Writer's Block Daily

Huh. A deux ex machina in the form of a guy who wanted to see two robots fight

I love it when the evil guy is the Audience Surrogate.

So I'm writing a character who's basically a ditzy Pollyanna who sometimes does things just because they're funny. However, I want her to be someone who's actually quite intelligent; she simply pretends to be ditzy to avoid significant responsibility, although her optimism is genuine. I also want the audience to know this without it being spelled out to them, so I'm trying to find ways to make it clear.

So far I have:

• Her job (basically a form of weather control) is implied to be a highly technical one. To keep the "disconnect" less obvious, we don't see much of it before she's called to adventure.
• She normally sticks to simple words, but is prone to slipping into larger ones when frustrated or talking about something that interests her.
• She never needs a plan explained to her twice, no matter how complex. She'll sometimes offer up explanations to other characters if they're confused.
• She often tries to weasel out of responsibility, although she'll take it up if pressed.

Are you looking for feedback or just sharing?

Largely sharing, although any suggestions are fine. (Probably should've made that clearer, but oh well.)

This is the first time that I've posted in this thread. Anyway, I've been trying to dedicate more time to writing my novel.

Welcome, and get back to work ;)

So the space wolves have finally come to eat me once and for all. u_u

Welcome, cosmic carnivore!

It's finally happened. EVE has tracked me down with a Matari assault frigate. (A Wolf. In Space!)

Meanwhile, I have just accidentally given one of my protagonists amazing guilt issues to go with his possible attachment issues, as in his last relationship the new girlfriend killed the old girlfriend at his request, though none of them were aware of it at the time.

Meanwhile, I'm seriously pondering whether or not to introduce a new character, with a few twists.

Out of universe, Ms. Isolde is a character written for a discontinued RP game by a friend of mine—not a PC, but a relative of a PC (Czeslawa) whom I'm already incorporating into the game because a) the player has given me permission to do so and b) who doesn't like a large, angry, drunken Polish policewoman with an unpronounceable name? (CHESS-sla-wah, I've been told.)

In-universe...yeah, I think I'll keep her personality and background. Elfin, cheerful, ex-Hauptverwaltung Aufklarung, used to work for Markus Wolf...it'll be an interesting element to toss into an urban-fantasy story.

Thanks for the welcoming, folks.

So, what threads would you all recommend, in this sub-forum?

edited 25th Aug '14 8:50:41 PM by SpaceWolf

All of them. (What? You had something better to do?)

edited 25th Aug '14 9:16:42 PM by Demarquis

I'll try some more, tomorrow.

Trying to figure out how characters should react to this joke: Why is it easy for a narcissist to change a light bulb? Because they hold the bulb and the world revolves around them.

That depends on how psychologically "stable" your other characters are. If you have more than one character of debatable sanity, you can play with Self-Deprecation, among other things. Oh, and you could consider writing in some narcissistic rage, provided that you have a genuine narcissist in your cast. You can also factor in varying personalities and senses of humor. Basically, everyone will react differently. Some people will find it funny, and others will roll their eyes. Some may find it in bad taste, even. Imagine that you are in a room, making this joke, and write from that point.

edited 25th Aug '14 10:00:51 PM by SpaceWolf

Is it a good or bad idea to have the goal in your writing be 'make something Crazy Awesome the audience can't get anywhere else'?

It's a good idea, but only if it's written well. If it's an ass-pull, then you probably shouldn't bother with it; if it's well-constructed, you can give it a go. This all hinges on how well you can recognize ass-pulls, of course.

edited 25th Aug '14 10:49:37 PM by SpaceWolf

That's a vague description of what your goal is. Awesome in what regard? Lasers and explosions have less of an effect in literature than they do in visual media. Sometimes a story only needs to be told in a certain way to awe the reader.

Essentially, I want to make a book that makes the reader THINK, with a climax that brings everything together. The climax more or less begins when an angel of death that looks like a clone of the main character breaks into a courtroom, backed by the military, and eventually escalates into a battle with a justified Parody Sue in a Humongous Mecha, a magical black hole and 4 different sides. This is all explained and I believe is simply pure awesome. Think Harry Potter. You set it up for most of the book with an action scene or two, then bring it all together. Does this sound okay?

Sorry for the bad grammar, I'm pretty groggy.

edited 25th Aug '14 11:48:14 PM by Dimentiosome

Well, I updated Moonflowers extremely late, thanks to my school's crap enrollment. Still feel accomplished, though.

edited 26th Aug '14 11:49:13 AM by Sharysa

9450 more words for Wings To Fly. Need to work on other things now.

I was doing some research for my furry transfiguration Nobel thing and found out some interesting stuff. There was an annual furry convention in California, reaching peak attendance in the mid-to-late '90s, about when I planned the transfigurationist to start doing his thing. The best part? One of the themes in that time period was "Magic and Morphs". I couldn't have planned it better if I'd tried.

It's always a great feeling when things happen to align just so, isn't it?

One idea I'm thinking about doing is a war between humans and apes.

Here's a writing tip. Don't ever write a novel by thinking about what tropes you want to build it around. I know that tropes are not cliches, but structuring a novel around tropes will always make a story that is cliched. The reader will have "seen it all before", because that's what a trope is-something that has been seen before. Writing a story centered around things you have seen before is how shit like Mills College Anime Club gets made.

Are you talking to anybody in particular or just in general?