Writer's Block Daily

On an unrelated note: the one thing I really, really wish I could just spend money freely on without thinking twice? Art books for visual speculative fiction series. Both for their own sake and because I could actually use them.

I dunno if this is the place I should be ranting about this, but a library I sometimes go to had a sale on books. No joke, TEN CENTS a book.

So I bought five and shoved them into the garbage bag I was carrying because reasons.

Also, I would like to take this opportunity to plug The Mysterious Mr. Enter. While I enjoyed him as a reviewer before, he is now creating a series of videos called 'Writing Tips'. Though the series has just started, it has helped me quite a bit in my own writing. Mainly because a large portion of it was body-swap.

So...this post was an incoherent mess. ...Meh.

So I've got a group in dire straits when a character who had been Out of Focus shows up and pulls a Big Damn Heroes moment. I want to flash back to the moment the focus left her to show how she got into the current situation, but I'm not sure if I should skip back just after she saves the others or foreshadow her impending arrival before leaving the others in a cliffhanger and then following her up to the rescue.

I suppose the answer to that question is how much you want to surprise your readers (with surprise here not necessarily being a good thing, depending on medium).

Am I the only one who wants more undead main characters?

Nope, certainly not. I mean, I only want that kind of thing due to my own fascination with unnatural means of extending an individual's life.

I just find it potentially interesting to explore the experience somebody who's died but remains inside their own rotting body.

edited 13th Feb '15 11:16:34 PM by BiggerBen

Well, one assumes that sensation fades as the nerves give out. After that, it'd be like piloting a zombie drone. The hardest part will be keeping it in running condition—all the messy metabolic processes of life are dedicated to that purpose, but if you find a workaround, all the better.

Have you read Unsounded by chance? That problem crops up - MC has to fight a perpetual battle against insects, brace his legs with metal etc. And though his appearance is disguised by magic, people who touch him are creeped out by his thinness.

I take it vampires don't count?

The loneliest day of the year, when I am least motivated to write.... Okay I'll be real, every day is when I'm the least motivated to write, but I'm more particularly least motivated to write.

Vampires are fine, but I prefer ghosts and zombies.

Finally updated Moonflowers. Twenty chapters, man—why do all my short things grow into giant multi-chapters?

Now to update Hunting the Unicorn.

I've been offline for a while due to reasons but I'm currently writing a short story. It has a lot of dialogue, let me tell you.

The problem is that I'm not sure if I foreshadowed enough so that no one will see the ending coming, or also that it wasn't slapped on.

That and I think the underlying theme only shows up at the end. But I think all that happened earlier may give it a different take on the theme.

Eh. It's just the first draft and I only need to write the ending itself, which may be the longest part.

So I've been toying with the idea of doing diaries for all of my characters - whether they'd actually write one or not - for a select period, as a characterization-building exercise.

Considering using the phrase, "He grinned toothily." Concise for, "His smile showed an awful lot of teeth.", but it also looks a bit awkward.

I've seen variations on that theme, usually with "toothy grin". Funnily, unlike "showed his teeth", the connotation is usually amusing or silly, not threatening.

It's only taken a week to write this fight scene. One nice thing about third person limited? I only have to worry about what the viewpoint character can actually see, rather than trying to keep the fight straight for every character involved. It helps, it helps.

My favorite take on this concept (I've used it several times) is "A predator's expression; all teeth, no joy."

edited 16th Feb '15 2:22:22 PM by Night

I like using comparisons to sharks for that effect.

On an entirely separate subject, I've found that I tend to write female characters with a similar phenotype: regardless of age, ethnicity, or character, many of them tend to be very short. (Also, when they're paired with a second female character as a teammate or a friend, said second is often a contrast in personality—and quite a bit taller.)

Might be an influence of growing up in SoCal, and a lot of the girls I know being vertically-challenged East Asian chicks.

Maybe, but then I'd probably have at least some level of that problem.

I just got a premise of a story.

A story about a man...who keeps suffering violent deaths and then return to life, and trying to figure out why it's happening and stop it.

I'd imagine selling point is the creative and darkly humorous ways he would die.

Sounds like a grimmer version of Groundhog Day to be honest.

It's my sister's show, but I think an episode of Supernatural did something kinda like that?