Writer's Block Daily

x5 I suspect that the Dapper Man may receive this treatment, due to his sense of style, Magnificent Bastard qualities and resemblance to Hazama.

Langston, of a different story, might be treated this way as well.

OOH, OOH, I'M CURRENTLY WRITING A FANFICTION CALLED, STAR WARS: Light in Dark Time. I was originally writing a trollfic but it's turned into a more serious story by now, finished 6 chapters and am currently working on the seventh, check it out. Also, I plan on writing my own comic series, and I have three major series on my mind right now..just, you know, have to get around to starting them

To be honest, if I ever have enough fans that a meaningful portion of them can be stupid, I'll be ecstatic.

As far as my reader feedback goes, one of my antagonists have already gotten the Draco treatment. Then again, he's an Inspector Javert -spirited Hero Antagonist, so out of all my villain characters he's the least surprising choice.

YES.

I can sort of see one of my villains, a crime lady, getting this treatment, given her overall semi-friendliness and tendency to plan ahead.

I'll remember to care if it ever happens.

...actually I suspect I won't and write it off with an "audiences be crazy, yo".

I think my biggest problem in writing right now is that I care literally for nothing else but writing ridiculous plots with tons of references and lots of dinosaurs. Everything else can take a hike.

@Nightwire: Yes, actually.

Amen fellow troper!

Rule of Cool always plays its part.

Meh. It's good for informing set-pieces and scenarios and the like, but the bulk of writing is figuring out the small details of characterization, themes, and plot events. Rule of cool in my head is the guy who keeps on barging into the staff-officer meeting and proposing some new wunderwaffen idea. Sometimes it's a workable one and it's worked into the general plan, but most of the time it's juggled around a bit and rejected as unworkable. For me inspiration isn't shoehorning some nonsensical plot around a cool-sounding idea; it's drawing occasionally-unexpected connections as a result of new insights and integrating them into the story.

It really doesn't, though. If you subordinate a story to Rule of Cool, you get Nobody Dies; a story that collapsed under the weight of its own references and attempts to be cool.

Setting up a story is like the Son Tay Raid: five percent carefully crash-landing a helicopter into a prison camp with miniguns blazing, and ninety-five percent careful planning to make it possible.

And it turns out to have been all for nothing because you ignored some key insight most of the way through your planning process.

In retrospect, I should've picked a cheerier example.

What kind of situation would I have to put a character in to traumatized them when they don't know anyone and have no idea what's going on? Would that be enough?

Tripping and hitting your head on the coffee table

One thing I'd like to see a new spin on is zombies. For the most part, they've just been the same thing again and again.

I take it you've not read the Laundry Files and its zom—I mean, residual human resources, then. Or Terry Pratchett's take on the concept with Constable Reg Shoe.

There are only so many ways one can use narrative metaphore to express fear and loathing of masses of anonymous strangers.

There's also the issue of what classifies as a "zombie": for two example, you could create a type of zombie that retains its intelligence, but then you're straying closer to other undead, such as the revenant or liche (depending on other elements of the character). Similarly, make it angry at its grave being disturbed and you're heading towards either revenant or draugr

(What I'd like to see in zombie works is more of the magical/mystical sort; I'm getting a little sick of pseudo-scientific explanations, especially the "zombie virus". That's not to say that I dislike the pseudo-scientific explanations—they can be fun, too—it's more that I'd like a change.)

Possessor spirits it is, then. Programmable ones if you know the right programming languages: summon a minor soul-eating horror into a reasonably well-preserved corpse, bind it and geas it, and set it to work. Incredibly useful for a government agency in the midst of a budget crunch, and which happens to come across a distressing number of corpses in the course of its operations. Residual Human Resources are versatile assets that can be usefully employed as nightwatchmen, shelf-stackers, librarians, hatstands, janitors, door guards, and cannibals. (Following employee complaints, RHRs will no longer be used as cafeteria staff.)

edited 25th Jul '14 3:33:40 PM by sabresedge

I actually really like that take on zombies: not only does it bring back a magical origin for them, but also seems to treat them in a manner closer to their origins as slave labour.

(I've been occasionally tempted to read the Laundry Series—and even cracked one of the books once—but keep getting put off by my impression of how much it's a spy/agency story (which interests me far less than the magical/supernatural side of things). :/)

The mix of occult horror and espionage is what drew me in, actually, and it hasn't disappointed. (The bureaucratic black humor is a bonus.) But I say that as a longtime espionage-fiction fan.

As magical systems go, the Laundry books has one of the best-developed systems I've seen. There's a lot you can do when you can program computers to do magic. Also, it's the only 'verse I know of where you can threaten someone with "don't move, or I solve this equation!"

What about zombies that start off basically like regular people, but start to become mindless and hungry if they don't take certain precautions?

Fair enough; as I said, it's largely the espionage stuff that's making me hesitate, I think. I'll admit that the magical and supernatural elements are quite attractive—hence, I fear, some equivocation on my part. ^^;

I think that certain (fairly modern) takes on vampires work similarly, but replacing blood with flesh: the vampire is fine as long as they get a minimum amount of blood, but under certain conditions they can be reduced to near-mindless predators.

I also seem to think that I've heard of something else that's similar, but I'm not managing to find it at the moment...

However, as an interpretation of zombies I do see potential: there's a certain shuddersome threat to the idea—as with the werewolf—of a seemingly-ordinary person who may at times, if unconstrained, become an uncontrolled, cannibalistic horror.

(And no, I'm pretty sure that the werewolf wasn't the entity that I was trying to remember... ^^; )

Oops, I did it again.

As in I published a sequel to my first novel. I'm feeling pretty good about doing it; time will tell if I'm in the right business or not.

Congratulations, well done, and good luck with it! ^_^