Writer's Block Daily

I don't see how that makes sense.

Well, okay, brain uploading onto a body other than your own is illegal, and also the fact that it's one of those things where your brain has to be mapped onto a template and most people don't like the template.

I'm not sure where you're getting your concept of Brain Uploading from. Most often it basically means turning oneself into a digital intelligence, not body-swapping.

Really? There are a lot of examples of that on the trope page.

There's the idea of using it as a backup with clones and such, but the situation you're suggesting of uploading, then downloading into an entirely different body doesn't seem either common in existing fiction or the most obvious use of the technology in theory.

Altered Carbon did it. The main premise of the book is that in the setting, people have little chunks of metal called cortical stacks installed at the base of their brains when they're born that absorb their memories throughout life and if they can afford it, they'll be 're-sleeved' into somebody else's body when they die. This one rich person who has been re-sleeved multiple times and is hundreds of years old is murdered and re-sleeved, and in the process loses a few hours of his life, so he enlists the protagonist to find out what happened during those few hours.

edited 13th May '13 3:28:48 AM by CrystalGlacia

"Jack, you have debauched my sloth."

I'm not saying it doesn't exist. I'm just saying that it's not really common enough (in fiction or theory) to justify its prohibition as a reason uploading would be uncommon.

In Fafnir's Bane*

, the dwarf Andvari, son of Oin plays the role of a Dark Lord figure. I have a plot problem; are there additional reasons why someonw would want Andvarinaut other than its gold-producing properties?

edited 13th May '13 5:40:25 AM by MorwenEdhelwen

The road goes ever on. -Tolkien

Just wrote first two pages of my book, total at...700 words. I would like to keep working, but I am at a library and I forgot to bring my charger. Oh well, I guess I can do research instead.

I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.

Have been re-reading Godel Escher Bach. I'm astounded by just how many of Hofstadter's theories on the origins of conciousness have made it into my own world building's Anatomy of the Soul, even though I never actually thought about his book while writing.

I mention this because it just goes to show how much influence the media — fiction and non-fiction — that one consumes alters what one writes, even outside of intentional references and sources of inspiration. And perhaps it's another argument for what I've always felt, that consuming a wide and diverse variety of media makes one a better writer.

edited 13th May '13 7:30:47 AM by KillerClowns

This actually got me thinking.

It's a long read but I promise its worth it.

That basically sums up why I'm wary of most writing articles and blogs. I've met very few that get me to create something better rather than prevent me from writing, and most of them came from Na No Wri Mo.

That's a really bad idea when taken to extremes, but in moderation I agree with it.

Of course it is. But if I may be blunt, the sort of person that believes their own ideas infallible will fail to meet standards regardless of what methods they pursue until they start to think otherwise. Bad writers are bad writers until they are not.

I'll hide your name inside a word and paint your eyes with false perception.

Speaking of Tumblr, I wrote an on-the-spot rant as a response to something else.

edited 13th May '13 3:37:50 PM by chihuahua0

Holy shit what I'm writing is dumb.

Congratulations! That realization is the first step to improvement. I'm sure we all know that from experience.

I mean I just really can't imagine any way this is workable at all. I am just trying to do too much at once.

I'm pretty sure that statement applies to every great work ever written or filmed. If I were to simply describe Star Wars to you, it'd sound dumb as all hell.

Nous restons ici.

"Holy shit what I'm writing is dumb."

Share it or it didn't happen... NO, seriously, let us see it...

Okay, I'm about to make a decision with my writing...

Either I abandon Manifestation Files for 1920's fantasy Dubious Doppelgangers, or I trend on with Manifestation Files. I'm still not sure which one.

Well, one thing's for sure: Dubious will be way easier to plot. I don't have any darlings to kill, and building from the bottom-up with the techniques I learned over the years will give me a cleaner outline to work with. The issue is whatever I'll stick with that outline.

edited 13th May '13 8:19:03 PM by chihuahua0

The more I think about it, the more I'm coming to believe that, one way or another, Show, Don't Tell (or its close relative misplaced prescriptivism) can be found at the bottom of pretty much every problem of fiction imaginable.

Fine.

Try here. Password is catscatscatscats.

I am going to be entirely honest here. Whatever you decide, Dubious Doppelgangers is a bad title.

edited 14th May '13 6:25:24 AM by ohsointocats

When I found myself in a similar situation, I ended up going with the newer story, bearing the Working Title of Koyel's Story, that has fewer darlings to kill, putting my "main" project, Crimson, on hold. I'll return to Crimson when I'm done with Koyel's Story under the logic that the long break will leave me a better writer and the distance from my darlings will make me better able to kill them as necessary. (Of course, there's the potentially differing matter that Crimson and Koyel's Story take place in the same 'verse, making returning from one to the other much easier.)

Guess what time it is?

Nrjxll had a problem with Show, Don't Tell.
Something about it had a really foul smell.
It really was a bother, brought a certain pain.
So he went on the Daily to tell it was a stain,
But did not show why this was a trope to quell.

(I never said it would be a good limerick.)

edited 14th May '13 6:31:27 AM by KillerClowns

I don't think that's really a limerick.

edited 14th May '13 6:35:00 AM by ohsointocats