Inchoate Ascendant™: April 8, 2011.

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April 8, 2011

Gearing Up for the Rhoad

Last time on Inchoate Ascendant™... "I have to come up with the initial name and create graphics for" what will later be the Umbral Intentions™ blog. Well I have done it and it is now hereby dubbed "On Dark Rhoads". This project is very exciting, and with the schedule I have adopted, somewhat difficult. I already dug a little into writing at cross purposes for the blog over at R.G. Male's Dark Corners in "It's Not What They Think, Josh". It has spoilers so I won't repeat it here except to say it seems like more than twice the work to instil double meanings and tell two stories at the same time with the same details. Then in the Dark Corners I moved onto "Don't Wear Us Out, Josh"--with fewer of the same spoilers--about pacing the blog. In that discussion I touched on the idea of using real-time streams to tell parts of the story for greater immediacy and tension. A perfect example of this would be Drew Daywalt's Queen Mary tweets and the subsequent video.

There is something different in the planning of this blog. I intend to include comments. First, some of the comments will be from other character in the story. That's the easy part. Since this is a part of the creation process and the advanced marketing for the RPG I intend to include excerpts from the blog into This Mental Eventide™ and this might include comments added to the blog. That will require adding to my planned caveats that this blog is fiction. The addition will add the requirement that all rights to the comments become my property to be used as it or adapted, as I desire, into This Mental Eventide. This isn't any different than the requirements when posting on an RPG site's forum or creating derivate works based on their products. What is different though is some people may want to relate their real experiences to the blog--even if they are clear the blog is fake itself--and that feels kind of like taking advantage.

The problem, and this is why so many other places just don't allow such interactions is you as an author come into contact with an idea from someone else and somewhere along the line you forget you heard it elsewhere and think it is your idea. Or worse you have already come up with something similar independently--I see that all the time. Either way I can only put up proper warnings and, intrusive or not, make it exceedingly clear they are giving the idea to me. It's either that or keep the comment door closed totally. Just for reference, I should actually institute such a warning and agreement here at Inchoate Ascendant. It is less imperative here because I don't expect plot detail suggestions only broad ideas and methods or comments intended as advice.

Music: Son of a Gun by Bruce Dickinson.