General Writer's Block thread

Regarding the Criticism thread, if it's proving useful, then I feel that it's likely important enough that I'd want it to be very visible, and so would prefer that it remain sticky. Conversely, if it's not proving useful then it might be better to allow it to fall from the front page, and direct people looking for critique to some more active source.

Hmm... Actually, to my mind that reasoning argues for an objection: since the thread is likely to stay near the top, it would be a de facto sticky thread if not a technical one, and thus unstickying it would arguably achieve little.

If I understand correctly, the problem with adding another sticky thread to the current set is that they end up taking up too much space at the top of the front page, meaning that recently-active non-sticky threads are pushed further down and made less noticeable. Thus, if we're to remove a sticky thread, it seems to me that we want one that's not active, and that can thus fall down the page by virtue of infrequent traffic, freeing up space for newer threads.

edited 23rd May '15 3:48:33 PM by ArsThaumaturgis

My Games & Writing

But then we have the problem where all the inactive threads are still useful, and their use would be forgotten by un-stickying them.

Which means we have a dilemma, here. Do we unsticky the threads that get a lot of traffic and would float to the top anyway, or do we unsticky the threads that don't get much traffic (thus filtering down) but are still useful?

Honestly, though, I don't think this is as big a problem as we're making it out to be.

Award-winning screenwriter. Directed some movies. Trying to earn a Creator page. I do feedback here.

I vote for unsticking the ones that get a lot of traffic.

My worst flaw seems to be segways. I have a hard time finding a good way to end one scene and start a new one. Are there any good troupes preferably for the Comedy genre that would help me with conventional means of ending a scene? Or just some general advice on it would help. Thank you.

A piece of good general advice is - don't waffle. End the scene with the punchline, comedic or dramatic. Once you've said what you need to say in the scene, shut up, add an asterisk and move on to the next. If you have trouble with this kind of thing (I do) then it helps to chop off a few lines or paragraphs until you hit the "aha" line, and feel free to be brutal - I lost four-fifths of a scene last month and by gods, it felt amazing. Another nice tip, from Strunk & White: put the key word last. And never underestimate the cliffhanger.

The same applies to beginnings. Start on dialogue, action, motion. Start with what is most interesting to you. My habit, and I think it's a common one, is to faff around with introductions and scene-setting and put off the bit I actually want to write, the part the scene is about. Bugger that. Start in the middle. Finish in the middle. (Middle the finish? I don't know, it's late and my brain's short-circuiting.) Oh, and "later on", "two days later", "somewhere on the Pampas" and the like are handy placeholders until you can come up with a proper genius line.

I recommend you find some of your favourite authors, skim through their segues, and steal from them like there's no tomorrow. (Read More Books is awful patronising advice, but here it may actually be helpful since scene-changing is a pretty specific technique.)

Re. tropes... Gilligan Cut and Answer Cut are often used in comedy, overlapping with Ironic Echo Cut.

And: http://theeditorsblog.net/2010/12/16/mastering-scene-transitions/

Patrick O'Brian is a master of the scene transition: he's been known to razor out entire weeks of sailing to keep the appropriate tone and pace. Several times, he'd write a sea battle out to the climax—crew of the enemy ship surrendered and packed into the hold, quick orders to hoist the right colors and to sail away—and then cut to the celebrations in port, often with a character recounting, with relief, the ordeal of getting the captured ship home with a large and angry mob of prisoners under the hatches and the prize-crew so short-handed they were grey with exhaustion.

Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.

I keep on popping in and out of the whole forum for a while now. It sucks, but to those who remember me, hey.

Anyway, I'm having a bit of a problem. When I was younger (about 7 or 8 years back) I came up with a dime-a-dozen idea; a comic about three kids, one of whom would be inexplicably smart and they all do weird sci-fi mishaps and the like. I was eight-ish and in the middle of a Jimmy Neutron hype, sue me.

Over the years it never really left me. Fades in and out of focus but it's always been there. And recently I've thought of it again and realized how different it was to what I had originally thought up. I mean I can't tell you a decent summary since I suck both at detailing and summarizing things, but the characters and their little world and all of other plot-points molded together into something I for once think would be half decent.

Problem being that my mind hasn't really figured out how it wants it to be done. I mean, I want to do it for sure, but back when I first thought up those three stereotypical, dopey dudes, I pictured it being some sort of comic. All these years passed and I can't really see it in anything other than the sporadic nature most cartoons have. Over-arcing plotlines but with each instance more or less being its own thing. And that's a bit of a bad thing when you can't draw for shite.

I'm not too sure if I'd actually listen to any advice given, or if I'm allowed to ask that in this thread, but anyone have any pointers on what to do with the idea?

edited 15th Jun '15 7:48:43 PM by TruthHurts22

Well, when that happened to me, I abandoned the comic idea and just wrote it as a novel. It worked.

I have been writing or rewriting Wings To Fly pretty much as long as I've been writing in general.

Nous restons ici.

I think that's part of the problem? Ignoring the fact that I'm not great at writing, I literally cannot imagine it in written media.

edited 16th Jun '15 9:21:16 AM by TruthHurts22

Then you have little other choice than to write it as a script, and hope to find someone who could illustrate it for you.

edited 16th Jun '15 9:45:28 AM by DeMarquis

Re, Ideas That Stuck With You...

I once had a thought: "I really liked the tone of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1." Then I had a related thought: "What would the Harry Potter universe look like in America?" Then I had a different thought: "Why are there all these different kinds of magic? (Incantations, enchantments, curses, "feeling it", etc.) What would happen if they all existed side-by-side?" These ideas all merged into a modern-day fantasy story with some Nordic themes.

Throw in a magic-based Superhero story. Then an Urban Fantasy that explored a city with elves, dwarves, vampires, werewolves, undead, and hermit-like trolls, mix them into the same setting, and get hung up on a couple worldbuilding details.

Extrapolate those details, throw out the other stuff, and now I've got a story about a group of travelling mages/heroes set in "America's medieval period."

So yeah. I know the feel.

edited 16th Jun '15 9:06:11 PM by AwSamWeston

Award-winning screenwriter. Directed some movies. Trying to earn a Creator page. I do feedback here.

The head of the writing program at my school just called one of my pieces the most interesting piece of student work she'd ever read, and she's been teaching for a looooong time. Not the best, mind you, since there's still a ton of issues with it, but I'll certainly take that compliment.

Congrats!

Yet more proof that TV Tropes Will Enhance Your Life.

Award-winning screenwriter. Directed some movies. Trying to earn a Creator page. I do feedback here.

Sometimes I wonder if I even have what it takes to be a writer.

Sure, I've got the ideas. Granted a lot of them are more-or-less knock offs of stories that already exist, but I liked to think I could make them something new. Don't have much of the motivation or skill, but I could always dig that up later on if I tried. But I always want to make something for the wrong reason. I don't get an idea and go 'Hey, that seems neat', I go 'Huh, if I make it good enough, I could be famous'. And yeah, that's a pretty good goal to reach for, but nobody starts out that way. They make what they want to see, and if along the way it gets popular, it's more of a happy accident.

It kind of sucks knowing that I don't have the mentality to be a content creator but have no other talents or hobbies I can base a decent career off of. Hell, I don't even have the stuff to do what I want to do. I'm just an idea guy, and they don't go anywhere special.

I'm torn between putting this here or over in the Yack Fest, so yell at me all you like. I just wanted to vent and this seemed appropriate.

Rhetorical question: How old are you? (For the sake of this post, I'm going to assume you're still in high school or college.)

When I was a teenager (and even today at 22, sometimes) I would think "I can't do anything productive. I can only do artistic things." So I was in a similar boat to the one you're in now.

But there's two things I want you to realize about that "no other talents or hobbies" bit:

First: Everyone has skills that they're just not aware of, or that they don't think are useful. Using myself as an example again: I'm detail-oriented. I'm moderately strong. I'm a people person. So now I run the frozen foods section at a grocery store. It's not very fancy, but it's something to start myself out. On top of that, I've got enough of a grasp on the way the world works that I'm hoping to start my own business eventually, first by selling photo prints to local tourists and then by getting into my passion: filmmaking and online video.

Self-praising aside, my point is that you just have to look hard at what you can do. Nothing is too mundane, so consider everything. Do you wash dishes by hand? Do you clean your home? Have you volunteered at a food shelter or done any other volunteer/charity work? Are you good at climbing things? Can you lift heavy objects? Are you tall? Can you fit into small spaces? Anything can be useful in the right context. Once you get your foot in the door, you can work your way up.^note He says, having never held a job for more than a few months.

Second, about general creativity: Your creative side can be mined in ways that businesses like. Just by being here, I'm confident that you have enough skill with the written word to write up the text for companies. Think about all those people who write advertisements or instruction manuals. By being on TV Tropes, you already (probably) have a grasp on how people would react to the way ideas are presented.

And that extends into other types of creative work. Are you a visual thinker? ^Example Like when you're writing, do you do really well with character actions and descriptions? Then maybe consider some of the visual arts like photography or graphic design. Are you good/decent with music? Guess what! People make Jingles for a living.

One bit of advice I've been given is that you don't have to be extraordinary. That there's a kind of honor in "working for the weekend" and such. ^note Of course, that's pretty hypocritical coming from a guy who has major delusions of grandeur.

Having said all that, here's some actual advice that could help your writing: Consider working in a team. Maybe it's with a friend or two, or maybe someone else brings you all together. A lot of screenwriters work in teams, and many of them love the collaboration aspect. The chance to bounce ideas off each other. Find out what works. Refine the story within the group. It also lightens the load for actual writing. Some teams will divide the work among each other and refine from there. If you're struggling with the details (and I know the feel), I can tell you from personal experience that feedback and brainstorms are immensely helpful.

Award-winning screenwriter. Directed some movies. Trying to earn a Creator page. I do feedback here.

But, no, see, every single thing you used as an example? I can't do any of that. Or I don't do it. You know what I do every day? I watch Youtube. Just Youtube, for hours. That isn't a skill, not something I could do in a work environment. Just

This is so off topic and I'll stop.

That's not a skill or a capacity, that's a choice. If you want to learn how to do something other than watching Youtube, then stop watching Youtube and do something else.

As if I didn't know that, as if I didn't beat myself up every day over the fact that I could be doing something productive or important, and I don't. I fucking don't. If I can't listen to what I say about myself, then no amount of help or trying is going to change how lazy I am. I don't even have anything else to do other than sitting at my computer, unless you forgot about the fact I have nothing I'm good at.

That's it, I'm dropping it. I shouldn't have brought this up in here.

It sounds like you're suffering from depression, but I'm guessing you already know that.

Dammit I really want to leave this alone, but

No, I don't know. How am I supposed to know the difference between Depression and Typical Teenage Angst? I can't speak about how I feel about things, so a therapist would be a bust. Everyone else would just chalk it up to the angst. I might have it, but how can I be the one to say it?

I'm sure you could vent in the Insecurity, Sadness, Anxiety and Such Matters thread in Yack Fest.

But as a starting point, how is your sleeping and eating? Depression tends to muck around with one or both of those. Like not sleeping much, sleeping too much, sleeping at irregularly. As for eating similar stuff.

You must agree, my plan is sheer elegance in its simplicity! My Tumblr

I haven't noticed anything like that. At least not in sleeping. I mean, I snack a lot, but that isn't too unusual..

Eh, it ain't an 100% reliable test. There isn't any one true symptom of depression anyway. More like lists of a dozen or so and if you have more than half you're probably depressed.

You must agree, my plan is sheer elegance in its simplicity! My Tumblr

Right, so I reiterate; how am I supposed to know? I'm terrible at figuring myself out, so I can't properly answer a test about..myself.