Writer's Block Daily

Hmmmm... I think I created a story midly racist.

...

Oops?

To be fair, is not that is racist, is that it can be interpreted as racist.

Damn it! D<

edited 26th Jun '16 1:52:27 PM by Tomodachi

I've noticed that I have a tendency to open a story with a joke, even if the rest of the story is light on the jokes. Generally, either the opening line is something silly, or the first few paragraphs set up something and then subvert your expectations somehow.

Greetings. If I may, I am going to write an MUGEN TV Series Crackfic when it comes to the randomness.

The opening line is this: "GENTLEMEN! Tonight, we create the internet's first Induvidual MUGEN Fighting Game Crossover TV Series Crackfic! And by George, I am going to send you all on a one way SNK Boss piloted trip to INFERNO!" The voice laughs as the Troll of Blazblue pilots a train with his mug on front across the screen (Thomas the Tank Engine styled design of said train face to further bizzare the world) chugging out "Lol lol lol lol lol lol lol lol..."

Did I mention each chapter will be 30 minutes long?

I haven't used Writer's Block in 900 years, so here I am.

Welcome back, I suppose?

Thanks.

I'm getting back to working on my novel and some side projects, probably tonight or tomorrow. I've been so busy.

I've come with a couple new characters for a screenplay, problem is that I'm hung up on plot. Good luck to you on that.

What also doesn't help is that the general writing advice consensus says "if you have characters but no plot, you should look into what they want, and where they are in life, and see where you can have conflict". The main characters are in comfortable places in their life. They have money security, pretty happy with themselves, despite once being international hit men. They don't really want anything or want to change anything.

My screenwriting book says you need to think of a plot first before you start planning everything else. Well, fuck.

Screenwriting and general writing advice don't mix well together for some reason.

The simplest thing to do in that case, then, is to come up with a way to disrupt their comfortable situation.

"When in doubt, have a man with a gun burst into the room."

They're hitmen, so that won't seem as weird as it would in other works.

I think that I have all of the pieces for building on how my protagonist leaves this town. It's all very complicated, but I know how I want it.

edited 27th Jun '16 10:26:47 PM by SpaceWolf

They don't even necessarily need to be targeted because they're hitmen. Maybe they piss someone off who doesn't know who they are — a mobster who thinks he's untouchable or something — and go out for revenge. A good, old-fashioned revenge plot done well is one of the most satisfying things out there.

For instance, in John Wick, mobster's son Iosef wants John's car. John doesn't want to give up his car. Iosef steals John's car and kills his dog. John is a former hitman legendary for his skill. Iosef doesn't know that. Everybody calls Iosef an idiot. John goes out for revenge and shoots everybody in the face. (No, seriously. He lands almost fifty headshots over the course of the film.) Roll credits. Not the most complex plot, but it's incredibly entertaining to watch.

Thanks everyone, I think I have some good ideas stewing around.

I kinda want to make an action flick with some drama and depth—maybe a theme that your actions have consequences (the people that are killed in hits have families, you know) maybe with some revenge thrown in.

Landing the exact plot is going to be the challenge. But it should be easier now.

I can't seem to feel sympathy for certain types of family issues, especially those in the media.

Let's take a famous example: Luke and Darth Vader. Specifically, the scene where Darth Vader says Luke, I Am Your Father, and Luke is emotionally devastated. I found myself sitting back and thinking "okay so... the completely evil villain Luke's never met before until the villain already became fully evil, and not a single time before Anakin fell into the lava... so what is Luke upset about? He didn't even have an impression of his father before!"

Come to think of it, maybe Luke did have an impression of his father as 'a totally perfect hero who had to leave his son for heroic reasons', his disappeared father becoming his childhood fantasy. That fantasy had been ruined by learning the father is actually evil. Maybe? I'm not sure.

Luke is far from the only instance of characters freaking out on learning they're adopted. I would say Luke is one of the better examples, because his father was a genuinely horrible person. Other characters in other stories go around causing wangsty drama as soon as they hear the word 'adopted'. After they've grown under a caring foster parent, and the biological parents left them when they were babies so they have no memory of those biological parents. Part of the drama they invoke is "I can't trust my foster parents anymore". Like... they hide a piece of information that doesn't impact your life for years, because drama shows make that information out to be something that should and must drive people crazy. Bwah?

What would I say if I learnt I was adopted? "Are my biological parents rich? I could try to claim the money. I'll split it with you foster parents, for all the years you took care of me. I don't live in a drama show, I don't earn money throwing wangst everywhere." And even if I do earn money like that, it doesn't mean I believe in the wangst.

So... could someone explain foster parent drama to me?

I always saw parentage drama as an extension of a time when one's parentage carried a lot more weight than it does today, even outside cases of royalty and nobility. The reputations of individuals were often built on what their parents did, and their parents' connections. We still see this today, a bit- for instance, people in hiring positions sometimes feel a bit more inclined to offer interviews to the children and relatives of coworkers, if they hear those relatives are job-hunting.

But I can't offer much more than that because I'm adopted myself- I was adopted from China at five months old by a white Ohioan couple, and I've known that I was adopted pretty much since I was old enough to understand it. My feelings about being adopted have pretty much just amounted to 'okay... so what?' I don't think this really makes my relationship with my adoptive parents different in any way, especially since my birth parents are still unknown. It is kind of a weird feeling to technically have two sets of parents, even when one of those sets of parents is one that I don't really care about.

That makes for a boring story, says those writers who were raised by their biological parents and have never been given so much as a reason to doubt their parentage. The family, like it or not, is still the basic unit of society and they were traditionally built on biological ties. So in a way, finding out something horrible about your parentage that you had no idea existed might be creating a feeling of undermining your place in society.

edited 1st Jul '16 7:11:36 PM by CrystalGlacia

Have you guys ever had to deal with a character being The Scrappy according to those who're reading your work? By that I mean you never meant for them to be super unlikable, but at the same time they're not a Hate Sink either. There's this one character in my work who's the first love interest of the main character that seems to be universally detested by my beta readers for reasons I can't quite understand. I present her as having flaws, and she's not an Official Couple with the main character, but so far the only character hated worse than her is the Hate Sink sociopathic mother of the main character, who I wrote that way purposely.

Might want to look over the critique more carefully. Maybe her flaws aren't 'real' flaws in the context of the story, or don't get presented as such? Maybe little cookie crumbs (accidentally) left behind connect up in a way that suggests Official Couple, especially with the First Girl Wins trope being fairly common? Maybe the Florence Nightingale Effect was a bit of a Pet-Peeve Trope for some people?

Can't say more without extra details, such as "what exactly did she do over the course of the story?". Have you considered the stickied Constructive Criticism thread, which is also in the Writer's Block section?

edited 1st Jul '16 8:01:31 PM by hellomoto

Maybe she just doesn't have enough of a personality?

I'm having hard time producing text. Or rather, finished prose. I can still write note of what happens and come up with concepts and whatnot easily and on the fly, but producing narrative sentences that are something better than "Man take potato, now man potatos" seems nigh impossible.

Maybe it's that for the last half a year I don't think I've even dabbled in prose. I've been playing D&D as a DM, which has been the main creative outlet for me, and it has never really required any finer sentencecraft than some general cliff notes of things happening. I need to get back on that horse.

Also, it's never a good idea to write a Hate Sink, IMO.

edited 2nd Jul '16 7:15:42 PM by Wheezy

Why is that so?

The only Hate Sink I know well is Umbridge from Harry Potter. You could use her as an example.

I've been around here for a while now, but I don't think I've ever posted in this thread before. *waves* Hi everyone!

Currently in the age-old conundrum: whole cast of characters, Point A, Point B... and absolutely no idea how they get from A to B.

It's writing a Flat Character whose main purpose in the story is to be a strawman of sorts, even if not for a sociopolitical cause.

I'll admit I haven't read most of Harry Potter, and when I did, I was very young, so I don't remember Umbridge. However, Your Mileage May Vary, but I don't see why you should write a character who not only contributes nothing to the story except to be a cut-rate minor villain, but doesn't even have ironic entertainment value.

It's basically just the author railing against personality traits no one likes. I mean, I can see parodying a particular famous person or trend that everyone seems to love but you, but it's not like common Hate Sink traits like Moral Myopia, Malignant Narcissism, or cowardice are in desperate need of satirizing at this point. We all agree they're bad.

edited 3rd Jul '16 7:14:26 PM by Wheezy

A couple of you have mentioned having trouble writing prose, or getting from plot-point to plot point. I'll just quote here something I just posted to another thread, because it's fresh in my mind and you might find it helpful:

"Here, I will share with you an approach to character interaction that I find helpful. The typical scene runs something like this: 1) Something or someone in the external environment (external to the point of view character) does something

2) The main point of view character reacts in a visceral or physical manner

3) The main point of view character reacts in a conscious, deliberate fashion.

"External events" could include someone attacking the main character, something that appears to the character, or someone saying something to them, etc. Visceral reactions are emotional in nature and take the form of clenching fists, breathing deeply, looking intensely, laughing, or whatever the scene calls for. Deliberate actions can include firing a weapon, picking up an object or saying something. Think of this as the "standard formula" for moving through a scene. And remember, a scene begins with some sort of physical description of the setting, which establishes the tone, then proceeds to a conflict or source of tension for the point of view character, then ends with some sort of resolution or outcome."

So I have something of a problem. I want to write novels, many novels in fact, because I've had a number of ideas brewing in my head over the last several years that I really want to get out. The trouble is, it's hard for me to actually go through the process of writing the things. It's not that I can't write, far from it, but I have trouble sticking to it. I can write one or two, maybe three pages a day before I get tired of it and have to wait until the next day to start again, and then within the next several days, it just becomes too much of a hassle for me. I know what to write, but part of me doesn't actually want to write it, if that makes any sense. It's like a sculptor who wants to make statues, but finds it a pain to go through the actual effort of sculpting them, or a would-be painter who wants to make his visions a reality, but can't bring himself to actually finish the painting despite knowing exactly what he wants to do. That's the best way I can describe it.

I've tried thinking of other venues to get my stories across, but nothing really seems to work. Most of them have some sort of fantastical element or another, so they would need a really darn high budget if made into a film or play, but they're also longform narratives, so at the very least, they'd each need a few movies or plays to be told in their entireties to boot. I could try and get them out as comic books, but I'd still have to get someone to draw the thing, and given the nature of comics these days, it would take a long time to tell each story. Novels seem like the only reliable option here. The thing is, I'm actually very good at writing in a stageplay format. It just seems to come naturally to me, and if I could, I'd love to just write my stories in that format and sell them as books, with the only problem being that I don't know if they would actually sell if written that way.

With all of that said, does anyone have any ideas of any other formats or ideas I could try, or of how I could jumpstart writing in the novel format? Because I'm kind of at a loss at just what to do here.

1. Are there responsibilities in your life that you should be doing? Are there things that you need to get done? Perhaps your brain is occupied with other things to do, which ruins motivation.

2. Also, you might have planned everything to a T. For me in the planning process, I plan the absolute things that need to happen. What happens in between is a mystery. Sometimes while I write I suddenly get a good idea, or perhaps my character acts on their own, driving the story in its own way.
   • When Stephen King was writing Misery, he expected his main character to be an idiot and get himself killed. Though he allowed his character to act on his own, and found that he was more resourceful and brave than he'd originally planned.

3. For me, to get excited in writing, I like to look up pictures and art that reminds me of the tone or "look" of the setting. I find this also helps in describing things. I usually can't describe a mountain scene from memory really well, so seeing a picture helps.

4. Find a place and time of day where you can write for awhile. Are you comfortable in a library? Your living room? Do you write better in the morning? In the evening? Set a routine. If inspiration fails, routine won't.

edited 4th Jul '16 11:10:26 AM by electronic-tragedy