Why should it be mentioned? I for one think it's cool that the name 'Derysi' is this esoteric piece of trivia that never appears in the main stories (and isn't even well-known in the story's setting). Maybe that's just the kind of writer I am, but I like making readers work for this incidental stuff. Why should you hand it to them, like it's a children's book? Plus assigning special names to everything just seems a little fannish... giving everything clever names is what amateur writers do in lieu of having a real story, and I don't think that's the kind of flavor you want to taint your writing with.
But having said that, I agree that you should absolutely remove or change anything which assumes preknowledge, especially a familiarity stemming from presence in the fandom; I recall you were very good about not using buzzwords like 'morph' which only have significance to furry fans... at the same time, yeah, don't go off on a lot of exposition about how things are or how they work, when you can hint at it through natural character actions or through narrative references strictly relevant to story, and let the reader put the pieces together themselves. You're not writing a D&D module, which essentially exists to satisfy a need for that kind of wankery (and you could always write a Ranea RPG later, if you had to gratify that urge), you're writing, I presume, a story that's going to pull people in and be real to the reader, and that means emphasis of things which are familiar to all readers.
Anyway, I hope it doesn't seem like I'm talking down to you, and I understand that my interests in writing might not be the same as yours.
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momijizukamori
no subject
Date: 2008-02-13 02:24 (UTC)But having said that, I agree that you should absolutely remove or change anything which assumes preknowledge, especially a familiarity stemming from presence in the fandom; I recall you were very good about not using buzzwords like 'morph' which only have significance to furry fans... at the same time, yeah, don't go off on a lot of exposition about how things are or how they work, when you can hint at it through natural character actions or through narrative references strictly relevant to story, and let the reader put the pieces together themselves. You're not writing a D&D module, which essentially exists to satisfy a need for that kind of wankery (and you could always write a Ranea RPG later, if you had to gratify that urge), you're writing, I presume, a story that's going to pull people in and be real to the reader, and that means emphasis of things which are familiar to all readers.
Anyway, I hope it doesn't seem like I'm talking down to you, and I understand that my interests in writing might not be the same as yours.