I shall never understand LiveJournal...

[baratron]

Dear friends,

You make no sense! On Thursday, I posted about something very, very important to me - and received 4 comments. Yesterday, I posted about something incredibly annoying, yet trivial in the grand scheme of things - and received 7 comments.

Guys - I WROTE A BOOK! I know I've written books before - technically my MPhil thesis is one; but this is a novel, and I've wanted to Be A Writer for years. And now I am one! Maybe you think it doesn't count because I borrowed the plotline and characters from a video game. Well, lots of people borrow plotlines (a certain Terry Pratchett has been known to borrow liberally from a certain William Shakespeare), and I've taken perhaps all of 3,000 words from the game. The rest of it is mine.

Maybe you were waiting to congratulate me until I finished it completely? I dunno. I'm pretty proud to get to the end of the 50,000 words. Given that I'm feeling better and am likely to be back doing College work next week, I don't know how long the rest of it is going to take. A while. Certainly longer than another month.

...People are strange.

Comments

[baratron.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I've been writing the story in such a way for it to make sense to people who haven't played the game, or indeed any games in the series - I've put in as much explanation as I can, considering it's narrated by someone who lives in the Elder Scrolls universe. So I don't, for example, go into a lot of detail about religion in the universe - but I do give clues.

"Who is the Prince of Destruction?". Surely not a Daedric Prince? Life was complicated enough as a servant of the Nine Divines, our holy Aedric gods, without getting involved with the unholy Daedric gods-or-demons as well.

That tells a reader from our universe that there are "good" and "bad" gods, and which are which :)

Here's an excerpt in which I explain the races in the universe:

Now that I'd been off the road for a while and my eyes had adjusted to the smoke, I could see hastily-erected tents, and desperate people - apparently of all races. There were humans: Bretons, Imperials, Nords, and Redguards; elves: Altmer, Bosmer, and orcs; and even an Argonian or two wandering aimlessly around the makeshift camp. I couldn't see any Dunmer or Khajiit right that second, but really, did I need to see dark elves or feline folk in order to prove to myself that this was a disaster of great proportion?

I've done that sort of thing as much as possible without it seeming weird. The one thing I know I haven't explained is the relationship between Cyrodiil and Tamriel - that the story takes place in the province of Cyrodiil which is part of the continent of Tamriel, and the Emperor lives in Cyrodiil but is in charge of all Tamriel. And that was simply because I couldn't find a way to fit it in while still keeping the feel of an in-game book. I was going to write it as a footnote when the story's posted on Ao3.