General Writer's Block thread

@De Marquis: Thanks.

edited 18th Aug '13 4:40:38 AM by MorwenEdhelwen

I'd suggest not abbreviating words in the narration (pointin', etc). It should be a description rather than the character's manner of speaking, unless they're reporting this in direct speech to someone else.

I thought it sort of came off as a Private Eye Monologue myself, only with street urchin overtones. The way I've seen most street urchins portrayed, they're either overly optimistic or overly depressed and bitter, and this kind of hits right in the middle of both, so something about it didn't sit right, but it might just be me.

Anyway, I've been writing my own story, and I'm a few chapters in. One of the things I've been trying to do is characterize my protagonist as a yandere in order to deconstruct the paranormal romance trend started by the likes of Twilight and such. Unfortunately yandere protagonists are something I'm not sure I've even seen intentionally attempted by other works of fiction, so I'm kind of runnning blind with how to go about this. This is further complicated by my own desire for my protagonist to be somewhat likeable and decidedly not a villain (she eventually grows out of yandere-ness through character development).

So far, the best I've been able to do is having her make and carry out a plan to murder her beloved (who she hasn't even met, mind you). It fails because she wasn't aware he was paranormal. And because of his paranormal-ness, she's nowhere near a serious threat to him until the part where she acquires her own powers, which I haven't gotten to yet. But working up to that point, all I can figure to do is to tell the reader that she's frustrated about the role reversal (something I'm not sure how to show because she's trying to keep her attraction to him secret) and give Cloudcuckoolander-ish asides in the narration.

I'm aware it's an incredibly fine line I'm walking here but any advice would be appreciated.

Just hit on a critical number of obstacles while writing a pair of conjoined-twin characters (dicephalic parapagus dibrachius type, specifically), who were born from a previously unpercedented variation of tetragametic hermaphroditic chimerism that ended up with the two eggs "fusing" together the same way normal conjoined twins are speculated to do (that is, "stem cells (which search for similar cells) find like-stem cells on the other twin and fuse [them] together"). And yes, that does mean that the twins in question are genetically of opposite sexes, though I'll have to consult the medical thread on the physiological consequences of this (with the pre-assumption that they are somehow adapted to not die from the weird hormonal activity).

The obstacle: I have no idea how they could work out the relationship aspect if one of them falls in love with a particular person but the other does not (much likely if the twins' respective sexual orientations are at odds, e.g. both are heterosexual). Worse, what if each of them falls in love with a different person?^note It would've been much simpler if it were like that one Ranma One Half fanfic where two of the Tendo sisters were made into conjoined twins and simultaneously fell in love with the protagonist, but each kept trying to get him to focus on her sister instead of her, and neither of them knowing that their respective attempts at hiding their attraction to Ranma from each other were pretty much transparent to each other. Yes, I know, that means that Akane/Nabiki likes Ranma, doesn't admit it to Ranma, doesn't know that her sister Nabiki/Akane knows, and knows that Nabiki/Akane likes Ranma, so Akane/Nabiki tries to hook up Ranma with Nabiki/Akane.

Then there's also the parenthood aspect. It's complicated enough if the two conjoined twins are of the same sex, but this pair are of opposite sex. Would the brother be a "mother" too if his sister has a child of her own, for example?

Ugh, the difficulties of writing on a real-life phenomenon that is so rare that we have little to no data on the consequential differences from normal people, especially on the stuff that the subjects in question understandably consider private and thus do not wish to share with the world (really, imagine all the creepy-squicky Rule 34 that would inevitably crop up if Abigail and Britanny Hensel explained how they're going to solve certain relationship issues).

edited 29th Aug '13 10:52:58 AM by MarqFJA

As far as how they react to each other falling in love, it all depends on the personalities of the two individuals. For example, the one who doesn't fall in love (yet?): is this person passive? Aggressive? Tolerant? Sturdy? Fragile? Outgoing? The way that he/she reacts to the other person falling in love all depends on how that person would react to anything. Of course, in real life people don't always make predictable, consistent decisions, but once you know the character well enough, it should start to become apparent what they would or wouldn't do in a certain situation.

The fact that they're conjoined is a huge defining factor in their life - it's made them make certain choices in life, and it's given them an interesting perspective. But all kinds of people could end up being born like that; you, me, Hitler, anyone. Knowing that person, whoever it is, should give a sense of what they'd do (and not do) given a new challenge.

I've written a handful of short fiction, as well as a play, and I'm not sure how to get that stuff "out there" in the same way I could get a novel published via Kindle or similar methods.

Also, say I want to be on the writing team for a television show, a video game, etc. I've looked around the net for the typical how-to advice, and I've done a very minimal amount of hardly-even-job-searching, and I still don't really have a firm grasp on what exactly I would need to do to get a job like that. I've considered applying for this, but I have no idea if it would be of significant help, or if any degree is even needed for this kind of job.

Much thanks if anyone has experience with these things.

edited 30th Aug '13 12:06:21 AM by Izon

OK, a small preface: I hate writing about/with/involving race. It seems that no matter what you try to do, there's always going to be some problem, not the least of which is the assumption that every character defaults to some variation of "white." But to avoid this, you have to actually mention race, which inevitably causes someone to claim unfortunate implications somewhere. Not to mention that calling attention to a character's race violates Conservation of Detail, since mentioning it implies that it's going to be important at some point.

To try and alleviate this, I try to mash up stereotypical features (it helps that Dark Skinned Blonde and Dark Skinned Redhead are Author Appeal to me) but I'm not sure that's enough. Here's the basic problem I've run into:

The main character is a typical member of culture of very Dark Skinned Blondes who gets sold into slavery by his own people as punishment for a crime. The people he gets sold to are a pacific island-meets-Mayans mashup with features to match (medium brown skin, black hair.) Basically, I'm worried that a dark-skinned person getting Made a Slave is loaded with Unfortunate Implications, but doing otherwise simply generates the typical White Male Protagonist. Or am I worrying about this too much?

For the record, the societies involved are pre-racial. The tech isn't advanced enough to allow the luxury of discrimination in spite of ability. While the protagonist will get looked down on, it's a social status thing as opposed to a race thing in-universe.

If it were a visual medium, I'd suggest giving the dark skinned blondes facial features and body structures that don't read as African. (I'm stupid and can't recall any other races off the top of my head that have had slavery as a huge issue. I want to say 'everything but whites' but that's too general.) But you're doing racial mismatch anyways, so as long as it doesn't seem like you're doing "this race but with lighter hair", which I don't think you are, it should be fine. I'm not sure how this would translate into prose? Depends on how much you describe appearances and how good you are at describing things like, say, different types of noses.

Really, you're going to run into people thinking it's unfortunate unless you make the race sold into slavery anything but white as snow. (And even then, you might get possible cries of reverse racism? Because people are idiots and do that sometimes.)

I assume you're writing fantasy anyways so as long as you avoid making any races obvious stand ins for any human races, I think you'll be good? It's like you said, race is one of those things that people are going to have issue with no matter what. But you are considering the implications, which are good. Just don't overthink the implications, because then you'll get nowhere.

edited 1st Sep '13 3:22:50 PM by Hermiethefrog

(Actually, even white were enslaved at various points in history—generally by other whites, but it still happened. There's very few ancient cultures that didn't practice slavery of one kind or another.)

Another way to cut down the implications would be to not make the slave system resemble the US system, which shouldn't be too difficult. The US system is actually an anomaly in terms of its structure—most cultures both granted slaves limited rights and had freed slaves become full citizens. In some cultures, it was even common for good service from the slave to be rewarded with freedom after a number of years.

How close can you be to the source in a novel written in response to/as a commentary on another work (in my case, Romberg's obscure musical The Desert Song?)

edited 2nd Sep '13 4:42:17 PM by MorwenEdhelwen

You know writing about superpowers can be fun but some powers are more broken than others. With powers like reversing casualty or dividing by zero, there is not anything to you can do unless you are some sort of god. I'll admit that I spend a lot of time lurking around in versus forums and I keep telling myself that there are different universes with different rules but it still kind of bothers me though. Is important to have such powers be beatable? The last thing is I want to create a character so powerful that they might as well be God because there is nothing that can seriously challenge on any level. How can I handle a setting where you got powers like reversing causalty or dividing by zero? Can such powers be defeated?

The simplest answer for that would be to give everyone such powers and make them do the most insane things you can think of. You can also have things like power limiters and weaknesses so they still have all (or at least most) of the awesome, but are beatable just the same. Finally, you could make someone like that, but then make him a villain for your heroes to overcome (so long as this doesn't result in Villain Sue or Failure Hero) or a person struggling with his/her own sanity/desire to do good vs people's fear of him/her. For the latter, think Dr. Manhatten. Omnipotence isn't something you have to skip out on because you're worried about making a mary sue or whatever. Just be sure to create conflict with it, and I only went over some ways to do so. I'm sure there are others.

edited 4th Sep '13 4:58:40 PM by DeviousRecital

Reversing casualties?

If that works the way I think it does (ie, walk up to an airline ticket counter and will a sequence of events that results in a ticket waiting for you, for example), then an ability like "Detect time-stream anomaly" would allow someone else to realize that causality was being messed with and track down the source.

That sounds like a good idea however with the ability to essentially undo the damage inflicted on themselves, the only way to create conflict is attack them mentally/spiritually or get them to undo themselves.

Oh, reversing causality.

But if it works the way you describe it seems like it should be fairly easy for the right person to best him. Someone could arrange for a situation such that he can't win no matter what changes he makes, for instance.

Right, and there might be other attacks we can think of. Like a "Random Branching Universe" effect that creates arbitrary changes in a time-stream, before they play out. That would play hell with anyone trying to will into existence any specific sequence of events after the fact (you are being attacked by someone in the past- how do you stop that?).

Also, is it even possible to divide by zero and defeat someone who has that as a power?

To the best of my knowledge, in mathematics division by zero is simply undefined; it's arguably a nonsensical operation. What are you imagining it doing as a power?

(Division by zero can be done — sort of — using limits, in which case I don't think that there's anything terribly special about it; the limit as x tends to 0 of 1/0 is either infinity or negative infinity, depending on whether one approaches zero from the negative or positive, if I'm not much mistaken)

Division by zero is a mathematical operation that does not make sense (if 1/0 = x, then x*0 = 1, which is false no matter what x is) and consequently there is no physical phenomenon which it can describe. So in a word, no. :P (As Ars mentioned, there are cases where a mathematical model seems to require division by zero to function, and limits are used in these cases to adjust the model to make sense.)

Now imagine someone who can't travel back and forth in time, but does share a hivemind-like consciousness with all possible versions of themself in alternate timelines. :D Changing the past is meaningless to them because they already know how they responded to it elsewhen!

edited 7th Sep '13 12:43:04 PM by Noaqiyeum

That's another good one.

What do you guys think of this (external linked because it's not insubstantial)? The number one question is, can you spot my direct inspiration for most of the scene? There's some pretty heavily similarities, and I'm a little worried some people might consider it to be a rip off. Then again, it's a fanfic, so originality mightn't be the order of the day.

In addition, general comments would be nice, regarding the tone and what have you.

edited 13th Sep '13 9:26:19 AM by Majormarks

This isnt the right thread for that.

Remember this line?

"It's so much easier to see the world in black and white. Grey...I don't know what to do with grey."

I don't know what to do with grey either. I like happiness, comedy, sci-fi, adventure, 60s/80s kitsch and justice (which I 98% of the time treat as a synonym for violence). Most of what I create is either just plain silly, sentai-inspired, or rarely, black comedy heavily influenced by "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia." It puts a smile on my amateur face, and as long as I respect language/grammar/characterization a few other people usually smile too.

But I get the impression that a lot of people favor Grey and Grey Morality, which is one of my (admittedly many) weaknesses. I have a rather low tolerance for Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy, and it's even worse when I'm the creator. When I try for something darker it progresses to the point where I ask myself "even if I can pull off a happy ending at this point, is it worth bothering with all this? These characters/events are becoming major downers..." and I throw up my hands and delete the file(s).

How do writers work with this? How do good writers work with this? Since different people are good at different things, should I just stick with what brings joy to myself and others? (Please be specific; I also have trouble with too much subtlety and figurative language/metaphors.)

Morally gray characters shouldn't cause Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy; check the bottom of that page and you'll discover that it used to be named Black-and-Black Morality. What I think is happening is that you're swinging too far away from the 'gray' end. You want Anti Heroes who are good at heart but just aren't squeaky clean Knights in Shining Armor.

But if that's not what you want to write, then don't write it. Write what you like and what makes you happy, not what you think will please some sort of wider audience. It shows when the author doesn't like or care about what they're writing about- and readers will probably agree with you.

Also, Grey-and-Grey Morality can mean making the antagonists more sympathetic just as much as it can mean making the protagonists "darker".