Writer's Block Daily

Why am I hearing "Riders In The Sky" play through my head?

You're considering an idea that revolves around it?

Sharysa's idea is what inspired it. Damn it, now it's playing in my head again.

The last fucking paragraph of this already stubborn-ass chapter isn't going the way I want it. The protags are just sleeping off their alcohol buzz instead of starting a Sexy Discretion Shot routine. I knew they were going to be low-key as a couple, but not THIS low-key.

Time for an even MORE discrete mention of sex. Argh.

I hate when characters don't do what I want.

Dammit. All this time thinking up a character's family history, and how it ties into the hidden struggle between magic and technology on Earth, before realizing that, thematically, she really works best if she comes the fuck outta nowhere.

So now the most dangerous anti-magic wielder on Earth is no longer a distant descendant of a dark and decadent French noble line that wielded Black Magic for centuries before falling into obscurity and being forgotten. Just a woman from a white trash family who stumbled onto The Masquerade and got away with it because she was smart, ruthless, and employed by a very powerful and open-minded Reasonable Authority Figure who listened when she told him that magic was real and she'd seen it with her own eyes. Which... was actually what she started as. Sometimes you get a clever idea, hone it into perfection, then realize "clever" isn't the same as "good" and have to chuck it.

Of course, that means my work on the history of House d'Néguev is useless. Unless, as often happens, I end up recycling it for something different.

edited 1st Sep '15 8:29:48 PM by KillerClowns

If it's not too long, I'd say to keep it! Most of my story ideas need to be recycled at least once or twice.

It's usually a good idea to keep even the cut ideas in storage somewhere. Just because they were cut doesn't mean they were necessarily bad. I mean, they were initially in the story for a reason.

I have a whole refugee camp of characters sitting somewhere, waiting for relocation to other stories.

I think I view pacing fractally: each story arc has a set of mini-arcs inside it that also follow the rules of pacing, and those mini-arcs may have mini-mini-arcs inside them that follow the rules of pacing, and so on. And if those all flow nicely, then the pacing's good.

But given what I know about pacing (and this graph◊), that might not be surprising.

edited 3rd Sep '15 2:01:48 PM by TeraChimera

How small is your smallest arc? Like, the span of a conversation?

It is probably a good thing my characters cannot actually come after me for changing their roles and motivations, again, because if they could I am sure Geda—the story lead!—would be displeased at me for how I'm changing her mix of motivations, again.

In closely related news I am bad at writing teenagers and the uncertainty that surrounds them.

So I decided to write a some sort of a grim story that takes place completely during Christmas Eve. This is partially because I wanted to prevent myself from stretching my story too long, which often tends to happen.

It might not be very Christmassy when it comes to the mood, though.

Not exactly. If I'm being unclear, when I say "arc", I mean "follows the exposition-rising action-climax-falling action-denoument structure". Basically, you can make a little story out of each of the smaller parts, and it's hard to do that with a single conversation. But with slightly larger elements, like individual scenes, you can do it easily.

Let's use Raiders of the Lost Ark as an example, and not just because of the arc/Ark pun. The opening scene would work just fine on its own as a short film, and follows the dramatic structure of a larger film. The scene at Marion's bar doesn't stand alone as well, but still has its own rising-tension structure. You can look at the scenes in Egypt as comprising a large arc, but that arc can be split into smaller arcs that still follow the same structure; say, Marion's capture and Indy's meeting with Belloq, finding (and losing) the Ark, recovering the Ark.

The main difference between these and the structure of a single story is that the denouement doesn't deflate the tension completely; because there's still more story to tell, the tension is at least a little higher than when it started. Say, a new plot development happened or someone got killed. But overall, lots of smaller parts of stories have their own dramatic structure to help move the larger story along.

edited 4th Sep '15 9:27:04 PM by TeraChimera

Hey Writer's Block, mrstack345 here. I have a lot of ideas for writing and I am looking here for some advice. I write for fun and I want to get a grip in the long creative writing process. It should be a lot of fun. :)

So when I started to rewrite my book, I decided that I'm gonna add some bits so it can be interpreted as the main character being crazy and imagining it all.

My story is a comical space pirate adventure, so that kind of theories are bound to happen either way, so why not feed the fire?

Because that kind of twist is stupid and annoying, that's why.

I concur. Plus, it's a real swift kick to the balls to anyone who actually does have issues with hallucinations and stuff like that.

Exactly.

I'm working on the skills for the characters for my Skyrim fanfic, because cause I like to play the characters and roleplay a little before I write out their part in the story, and I've come up with the only logical way to handle having gaps when I can't figure out a skill to use: When in doubt, add Alteration.

@mrstack: Welcome.

The character development threads are all open for everyone, including newcomers right? I do have a basic ourline for my MC.

Thanks.

Yes they are.

A way of distracting yourself from writing, number 9774374: after playing Kingdom Hearts I started to draw every world my stories are set in as small, planet-like places they're depicted in the game's level select menu.

edited 6th Sep '15 1:03:07 PM by Xeroop

Was reading a friend's dead-tree version of What If? when I learned that Don Brown set a record for archery using, quoth Randall, "an unholy amalgamation of wood and metal that only vaguely resembled a bow" (or something like that). I looked it up, hoping to find an interesting design for my repeating crossbows. The design was interesting, but hardly looked terrifying.

Maybe the Chinese version of repeating crossbows would work?

I've already seen those. I'm looking for more unusual aesthetics than anything, since the design probably isn't that realistic. (It's pump-action, for starters.)

Not to mention that the zhuge nus are very low-powered compared to the crossbows, the big English longbows, or the modern composite compound bows.

The really modern designs would probably be compound crossbows. There are always rumors floating around about how certain secretive militaries use them for silent assassinations.