Writer's Block Daily

Welcome to the thread, the Unsquished.

Complex villains make much better characters, IMHO, but their popularity is limited by making them appear to similar to RL leaders, which might cause the followers of such leaders to feel uncomfortable. Nihilistic irrationality is safer to depict.

Very true. And they're tricky to write, because you need to give them good, strong arguments that other people would fall behind — so not only do you need to think like someone cleverer, more charismatic and most likely more attractive than yourself, but you might even find yourself accidentally agreeing with a genocidal maniac.

Tell me. My own antagonist fits that description very well. I ended up basically basing him on myself. That made for an interesting writing exercise.

I figure that's a point in their favor when it comes to writing them. It's one thing to write an opponent who's basically a force of nature; it's another to write someone who, if looked at from a particular angle, seems like a savior. Even more once you consider that the leaders wouldn't consider themselves villains; for something like genocide, it's not a case of someone waking up one day and deciding that they'll kill everyone. Not is it a case of sudden, temporary insanity. The truth for each of the great slaughters in human history—be it the Holodomor or the Trail of Tears, Auschwitz or Srebenica—there developed a situation, intentionally or unintentionally, when the rational choices for many good and ordinary people were either to play a role in the evil, or to stand aside and let it happen.

Depicting that can be hard and brutal, but worthwhile if your story takes you there and you are willing to follow. That you can comprehend and portray the mindset and the rationale of a killer does not make you a sympathizer to killers; to understand is not to condone. Evil is something you can understand, not something so fearsome you need to run from its nature.

Dear gosh, don't get me started on antagonists.

As I kinda did, try seeing how the world is screwed up for you, but benefits someone else. Perhaps the government, or a large company. Then, put your protagonist in a situation where that still applies, but since they're protagonists, they have the drive to do something about it.

What I did, at least. Unfortunate Implications be damned. Maybe I should make it a bit more Gray-and-Gray Morality? I dunno.

@Tera: Ah yes, a syllabary? Went with that for the Uelane. Has the side effect of making adopting words from other languages a bitch, though for an isolationist culture as theirs, that's not necessarily a negative; the Maurosian and Kykzavi loanwords more rapidly meld into the local language.

I just realized an interesting counterpoint-subversion-something to the "villains motivated solely by revenge will serve the more charismatic villains" point last page: Ivan Vanko and Justin Hammer in Iron Man 2. After Vanko's first revenge plot against Tony goes awry, Hammer hires him to build better suits and upstage Tony. But Hammer's not as smart as Vanko, which allows Vanko to sneak several things under Hammer's radar. And guess what? If you only want revenge on one person, robots are a good way to get that single-minded army without asking why they're serving this narrow-minded person. Vanko puts an override code into the robots he designs that allows him to take control of them at any time. He swipes the robots from under Hammer's nose at his high point and almost kills Tony with them.

So while a villain who thinks the world is theirs for the taking may control revenge-motivated ones, dumb wide-thinking ones can still be manipulated by smart revenge ones.

One thing I like about that villains essay is that it acknowledges that short-sighted "villains" who only want to cause destruction really do exist. Sure, they can be the tool of a lazy author and are often thinly drawn, but I'm kind of tired of people blithely asserting that they're wholly unrealistic.

On an unrelated note, one thing that's bothered me for ages with my writing is the fear that I only have a small pool of different character voices - that even if a lot of the details are different, all of my characters of a certain archetype will basically sound the same. Does anyone else ever worry about this? Usually I just see people concerned that they can't do distinct character voices period.

Something similar. I tend to worry that my characters all seem the same because I don't write them well enough. Like, Character A from Story 1 is the same as Character A from Story 2, because I didn't write Character A from Story 1 in enough details to flesh them out and make them distinct from Character A from Story 2. Like Character A from Story 1 is the skeleton for Character A for Story 2 and they'll never be more than that skeleton.

So yeah, I can understand that feeling.

Something interesting that just occurred to me about my writing:

In real life, I fear change. Not, like, on a crippling level, but I'm extremely uncomfortable with the idea of changing even small things about my life in a permanent way. To take one relatively minor example, I have dozens of bookmarks for websites I no longer visit on the off-chance I ever want to change my mind about not visiting them anymore.

Meanwhile, in my story, one of the major recurring themes is the inevitability of change. Change isn't always portrayed as a good thing, but it is shown to be something that can only be held back for so long.

And the interesting thing is, not only did it never occur to me until just now that there might be a connection - that the reason this is a recurring theme is because it speaks to my personal issues - I'm still not convinced there actually is, because I had a very specific conscious reason for making "change" an important part of my story: the story is in part a metafictional commentary on science fiction, and the theme of change is meant as something of a criticism for what I see as science fiction's recurring problem with its own fear of change, whether that manifests in a reluctance to create truly innovative future societies in favor of cheap rehashes of present or past ones, or the ever-frustrating blight that is Status Quo Is God (which is hardly unique to science fiction, of course).

So it's interesting to see that connection, given that I never intended it and it might not even really exist.

Ah, character go "click" moments, thou art strange, strange, strange.

I started writing a lad named Janek (originally paired with last name Wisniewski as an obvious placeholder, and while the last name didn't stick the first name did) more than a year ago, fleshing him out as a character, his motivations, his relationships with other characters, et cetera, et cetera. Seeing how he's one of two main characters in my story, I thought I had a firm grasp on him. Then something went 'click' today and in a moment of insight I realized exactly what it was that was making him tick, and suddenly his actions and his words all make sense according to that new context. I'm going to have to rework a lot of scenes, of course, but that's fine. Two themes: radio, clandestine...

Yes! YES! Because what if we did delete one, and then forgot the name of the website, and had to spend several hours trawling through Google until we find it and remember why it is we don't visit it any more? Such a waste, such a terrible waste.

Speaking of digital hoarding, after about 30h of agony I just solved a major obstacle in a fanfic database I'm working on. It's possible I may cry. And I wrote down a couple of scene snippets, too, which feels pretty good when I think of my typical output.

Also:

edited 17th Jan '15 4:44:46 PM by LongLiveHumour

For a long time, I've been pondering what webcomic idea would be worth perusing. Well, that's not entirely true; any webcomic idea can be made interesting. For me, it's more along the lines of "what would be a good one to START with." After internally debating it for a while, I thought up a pretty interesting one.

Basically: I've thought up these characters in High School and I like them well enough to still use them. I've thought up a webcomic with a specific narrative where they could be best utilized : it's essentially a beat for beat graphic novel adaptation of an non-existent Avengers style team up film, part of a non existent Superhero cinematic universe. It stems from several factors:

A. Me wanting to do a bunch of other projects and not wanting to spend too long a time working on one in particular.

B. I find it "manageable" to write, as I don't have to delve a LOT into the backgrounds of each of the characters; after all, Joss Whedon wrote The Avengers well enough that you could watch it without seeing any of the individual films while still "getting" what most of the characters were about.

and

C. I get to make use of these characters who I feel could be something really special.

These are just my thoughts. I'd be very curious to hear what some of you think of it; suggestions, advice, etc.

edited 17th Jan '15 7:32:05 PM by PrometheusCreations

You havent told me enough about your project to formulate an opinion. Some details please.

Fair enough. The project is still in the fairly beginning stages, but I do have some basics in mind. It would be a team of six, three boys and three girls, each with their own superhero niche. I'm hoping for the team to be fairly diverse in terms of personalities, ethnicities and sexual orientations or lack thereof.

In terms of structure, I was thinking it being around 144 pages, which would be split into six twenty four page chapters. It's essential a miniseries in that way.

The daunting part is thinking up the backstory. Recently I thought up a concrete origin for one of the heroes; a young, trouble seeking, wannabe Youtube star teen girl who has her world turned upside down when her much respected, retired police officer grandfather is framed for a crime he didn't commit. She realizes that the system he put his life on the line on for thirty years has turned his back on him and, using her newfound abilities, creates a new identity, fighting against corruption physically and using viral videos as a rallying cry for others to take action and to warn those in power who abuse their authority and influence.

That's just the origin story for one of them; there are the remaining five, PLUS the universe itself, which definitely take the most time to properly develop. The Marvel and DC Cinematic universes have the luxury of having decades of stories to mine, so it's just a matter of rearranging a bunch of old pieces into a new one. With me, what the pieces are and what they're being made into are entirely up in the air.

In this case though, I do have a frame of reference I can look to, which are the Marvel films: solo origin stories all leading up to a big team up. I feel that it would be best to start with the characters, write out each independent origin story for them, see in what ways they can intersect, then build the universe from those foundations. For me, that seems like a logical way to do the world building, but I'm curious if there's any general suggestions or what traps I should try to avoid. I'm sorry if I'm being too vague with a lot of the specifics, but one of my big hurdles at this point is the world building, not so much the individual characters.

edited 18th Jan '15 10:17:52 PM by PrometheusCreations

Hi all, was told to introduce myself here by the scary internet robot. I've been active on the other boards for a bit, namely chattering about narrative theory and my own take on it. So, thought it way past time I dip my toe in here.

So far, my writing has been... strange: one unpublished novel, written ten years ago, which I shudder when I re-read it (Though an agent said it had elements that would be good if expanded....)

Two fan-fics written, both circa 60k words, need some editing but overall seem ok.

Much posting on PBP web-boards, where I've gone from mary-sue-ish character writer with a one-trick pony of characters to, I hope, some more nuanced and flawed heroes, villains and extras.

I have a couple of ideas I'm weighing in my mind right now, which I'd love to float with people. My main issue right now is my impatience with writing! I have the idea, but getting it down on paper never seems fast enough and I am far too self conscious to dictate!

Any advice on methodology would also be appreciated!

@Jerek Laz: Welcome.

@Prometheus: Sounds good. Can you describe the characters?

Just once, in response to, "Are you crying?", I'd like to hear someone say, "...Yeah."

I just counted up and realized that even with having named two more in this chapter, I'm still at only 11 of the 18 original pilots in this squadron having been named at all. Five of them only have one name that's been told to the audience even so.

edited 21st Jan '15 3:39:22 PM by Night

I was told to introduce myself here, and I'm primarily a fanwriter who writes in Japanese fandoms, but I do occasionally have ideas for original fiction.... and I am a lot better at coming up with ideas than writing them.

(Can fanwriters post here, or is it original works only?)

Fanwriters are fully welcome here. Several of our regulars primarily write fan fiction, so you should find good company here.

Yay!

re: Night: so, closer to Stackpole's Rogue Squadron than the late great Allston's Wraith Squadron? Awww.

Something like that. Mind, everyone with a name gets a scene, which is more than can be said for Rogue Squadron.

Alright. Everyone knows that a villain not simply killing the hero when he has the chance is stupid, even if they let it slide. However, in one of my stories, this not-killing plays an important part in the climax when a bunch of other things go wrong. I want the villain to seem intelligent, and I think I've got it fairly well-justified, but there's always that little doubt.

So I wrote up the villain's reasoning for this, as explained to the hero. I'd like to hear if it's any good or if I should ditch the not-killing and rework the climax a bit. For context, it's basically the usual "hero leads ragtag bunch of misfits against evil authority figure" thing.