Yes, I am, but my Story Hour's not completely official yet, either, as I'm trying to get feedback on whether it's good enough for me to continue it.  People are *not* wanting to vote in my poll.


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## megamania (May 18, 2006)

Not meaning to sound negative, you will find only a few select authors will recieve any real feedback.  They are written well and have been here since Storyhour started.


I made minor tweaks with my reposts.   Nothing major.   Didn't feel the need in truth.


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## Redwald (May 18, 2006)

megamania said:
			
		

> Not meaning to sound negative, you will find only a few select authors will recieve any real feedback.  They are written well and have been here since Storyhour started.




They're probably most of the same ones _I_ read...


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## megamania (May 18, 2006)

Redwald said:
			
		

> They're probably most of the same ones _I_ read...




quite possibly true


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## PieAndDragon (May 20, 2006)

Yeah, edited most of it recently, just after reposting.

Paragraphs, spelling, some phrasing.


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## Ao the Overkitty (May 22, 2006)

Redwald said:
			
		

> Yes, I am, but my Story Hour's not completely official yet, either, as I'm trying to get feedback on whether it's good enough for me to continue it.  People are *not* wanting to vote in my poll.




For me, you've got to be posting the storyhour for yourself or the players, not 'fame and fortune.'   If you want to keep writing, keep writing.  Doesn't matter if someone else is reading it if you're enjoying doing it.  I may not always enjoy writing them, but i do it for my group.  For exalted, i do it so i can remember odd details from past sessions that my character should remember.  For Firefly, I do it so I can remember stuff that can come back to bite them in the ass.   

I was really surprised when someone besides me or one of the players posted in mine (sniffles).  The entire storyhour was lost in the reboot, so sniffles posts were lost, but oh well.  I know peole are reading it cause of the number of views.  Only double the number of posts in views are mine.

And I did do a little editing in the repost, but this is the secondary posting site anyway, so it's often already edited before showing up here.


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## Redwald (May 22, 2006)

Ao the Overkitty said:
			
		

> For me, you've got to be posting the storyhour for yourself or the players, not 'fame and fortune.'




No, fame and fortune wasn't what I had in mind. 

It's more a sense of "giving back".  As I noted in the first thread of my reposted thread, I can trace my return to playing D&D after a hiatus of nearly a decade to Sagiro's Story Hour.  Truth be told, I can trace it back a little farther -- in the mid-1990s, a couple of guys named Brad Solberg and Christopher W. Page posted on USENET a couple of "story hours" of themselves playing through _Tomb of Horrors_ and _The Temple of Elemental Evil_, using c. 1979 1st edition rules as written (as far as they could stand).  That didn't get me playing again, but it did remind me why I used to, and it got me paying attention to the hobby again.



> If you want to keep writing, keep writing.  Doesn't matter if someone else is reading it if you're enjoying doing it.




Sure.  The question isn't so much "should I keep writing", though, as it is "should I keep posting"? Fortunately for me, I have my own ways of archiving my writeups, so I'm not screwed if there's another board crash.  And I don't need anyone's permission or encouragement to write to please my own muse.

So the issue for me comes down more to, "Am I effectively returning the same kind of value to the community that I drew from it?"  _That's_ the motivation for the poll.  If my stuff isn't entertaining to people, then I am not, and what's the point of posting?  I have more effective ways to indulge narcissism than to parade bad writing about.  

There's a continuum between being a perfect hack and a perfect artist.  The perfect hack writes only what the audience wants.  The perfect artist labors away in obscurity, and does what he must, not caring if his work is only appreciated after his death.  I don't occupy either of those extremes, myself.  I write because I want to and because I enjoy the craftsmanship of it, and because I think I've got some occasional cleverness in my head that may amuse others.

But I solicit critique and feedback because EN World Story Hours are a bit of a novel medium that I don't pretend to understand completely, and there are people here who have been writing (and reading) them for many years who understand the nature of the form better than I do.

Certainly there are critques that I would not be able to use, like "make every entry a lipogram"1, or "write without offering any insights at all into what the characters are thinking or feeling".  To conform to those sort of restrictions would probably kill the joy I get out of writing in the first place, and render the exercise mere hackery.

But so far, the feedback I've gotten, such as from Piratecat in the original thread lost in the board crash, has been quite reasonable, and had to do with structuring my narrative to fit the constraints of the format.  That's good advice, and I see no reason not to solicit it.

Have I convinced you that my heart is in the right place?  

1 i.e., deliberately write an entry without using a letter of the alphabet (usually implies a common one, like the letter "e" -- there's little challenge in avoiding "x" or "z")


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## Lazybones (May 22, 2006)

I compile my SHs into a PDF or LIT format once they're done, and I try to do a thorough editing at that point. Unfortunately, every time I reread them I find more errors. I used to work as an editor for a small historical journal, and I think it's a truism that there's ALWAYS more errors to be found, if the document is of any reasonable length. 

At my current job, we try to have 3 or 4 people read everything that goes out and errors still creep in. I'm something of a perfectionist and I'll still get stuff back with 5-10 markups on a page (we have to follow an official Style Manual that details almost everything having to do with writing). 

Obviously SHs are a different beast. But I have to admit that those that try to pay attention to grammar and spelling tend to hold my interest more than those that do not. If I see a SH post that's just one huge paragraph, or with a few simple errors in the first few sentences, I tend to hit "back" pretty quickly. 

Luckily I have a few readers that are quick to highlight obvious mistakes that creep in. I've occasionally been known to change a character's identity in mid-post, and once I even gave a clean-shaven character a sudden beard, I think.


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## megamania (May 22, 2006)

Lazybones said:
			
		

> Obviously SHs are a different beast. But I have to admit that those that try to pay attention to grammar and spelling tend to hold my interest more than those that do not. If I see a SH post that's just one huge paragraph, or with a few simple errors in the first few sentences, I tend to hit "back" pretty quickly.




But not all of us are english majors...  but we still have good, solid and entertaining ideas.


Back to the subject of this thread-   At first I wasn't doing much but as I started to look at my other SH I found more editing creeping in.


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