Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-30039312-20181221131246/@comment-36627132-20181224120839

Resdraon wrote: Just for the record, using a game as your pasta already isolates readers, just as making it any genre of any sort normally alienates people who don't normally read it, only at a mass scale. Excepally when you fail to explain what the hell any of it is.

I legit had no idea what the fuck your first paragraph was going on about as someone who hasn't played this game. That's one of the main reasons outside of the cliches that people don't enjoy them.

I have no idea what "Kerbal Space Program"; is, outside of the fact it's a game.

Leading me to not understand any of this or the reason behind it. "I often mess around in the files and do stuff, I managed to make asteroids placeable, which was fun I guess, ships got buggy. The editor saw them as a white cube. Now, I messed around with them until I went EVA with Bob (One of the main Kerbonauts) which usually has the lowest courage stat in-game. He's also one of the original 4, which never actually dies, they always re-spawn and are ready for use. I went around EVA. But something was off. I started walking around in the space center, and I realized just how incredibly lonely it is."

It's pretty much how you would feel if someone made a fanfic about some weird, not that known anime and didn't explain the plot. If someone hasn't played the game, watched the show, etc, you must treat them like teachers do grade school students and explain.The only time you can get away with not doing this is if

A) The game is super well known like Mario:

B) You're making a novel. As novels have chapters which give leway to keynotes coming together in an understandable way. For example, Katniss doesn't have to explain what the hunger games are, as we learn this through th ebook and it keeps feeding us information as it tells a story.

Your story is only like 2/3 paragraphs and has neither element. Meaning I don't understand

1) What the hell this game does or is about

2)  What "I managed to make asteroids placeable(what?) which was fun I guess, ships got buggy." means. Is it like minecraft but space where u make a world or something? Adding in "Saw them as white cubes" in a new sentence is also confusing, as I had no idea they were correlated until I reread it a few times.

3) I have no idea what "EVA" means, that they were NPC's, what original 4 means, or what the fuck a courage state is and how it implies to the game.

As a reader, it's not my job to google the topic you chose to write about. It's your job to explain it more clearly. So, you lost me after about 4 sentences because of this.

When writing, it's very important to be able to hit a mass audience. That's why even though things like "Jeff the killer", were poorly written, they became popular as it hit the niche of the market at the right time, fed on the teenage angst of CP audiences. If you wish to write gaming pasta, you need to find the best way to do this and explain yourself through your story without making it sound like a school report.

All that being said, I'd recommend trying something more original instead. Gaming CP's are not only overdone and unoriginal but kind of a spit on writing and any development you will have as a writer. Yes, writing about things you enjoy helps you improve, but by only writing fanfics(I count GP's as fanfics, why shouldn't I?), the world is already made and limits your horizons and ideas. I agree with everything you just said. This review was much more entertaining than the actual story.