General Writer's Block thread

Yeah. As far as I know, てんぽ is slag, something like "outrageous," but I still don't get what Yuri Strike was trying to say.

Um, it's used to describe a wacky person who enjoys spouting information that's outright ridiculous, as if being affected by some mysterious radio wave.

No. That's not my character. He's just the equivalent of a college educated man among middle schoolers, who doesn't want to deal with their bullshit.

If he's a teenager, than he probably is a Chu Ni.

Used to describe self-righteous teens that consider themselves mature.

edited 30th Mar '12 10:13:27 PM by YuriStrike

I don't want to come across as some kind of snooty xenophobe, but could you please speak English when giving other people writing advice?

He's not a teen. His aging has slowed due to magical hibernating, but he's in his twenties.

edited 30th Mar '12 11:34:04 PM by MrAHR

Suggestion accepted, but I did explain.

Those teens must be bringing him headaches.

edited 31st Mar '12 1:12:34 AM by YuriStrike

By the way, my Magical Boy is Spanish-American and lives in California (his bloodline immigrated in the 1850s). Should I look in to how his Spanish background might affect him culturally, or would it suffice to just write him the same why I write my white characters (e.g. not putting too much thought in to their ethnic backgrounds)?

edited 31st Mar '12 2:39:43 PM by Haldo

Eh... it depends on what he's like.

Some people let their heritage affect them, some don't.

Sometimes, a person's ethnic background influences them to a great deal because their family retains a lot of the parent culture's rituals and practices. Sometimes, this doesn't. I think it depends on your character and their family.

For instance, if your character's background and cultural practices strongly influenced him, he might view his magic in a different manner than if his family just integrated themselves into America.

edited 31st Mar '12 2:44:09 PM by CrystalGlacia

Since I'm feeling particularly sadistic tonight, how do you think the plot would go if the main antagonist of Del Toro's The Strain tried his scheme on the world in Stephanie Meyer's The Host? During- and post-invasion are both open for discussion.

edited 31st Mar '12 6:48:37 PM by Zenoseiya

Finished three pages of my comic script kinda cheated cause one is the cover, and another is only two panels but still XD

Whooh fellow comic script writer whooh

Just for the month but who knows maybe this will convert me. I certainly find it easier to novel writing.

Even if he did grew up in a highly ethnic environment, his cultural heritage would have desalinated.

He might even try to break away from it.

So, I want the evil bunny's efforts to help the hero fight baddies directly help him regain his power and further his plan to become an Eldritch Abomination fit to rule the universe again (though he most likely won't get that far in the end)... How exactly would that work?

the baddies are baddies because they have access to artifacts of power, which the hero must separate them from. The bunny has plans to use those artifacts in a mystical rite to gain back his power.

edited 1st Apr '12 10:39:19 PM by BensenDan

Someone being Spanish-American in California, particularly the southern part, will definitely affect his life — at least inasmuch as he's likely to be mistaken for Mexican at times. Also, if his family is proud of its heritage, they won't describe themselves as simply Spanish — they'll likely identify as Castilian, or Andalusian, or whichever autonomous community / former independent nation they're from (see Wikipedia on this topic).

Weird question. I'm working on a story that's somewhere around a 'Mature' rating, and I was wondering: how graphic can I make a birth scene without scaring people off? I really want to hammer home that the whole ordeal is frightening and traumatic to the character, but I don't want to descend into flat out gorn.

It's only gorn if you eroticize/glorify it. I think.

Maybe so, but one can overdo it, quite easily.

I'd say that you should leave a significant amount of really nasty stuff up to the audience's imagination. To continue drawing the sex/violence parallels—however unfortunate they are—in either case, the reader's conception is always going to be more intense than the reality of your prose.

Well, is anything going to go wrong with the birth? How graphic it's going to get might depend on that.

huh someone just favorite a fan fic I posted last week, and that's a tear in my eye... both eyes ... I should continue writing that fic now.

@takwin:

According to Sam Sykes (http://www.writingexcuses.com/2012/01/29/writing-excuses-7-5-sensory-writing/), the best way to elicit horror (or any other emotion) is to focus on one sensation. He uses "the sound of slowly tearing skin" as his example, and it certainly made me feel horrible.

That episodes made me awful gleeful and happy. Which concerned me.