>writing cyberpunk short story >trying to describe virtual

cringe

Read some of Ulillilia's book for reference. :)

>>8790715
it's way less autistic than it sounds, this is a relatively minor scene. Which is why it's hard. I don't want to devote too much of the text to it, but I want it to be clear

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86KB, 500x500px

>>8790708
>he's writing a RPO knockoff

>>8790737
but I'm not

Just do it and see what happens.

>>8790708
Write health points instead of HP, mana or (preferably) magic points instead of MP, and so on, and try to refer to stats and the like as few times as possible. In the end though, it will inevitably sound like an episode of Yugioh and incredibly autistic. The only non-autistic descriptions of cyberpunk virtual worlds I've seen are ones where cyberspace mimics reality almost perfectly.

In terms of the combat just make it hardcore 1-shot-kill gunplay rather than knights n shit. Way less autistic, way easier to describe, much more relatable. Plus, since gunfights are a real, modern thing, you can draw a nice comparison between the non-danger of a virtual gunfight and the real danger of a real gunfight.

>>8790755
I'm not referring to any stats. Basically describing what a fantasy film's battle scene would look like except with nerds talking over VoIP

If you've read Ulililia's book you'll see exactly how this works out, i.e. it doesn't. J.G. Ballard and William Gibson have definitely written prose that has ventures into this territory and they manage to make it pretty appealing, even aesthetically so. Unironically, a good thing to do would be to use unconventional vocabulary to describe what you want to describe: Ballard throws in strange words that give the text a slightly ethereal feel ("gymnosperms", "fronds"); this can help distract from what would otherwise feel like a mechanical description of a mechanical scene. As for writing battle-type scenes, Gibson's Neuromancer manages to depict what would otherwise be an orgy of unreadable nerd-wank - hacker battles in cyberspace - while keeping it both interesting and innovative. To a certain extent you just have to have the ability to write nice prose, but like the esoteric vocab-dropping, there are ways of pulling it off. Perhaps invent your own terminology for battle scenes instead of using stupid hack RPG terminology. Most people will quite rightly turn off and go "this is nerdy boring shit" if they see a "hit points" or "stats buff" anywhere in the text.

>>8790806
thank you anon, you are my greatest ally