Writer's Block Daily

hey somebody replied to my answer and suggested i need to implement the idea of roma or romani discrimination when my character in question never dealt with simply due to her ambiguously brown status and her aloofness to it. I'm really not the type of person touch on these issues since i never felt the need to. call me a heartless buy t's kinda true which brings me to this. is it optional to avoid such an issue or talk about it since my character does deal with it from time to time but it's either neutral or dark-ish?

I've had several ideas for animated shows recently, but a lot of them seem to be in the odd middle ground where they're too dark/mature/etc for children's cartoons, but too tame for adult's cartoons.

i feel ya pal. i'm not ever sure if i can get away with two of my character's coming out as bisexual and pan-romantic in a kid's show.

You've never watched Steven Universe, have you?

edited 27th Oct '16 1:32:59 PM by kkhohoho

This strikes me as a wildly optimistic thing to worry about.

one could argue it was more les yay in some parts and most of the lgbt characters you're talking are gems. the closest we got was possibly the pink haired girl that served as a replacement love interest.

Feh. I'd easy put a $20 on a major network kid's show in the States giving us an unambiguous LGBT kiss in the next ten years, and that's a cautious estimate. Find me a bookie who'll give me 1:3 payout or better, I'd throw a full hundred on it and call it an investment.

The problem would be to find someone willing to bet against you.

It seems to me that "there people are LGBT-etc" doesn't qualify as controversial by itself, regardless of the medium. Want to explore it further, go into some of the more complex themes? Sure. "They're bisexual"? Meh.

It strikes me as that would vary pretty heavily depending on where you're talking about. Canada had cartoons reach the point of Legend of Korra and Steven Universe (Well, earlier seasons anyways) close to a decade ago. Some places find that stuff a bit more objectionable.

Is it gonna happen anywhere in the next ten years? Of course. Wouldn't surprise me if it happened in the next year or two (2017 may very well serve as a cosmic counterbalance to this year). But it also wouldn't surprise me if a few places—even major places—found some ways to finagle around it for a while. After all, subtlety is comfortable for big studios.

I've struggled sometimes with consistent pacing in my stories. Sometimes it's because I wanna just get to the action, sometimes I don't want to go deeper into the story, but most times it's the former. Can that be a hindrance to the story and upsetting for readers?

And what do you suggest if I move at too erratic a pace in the story?

yo, when dealing with someone that's part of minority, is it wrong to shrug off the discrimination they face or not since, most of my characters are minorities of some kind.

edited 29th Oct '16 11:22:18 AM by ewolf2015

It depends on what kind of story you're trying to tell. If you're trying to tell a story that deals with race and discrimination, then by all means, it should be at the forefront, but if not, while you shouldn't just pretend that discrimination doesn't exist, than it doesn't need to be at the forefront. Just tell your story as you normally would, but if there's a natural opportunity to bring it up, then bring it up. Just don't dwell on it for too long, lest you run the risk of being grating.

edited 29th Oct '16 11:44:52 AM by kkhohoho

so like dropping anvils or something?

Exactly. Though keep in mind that Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped.

also, Hey I have a question to ask, I have a race of Unguligrade humanoids (fanu and sayra) whom are divide by sub-races based on real life hooved animals. yet the thing is, they're also based off of the Greek creatures of myth, the satyr and faun. I'm a bit worried that since their cultures are similar to woodland native Americans, I might get called out for it.

edited 30th Oct '16 6:10:48 AM by ewolf2015

@Lightning Lancer, I've dealt with the same problem in my screenwriting. For the longest time I would be like "dangit, why can't I just rush through this scene and get to the real meat I wanna write?" So to fix that, my remedy (and this may or may not work in your case) is to first write all the scenes that really grip me, and then build the connective tissue from there.

EDIT: Sorry. I see now that this isn't quite what you're getting at. I hope it helps though.

edited 29th Oct '16 8:18:00 PM by AwSamWeston

LightningLancer: Assuming "action" is fighty action, and not the meat of the story: getting straight to the action is not, in itself, bad (and given my love of the actiony opening scenes of the Indiana Jones movies, I can totally understand where you're coming from), but it can be tricky to get the audience to care about the character in an action-heavy opening scene. Action itself doesn't give the audience a reason to care. However, the "reason to care" doesn't have to be a big, complex backstory. It can just be making the protagonist the underdog in the action; everybody loves an underdog. Just be sure to make them a bit more rounded in the moments between action.

Assuming "action" means the meat of the story: honestly, I'd rather read a story that got off to a fast rocky start than a slow rocky start. There are several times when I've stories that have a lot of building atmosphere (or whatever) in the beginning, but then build up so much atmosphere that they take a while to get to the plot, and I'm left rolling my eyes and going, "Stop stroking your writing ego and get to the story." A slow beginning can make me get bored and put down the book. A fast beginning at least gets me invested in the story, even if it's a bit rocky.

Tangentially related: what's good pacing? This is good pacing.◊ Do your best to balance out moments of rising tension with moments of downtime to allow the audience to breathe. Keep the tension rising all the time, and they'll feel worn out. But don't stay down too long, or they'll feel bored.

Have you guys ever had a moment where, for whatever reason, you find yourself having to describe something you've taken for granted/something completely normal but from the Po V of a character who would find it unnatural? Since the main character in my story is a catfolk who's grown up primarily around other catfolk, he would have never seen a human before.

So right now I'm having to describe how odd and bizarre humans look while not writing anything that's peculiar to me. It's kinda funny, kinda strange.

edited 30th Oct '16 11:39:24 PM by randomdude4

Once you get past their disgusting lack of hair, and that weird way they walk on two legs, they aren't too bad. No claws or teeth to speak of, but they are surprisingly strong, and while they are slow, they can run basically forever. Oh, and they can climb like monkeys.

Well since catfolk in my story are pretty much Petting-Zoo People, bipedality isn't an issue, but yeah the rest is pretty accurate. That's why his reaction is far more along the lines of "what the shit?" and not full-blown Humans Are Cthulhu. Still, that perplexity is rather fun to write, especially because it's not something that's perplexing to a normal everyday person, even within the context of my story.

Plus, humans only have a few sharp teeth and the rest are flat, like prey animals.

Actually, our style of teeth is sorta shared by a lot of predatory omnivores.

Sorta, because their teeth tend to be pointed in front, rather wide-but-thin-edged like ours. The point is, it's not uncommon to have combinations of tearing and grinding teeth in the same mouth. The order of our teeth are more unusual, however, which could be a point.

One interesting thing to note is that Cats sense differently than humans. Their eyesight is better at night, but worse overall, due to the presence of Tapetum Lucidum (the reflective film that makes their eyes 'glow'). Their hearing, sight, and touch are much more acute, however—they hear well above our range, their sense of smell is about 14 times greater than ours(And they scent mark), and they can feel movement in the air with their whiskers.

So with all that you could draw some oddness out of the way humans 'behave' with their less acute senses but frighteningly precise vision.

Oh right, it's Na No Wri Mo time again. After Inktober I don't think I have the energy for that, but I can try to sort of push myself back towards the writing table. I got some ideas over the holidays, so I can finally return to a project I haven't touched in a good half a year.

@randomdude4:

Maybe your character could also notice that while humans have very poor balance and reflexes, their hands are surprisingly dexterous.

My premise sounds like jem meets Ben 10 and Billy Elliot but mostly jem. Heck, they're even named after gemstones with something pertaining to glitter. Her, I'm a bit scared that might come off as a jem ripoff but I don't know how can differentiate from it. Both idea and jem have so much in common, too (well mostly the idw comic). Like rival bands, crazy hairstyles, some lgbt+ characters and diversity. With all things considered, how can make it different so it won't end up being to similar to it.