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Author Topic: Goal oriented dialog
elzoog
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I have read that the most important thing in a dialog is to give each character his own voice. But what I am wondering is, what is the best general method to create a goal oriented dialog? What I mean by this is, I want the dialog to start with a certain situation or condition and end with the people agreeing to do a certain action.

For example, the dialog could start with some Americans who are teaching in Korea that get together after work. They start by talking about the problems they are having with their jobs. The goal would be to end the dialog with, "Let's go get some pizza!"

I could think of several ways the above dialog could go that would end with that and be natural. However, in the story I am working on, the situation is much more difficult to work with. The story I am working on is a strange universe where people on a certain planet (who don't know anything about space travel) want to know the answer to the question "why". The "god" of that universe eventually tells them that they will have to build a spaceship and travel the universe in search of the answer to "why".


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franc li
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So how does the god get involved in the discussion?
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elzoog
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The "god" of that universe gets involved because he sees that they spend their time talking about trivial or unexciting things. Since they decided to ask "why" this "god" took that question as an opportunity to get them do start doing more interesting things.

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arriki
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I have a question. Is the "goal" of the "goal oriented dialogue" the "goal" of the characters or the goal of the author? Or, is it both?
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Robert Nowall
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Dialog should also advance the plot, wherever possible.
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Elan
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Ditto what Robert said. The purpose of every word you write is to tell your story.

Gloria Kempton has written a well done book on crafting dialog, entitled: "Dialog: Techniques and Exercises for Crafting Effective Dialogue."

I suggest you look that book up and read it. It taught me a lot about balancing dialog with action, all with an eye to propelling the story forward.


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wbriggs
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Joe: "I want to know why things happen."
Mary: "What things?"
Joe: "Everything!"
God: "Philosophy bores me. Why don't you build a spaceship and go looking for, um, explanations? You never know what might happen."

That does it!

What's the big thing missing here, IMHO, is character -- the other thing dialog has to do (besides entertain and move the plot). I don't just want Joe, Mary, and God to spout plot points. I want them to say what they *would* say, being who they are, and I want to get to know them through the dialog.

If you can't get the character to say what you want to move the plot forward, as happens to me sometimes, either character must change or plot must move differently!


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ChrisOwens
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Let's go get some pizza!
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elzoog
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wbriggs

Thanks for the help. I agree that the dialog that you presented
would be out of character for the people in the story. If "god"
said what you mention, the people would respond with "What's a
spaceship?" (which is exactly how they respond in the story).

I think perhaps instead, I should not worry about whether the
"spaceship to solve the problem" is introduced at this part of
the story. Perhaps it should be introduced when the characters
are ready for it to be introduced.

Robert

I think that in order for a dialog to advance a plot, you would
need a reason for the dialog to be there (either to set up
how the characters are or to set up the next part of the story).
This is why I think the idea of a "goal" for the dialog is
important in some situations.

The basic disappointment I am having is I have written about 20 pages and I still haven't introduced the spaceship yet. This is because I felt the need to answer questions such as:

1) What is the planet like that these people live on, and what kind of society do they have.

2) What sorts of things interest the people on this planet.

3) Why doesn't "god" simply give them the answer to "why" instead of having them do this task.

As well as set up a few other details.


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autumnmuse
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I would actually caution against twenty pages of explanation before getting to the plot. Unless there is a compelling reason to keep reading, your readers won't care about the history and setup of the universe, even if it's vital to the story. If you need to write it all out so you know it, great. Just don't think that what you are writing all has to be in the final story. Give us important information only as needed, and in context wherever possible. You'd be surprised how much information you are putting on the page, even when you are writing as though the reader already has an understanding of your world.
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Survivor
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I'm going to pitch in here and say that I'm totally confused about what you're asking here.
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Robert Nowall
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What other reason could there be for the characters to be there talking to each other, than to move the plot forward? If they sit around and just chew the fat, it's open to argument that it's not a story at all. (Check out Tolkien's "The Notion Club Papers," written during one of his lulls while working on "Lord of the Rings." It's interesting reading, but it takes quite a while before any sort of "plot" emerges.)
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Christine
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In SMALL doses, "chewing the fat" or other dialogue that does not directly advance the plot can go to characterization, world building, or realism.

But overall, get to the plot.


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Survivor
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Characterization, world building, and realism are all goals as well, you know.

I guess that for the question about, "the best general method to create a goal oriented dialog", I would say that you simply start with your objective and work backwards, asking what you need to achieve the objective, then reiterating that question for each pre-requisite you identify until you make your way back to the starting conditions. Not every possible chain of pre-requisites will lead you back to your initial conditions, so you have to keep at it till you find one that does.

In your specific example, you don't tell us anything meaningful about the initial conditions, so it isn't really possible us to give you any help identifying a path that leads from those conditions to the end point. You tell us that the people live on a planet (which is a given since they don't already have space travel, which is the end point of the conversation). You tell us that you want a "god" (your quotes, not mine) to eventually intervene in the conversation, but we don't know the initial state of this "god" or whether said "god" even exists at the beginning of the conversation. Does the conversation have to create the "god"? What available material is going to become the "god" who tells them to go traveling in space? Do we already have the question "why", or does that have to be created from scratch as well? Given that the question "why" is a pretty basic element of human level communication, are these people at human level sentience at the beginning of the conversation, or do they have to evolve from a pre-sentient level to conceiving of space-flight during this conversation?

This is the kind of ambiguity I mean when I say "totally confused".


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wbriggs
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Another consideration: whose story is it? What kind of story is it (milieu, idea, character, event)? These questions help writers decide where to start.
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goatboy
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It seems to me that the goal of all writing is to advance the story, whether that is by advancing the plot or providing characterization, descriptions, etc. Within a scene you use dialogue to reach a specific ending for the scene, I suppose you could call that the goal of the scene and by extension the goal of the dialogue.

I usually see dialogue as more stimulus/response oriented.

"Wanna do something?" Mary said. (a stimulus to Joe).
"Sure." Joe replied. (responding to Mary's stimulus) "What do you want to do?" (A new stimulus to Mary).
"Oh, I don't know." Mary said (response).
"You guys are boring," God said. (stimulus to both Joe and Mary.)
"Why are we boring?" Joe asked. (a stimulus to God)
"Because you don't understand space travel." God explained.
"What's space travel?" Mary asked.
"It's where you get in this long thingy with fire coming out the end." God said.
"I like ice cream with nuts." Joe said.
"What?" God asked. "Where did that come from? There's no stimulus for it. Ice cream with nuts? Why it's unheard of man! You don't even have space travel yet. How dare you break the stimulus/response pattern?"
"My nose itches," mary said.
"Bah!" God said. "You two can't even carry on a conversation. I'll be darned if I'll give space travel to two boring folks like you."
Then God smote them.


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elzoog
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Survivor:

I will try to answer your questions based on WHAT IS ALREADY IN THE STORY (i.e. answers the reader would already have by the time he gets to this part of the story) and not on what I know.

1) Does the conversation have to create the "god"?

A) The "god" in question is already mentioned in the first three chapters. Basically, the first three chapters are about starting the universe, setting up a few characters, puting life forms in this universe and a brief discussions about the religions which exist in this universe.

2) What available material is going to become the "god" who tells them to go traveling in space?

A) ibid.

3) Do we already have the question "why", or does that have to be created from scratch as well?

A) The characters come up with that question. They live on a planet which is pretty and has an abundance of materials so they don't have to work very hard to get their basic needs. So they spend much of their time in various discussions. Since many of their discussions are trivial (for example, how many leaves should they eat for dinner) they try to come up with better questions to discuss. One of them comes up with the question of "why?". Since they don't know the answer, they pray about it, then the "god" shows up and basically says, "You guys finally thought of something good. Now I'm going to give you the kick in the butt you need."

3) Given that the question "why" is a pretty basic element of human level communication, are these people at human level sentience at the beginning of the conversation, or do they have to evolve from a pre-sentient level to conceiving of space-flight during this conversation?

A) The creator of this universe decided that he didn't want to wait around for millions of years for the process of evolution to work before he gets characters that have intelligence. So he tries an alternative. His first try fails, so he tries something else. This is also discussed in the first three chapters.


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Survivor
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See, you're taking the minimalist approach to reducing the abiguity, and that doesn't work.

In practical terms, this is still far too ambiguous for us to give you any cogent advice that applies to your particular situation. For instance, you didn't answer the question of how much the inhabitants of this universe know about "god" (if this guy is the creator of this universe and has taken an interest in the uplift of these characters, then drop the quotes, He's God, okay?). If he's speaking to them for the first time, then that's completely different from the situation if he's already been in contact with them. There's also the question of the exact kind of uplift for which he is seeking, what his goals are with respect to them. To what extent does he value autonomy and free-will or courage/fidelity/whatever in his creations and all of that.

You've also recreated the comedic "how, why, where" heirarchy of Hitch-hiker's Guide fame, but don't let that bother you.

More important, "why" is a basic concept that can't enter a discussion without the participants already having practical experience with inquiry into causality, either mechanical or purposive. It's a lot like any other term that way, you can't just start using a new word in the middle of a discussion and expect anyone to know what the word is unless you can explain it in reference to existing concepts or experience. Because "why" is inherently self-referential, it needs to be referenced to experience.

In other words, all the characters in the discussion need to have experience wondering "why" before it becomes possible for any of them to invent the term for purposes of using it in discussion. This isn't a matter of "intelligence" in the usual sense, it's a matter of sentience. "Intelligence" only refers to the ability to generalize experience into concepts that are predictive. Sentience has to do with being aware of oneself and one's motivations. "Why am I doing this?" You cannot think this question without having a concept for "why", thus a group of individuals who have never asked "why" cannot be sentient, because they cannot have ever questioned their own motivations.

I think that the problem is that you're failing to be specific. You don't mean the characters have never asked "why" before, but that they have only now asked "why does this universe exist?" But that's just a guess based on intuition.


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elzoog
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Survivor:

Thanks, very good points. But please understand that I don't want to post the entire contents of the first three chapters.

1) For instance, you didn't answer the question of how much the inhabitants of this universe know about "god"

A) This is not explained in the story except to say that after intelligent beings were placed in the universe, they naturally began to invent "gods" to explain gaps in their knowledge. However, I think you still have a good point in that this should be further explained in the story.

2) More important, "why" is a basic concept that can't enter a discussion without the participants already having practical experience with inquiry into causality, either mechanical or purposive.

A) They do explore causality in their discussions. For example, in their debate about how many leaves they should eat for dinner, they state that this is an important topic since they don't want to be too fat, or too thin. And also, if they eat too many leaves, they won't have room to eat quather meat. So they do understand a form of causality even if they apply it to an uninteresting topic. The whole point of chapter 4 is that certain people decide that they don't like debating such topics and get together to decide what topics they could discuss instead. Therefore, there is motivation, and an implicit "why" (i.e. why are we discussing these topics).

3) if this guy is the creator of this universe and has taken an interest in the uplift of these characters, then drop the quotes, He's God, okay?

A) Well, he does LITERALLY come down and SAY things to these people. However, I am only paraphrasing what he said. I don't know if this list would allow the type of language he ACTUALLY uses in the story.


Basically, these specifics (other than how do they know about "god") are already in the story. But I don't think that the people on this list would be happy if I post 15 pages of the story here, so I am forced (by what would probably be acceptable on this list) to be brief.


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Survivor
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Be concise. Figure out what information is relevant to our understanding of the initial situation, and tell us that. For instance, we don't need to know everything these people "believe" about God, but which of those beliefs are correct and which ones are decidedly incorrect in ways that will impact this interaction. We don't need to know the correct spelling of the non-phonetic liguistic term for "god" in their language, we need to know whether this "god" is something that can only be called "god" rather than God.

We definitely need to be told up front if the question "why" is only being asked implicitly, since that makes a mega-big difference in the overt dialogue. You probably should mention something like that at the outset.


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elzoog
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Survivor,

Sorry, I don't think this discussion is going anywhere. For example, (unless I am wrong) I think that I state that the question of "why" is asked explicitly (even though I don't use those exact words), but you are still asking me if it is being asked implicitly. This tells me that either I really am being unclear, or that you are not reading carefully. In any case, I don't feel like explaining myself over and over again regarding the same points. You make the point that it is not clear how these people know about "god", which is something I should probably work on in the story. But your other questions seem to be already answered, or are not actually important to the plot.


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Survivor
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In your previous post you said:

quote:
The whole point of chapter 4 is that certain people decide that they don't like debating such topics and get together to decide what topics they could discuss instead. Therefore, there is motivation, and an implicit "why" (i.e. why are we discussing these topics).

Combined with your assertion that this wasn't the first time that they had asked "why", it created the strong impression that you were saying that the "why" which the "god" found interesting was only asked implicitly. Given that you did not previously explicitly state that the question was asked "explicitly", you can see my confusion

You really are being unclear. That's what I've been telling you all along, if you are willing to accept that and take action based on that fact, then the conversation will benefit you. If not, then this thread will only serve as an example to others.


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elzoog
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Survivor:

Ok, I looked at what I wrote previously. You are correct. I was/am being unclear. It's probably because I am going through some shit right now with people not listening to me in my workplace .

Let me try it this way. It might still be unclear, but if so, you can ask me further questions.

Here is a basic outline of the story

Chapter 1
Creation of the universe and a critique of the motives for creating the universe (he did it only because he didn't have anything better to do in his spare time). The motive is compared to a few of the major religions on Earth and it turns out this motive is just as good as any other the creator is aware of.

Chapter 2
The creator of the universe decides that he doesn't want to wait millions of years for evolution to create intelligent life. But he doesn't want to individually create millions of people. So he puts one "scientist" on a planet with various equipment (including an intelligence ray that gives objects intelligence). The scientist makes decisions based on inexperience as to what objects to give intelligence (such as cheese). This ends up being largely a failure except for the fact that he makes the third most intelligent being in the history of the universe (an ant named Klum Oquim).

Chapter 3
After Klum Oquim contacts the creator of the universe and tells him the scientist is failing, the creator decides to check on what he is doing. As he does this, the scientist gives a computer intelligence. The computer then decides to give the scientist an alternative to what he has been doing so far. Then a brief explanation is made of the various deitys in the universe. However, I intend on giving the deity part of the chapter a major rewrite.

So then we get to the beginning of the story I was asking about.

Chapter 4
The people on a certain beautiful planet named Dobinia (which is in the shape of a regular dodecahedron) have free time because their needs are easily met on the planet they live on. However, they talk about trivial topics (such as how many leaves they should eat for dinner). Some of them complain about the fact that these topics are uninteresting or trivial. So they get together to decide what topics they should talk about instead. One of them comes up with the question "why?" to which the leader responds with "Why what?". The questioner then says something like, "Why anything? Why this planet? Why do we not have to work hard?" and so forth. The people in the meeting don't know so they decide to pray. Then the creator of the universe appears to them in his actual form (i.e. an Earth man in his early 20s).

Chapter 5
The creator proves he is who he says he is by doing a few magical things. Then he tells them that the question is good but that they have had things too easy in their lives so he is not going to make this easy for them. He tells them that they are going to have to assemble a team which will include people from other planets. He gives them a device to talk to people on other planets. When the Dobinians ask how the people from other planets will get there he says they will get there by spaceship. The Dobinians ask "What is a spaceship?" to which the creator says, "Man your lives are about to get a lot more interesting." and disappears leaving the Dobinians baffled. After the Dobinians leave the meeting, the deity has a conversation with others about these people.

The problem I am having is that it seems like it is taking a LONG time for me to get to the point where the Dobinians build the spaceship to find out the answer to "Why?" But to be honest, I don't see any way of shortening it without the Dobinians being out of character. It seems like to introduce that to the Dobinians I have to do it more gradually then I had originally anticipated.

Perhaps a bit of information I forgot to include, which might be relevent, is that there are no consistant physical laws that apply in this universe (because the creator was too lazy to think of any). So the spaceships from different planets might all work on totally different physical principals. Also, the Y-ship will have to occasionally stop and change engines when it reaches different parts of the universe.


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Survivor
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Hmm...what is the mechanism by which this universe is created in such a way as to allow the creator to interact with it? From the perspective of an Earth man, that is. Most specifically, does it involve some kind of time compression relative to this universe? Also, is the narrative primarily structured around the perspective of the creator?

If the creator has been skipping forwards through time, and you've been showing things from his perspective, then go ahead and have the conversation take several generations. Creator guy shows up, gives them a developmental task, then waits for them to complete it. Every time he comes back, their society has changed in some interesting ways (or has failed to change in some frustrating ways).


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elzoog
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Survivor:

The problem is, I intend on the Y-ship to be a vehicle (or excuse)
to describe other, much more interesting parts of the universe
(such as a monetary system where the currency has negative value
for example). Imagine this for a moment. Think about a pit crew in an auto race. Now imagine that a space ship has to change engines because it is entering a part of space that operates under different laws. So they get guys that look kind of like a pit crew, to go outside of the spaceship and change the engine. Sorry, I digress. I just thought that image was funny enough to share.

As to the mechanism the deity uses to interact with the universe, can you clarify why that would be important for the story?

I think what I might do, is the next morning when the Dobinians don't know what to do with the device to talk to other worlds, another high level character shows up (say Klum Oquim for example, or another deity) and tells them how they can translate the languages of other planets into Onen (the language on Dobinia) so that they can communicate. Then the main deity shows up and tells everyone that they will now need to make the great Y-ship. Then they are off and I can use later chapters to describe all sorts of strange planets. For example, a planet in the shape of a donut with a wide hole called "The Hole Wide World" (corny, but I still think it's funny).


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Survivor
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I'd think that, insofar as it relates to the motives and methods of the deity in question, it'd be essential. On the other hand, the more you describe this the more it sounds like you don't actually have something that could reasonably be described as a story in the conventional sense of a series of events which are connected by a unified dramatic tension. So perhaps it doesn't matter.

In that case, it isn't clear why the conversation is important either.


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kings_falcon
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Finding the beginning of a fantasy story is hard because you have to know and, for me at least write, the backstory of the world your characters will act in.


Elzoog (stepping in where angels fear to tread), why do you need the first three chapters? Or really why do the readers need it?

You, the author, need it to work out the back history, but it seems to me, the potential reader, that you are going to have to explain/show the first three chapters as your 4 MCs look for the answer to the question: Why?

To give you an example, during the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, we didn't know the world had been created by mice when it started. As the MCs discover this, we, the reader, do too. The Heart of Gold, the ship, was there as a vehicle to move them around but also there to help get the plot out of some real dire problems - like when 2 MCs are spaced.

It would be more interesting to me at least if the story started with Chapter 4 where "god" appears and sends them on a quest.

Having read Survivor's post again, he's also noted the similarity to Hitchiker's, which should tell you that you have a workable premise and just need to think about execution from a READER'S standpoint.

I had the same problem in my novel with about 70 pages being written, 50 pages stripped off as backstory that I get out in the rest of it, and about 10 pages put back as Chapter 1.


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elzoog
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(Side note, advantage of having a tabbed browser is that I can click on "post reply" and have it open in a different tab, then I can go back to the previous tab if I need to refer to what a previous person said.)

Survivor:

You say, "you don't actually have something that could reasonably be described as a story in the conventional sense of a series of events which are connected by a unified dramatic tension"

That is a very good point. The problem is that I DO have a story except that the "unified dramatic tension" isn't clear unless you know the whole story. I PURPOSEFULLY make the reader think he is starting on a different story in chapter 4, only to find out later that it isn't really a different story.

It's just not a story in the same sense as other stories. For example, Douglass Adam's Hitchhiker's has the character of Arthur Dent. He decided to run the story from Arthur Dent's perspective so that character features prominently in the whole book. However, I decided that for the Capiam universe, it would be better to NOT have a character that features prominently in the whole story. Different characters become main characters for awhile, only to be not used later as other characters become main characters. But there is an overarching theme that IS the focus. You can think of it as, instead of focusing on a character, I focus on a theme.

The overarching theme is "Why do we exist?". So chapter 1, answers the question of why the Capiam universe exists from the creator's standpoint and the later chapters address the issue more from the point of view of the characters in that universe. The dramatic tension sort of comes in the sense of "Will the characters come up with the same answer as mentioned in the first chapter?" The answer is, in one sense they will, in another sense, they won't.

Kings_Falcon:

You say, "Why do you need the first three chapters? Or really why do the readers need it?"

Good question. I thought about it in my head (from the point of view of my overall story, and not just the first five chapters) and I feel that it would not really make it more interesting to start with the fourth chapter. It was a good thought, but I feel that if I were to do that, then the Capiam universe would be just another Douglass Adams like story. I don't have anything against Douglass Adams. He was a good writer and I will admit that his writing was a major inspiration for this story. But I feel that setting the story out in the way I did, is actually more interesting to me.

Since I don't have aspirations of getting published, I don't see a great need to please as many possible readers as I can. I see a great need to write a story that I think is the best story I can write, which is why I post to this forum. Keep in mind that this story has been bouncing around in my mind for about 20 years so I have given a lot of thought to it. It also feels sometimes like this story is bigger than me.

Besides, I don't want a publishing company that makes stupid decisions like this:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1691805,00.html
to have any creative control over something as important to me as the Capiam universe.


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