Writer's Block Daily

i want to bring my ideas to life but when i try...it becomes tell don't show, grammar error widdled mess.

It also depends on where your skills lie. Some people are writers first, story tellers second. Others, vice versa. I am very much a story teller first. If you're like me, the journey for writing doesn't have to be enjoyable, but it helps.

Would anybody be interested in reading over the pitch bible to an animated series I'm planning?

i would

So I've been trying to hammer out the details of the Villain's plot in a story I'm currently planning, and I keep running against what I feel is a bit of a logical gap.

The villain's plot is essentially a Fake King plot: He plans on conquering a nation by impersonating the princess. Not only will he be crowned the next queen in her place, he'll also produce a line of legitimate heirs and ensure his dynasty, effectively handing control and ownership of the kingdom over from the humans to the dragons.

Now, because I'm not sure if the issue with this would be apparent to most people (And if it isn't, then it's not really a problem), I'm going to spoiler the next bit. I'd appreciate it if anyone could offer their thoughts on whether or not the issue is apparent just from the plot itself.

The hitch in the problem is that, in most real-world kingdoms, they had provisions for this sort of thing. That is to say, there were specific laws that stated if someone succeeded the throne through impersonation of the heir, it didn't count—the coronation was more for the spirit of the heir than an actual legal thing. So if the villain tried this plot in, say, England, if the deception was revealed they'd just get told to fuck off.

Of course, the obvious solution here is for the villain to just... not plan on revealing the deception at any point. That doesn't really fit with his personality, though. He's an egotist, megalomaniac and kind of a 600-year-old brat. His whole motivation for the plan is being offended by the idea of humans actually owning something. He wants the kingdom because he believes he's entitled to it, and he'd want people to know he owned it. If they thought he was a human, that would kind of defeat the purpose.

I'd be interested as well, if the offer still stands.

@Kegisak: He just has to wait until he has consolidated enough power that no one can overthrow him even after they know who he is. Perhaps he hires a mercenary army, who are loyal to him, not the Kingdom, something like that.

That might even give you some ideas for the plot, if you still need some.

@ewolf: have you seen this?

edited 19th Jan '17 7:48:41 PM by DeMarquis

If sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, would anti-magic also be anti-sufficiently-advanced-technology?

Nah, it'd just the natural counterstep in the arms race.

Anti-magic would be harder to do with technology though, I'd think, since it would be harder to holistically disrupt tech in that way. Unless it was just a single technology with pretty wide application, like worker nanobots being disrupted by a jamming signal or something.

@De Marquis: That—hmm. I hadn't thought I needed to do any more thinking about the plotline, but now that you've said it it's given me a couple of good ideas that would involve some originally minor elements taking on a larger role... and the villain having more motivation to obstruct the heroine than mere pettiness. I mean he's definitely still going to be doing it out of pettiness as well. His idle cruelty is one of the things I'm looking forward to writing about him.

Either way, I'm going to need to do some more brainstorming. Thank you, and also curse you!

Not necessarily, they only look similar in effect but operate on separate principles.

You can have two watches, both with clock faces, but one of them is electronic behind the facade - and you won't be able to tell until one of them stops working after getting EMP'd. And a third watch that is powered by a tiny demon moving the levers inside is going to stop working if you enter a consecrated ground while the two techy ones won't care.

edited 19th Jan '17 10:43:11 PM by Adannor

@De Marquis thank you.

@kegisak and ewolf: Your welcome!

edited 20th Jan '17 10:36:07 AM by DeMarquis

By the way, I sent you the link to the pitch bible, through PM

Say, what is a pitch bible? Or a bible in general. (In Media of course)

It's... everything, essentially.

I can only speak for Video Games for firsthand experience, but a Video Game Bible contains,

• All Mechanical Documentation, including mechanics that have been scrapped or altered
• All concept art, including concepts that never made the cut
• All Finalized art, including assets that were dropped or scrapped
• All background information on the story
• All actual in-game story, including general overviews as well as scene scripts

I could go on, but I think you get the idea. A bible contains everything. In the days before easy digital storage, these things used to take up multiple binders worth of pages.

A Pitch Bible tends to be a bit more simple, because it's just meant to, well, pitch the concept.

@Bigger Ben: I can't speak for ewolf, but I've read the copy you sent me, and and I'll PM you my thoughts/constructive criticism tonight after work.

edited 20th Jan '17 2:30:17 PM by MapleSamurai

Okay, thanks

Would it be possible for a bunch of escaped human experiments to create a tribal like society in a forest?

That's a bit of a broad question. Are you talking about sociological norms?

Lemme explain. During the 1970s, a group scientist were conducting experiments on children to splice their DNA with animal genes. These test subjects escaped in a attempt to avoid further experimentation, with one of them growing up to be a hunter to mankind.

That doesn't really... explain much.

I mean, any group of humans could form a tribal society. That's been... fairly adequately demonstrated. Especially if they share some kind of common origin or experience. I'm not sure what would keep them from it.

Are the different Animal genes at odds, ie. some are Predator Species of others? Were they spliced with specifically solitary creatures, potentially making socialization and pack mentality more difficult for them? Were they organized against one another in the lab, resulting in a long-running divide? Were they taken at birth, spliced, and then raised with little socialization, resulting in stunted and underdeveloped language and social areas of the brain?

If you're asking if any group of people can get along, the answer is, by default, invariably yes. The difficulties come from various factors that you can choose to not introduce. Word of God isn't just a fancy term—what you say, goes. The only thing you have to avoid is stretching plausible deniability, and frankly half-human hybrids is gonna stretch that way more than 'secret tribal society in the woods'.

i was thinking wolves, cats, and deer i guess.

Speaking of tribes, there's something I need feedback on.

There's this tribe in my story that secretly guided the world through the power of foreseeing the future with the use of mirror. Problem is that afterwards, the world grew weary and suspicious of their guidance after finding out about it, to the point that the strongest kingdom (based on Imperial Britain) sent their forces to exterminate them and then hiding their fate completely out of the official records to the International community.

One question that makes me wonder, what course of action could the world take after finding out of that atrocity?