Random Questions Thread

You can treat homophobia as completely non-existent, especially if that serves the purposes of your story better. Will homophobia be a theme in your story? Do you want it to be a theme in your story?

You yourself said "I also want same-sex relationships without it being central to the plot and characters. Just like real people, the characters choose who they want to be with, and that's that". So you likely don't want homophobia in your story.

There's aboslutely no problem with having zero homophobia - in fact, it makes for an interesting aspect of your world where people can and will casually mention "have you found a nice girlfriend yet?" to a lady in front of children. I would personally love to read that kind of story, even if it's slice-of-life.

edited 1st Dec '16 8:50:40 PM by hellomoto

@Ultimate Lazer: yeah, that's sound like an ok timeline for progress.

Although situation in currently less accepting parts of the world, may not be as peachy, so that's something to consider if you want it all thought out. Or just make it so that people that travelled away from those parts would be more worldly anyway and get along with the mindset of the location.

@ewolf, You could also see about finding a mentor. Somebody who's already skilled at the craft who's willing to take you under their wing and help you develop your talents. But finding one a lot more rare these days than, say, joining your local writer group.

What are common hazing practices of like, younger kids? Say 10-15?

My mind immediately goes to "stuffing the fat kid in a locker." Also swirlies. And online harassment...

Or maybe that's just bullying. (But really, what's the difference?)

That comes off more as bullying, indeed.

Inasmuch as any distinction can be made between hazing and bullying, all the ones I can think of make me think the former's not really a 10-15 thing.

Yeah, hazing has an air of "military" to it. Or at least some kind of formal command structure. Bullying is just kids (or, let's face it, some adults) asserting dominance in demeaning ways. They resemble each other, where one is semi-formal and the other just pops up independently, but the motivations are different.

For 10-to-15-year-olds, hazing might — might happen for new members of a sports team. But even then, any coach worth their salt would quash that within the first week.

IMHO, "bullying" is knocking a kids books out of their hands while they walk down the hallway. "Hazing" is making some kid carry your books down the hallway (because its a status thing). Bullying keeps you out of the group. Hazing is a ritualized way of joining one.

Since I seem to have a knack with making threads that don't get used, I'm going to ask this here and hope for the best;

Can there be too much in a story? I'm not talking about tons of plot lines or switching between a bunch of different PO Vs. I'm asking if a singular story can contain too many different things.

I'm not sure if I'll actually write it or anything, but I've been toying with an idea recently about this suburban community (the ones with the signs and are almost certainly surrounded by trees, y'know?) which is some sort of magnet for weirdness - aliens, time-travellers, magic, superheroes, Sentai-squads, etc - and this new-kid-on-the-block who forces himself into the middle of it all cuz who wants to be a regular kid when your neighbors can fly? And I got to wondering...would a story/plot with all of these different elements and genre-crossing characters work well if done right? Or would it be doomed to break its own back trying to do too much?

edited 3rd Dec '16 6:01:06 PM by TruthHurts22

A lot of it depends on your writing process—a story that seems jammed with ideas when you describe it halfway through the draft might SEEM cluttered, but if it grows organically from a basic premise or if there's a very well-timed Wham Episode that changes the entire scope of the story, audiences often love it for making the world seem more real and chaotic.

Plus, it's often dependent on the setting. I would be REALLY put off if a Renaissance-themed setting was stuck in a quiet little town/village where nothing ever happened. I have nothing against quiet little villages, but if you're setting your story in the Renaissance or its Fantasy Counterpart Culture—especially the Italian Renaissance that everyone knows about—then I want to see ships dropping off passengers and goods from far-off places, I want to meet a Renaissance Man experimenting with his fourteen different fields of study, and I want to hear how all of the royalty/nobles are having petty feuds within their giant cities. Your story is pretty superhero-esque, so that seems like the good kind of chaos-magnet.

The key thing is to watch your pacing—most stories that grow organically don't just shove everything in all at once, or else that would lead to a setting version of Lost in Medias Res where nobody can keep track of anything happening in the world. Keep an eye on your main plot (and your main protagonist/ensemble characters), and introduce different people/plot-points in small doses.

edited 3rd Dec '16 7:26:52 PM by Sharysa

Yes, if the author can't pull it off.

I know that sounds like a very short answer for a complex question, but it really is all in the execution. Better the writer who trims the excess stuff they can't pull off and focus on doing a few things really well. (A few very skilled writers can cover a lot of things and still pull it off.)

You can add as much as you want if it's paced right and long enough. Long running stories in general will build up the amount of shit in it.

Is there any way to make a believable reason for a government-funded Amazon Brigade?

My story Protectors features a spec-ops unit of young female Super Soldiers called the Artemis Unit. All of them were homeless or were orphans, and no one would notice their absence, so the government "inducted" them into their program to produce "unbreakable" warriors that went through Training from Hell and a Super Serum to enhance their human abilities.

It takes place in a world of superheroes 20+ years after an Alien Invasion, so they wanted to be prepared for threats. I have the basic concept down, but I'm wondering if there's any believable justification for why the program would only use women. It doesn't have to be realistic, given that it's a setting with superheroes, but something believable within the story's context would do good.

1. It just happened that way. 2. One of the test requirements is actually medically cheaper for afab people, for whatever reason, thus it weighted over 3. It's the personal pet project of someone

That sounds like better suited for something episodic. Kid runs into group A, tries to befriend them, engages shenanigans. Repeat for groups B, C, D....
You can connect it up by building a web of relationships, rivalries and alliances, by having him sometimes actually fail to get in with them and leave it for a revisit later, etc etc.

But on a general fullness - replace all the fantastical groups with regular cliques with focuses on regular interests. Does it now feel like too much things to put in?

edited 4th Dec '16 11:25:14 PM by Adannor

& Could tie it to estrogen via hadwavium science; and artificially tipping that factor introduces too much variables.

Would make it interesting for intersex people (see klinefelter syndrome) as well as those who are transgender.

What would be a Genre Deconstruction of Young Adult Paranormal Romance genre using through the premise that most novels use,

12 year old Savannah meets a boy named Trip in biology class on the first day of school. Savannah and Trip have themselves a newfound relationship in which finding themselves in risk of causing a massive disaster between Humans and Werebeasts after Trip reveals his Werecat heritage.

I need to do an extensive and thorough research on World War I. What are the good information sources on this topic (not just websites, history books included)?

edited 8th Dec '16 4:49:59 AM by Millership

Try B.H. Liddell Hart "A History of The First World War".

Liddell Hart's theses are somewhat controversial, though; the events are generally undisputed, the causes and effects are not.

Castles of Steel focuses on the naval aspects, The Price of Glory covers just Verdun and its aftermath (and Verdun is one of the single biggest battles in all WWI).

Uh...I'm not too sure how to ask this exactly, but how would I go about covering the trope Their First Time if I myself am a virgin? My story is a Fantasy-Adventure with elements of a Coming of Age story early on, and this sort of moment is a pretty big one for most 16-year-old teenagers, and as such it's relevant to a Coming of Age tale.

Side-note: I do find it kinda funny that said main character is already hitting this point in his life well before me even though I'm six years older than him roughly at this point. But I digress.

I don't want to gloss over this scene because of the emotional weight behind it that further develops both characters involved, but I'm also not sure how to go about it due to the fact that it strays out of the range of "write what you know" for me. What sort of research should I do before going about it? Should the scene be heightened of a bit more grounded in realism (either way it's going to be a balance, but I don't know which one should be more dominant)?

I should also probably clarify that I'm not writing anything pornographic. That's just inviting bad writing. I'm far more interested in exploring the emotional aspect of it than the physical, and as such I deploy a Tactical S.D.S. once the clothes start coming off, and then resume after the fact with both characters being fairly awkward. Namely the main character is pretty much doing a Thousand-Yard Stare at the ceiling while trying to process what just happened.

edited 9th Dec '16 12:30:05 AM by randomdude4

YourBloodyValentine & SabresEdge, thank you for your suggestions.

Was there any people of color in middle age Europe?