Writer's Block Daily

Oh, good heavens, that is brilliant.

What's the folk remedy for zombieism, I must wonder? Eat plenty of amino acids, stock up on animal spinal fluids, and groans of "braaaaains" instead of coughing and hacking? Inquiring minds need to know!

I was thinking of making Death Takes a Holiday the reason for the zombie apocalypse.

So, Reaper Man, basically.

Nah, I was thinking of a more voluntary holiday than that.

It is! I wish I could say I had come up with it myself.

Other symptoms obviously include moaning about the house in too much of a daze to form or express complex thoughts. I don't know if she's thought about folk remedies, though - "Starve a cold, feed a zombie" would be my first guess. Maybe with pork broth as a substitute for human flesh? :D

IIRC, the reason for the zombie apocalypse in Night of the Living Dead was something along the lines of "hell is full". Never seen it, though, so don't quote me on that.

Another development in the Amazon/Hachette debacle, which is still going on. Basically, they're fighting for a lower price that can benefit all parties better.

This paragraph is stands out:

I'll need to dig up the source, but apparently Hachette authors usually receive 25% of what the publisher receive from an Amazon ebook. Since publishers receive 70% of the sale price, authors are getting 17.5% of the sale. And that's before the agent receives their cut (15%), so then it's down to almost 15%.

For reference, a self-published author on Amazon receives 70% royalties for books costing 2.99-9.99, and 35% for books outside that price range. They might not receive help from a publisher, but they can earn more money with less copies.

Do you think 15% royalties for a book you've written is fair? Especially when it's an ebook?

EDIT: Found one.

edited 29th Jul '14 8:57:06 PM by chihuahua0

Back to the last page for a moment:

1. The characters in question are in a situation where openly acting as a couple would be dangerous or ill-advised. This is probably the most self-evident reason, particularly in historical works wherein the pair in question would be "non-traditional," especially queer. If they're not going to spell it out and you're not interested in the nitty-gritty, it falls into the background.
2. The character themselves is uncertain of their own feelings, or else attempting to save face by repressing them. A good example that springs to mind from recent reading is Peridot from the comic Cucumber Quest. Peridot has a hilariously obvious crush on the main character's younger sister, but seems utterly oblivious to the fact, partly because she is too young to have much experience with these things and partly because she is insufferably haughty—facts which are connected. It is telling of her character, in other words.
3. The situation is in itself ambiguous. Sometimes, the line between a close friendship with romantic overtones and an actual romantic relationship, or between sexual tension and sexual interaction, is a faint one in real life. Thus, it sometimes is in fiction: You can't tell because even if you had more information, making a call might be hard.
4. The relationship is peripheral and discreet enough to the plot that conservation of detail kicks in. Sometimes two characters are minor enough and low-key enough in their interactions that it might never be overtly stated whether or not they are, in fact, in a relationship.

I like the middle two, personally, because I like the psychology of those sorts of interactions, but that's just me. And I'm only talking about sexual and/or romantic subtext up there; there are a billion other sorts of subtext out there that are just as interesting. I mean, why on earth should I have to hold people's hands with this stuff? I like working for my supper when I read and I write what I want to read, so naturally I'm not going to write a cakewalk of a book.

I think a lot of people are misunderstanding what I mean by "couldn't theoretically be text". Sticking with the above examples, I'd consider all of those except maybe #3 cases where the subtext could theoretically be text, if the setting or plot focus or character development were different. What I don't get is why someone would stick in subtext that was never meant to be, and never could be, text.

You mean deliberate ambiguity that is never elaborated upon?

Hmm. Well, there is the aforementioned "intrinsically ambiguous relationship" situation, but mostly... I would say it's mostly used for queerbaiting, to be blunt about it.

P.S. In full disclosure, at least one fairly significant relationship in my work falls into that third category because those relationships are such that whether or not they are actually romantic or sexual does not alter their intimacy or complexity. But again, I'm an odd person that likes to write odd people. I don't know if that particular dynamic is rarer or more common than I think.

Ironically I've worked with these concepts a few times, including at least one case where physical intimacy was rejected by the participants because it would have made things worse.

Sorry, this is completely unrelated to the zombie discussion, but I have another problem that needs to be resolved.

The main character needs some form of exposition that could provide information on completely random stuff, so I decided that one of the villains could simply buy her a DVD box set (long story). This seems to be working, but I feel it's coming off as a clone of The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy. How could I get around this?

Once again, I'm sorry this is unrelated, but this seems to be the best thread to post this in.

The next time I try to describe Martian reentry, someone please kill me.

Hi guys! I may be a new member to TV Tropes, but I'm not new to the site, or new to writing. I have two Fan Fictions currently in progress, with about oh, six or seven planned. I am an avid writer who would love to be given some feedback from you all on here to make myself a better writer! You can even check out my now second one that's currently active, simply titled, Death Note: The Fanfiction (I'm a new member, so I can't post external links just yet).

I'm fairly new too, so welcome! When you want to do fancy stuff in replies, when you make a post or edit a page, there should be a tab below or to the side that says "show markup help" which should help. I also suggest looking through the Administrivia page.

(Now on topic) I accidentally made one of my serious characters snarky. Oh well.

edited 31st Jul '14 12:05:39 PM by electronic-tragedy

A word of warning; I've discovered the planning stage is the enemy of ones already running.

In the meantime, I've realized that not only do the final configuration of most of my story's wing pairs read like they're a couple, I probably intended it to be that way.

edited 31st Jul '14 4:35:37 PM by Night

I second that warning. Planning halts everything else, and when you get the planning going you'll end up with 12 projects in planning stage, plus one 'airing' webcomic coming along painfully slow, one book that's a re-edit round short of publishing, and one poster needed in a month for the school's freshmen party. And all you'll be doing is concentrate on one ridiculously oversized piece of Adventure Time fan art.

That was a hypotetical example, of course.

This is the extent of my writing these days, besides that one writing intensive I did two weeks ago.

Tomorrow, I'm going to make an album of my Sim setting a bar on fire, but it's only meant for some quick laughs. I'm not going to be making anything with a proper plot any time soon with The Sims 3.

EDIT: Too late. I uploaded the photos anyways. Are they fine without captions, or should I add some? I'm tempted to caption the penultimate photo with 'Why am I surrounded by such incompetence?'

edited 3rd Aug '14 7:20:54 PM by chihuahua0

A very minor character has suddenly decided to be an extremely large ham. I'm not sure whether to go with it or not.

Embrace the ham.

If they're minor, it's just a quirk. If they're not minor, it might become an issue.

The Sims 4 is going to have a Writing career, more fleshed out than its self-employement option in TS 3. to this post, one of the objectives is to "overcome writer's block".

Cue roleplaying for a lot of writing Simmers.

The thing about ebooks is that I found this set of 20 paranormal books for a dollar.

I'm like, they might be crap.

But then.

It's a dollar.

And there are twenty of them, all by different authors.

Surely there must be something I like...

But they might be crap...

But it's a dollar...

More or less describes how I feel about the Trio mini tablet.