Writer's Block Daily

I've been working in my comic. Managed to write 8 pages, but without an specific order. 5 pages are about the climax, and 3 about the intentional Ho Yay between two characters. However, I'm still looking for a way their "friendship" looks genuine and not forced for the climax.

I'm writing a shonen-like story, not a romance story by the way.

And my friend is fine, he'll continue inking the parody comic. With time, the comic shall be finished in october, I hope.

edited 18th Jul '14 10:33:25 PM by Tomodachi

The Ho Yay trope only applies when it's accidental; what you're looking for is good old-fashioned homoerotic subtext.

Which is the best thing.

I'm back to writing my story which is refreshing. But thr beginning is stale so I'm thinking of writing "out-of-sequence", but I feel if I organize it by writing out the sequence of events, I'll lose interest in the story (I leave some of events open in case I want to add in a scene). Once I outlined a story and I felt like I wrote the whole book so I got bored. I like this idea, I don't want to lose interest.

Sorry I just wanted to let this out.

I've written a lot of stories out of sequence, but discovered I rarely complete them unless I force myself to write mostly or wholly sequentially.

How does someone do a Kid from the Future plot in a fanfiction without said kid coming off as a Mary Sue? I've unfortunately got this in my head for months... (-__-')

1) The kid tends to be a copy from the fathers.

2) Tends to have the same powers, or even being more powerful than them.

So, does your kid follows the formula? Introduce him, give him a good introduction, give him flaws, make him different.

edited 19th Jul '14 6:42:08 PM by Tomodachi

Not really. Physically, she looks like a blend of her mother and father. Personality-wise, she's quiet like her father, but it's more out of shyness. And the only "power" she has is a pair of wings, and both parents have them, so it kind of doesn't count.

Also, she didn't intentionally come to the present to get her parents together — she came here thanks to a time machine going haywire, and ends up causing trouble in their relationship (She ends up kissing her father by accident. Yes, she's extremely squicked out by it).

That sounds hilarious!

I'm honestly not sure of why being a time-traveller would make the character more likely to be a Mary Sue—knowledge of the future is the only thing that really comes to mind that's specific to time travel, and that can be dealt with easily enough by faulty recollection, alterations to future events as a result of the time traveller's actions, etc.

The claim is made on the page itself, though I've long since just started tuning out any discussion of the subject in question.

@Ars: The So You Want To Avoid Writing a Mary Sue page mentioned it. As did the Kid from the Future page itself.

@Tomo: Thanks!

It'd seem like the main trouble would come from the fact that they'd know a whole lot of things that nobody else would as a result of being from the future. You could very easily negate its applications via the butterfly effect, and things unfolding differently from the way he remembers them to be. That's more a function of reading good time-travel fiction and seeing how the authors do that. (Night Watch is the example that comes to mind.)

So, the first villain of my superhero story is a Large Ham despicable terrorist, who looks like the lost son of The Rhino and a megaman character.

... I'm doing something wrong, he's supposed to be despicable, not funny!

edited 19th Jul '14 9:27:26 PM by Tomodachi

Can we change? My bad guy is an Omnicidal Maniac from the future who thinks the best way to save humanity is to eradicate all humanity from Earth and create new, higher state of civilization by cherry-picking the best human individuals out of their own timelines to re-colonize. And my story was supposed to be comedic.

Re: Kid from the Future: The Mary Sue warning on the trope page seems to be noting a tendency to use Kids from the Future, not that Kids from the Future are inherently Mary-Sueish. The "So You Want To..." page has some points worth noting, I think, but as long as you're in a position to write a non-Mary-Sue in the first place I'd guess that you probably needn't worry much more for your character being a Kid from the Future.

(Again, the main source of potential Mary-Sueishness specific to Kids from the Future—that I see, at least—is the issue of information from the future, which has been discussed already.)

You know what I think would be a nice twist to the Kid from the Future? If the reason they came back was to prevent their own birth.

Small realization: it seems that for a number of my characters, I've inadvertently applied Power Gives You Wings (which I didn't even know was a thing until after I did the planning): a Polish winged hussar, a Spitfire fighter, an angel of fire...

It's also occurred to me that I have comparatively unusual designs for meguca costumes, but what the hell. Function over form, especially if the wings are functional for air combat maneuvering purposes.

So I had this talk with a Badwebcomics wiki admin.

It was interesting.

Also, yay, two more pages!

Do you feel like sharing the interesting part with us?

Sure!

he actually gave an opinion of my villain. He said my villain was pretty bad because it simplifies a real life problem, and follows the idea of a Revenge Fantasy. The message was pretty poor made, and could be better

And that he was kinda undeveloped.

But for the rest, he was pretty friendly and like the concept. Im actually taking notes in order to create a better villain with a stronger message.

edited 21st Jul '14 7:17:37 PM by Tomodachi

Everyone: Do you have any characters that you're afraid might receive the Draco in Leather Pants treatment?

Should my works get published/adapted somehow, I don't really mind what my potential fandom might think. Well, as long as nobody gets obsessive enough to send me creepy letters or somehow hurt people because of it. Then I'd need to tell people to calm down and step away from my stuff for a week or two.

Also, my characters for Moonflowers are damn awesome. I thought a newer guy would be a minor character mostly for worldbuilding and character development purposes, and instead he has a REALLY good way to kick the plot into motion.

edited 23rd Jul '14 9:05:48 AM by Sharysa

So I cut a character because I thought they didn't give anything to the story other than being another voice. I feel bad now that the main team is composed of two males and one female (the MC), but I think the story works better now. The three were better planned anyways.

edited 23rd Jul '14 10:55:56 AM by electronic-tragedy

Pretty much what Sharysa said. I'd expect some readers to react differently to my characters than I would. Plus, I made a conscious decision that all the important characters are humanized to some degree, and that I'd try to avoid caricaturing, even for the villains. The reader is meant to feel some understanding of them, if not sympathy, but I can see some readers getting those mixed up.

I try and not think of future fan treatment unless it's problematic stuff, because for now I need to focus on making a good story. Also I find it egotistical to worry about something that will only come if I'm successful.