Writer's Block Daily

Given that context, I say go for it. If it's offensive to swear by someone else's ancestors in that culture, it serves to play up his assholery — which, it sounds like, is what you're going for.

EDIT: Woo! Page-topper!

edited 25th Mar '17 9:09:28 PM by AwSamWeston

I just finished my outline (37 pages)!

good for you.

whelp, I'm in the dark with this one.

so I'm considering doing a webcomic detailing the relationship between 2 boys of different backgrounds. one's a guy who's raised in a conservative catholic while the other was raised by a fey god in the otherworld. in the middle of it all is a Muslim immigrant girl who is trying her best to support this relationship. due to her family's values, however, she can't bring herself to understand it. but, since the topic around Islam's view on homosexuality is a bit complex, I'm not sure how to go about this.

Howdy, guys! So not many of you may know this (or me), but I studied Creative Writing in college and now I want to apply for my master's degree in Publishing. Unfortunately, the short stories I wrote for my applications were solid in ideas, but rushed in execution. I'm working on polishing them up for my next run; one's fairly fantasy-oriented but shifts perspective to a modern setting with different characters later on (same thematic elements and plot devices though), and one's more superhero-oriented, cartoonish, introspective and meta-heavy. I'll give more details to whoever asks if I feel like it, but I'm mostly here to get/spread ideas and unjam writer's block whenever it comes. :)

First question: How important is it to the plot that there be a conservative Catholic character? Or a Muslim character? Or a homosexual character?

If you're just shooting for ~representation~ then your intentions are impure. Make sure those traits actually have some weight to the plot.

It seems pretty clearly that interplay of all those views is a specific plot of their idea.

edited 29th Mar '17 10:22:19 AM by Adannor

i'm not just doing for the sake of representation (honestly i'm kinda tried about it). i actually thought it could have been interesting since religion is one of the themes of it.

Question; would it be kosher to start threads about game design in Writer's Block? We don't really have a "game design" forum and the Video Game forum is more about playing games than making them.

That question has come up before. I dont remember the answer.

If you do start one, please inform about it here. I'm a game design student finishing my degree ATM and would love to have a thread here.

What does "methods are impure" even mean? sometimes I change the races of my characters just because it looks better when I draw them. There's a million ways to approach such a topic, there is no "impure" way to do it.

If I really like having drunk assholes in my story, I'm gonna write them, impure methods are not. Same goes with diverse characters.

I'm pretty sure it was "impure intentions", not methods.

My bad, wrong word, let me rephrase:

What does "intentions are impure" even mean? sometimes I change the races of my characters just because it looks better when I draw them. There's a million ways to approach such a topic, there is no "impure" way to do it.

If I really like having drunk assholes in my story, I'm gonna write them for the sake of it, impure intentions or not. Same goes with diverse characters.

edited 29th Mar '17 10:21:57 PM by MrAHR

Why do we need a REASON to have diversity?

It's great to have plots that focus on diversity/race/sexuality/religion, but at the same time, minorities don't need a reason to exist in a story. Nobody asks why all the white, straight, Christian characters don't have plots revolving about their whiteness/Christianity/straightness, after all.

For my superhero story, I was reading up on Greek mythology and found out that Dionysus is apparently a Canon Foreigner from the "far east/south," and I went "PARTY-GOD IS FROM THE FAR SOUTH OR FAR EAST??? I'MMA MAKE HIM SOUTHEAST ASIAN."

It's also kinda weird that "making people different for the sake of it" is only bad in this one area. We accept that in casts (especially visual ones) people should look and sound different so we can more easily differentiate them.

Like if I decided to give a character glasses just because I realized no one in my story had glasses, no one would really question that? It'd be seen as basic character building and differentiating.

I'll be honest, my post above derailed the conversation way more than I was intending. Doesn't help that I've forgotten what exactly I was trying to say, so I'm just gonna roll back on that whole sentiment. Sorry about all that.

this was mostly directed at me.

now, see look, I'm not doing it because why not or some Muslim had a gun cocked to my head. rather, it was an idea suggested to me by someone else. originally, Lilah was intended to be Jewish, but due to the topic, i opted out of that and changed her religion to being Islam. honestly, the change for me personally, was for the best. i haven't heard much stories dealing with the various prescriptive of immigrants in Ireland, more specially those of Islam. I'm not saying it was cool. it was by no means cool. as expected, Ireland has it's fair share of racist against other ethnic groups. it has gotten a bit better, but minorities are still treated differently due to bias.

edited 30th Mar '17 4:49:38 AM by ewolf2015

has anyone else being dealing with a bump in the road? since i pretty much made this thread stop.

It was less than twelve hours between your two posts. How many times do we have to explain on these threads that people have lives? We don't constantly monitor the TV Tropes forums, and you didn't "make this thread stop." The conversation just hit a lull. It's a thing that happens wherever discussion occurs.

edited 30th Mar '17 1:36:15 PM by AwSamWeston

Interesting. It kind of reminds me of how the protagonist in my Crowley University story having of Caucasian-Korean mixed race came about sort of by complete accident. When I was planning out the story originally, I had already decided on the name, "Victoria Cross," admittedly because I thought it sounded cool.

Eventually, being a visual-minded person, I got an idea of what she looked like as the first inklings of my first chapter formed, and I ended up imagining a character of East Asian descent, despite the decidedly Western name I had already decided on. So, my solution were reconciling both ideas was, "well, maybe she's of Asian descent on her mother's side," and I specifically made her half-Korean simply for a change of pace, because most elements from Asian cultures that usually pop up in my writing come more primarily from Japan or China.

And as I was writing, I actually realized how well that particular background worked for the setting I had written for the story. You see, the world of Crowley U, a 20 Minutes into the Future where the existence of monsters and magic has been revealed to humanity some time in the past, is mostly recycled from a much older story of mine that never really got off the ground. One particular backstory element of said abandoned project that I had decided to keep from the start was that both North and South Korea had fallen to a monster-led regime where humans were now second-class citizens. Of course, it stands to reason that Victoria would probably have family living in that part of the world when said regime took over, giving my character a personal stake in a key aspect of my setting's backstory.

edited 30th Mar '17 2:09:01 PM by MapleSamurai

i'm honest to god sorry for that mistake. if you don't want any part of conversation, then fine by me. nothing of value is lost.

Just chill down. Don't panic over the temporary lack of posts or answers, or about people telling you about you panicking :P

i just don't wanna get banned for it.

'Being the last post in a thread for more than a few hours' is not a bannable offense any more than botching a joke is a bannable offense. But when you doublepost to ask if you 'killed' a largely self-propelling thread in one of the sleepiest subforums at TV Tropes, you come across as impatient and self-centered. Unless you point it out, nobody is going to remember, much less care that you were the last person to post in a particular thread for a few hours.

alright. back to something else.