Writer's Block Daily

That's where it got to! Have used it, but lost link. Thank you!

Another fun thing has been coining words, because it's a flowing, fluid language... that borrows many of its scientific, technical, and modern terms from guttural, buzzing Kykzavi or its predecessor, Kykiten. So lighting in the sky is "anuetha", and has spirit animacy by tradition, even though it is now understood to be inanimate. But electricity used to power imported light bulbs is "xaqetuexa", from "zakteza", and has inanimate animacy.

edited 1st Feb '17 3:21:50 PM by KillerClowns

Borrowed words! I have to add that to my setting's languages, even if I end up never really writing anything in them. It is in part because my story takes place just a few centuries after the unification of a continental empire, which contains many provinces that were at the speartip of scientific discovery or cultural production in different areas at the time of their annexation, so borrowed terminology would be inevitable at certain points

Nice. Sounds like the merging of Anglo-Norman with Old English after the Norman invasion of England. I'm not the kind to go for that, but it sounds interesting.

how do you make a premise sound different from another one? I've made an idea about a boy with self esteem issues becoming a 20 foot tall giant after being exposed to green rocks. that, and some organization that wants to use him as weapon against the kaiju.

does that sound like Pacific rim meets monsters vs aliens?

edited 1st Feb '17 1:41:02 PM by ewolf2015

Trying to properly phrase the description of a character getting shot in the head as a chapter closer. It's basically an invocation of Chandler's Law, so it happens out of nowhere; several characters are having a conversation in a diner when one of them gets sniped. But because it's so abrupt, I'm having a hard time thinking of a description that shows what happened in a short amount of time without falling into silly territory or overly-clinical territory. For instance, saying something like, "And then his head exploded." just doesn't work. Trying something like:

Looks good, although I might defer any mention of blood until after the body hits the floor, since that draws out the drama a little longer.

I think just saying "His head snapped to one side and he crumpled to the floor" is enough. It's obvious enough that he got shot without needing to mention the bullet wound.

I been trying to write some haikus for the last hours. They are kinda fun =D

Where can I ask for a constructive criticism of them, I wonder?

how would you describe someone executing a loops to loops, hoop shots, and tosses in proses? or in this case, a screenplay.

...like you just did? It's a screenplay, so you can be more clinical if needed.

Random idea: an eldritch abomination is summoned to our plane via human sacrifice. It's banished by having someone come back from the dead in the right ritualistic circumstances. Being Only Mostly Dead qualifies, such as drowning in cold water (to slow metabolism and preserve the brain and organs), so long as the person flatlines and is revived.

Sounds like the kind of idea that makes me feel envious at who came up with it.

I am reminded of my friend who, when told that there used to be a time where death was defined as "heart stopping" and thus would get you out of student loans, started seriously considering the venoms she had at her ocean biology job.

oh

That's just got Messianic Archetype written all over it, that does.

The last few days an idea has nicely crashed its way into my head, screaming "WRITE ME!" at the top of its lungs. Never mind that I already have too many projects going (two long-form fan fics plus a shorts collection that really needs updating, as well as a novel under development and a really writing-intense roleplay), it looks like this is what I'm working on for now.

But of course the idea is, at least superficially, very similar to a recent, popular series and the premise itself has major logical flaws in it, to the point that I'm like "why is this plot even happening?" Ugh, sometimes I like my brain better when it's not being creative.

Maybe I should open a thread to bounce the concept off some other heads and see if it's salvageable.

In a sentence or two, what is this idea?

The idea is that it follows the (platonic) relationship of two boys, one the crown prince of a small-ish kingdom, the other its former prince, forced to become a servant to the new royal family after his father is overthrown in a coup. I'm envisioning some political intrigue, possibly a small bit of action, but mostly a coming-of-age story as they slowly develop a friendship while working through their personal problems and learning that the world is a whole lot more complex than they thought.

Discussion in spoilers if you want to comment without hearing my thoughts/concerns, and also because it contains spoilers for the Captive Prince trilogy (not sure how major).

it doesn't sound as bad when I put it that way, but the "one prince is enslaved to another after the first one's kingdom is usurped" premise sounds very similar to the Captive Prince series, or at least the brief plot summary my friend gave me a few months ago (I haven't read it myself). A brief glance at the wikipedia and trope pages for it shows that they do/would indeed have different foci, but it's kind of an unusual premise to begin with, and they also share some major details (such as the 'new' prince being a shorter, light-haired Ice King who's hiding/not dealing with the abuse he suffered as a child and the 'old' prince being a taller brunette with a half-sibling whose existence and status are very important to the plot). I feel it's important to note that I did not know most of these were similarities until I looked it up.

As for logical issues, well, I can buy the usurper king deciding to imprison the old king's two youngest children instead of killing them. He's not supposed to be a Complete Monster, he has a kid around the same age, and I can see him justifying it by saying that it's not going to do much harm keeping them locked up, particularly if he lets people assume they're dead, and you never know when they might come in handy. Besides, he can always kill them later if he needs to.

What I can't buy is him suddenly deciding a few years later that it's a good idea to bring the son (now in his late teens) out of prison to be a companion/servant (I can't think of the exact job title, but it's the Spear Counterpart of a lady's maid or lady in waiting, you know, a combo of friend, servant, and personal assistant) for his only son. Even with a magical or technological Restraining Bolt in place to keep him from actively harming him, surely there must be a thousand better options in his kingdom?

edited 7th Feb '17 9:08:17 PM by Ashfire

Well, a way to make things less jarring would be to just remove the part about the old prince being locked down in a dungeon or something, and instead have him kept at the palace either to make tge new ruler look more legitimate or as a way to avoid retaliation by the old ruler's allies.

That also depends on how the coup went however. Was the king killed in plain view by an assassin or did he die of "sudden ilness" or was incriminated with something not even royalty could get away with and then exiled or killed?

Depending on those and on the new ruler's status and position, he could initially take over as a regent and then persuade the prince of passing the sucession to hus family, specially if he and the king were relatives of some sort.

In that case, the prince actually has to be alive and at least looking well.

Even then, he would never become an official servant of the new prince. Extra-officially he wouldn't have much choice to defy the new ruler however, and maybe the new king hopes he can teach something to his son.

edited 8th Feb '17 4:41:33 AM by EternaMemoria

The other option is that this arrangement is the result of some sort of peace agreement that was agreed to as a way to end the civil war. The crown passes to the ursurper, but he has to keep the former crown prince alive in his household. Making him his son's servant may be intended as a way to humiliate him. And maybe this backfires when they become friends?

Making the former heir a ward/servant of the current prince isn't necessarily to HUMILIATE them—a lot of times, nobles and royalty were in a type of hostage situation where their captor went "you can stay in your home and we'll still treat you as a prince—just do what we say and don't go out without our permission."

edited 8th Feb '17 3:09:03 PM by Sharysa

That's a good idea, too.

My villain's plan has a frame-up as part of a frame-up. Huh.

Explanation: character A murders character B. They frame character C for it. But they do it in such a way that it looks like character D is framing C, which is plausible, since D hates C and hated B. A is banking on the fact that once the police spots a frame-up, they won't expect another frame-up. (They almost get away with it, too; A's involvement is only revealed when a co-conspirator realizes the full implications of A's plan, freaks out, and blows the lid on the whole deal.)

That sounds really interesting, props for coming up with it :)

@Eterna Memora, De Marquis, and Sharysa- Thanks for the feedback! I talked it over with my brother (who's very good at helping me figure out these sort of logical problems) and we came up with a solution that, while still a bit implausible, keeps all the character dynamics and specific scenes I wanted intact, while also setting up some external conflicts to drive the two boys' character development. Not perfect, but good enough for a first draft.

To answer your question, Eterna, it was a military-backed deal (I'm thinking at this point that the usurper king was a general in the army) of the "infiltrate the palace in the dead of night and murder people in their beds" variety. While the old king knew something was up and had been trying to deal with it, he didn't realize quite how far up it went or how far along their plans were.

The kings three children (crown prince + protagonist + the much-younger princess) were removed to the estate of a member of the court (whether they had been captured during the storming of the palace and the noble was always loyal to the rebellion or they were sent there for their own protection and the noble decided to turn traitor later to protect himself when it was clear the old dynasty was on its way out is not yet decided).

This noble has the crown prince executed, but can't quite bring himself to off the younger two as well- his son the prince are the same age and friends and the princess is really cute and they're both crying and traumatized because he just cut their older brother's head off in front of them. Instead he decides to secretly keep them around, figuring that it's not going to be too much work to do so, he can always kill them later if he needs to, and if things go south with the new government, it might be in his best interest to have the now-heir of the old situation on hand.

Years pass and the noble's relationship with the new king do indeed deteriorate, to the point where the noble is contemplating a rebellion of his own. The king, however, being a usurper himself, is paranoid about the same thing happening to him, so he plans to order the noble to send his son as an unofficial hostage in the guise of asking for a companion/servant for his own son (now crown prince).

Noble knows or suspects something like that is about to happen, so he decides to get the jump on him. He grabs the old prince and publicly offers him as a companion for the new prince (not sure what old prince's legal status is presented as in this situation, whether it's a slave, a servant under contract to someone else, or just "hey, here's this guy I found, he'd be great"), with dire threats about what will happen to him and his sister if he messes up. King recognizes him right away, but can't just kill him for no reason, since people would start asking questions. Nor can he use old prince's identity to do so, since he's just recently started to get major public approval and reminding everyone what he did is not going to help.

So instead, he resolves to make the kid's job hell as much as he can so that he screws up or runs away, thereby providing an excuse to execute him or at least move him to a position out of the spotlight where he can be offed quietly.

I'm planning to have this noble character and his attempts at provoking another civil war be a sort of Disc-One Final Boss for the story, as old prince considers helping him but ultimately ends up deciding not to due to character development and maturation that's taken place since then.

Sorry for the long post (it feels like I'm taking over a general discussion thread, and I'm sorry. I can take it to its own thread or pms if it's an issue and people want to continue the discussion).

edited 9th Feb '17 1:06:48 AM by Ashfire

I'm excited.

After several stops and starts and finding the right story, I have now spent the last week working on a new feature-length screenplay.

I'm writing it a lot quicker than my last one.