Writer's Block Daily

I'm wondering whether or not 'Captain Neckbeard' would be a good pirate.

Thanks to Reddit, 'Neckbeard' sounds like the opposite of a pirate to me.

Maybe the Swedish variety, perhaps.

That was exactly what I had in mind. Though in this case better term would be 'hold-dweller'.

I'm also imagining a parrot trained to say "Brawk! I'm a nice guy!"

That's brilliant. Go for it.

Edit: This second part was stupid, so I got rid of it.

edited 7th Aug '14 7:50:26 PM by Wheezy

Does he have pictures of himself trying to look cool, wearing sweat pants and a faded t-shirt with an absolutely pristine tricorne? :D

I was specifically responding to Prometheus Creations post, but you're welcome anyway.

In sorta-writing news, this nice piece of what happened in one of my games is the hottest comment of what's currently the 3rd hottest post on Reddit. (It's technically the second-most upvoted comment, but it's on top because it received more upvotes sooner). 350 points is actually a bit small at a moment, but I think it might reach four figures by the time the post gets cold.

Note to self: Continue that save so I can get to killing off all of my Sim's employees and telling it via a comedic story.

I will do some real writing on Saturday, when I take a writing class. Maybe I should print this out for my teacher.

edited 7th Aug '14 4:14:23 PM by chihuahua0

EDIT: reposted to WIP works for convenience.

edited 7th Aug '14 5:25:52 PM by PrometheusCreations

It looks interesting, but I'm not sure that this is the right thread, as we have a thread dedicated to soliciting feedback on one's WIP. Maybe you should repost over there.

edited 7th Aug '14 5:00:24 PM by demarquis

I only posted here because was told that I had to link the work itself rather than the summary. I took that to mean it was fine, but I suspected it not entirely be 100% correct. For the sake of following the rules, I removed the post telling users to check it out.

edited 7th Aug '14 5:29:38 PM by PrometheusCreations

Really? I just came back from reading the rules over at the "Constructive Criticsm" thread and it doesnt mention that.

Telling from Reddit, I need to reuse the line "unfortunately, nobody died" in a more formal form of writing. It makes for a good writing prompt, thinking about it.

Sorry. (And I removed that.)

edited 7th Aug '14 7:50:43 PM by Wheezy

So all of a sudden I decided, "hey, I want to see Harrison Ford with a beard (and a real, bona fide beard, not like Indy's permastubble)" and then I found out Mark Hamill was contractually obligated to grow a beard for Star Wars VII and he looks an awful lot like Alec Guinness in A New Hope.

Also, for episode seven Hamill is close to Guinness's age when he was in a New Hope. It's all coming full circle.

... I hope he doesn't die in the flick. I mean, I don't want Han to die in his place, or Chewie, or Leia, or... I think I don't want any of them to die D: To put this a a little better in context with this thread, I find it better to have an older generation guide the protagonists than having them killed off. It's become a bit too passé, and it sometimes comes across as slightly ageist. I've toyed with the idea of having the mentor figure actually be a mercenary, who was in disguise to kill the hero when they least expect it. I think it was for a rewrite of Eragon, where the Ra'zac are replaced with an eclectic array of guns for hire and assassins. I might just use that idea for an original work... And now I'm rambling.

I'm starting to get depressed at how much I still have to do before being able to actually work on my story.

Hello, everyone! I got a message a few days ago suggesting I introduce myself here so I can better get to know everyone here in the troper community!

So, hi! My handle is Corialos, though you all can just call me Cori if you like! I'm new around here, and while I'm not super active in the community, I do look forward to hanging out and talking about the craft of writing with everyone here. I used to consider myself something of a writer as a kid and I'm hoping that getting together and talking with other like-minded people will help me get in the state of mind to start writing again.

Though I only recently became a troper on the site, I've been reading the work put out by this community for a little over half a decade now, and from what I've seen y'all seem to be pretty cool folks. It's nice to meet all of you, and I'm looking forward to spending more time in the forum.

If you've got any questions for me (to talk about story-writing, or for just about whatever else, really), don't hesitate to ask.

Greetings, etc.

Then start working on your story anyways. Excessive background work is the enemy of a completed story in exactly the same way that the enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect one.

Welcome to the fora, Corialos.

Wow, a couple new people showed up. Makes me feel a little less like a newbie. No but welcome anyways.

Feels good to get back on the forums after a whole week of feeling bad for myself. The problem is that my protagonist doesn't really have a good reason to answer 'the call to action' other than being a good person. I could go back to her back-story to find something she's driven about- but my only clue is that she was disliked by peers because she was once in a higher class (she wasn't snooty). But I think that's not really a good reason since she's on a race to deactivate long-range missiles to prevent another world war.

I feel like I keep creating problems for myself...

Heh, I've got a similar problem with a character from one of my...older works in progress. I've got a large number of characters living in an interesting setting with an interesting mythology behind it (thank the Author Gods for good worldbuilding), but as for the characters themselves; there's not much interesting about them. Good stories thrive on conflict, and I can't seem to come up with any personal issues that can make any of the characters interesting.

Take my main protagonist, a teenager named Connor, for example. Basic chain of events is as follows: Connor gets tricked into joining secret military branch as part of an extracurricular activity, later finds out that his commanding officer is a Reaper (as in, literal metaphysical grim reaper), one of many (specifically, he's the oldest) charged with maintaining stability between Heaven, Hell, and Earth (among other things); Connor is then inducted into ranks of Reapers as his former CO's apprentice; after a series of missions, Connor receives the revelation that his mentor is actually his great-grandfather, and that his mother was actually a Reaper the entire time.

There are a couple of problems with Connor's character: 1.) He has no motivation to speak of. I'm having trouble trying to come up with any reason as to why he would choose to accept his master's invitation to become a Reaper (kind of like your problem regarding the "call to action"—exactly the same, in fact, since without Connor's transformation there is no story here for me to write).

2.) The second and far more infuriating problem is my inability to come up with any insecurities or angst regarding Connor's status as a Reaper or the so-called "revelation" of his familial upbringing. Like I said, stories thrive on conflict and interesting character development comes from personal emotional conflict as well. The good news is I think I've found a solution for the former (regarding why Connor should care about his status as a Reaper and what it means for him in relation to the world at large) but I can't rightly think of why he should be at all bothered by his secret family history. I mean, I'm sure he'd be annoyed about the secrecy, but since he's had an otherwise normal family life I can't find any angle where there would be a source of any real angst—to put it into words, "Why should he care?" It kind of goes back to the first point about his motivation as well; why should he care enough about the Reapers' role as peacekeepers and general soul-shepherding (yeah, pretty sure that's not a real term), anymore than he should care about his family history being kept a secret from him?

I'm having a lot of trouble actually answering that question, and it's got me stuck.

EDIT: I accidentally wrote that the mentor was Connor's great grand[i]son[/i], when in reality he is Connor's great grand[i]father[/i]. This has since been fixed.

edited 9th Aug '14 9:07:13 AM by Corialos

Well motivations can be simple like "survive the winter" or "get an A on the test" and they change throughout the story.

For the second problem of yours (the family revelation), think about personality-wise how your character would react to it. Personally I'd be shocked. Others might get mad (hates secrets) or overjoyed (lonely people). Put some thought into that. About "why he should care", my two more well-developed (mentioned below) care because one has family reasons, the other fears what comes after life. Other than giving examples, that's what I'm struggling with.

The things is that my other two characters who aid my protagonist are really interesting and have their motivations (one wants to finish the job his late father started, the other wants to turn his life around to prevent others from becoming the same as him) and my MC is just pretty normal and boring. Perhaps I should give her some fears? Fears motivate people.

edited 9th Aug '14 8:29:48 AM by electronic-tragedy

Depends on the nature of the fear. Do you want something primal, such as fear of heights, insects, water, etc.? I myself have a fear of heights that weirdly enough manifested on its own with no explanation (no childhood trauma, no nothing—I am just deathly afraid of falling, but not of flying...weird).

Or perhaps you'd rather have some sort of more existential fears, such as fear of the unknown, or of one's own mortality, or of a lack of ambition, or crippling indecisiveness, etc.? That has the potential to really mess with someone's head and can make for good drama if written well.

If written REALLY well, you can take advantage of it so that whatever your protagonist fears affects the reader directly as well, forcing the reader to experience the same fear by proxy. For example, I am most emphatically NOT claustrophobic, but I know that I started feeling uneasy and somewhat queasy (rhyme unintentional) after reading House of Leaves.

In short, it kind of depends on what you're looking for in terms of a character's fear. But if you're looking for character flaw, make sure you milk it for all it's worth—really torture your character with it at every opportunity. Don't just say she has a fear and make it an Informed Flaw, because that never works out well.

Can't decide whether to parse a character's mention of AA batteries as "AAs" or "double-As":

And, yes, I could just have them say "AA batteries", but that seems a bit redundant to me.

When I see "AA batteries" my mind goes to an entirely different place.◊