Working on a Fanfiction Adaption
ZaramMaldovar
Member Posts: 2,309
I felt the book wasn't very faithful to the source material despite having it's moments, so I've been thinking for years now about doing my own fanfiction adaption.
Now that I've established Zaram as a character, I figure now is as good a time as any.
Any advice or suggestions? It will be a while before I get this up and running, but I'm willing to listen to any and all help.
Now that I've established Zaram as a character, I figure now is as good a time as any.
Any advice or suggestions? It will be a while before I get this up and running, but I'm willing to listen to any and all help.
1
Comments
For example, in my own Baldur's Gate fan fiction, I killed off Kivan, but he didn't die in some random battle or by Viconia's hands, he died during in the bandit camp assault because of his thirst for revenge, trying to rush in and face Tazok alone only to find him gone and be killed by his lieutenants instead of waiting for the support of Ralis and his party. The moral lesson of his death is it is dangerous to let your desire for revenge control you and make you reckless, it might get yourself killed or your allies, or maybe both.
Understand? Respect the source material and you should be fine. Though I killed Kivan in my fan fiction, I stayed true to his character and made his death make sense so the person reading who might have played the game and likes Kivan won't feel offended. If you plan on killing off some characters who will travel with, always make sure to make their death meaningful somehow, not random, and make sure that they don't appear in sequels, too. It's good that you already established Zaram, but there is more to think about, like how well Zaram would get along with Xan, Minsc, Branwen and such.
Thank you, while I disagree with you about the Star Wars thing, I will take your advice to heart. I intend to stay faithful to the source material (though I will liberties to a certain degree) and have considered certain companions based on my runs with Zaram as a character. Staying faithful is important to me after reading the books several years back because they dissapointed me by 1. Not following the linear main story 2. Butchering characters 3. Killing characters off way too quickly and without warning.
I'm curious, what class is Zaram? And what is his race?
Gorion's death would be a nice example. It never really had any impact on me in the game because they didn't really introduce his character and your relation with him that much. Which you have a chance to do when writing a longer fan fic.
Generally, things like knowing the source material you're working with (not only Baldur's Gate, but the Forgotten Relams also) would help a lot.
Finally, I would definitely want to read your fanfiction adaptation and I would be glad to provide you feedback.
*TVTropes is good placae to do that, with lenghty and laconic explanations and providing examples in works of fiction. Beware that the site is essentailly time stealer.
Prologue should be up in a few days but due to both of our working schedules, I can't promise chapters will uploaded quickly. It may take a long time before we have other chapters ready.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12923726/1/Baldur-s-Gate
According to Google Docs our net word count is somewhere around 22,000 words, but Fanfiction counted the word's differently (how does that even work?) so I don't know what the final product will be. It took over a month and it was incredibly long but we wanted to give my magnum opus the greatest opening we could. It should be up sometime in the next couple of days (for real this time :P) and I hope you all enjoy it. I'm certainly looking forward to reading reviews just as much as I looked forward to writing it.
And now, Chapter 2 awaits me.
Killing off characters need to be consistent. So if you can't raise one character (Gorion) if anyone else dies in the story you shouldn't be able to raise them either. It also has to be consistent with the games. If you area writing a full trilogy, you can't kill off people like Khalid, Jaheria, Minsc, and Dynaheir until they die in the game or are re-recruited (Edwin and Viconia can be easily skipped in BG2 so this rule doesn't apply to them)
You do not really need to kill characters to not have them in your story either. In mine, my protagonist hid while Monteron and Xzar passed by never to be seen again (while talking about a lost magical ring outside of FAI).
A character can also choose to go there own way once part of the story is done. Finished the mines? Maybe you can break the pairs up (Khalid/Jaheria or Monty/Xzar) up and have one report back to their supervisors while the other sticks with you following leads, or Imoen decides to stay with Firebead in Beregost to learn magic, realizing she made a terrible mistake following you and now that you have allies, she feels ok letting you venture alone.
But if you do have a character you want to kill off, make sure it impacts the story in some way. For example, Garrick died fighting Nimbul in mine. Grief stricken, my protagonist snuck away from the rest of the party to prevent another bounty hunter coming along and killing them.
Also, while writing, stick to the main story. Fitting every subplot into the story would make it massive.
(I wonder if I am ever going to be able to finish mine...)
There will be a few character deaths in the story, but I can't tell you anything else without spoiling my adaption. I will however point out that ressurection is expensive and tricky in tabletop games, and if the soul doesn't want to return then it won't.
Logical Game Examples:
1. Gorion can't be ressurected because he doesn't want to come back.
2. Khalid (and likely Dynaheir as well) can't be resurrected because their bodies have suffered too much damage and/or they have been dead for too long.
3. Ditto for Montaron
I will take things like this into consideration, but my story is also an adaption and I will be taking some liberties as well as adding things that weren't in the original story.
However as I also stated before, it will be much more faithful to the adaption of the actual game than the book series was so we don't have to worry about:
and other misc. ROFLstomps that the book series made.
Edit: I have read the third book now, and although it is much better than first two it still suffers from it's own problems, including the anticlimatic ending and poor character development
As far as subplots go, expect a few but I won't go into any details.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12923726/2/Baldur-s-Gate
After that, Chapter 3 should go by pretty smoothly.
Quality takes time and inspiration, factors of my life which are slowly starting to come back to me. Please bare with me, I thank you for the support.
Chapter 2 will focus on the introduction of Zaram
Chapter 3 will focus on the introduction of a few other central characters
Chapter 4 will be entirely focused on the Ambush Scene that ends the Prologue.
Stay tuned and in the meantime make sure to check out my Baldur's Gate Logic thread
With any luck, Chapter 2 will be up in a week or two and then Chapter 3 will be going full steam.
Of course, thank you for your support and encouragement. I'm new to writing a big project like this and my cowriter has been a huge help throughout the process, teaching me how to weave better descriptions and narrative threads and improve my already adequate dialogue skills while I help to temper his habit of overdescription and redundant details. It's like a check/balance system.
I'm also always open for suggestions, though I've already got a pretty clear way of how I'm going to handle the story as it moves forward.
I plan to do the whole saga in 4 stories plus a few companion pieces but it will be quite a while before I am finished.