Writer's Block Daily

Really, I should do a quick assessment of my magic system and Masquerade structure to make sure everything's logical and consistent, but I already struggle with writing the actual thing as it is.

I realized (last night) in one of my scenes a character accidentally picked up the Idiot Ball, but it's less they picked up and more I picked it up while writing them. Proving that sometimes the Idiot Ball isn't the writer cheating, it's just the writer being incompedent.*

edited 25th Apr '13 4:10:59 PM by Vyctorian

You've been watching Galactica around the New Caprica arc or after, haven't you?

On topic of planning: I'm a weird mix of planning and thinking as I go. The only thing I have semi-planned is my third book.

On another topic: I'm starting to realize that I find it easier to write boys than it is to write girls (unless they're young children and grown women). It actually makes me feel really bad.

edited 25th Apr '13 4:40:56 PM by Masterofchaos

I think this is because it has been cemented in our heads that girls are "supposed" to be written one way when that's not true.

I guess that's it now that I think about it. Like with some of the tutorials I've seen when I first started writing, like how not to make a girl, I followed their advice and then it just kind of got to the point where I've been more comfortable writing guys than girls.

edited 25th Apr '13 4:49:54 PM by Masterofchaos

And That's Terrible.

I'm sorry. -sob-

You're not terrible, society telling us that male is the default and that any female characters must therefore be "different" is terrible.

Oh man I wish I could babble about my contest entry but I can't because it's a contest entry... this is gonna suck.

I've been paying attention to this blogger lately. Do we have the trope she's describing (and condeming the common execution of)?

Kind of a quiet day for Writer's Block.

No, but it was definitely at the back of my mind when writing that.

I definitely fall into the "plotter" side, but I have nothing against pantsers. I just wish so many of the professional ones - especially in TV - would be honest about it.

The few times I have finished my stories, I used a method intermediate between pantsing and plotting, which is to say I would work with a flexible mental outline that I never wrote down on paper. Unfortunately all these successes were with short stories, so this method may not work as well for novels which have more to keep track of.

I do find it's easier to generate a mental outline if you know how your characters will develop over the stories' course. Character developmental arcs come in handy when plotting.

I'm generally a plotter for the big stuff, but I surprise myself every now and then when writing the specific interactions. I also found out very quickly that if the location of various characters in a large but closed-off space is remotely important to the story, a map helps a lot.

RE: Plotter vs pantser.

There's a time and place for everything. Personally, I'm a composite. I'll plot stuff in advance and pants the path to said plot event....unless along the way I come up with something better which has happened before even recently.

Sticking to the extremes of either for too long can seriously degrade your work. Too much pantsing for too long or simply having no idea what you're doing in a work at any point can lead to a hell of a lot of continuity and consistency errors. Conversely, too much plotting for too long can leave you restrained, bound, and left with little to no room for creativity in the drafting process. (After all, if you cast out the entire outline of your plot because you thought of something better for Plot Point X than was originally planned then what was the point of outlining it?)

... I don't think that I have enough finished work — let alone published, of which I have no fiction that I recall offhand — to be in a good position to comment on a preference for "pantsing" or "planning", as my preference may well come to change as I — hopefully — improve in the art.

That said, at the moment I seem to have a bit of both: I largely write "by the seat of my pants", but it's also not uncommon for me to have individual pieces in mind for various parts of the story. In a sense, I suppose that I sort of write by the seat of my pants, but not always in sequence: inspiration for a later part may come to me before I've reached that section of the narrative, and be held aside until I do.

[edit] I'm also amused by the image of some of us being plotters... [/edit]

The best fit that I managed to find after a brief bit of searching might be a single-project version of Married to the Job, although that doesn't seem to explicitly include the partner actually leaving, only the inclusion of relationship tension.

As to the article, without actually doing some research myself I think that I agree on the gender-disparity aspect, but don't think that I recall reading it as the writer does: the writer of that article apparently reads such situations, if I have it correct, as "the protagonist is the one engaging in the costly project, so the one leaving is to be seen as a poor partner for not understanding". I believe that my usual reading of such situations is rather "wow, this protagonist is so deep in obsession that they're driving a wedge between themselves and their partner".

edited 25th Apr '13 8:35:13 PM by ArsThaumaturgis

The way it usually works when I write anything, from formal essays to creative work, is I have a general idea of what I want something to do or say. The rest is a matter of thinking about how my characters and whatever I have access to would go about doing that for me. If I try to commit any part of my plan beyond that general idea to words, it usually doesn't get written. But I can't write by the seat of my pants, either, or I'll slide into editor mode and wonder what I'm even trying to say at all.

I don't think I've ever seen an example of the "project driving a wedge between partners" thing that doesn't portray the protagonist as incredibly obsessive about it. In fact, even when the partner doesn't leave, the project straining their relationship is almost always used to show that the protagonist is unhealthily involved in it.

I agree with the above. That's a strange - I might go so far as to say perverse - interpretation of the trope.

You know, come to think of it, the only way the wife leaving could be depicted as unreasonable in this case is by assuming that, because the protagonist is the protagonist, everything he does is supposed to be Perfect and Good and Right, and he cannot have any flaws.

I mean, take a look at the excerpt the blogger uses: the first line describes a Room Full of Crazy. When has that not been a sign of instability?

I start out with one scene which develops a character in a random situation. From there, I construct the story around that character, first focusing on the world from which that character emerges, then adding more characters, developing those in more random scenes with a particular focus on the relationships between the characters.

Once I have my characters sufficiently defined, I carry on by fleshing out the world further, going back from time to time to adjust the characters in order to fit them into the developing world. From who the characters are and the major discourses of the world in which they live, the plot emerges.

At this point, I plan out a rough route, figuring out where to start from and where I want to take it, alongside some way stations in between. Usually, the way stations are more about what sort of major character development I want to happen at which point, alongside one or two ideas about what sort of events will trigger it. I also think about the most important McGuffins and Phlebotinum I'll be needing.

After this, I discuss these ideas with my brother and share some of the character development scenes with him. Once we have sorted out the worst issues and established an internally sound logic to the world and a basic psychological profile for the characters (my brother always being the devil's advocate), I get to writing.

Everything else is made up as I go along, with my brother checking for consistency and acting as a soundingboard for new ideas.

edited 25th Apr '13 9:34:48 PM by montmorencey

30,000 words. 85 pages. I seem to be averaging about 2,000 words a day lately. Good.

edited 26th Apr '13 3:01:45 AM by Wheezy

edited 26th Apr '13 4:47:51 AM by Wheezy

Translation suuuuuucks.

Thanks to a recent mental Wiki Walk, I now have the image in my head of a triangular Karma Meter system, with the three equidistant points being "honorable", "pragmatic", and "spiteful". Not sure why I felt the need to share that.

edited 26th Apr '13 4:18:56 PM by KillerClowns