clearing on 12/10/2007 at 10:45
:cheeky:
xxcoy on 12/10/2007 at 10:48
Alright, first I go tell my father that I hate his job. ...and maybe then I make another ridiculous attempt for an English version by myself.
Or maybe I don't. ;)
Digital Nightfall on 11/2/2008 at 18:26
Just make a new thread. See you there.
xxcoy on 13/2/2008 at 16:52
Quote Posted by Digital Nightfall
... and then some of them start to seem more real than some people you actually know.
Yes. For you naturally know them better.
Digital Nightfall on 13/2/2008 at 20:17
I take it you've still had no headway in an english version of your work (or have you?). What is your story about?
xxcoy on 13/2/2008 at 23:21
Quote Posted by Digital Nightfall
I take it you've still had no headway in an english version of your work (or have you?). What is your story about?
I had some offers for a translation but I just can't afford it. An English student in Germany wanted to do it then but he just told me he wouldn't have enough time to.
It's going to be quite expensive anyway. I'm still looking. :)
My story takes place shortly after the ending of thief 2 and before the beginning of thief 3 for I didn't want to do without the keepers as they were then and I didn't want to interfere with or continue any existing plot in the games, exept from using it's surroundings, characters and atmosphere.
Garrett is not my main Character. He is the second-in-line, if you can say so.
It's written from the view of a young and quite incertain hammerite-novice stumbling into events, spoiling one of the thief's raids without intention and starting a chain-reaction into some who-did-it-story mainly.
He's quite a millstone around Garrett's neck, at first tolerated only because of being needed to crack the problem.
I dindn't want to compromise Garrett's "lone-wolf"-character, therefore both characters turn to each other very slowly.
Don't know if you ever read Barry Hughard or Conan Doyle, but if you did, you know their way of dealing with a story about a person who is a genius in some way - and I consider Garrett to be kind of a genius concerning his skills. They always use their protagonist as a mediator between the reader and the genius the story is about actually.
You may be able to believe being that brilliant person if you play him for you then just
have his skills.
But it's a different thing
reading about him. Then you wouldn't only have to deal with skills but with life, thoughts, emotions, anything making a person out of him and explaining his decisions and actions.
It's very difficult to credibly rise the curtain about the mind of a person so mysterious and with all the aspects people had already read into him when playing him.
Apart from that, Garrett is outstanding and most of us are not, so I suggested it easier to identify with somebody who is quite swamped if suddenly forced to balance over an abyss on a rotten piece of wood or suddenly face an undead in the dark of a forgotten vault he'd never have entered volunterily; someone who already gets a guilty conscience if he treads on a beetle by accident and doesn't believe in himself at all.
It was quite fun to develop that boy and let him experience Garrett's ways in an antagonism of naive wonder and complete consternation. Was fun as well to let the thief reluctantly react on his naive likability.
... I need to stop this post before it's getting a novel of it's own.
Where do I find some writings of yours, DN?
Digital Nightfall on 14/2/2008 at 00:33
You could do what I suggested to Vii. If you can get it into some form of english yourself, it would be much easier to then find help putting it into proper english rather than finding someone to not only translate it, but also is good enough with the english to grapple with the (perilously difficult task) proofreading too.
I understand exactly what you're saying about Doyle's work and how it relates to what you are doing with Garrett. Essentially (and for anyone else who doesn't quite get what she means) you're making Garrett into Sherlock Holmes and your new character Doctor Watson. The stories were always written from Watson's point of view so that not only would the reader have a chance of relating, but the writer himself did not have the task of explaining the thoughts of someone far more intelligent than he. So we have Watson, an intelligent but not brilliant man providing the point of view, and the genius is free to do his work without the confines of the writer and the reader's own limited minds to get in the way.
That is a good solution to dealing with Garrett. My own solution was different - don't put him in the story. It was not just a matter of me not wanting to have to write for a character that belongs to everyone; and yet no-one, but also in the sense that Garrett prizes anonymity. All of the characters in the story have no reason to know Garrett, and most have no reason to even know about him. So he's not even mentioned. The Universe is so much bigger than Garrett, and I try to make the reader feel just how big it is. Every time you drop a name of something familiar or some detail from the game, the world gets a little smaller. Of course I do have several cameos and mentions of characters from the game, because I know that many readers will enjoy that, but I tried to do this as sparingly as I felt I could get away with.
I have some writing online, but I only keep it there for posterity's sake. If you'd like to read some, I could send it to you personally.
xxcoy on 14/2/2008 at 00:54
Quote Posted by Digital Nightfall
If you can get it into some form of english yourself, it would be much easier to then find help putting it into proper english rather than finding someone to not only translate it, but also is good enough with the english to grapple with the (perilously difficult task) proofreading too.
If I still was a student, I might have time for that. I would really like to try but I know I won't. I'm always putting so many things into cold storage and eventually never get them done.
As you surely have noticed already, I'm not good enough in English to translate my own often quite complicated phrases without danger of losing deeper meaning in translation.
Quote:
I understand exactly what you're saying about Doyle's work and how it relates to what you are doing with Garrett. Essentially (and for anyone else who doesn't quite get what she means) you're making Garrett into Sherlock Holmes and your new character Doctor Watson. The stories were always written from Watson's point of view so that not only would the reader have a chance of relating, but the writer himself did not have the task of explaining the thoughts of someone far more intelligent than he. So we have Watson, an intelligent but not brilliant man providing the point of view, and the genius is free to do his work without the confines of the writer and the reader's own limited minds to get in the way.
If I could express it that way in English I actually *would* translate it myself. It is what I wanted to say - but
I had to take a detour.
:thumb:
Quote:
My own solution was different - don't put him in the story.
Well, it gives you a lot of freedom to do without him.
It's a completely different way of approaching the theme. I for myself would feel a little lost in a world so wide - if I wanted to write about
thief.
To me, Garrett's character was one of the main reasons for writing the novel, so he was a little indispensable.
Quote:
If you'd like to read some, I could send it to you personally.
I'd be glad to.
TF on 14/2/2008 at 16:34
I'll take no novels over crappy novels which is what most games get.
