Writer's Block Daily

Honest to God, I don't even think about tropes or narrative theory when I write. I just use my imagination and type out what goes on, then go back and try to word it as smoothly as I can.

I'm brainstorming for my Sekirei fanfic and decided to try something fun: I went through the love tropes and made a trope list for the story. I wrote as if it would be an entry here and breezed through it. Now I'm organizing them to go in my beat sheet. I wish I'd known about tropes when I wrote my Saints Row fanfic...

I'm having to restart my story as it seemed I valued humor more than character. That said, though, this is the most progress I've made on it in a while. Although it's deviated pretty far from what it originally was, I can expand upon it in another novel.

I haven't written my story for months due to a faulty keyboard and a lack of feedback, and because my writing is shitty.

But i've decided to continue.

Ironically it was writing something less.... wholesome, i suppose, that revived my urge to write

Gah, I apologize I keep posting so much. Now that I've actually convinced myself to start writing, it's easier to pick out all the flaws.

So...I have a group of characters who I believe are fairly deep. However, since I'm trying to create a more dramatic story, my default Genius Ditz narrator has to be far more subdued. So...if the narrator isn't keeping people's attention with the humor, what exactly would get a person to feel engaged with a character? Do they have to open up to the audience? Appear sympathetic?

I...I don't think I'm horrible at writing. I just think some facets are pretty good and others are spotty.

Haha, I know the feeling; whatever works. My own attempt to write a "less than wholesome" story in my own world ended before it even began with me getting distracted by finally determining the exact workings of the Uelane calender when an issue of seasons came up.

My computer's still in the works along with all my files. This has resorted me to drawing monsters into all my notebooks. On one hand, it makes me feel like a highschooler, and these things actually look pretty good, but on the other hand, fuck, I have another idea I don't have time or recources to develop further.

Non-sequiter thought on how I found myself inadvertently practicing my Gender Neutral Writing: telling somebody why the last season of Doctor Who was so goddamn awesome without revealing any spoilers.

"So...if the narrator isn't keeping people's attention with the humor, what exactly would get a person to feel engaged with a character?"

The key to an interesting character is that there is something about their personality which prevents them from completely fulfilling their own goals or needs. An extroverted character with an annoying personality. An honest person who is forced to keep a secret. An ambitious individual who isnt really as skilled as they think they are. And so on. Interesting characters have internal conflicts that they cant overcome without some degree of development.

This applies mostly to the primary characters of course.

edited 10th Jan '15 7:50:29 PM by DeMarquis

One of the lessons Patrick O'Brian taught me in the Aubrey-Maturin series is to give just about every secondary character, no matter how minor, some degree of unexpected depth. I'm trying to follow that.

I put a Teflon® (1945) metaphor in a 1930s story. Arsebiscuits.

Meanwhile: finished Korra, new avatar, and all I want for my life is to write about badass middle-aged Iron Ladies. Fickle, fickle.

Chris Boucher, the script editor for Blake's 7, always tried to two possible motives for everything Avon did: one selfish, one idealistic. There's about a million essays arguing for one or the other.

edited 11th Jan '15 8:40:39 AM by LongLiveHumour

Also I made a goal to finish the first draft of my book by around Aug. 8th- (which I've loosely guessed to be around 80,000 words give or take) so every day I have to write around 320 words per day.

I already have around 2873 words already written, so I've got a head start. Wish me luck so I can finish this project.

I'll wish you luck, but I'm not sure if you actually need it. 320 words a day is pretty doable.

Meanwhile: finished Korra, new avatar, and all I want for my life is to write about badass middle-aged Iron Ladies. Fickle, fickle.

Yeah, there is a serious hole there an audacious creator could fill. Even action/adventure works praised (rightly, don't get me wrong) as feminist frequently take it for granted that they need a young (i.e. no more than 20s), attractive (sometimes semi-sensibly, often not) female protagonist, whereas men starring in the same genre... anything from James Bond to John McLane can do.

Then again, fond of the Iron Lady trope myself. Perhaps because my genetically long-lived, blue-collar family has a way of producing them.

edited 11th Jan '15 11:20:53 AM by KillerClowns

Yeah, I gave myself a large time frame to allow it. Hopefully I'll be ahead of schedule.

I kind of need the luck because I feel I might get bored of the project half-way through, or find some sort of trouble some way in and put the project on the back burner. I really like this idea and it took a good 2 months of planning, so I think I'm more than prepared to do this.

re: older protagonists: I'm in full support of the idea. Works featuring them don't usually cater to the young-adult audience, but they're free to explore themes of marriage, aging, authority, and the like that don't work with a younger, more inexperienced protagonist.

Come to think of it, the majority of novels I read feature older protagonists. Aubrey Maturin, The Quest For Karla, the works of Tim Powers and Charles Stross...

I'm finding that whenever I'm writing a character dying or near dying, it's often through impalement of some kind.

For example, one of the protagonist nearly dies stabbed and pinned to a wall with his own sword and a villain dies when a he's stabbed through the chest by a bladed tentacle.

I find it slightly worrying that I enjoy writing these kinds of things....

I'd argue that you should probably examine your own fears to explain that.

Alternately, impalement lets you do a big dramatic death scene in a way that many types of death don't.

R. V. Jones had some excellent advice regarding engineering: try rearranging the order of the components; it might work better. (This after a German agent parachuted into England during the Battle of Britain with a radio; the only trouble was, due to Abwehr brilliance, the radio was suspended between the agent and the parachute, and the moment he landed, it hit him on the head and knocked him unconscious.)

Surprisingly, the same advice also worked very well for writing: a simple rearrangement of two scenes, and suddenly a lot of things click into place.

Blanked

Edited by FlowingCotton on Oct 12th 2020 at 2:12:18 AM

Well, it is certainly dramatic and not as obnoxious as the other common form I death I write (explosions).

Hello, there, I'm the Unsquished.

I got told to introduce myself here, so here I am.

I've tried writing on and off over the years, but never really managed to get into the rhythm of continually writing every day, so consequently, I've never finished anything except for short stories - emphasis on the short.

I'm not usually one for New Year's resolutions, but this year I'll make an exception.

edited 13th Jan '15 8:28:18 AM by TheUnsquished

Okay, this seems to be as good a place as any other to post this.

Political science wunderkind Adam Elkus wrote this post some two years ago, on supervillains and supervillainy. The main problem for the modern supervillain—citing the Joker, Bane, M. Silva, and Raoul Menendez—is that they are completely, utterly irrational and nihilistic, and therefore can't be realistically imagined achieving as much as they do—because their actions are self-indulgent, not instrumental. This matters because, in reality, without an actual grievance to motivate others, not just themselves, they don't end up as leaders of groups: they end up as followers. 'Verses where they can ignore this may feature them as terrifying, but they'll lack the granular texture that provides versimilitude and life for non-supervillains.

edited 13th Jan '15 10:03:41 PM by SabresEdge

That is truly excellent. Eloquently written, exceptionally well-argued, absolutely love it.

Thinking about conlanging. Realized that if you went with a Polynesian-style language, with as few consonants and vowels as possible, you could potentially have each possible combination of sounds have its own letter in the orthography. pae has a letter, bae has a different letter, ae has a different letter, and so on.