Writer's Block Daily

I am constantly stuck in this mental limbo where I don't know what I want to write, combined with the mixed emotions of if I even should write or if I really want to write and it's grinded all progress to a halt.

EDIT: Oh hey top post

edited 11th Jun '17 8:12:48 AM by DarkbloodCarnagefang

Don't worry, bro, I've been stuck on a WHOLE lot of projects for the past couple of weeks.

I'm finally getting around to writing my sort of novel.

oh, and i ran into my first problem, i can barely exceed a 2500 word count. if i did, it might lapse into a tell then show fiasco.

If you move a chapter that takes place later in a work to the front, and it's full of references to other events in the story, is it reasonable to expect readers to tie things together on their own as they read? I posted something up for review and the majority of the reviewers seemed not to understand that the ending of the first chapter is explained on the very first page of the next chapter, because they clearly didn't bother to read that far. But If I move the explanation to the (new) first chapter, it doesn't make any sense because there's no way for the POV character to know that information.

I've been having troubles actualising a comic concept for a while, so I took a different approach and started a 30 Day OC Drawing Challenge using those characters. It has been a fun way to flesh out and explore them that way.

Reading LA Confidential. There's a fantastic scene in there where a detective interrogates a suspect. Actually, three suspects at the same time. They're all isolated from each other, but the detective chooses which one to question and goes back and forth and back between them. Things get really interesting when the detective starts lying about what the suspects are supposedly saying about each other to try to get them to crack. It's great.

Also, in the "Lines That Say a Lot With a Little" section: "He showered again. He could still smell the day on himself."

The trio of ravens let go of it, leaving the shovel swinging downward. it landed a hit on the back of the old man’s head. his body went head first into the flower pots he recently put in. the pot crushed into pieces whilst the flower get smashed apart.

does this seem choppy to you?

Yes, but not necessarily in a bad way...

Man, I'd be a terrible villain.

For the past week and a half I've been trying to figure out my villain's 'end game'—she achieves her core objective at the end of the first chapter, effectively conquering a nation by cursing and impersonating the heir the throne. The trouble was that she's too egotistical to settle for ruling while disguised as someone else, so I needed a way for her to take control of the country after exposing herself (heh).

Somehow, in all of my brainstorming, I overlooked the simplest option: Get an excuse to get together all the authority in the country, and kill them all and declare herself the new Empress. Sure, there'll be rebels cropping up here and there but if she does it in one fell swoop most people will be too intimidated to stop her, and any number of Tyrants have lived far longer than they should have by keeping the guards happy.

Maybe I overlooked it because it seems too simple? I dunno, are there any real logical issues with it? Threat of force may not be a really legitimate claim to a throne but it's worked out for a lot of people historically, at least for a while.

The biggest difficulty would be conving a big enough part of the armed forces of taking her side, otherwise she will find herself caught up in the weakest side of a civil war at best, and at worst her head will be on a pike by the next morning while the generals she didn't kill on her coup argue over what to do with the nation.

edited 23rd Jun '17 7:53:39 PM by EternaMemoria

Ech. Yeah, the was the biggest sticking point in developing her plan is that, in order to highlight the themes of the story (what it takes to be a good leader) support for the villain would have to be... limited, at best.

Now granted all the plan needs to do is make sense from the villain's perspective, which in this case translates to 'how can I cow as much of the country in one go as possible'. I had planned for there to be a pot point of the villain subtly canvasing for support among a minority-numbers-but-high-strength population within the country, but said plot point involved it not really working...

Too much of the themes of the story relies on the villain being too fundamentally selfish to ever dream of being a decent leader, which pretty thoroughly writes off significant support.

If the police found a woman in tattered clothing wandering the streets, would it be plausible to take her in? Especially when she has no memories of her past.

What country is this? Does she have some form of identification? Not sure there's any reason to take in a person who isn't trespassing or the like.

She could cook up some lies to suddenly gain a lot of support, but over the course of the story the lies are revealed and people start withdrawing their support.

edited 24th Jun '17 4:58:17 AM by hellomoto

she's actually a half demon who ends up stuck in the body of some girl.

Well did the girl have any ID on her?

But overall I think she'd probably be treated as just another homeless person and assumed to be drunk, so just look up how those are treated in whatever location you're setting your story at.

Depending on the area (like if this woman's stumbling around a quiet suburb vs. an inner city neighborhood full of apartments), her getting picked up by the police could also be dependent on whether someone calls the police on her- there's not enough police to cover every part of an area. People might not pay enough attention to her to want to call the police if she's in some inner city or lower-income area and isn't really bothering anybody.

So, after putting on paper (well, in Libre Office document) 2K words of my Web Serial Novel in one sitting yesterday, I'm once again reminded of the importance of actually writing the fucking thing down in writing. I had only vague ideas about the content of the scenes when I sat in front of the computer, but when I started typing, sentences sprouted out like mushrooms after the rain.

I am a new person

...Good for you?

Hi there, New Person! Welcome to Writer's Block. Here for all your writerly needs!*

* Availability depends on the whims of other writers that are active on Writer's Block. We all have lives, of course, but we're happy to help as we're available.

It took a couple of years, but I'm finally published with a book. This feels unreal.

Nice! What's the book by the way, if you don't mind me asking?

Here it is!

Congrats!