Random Questions Thread

Any tips on writing birth scenes? For context, I have this scene where a couple were sleeping when the mom suddenly wakes up due to contractions starting. They stay at home as they intended to have a home birth. The mom didn't expect the birth to be painful as she previously had a Twilight Sleep birth (a form of childbirth where the mother is put in a state of sleep through drugs during the birth and wake up with no memory of the procedure)

https://springhole.net/writing/things-writers-need-to-know-about-birth-and-babies.htm

I've never witnessed or given birth, so i don't have any advice of my own.

Edited by Nukeli on Mar 20th 2023 at 1:16:44 PM

~Nukeli I appreciate the link but I would've preferred that you gave your own tips/advice alongside the link. In fact, isn't it against site rules to only post a link with no other context/text?

I know, that's a sensitive subject, so here I am.

If someone practiced Self-Harm by cutting oneself five years ago, how would the scars of that look?

Same as any other old scar: Slight discoloration and tightening of the healed skin tissue in the same shape or pattern as the original wound.

It might help to understand that a scar occurs when the skin is removed entirely in an affected area. Collagen comes in to seal the wound, but it's different from skin cells. I'm not a medical expert, but a few Google searches should help you get a better idea of how scar tissue works.

From the UK's National Health Service: (link)

Edited by AwSamWeston on Mar 19th 2023 at 6:17:03 AM

Is a Healing Factor still one even if it takes a long, long time to fully do its job?

One of my characters is from a supernatural species who can, under certain circumstances, attain immortality. One of the perks of this immortality is that they will heal perfectly from every wound.

Near the end of the story, her arm is ripped off by a werewolf. It doesn't grow back immediately—-in fact she almost bleeds out and is only saved because another nearby character is a trauma surgeon.

The lost limb then takes many years to regenerate (I'd say between 16 to 20 years, since the epilogue, where she now has her arm again, takes place after this length of time).

I wonder if this still counts as a healing factor.

Edited by Swordofknowledge on Mar 20th 2023 at 1:00:05 PM

In The Dresden Files, wizards' bodies fully repair themselves on this exact kind of timescale. It's why they're able to live for hundreds of years. The story treats it as a Healing Factor. In one book, the protagonist burns his hand to a crisp and spends the next several books (and years) without full use of his hand, but it does gradually improve over time.

If a regular human gets their limb cut off, it doesn't grow back. The fact that your character can grow back their limb in the first place is the key element to it counting as a Healing Factor.

@ Aw Sam Weston:

Thanks for the answer. I actually didn't know that about the Dresden Files (I've heard about them for years to the point of many spoilers but never actually read them). It's also kind of ironic since the character I'm talking about belongs to the Witch Species of my story .

But anyway, glad to see that there is a "gradient" for supernatural healing apart from a wound repairing itself within minutes or a limb just growing back in a short window.

I asked this in Writer's Block, but wanna repost: Would an Alien invasion story feel immersive if it has at most 4 main PO Vs and a fifth that can be added from time to time?

"Immersive" is all down to personal taste and how well the writer can pull it off. But there's plenty of movies, TV shows, books, comics, etc. that deal with an alien invasion of some kind and feature 4+ POVs, so there's definitely precedent for that.

Heck, if you set those POVs at different parts of the globe, it could even feel like a real alien invasion instead of "Aliens attack NYC / DC / London / whatever major city the author picks on a map"!

I see now.

To be precise; mine includes the four chosen heroes who have to stop the Alien empire attacking the galaxy and Earth too and showing Humanity can be worth saving, a conscripted refugee from the Philippines who has to contend with his misanthropy and distrust of others, especially the aforementioned heroes, the son of a racist cop who joined the Aliens who just wants to escape the stigma of his father, two alien twins that weren't indoctrinated by the empire and have to grapple with the fact that they may be fighting for the wrong side. So far, the fifth shifting POV is about mercenaries hired to protect the main heroes in the skies feeling the need to be free.

And depending on how it goes, the fifth shift could go in seeing the inner circle of the Human collaborators or the resistance groups outside the armed forces.

I mean. Sure. Go for it.

But seriously. If there are flaws in your concept, you won't be able to really see them until you hammer out a first draft. No use second-guessing yourself in the ideas stage.

Edited by AwSamWeston on Mar 20th 2023 at 2:48:44 PM

Especially when consulting with an editor.

I'm writing a two-part story, but I'm having trouble making the cut off point between the two parts natural. For context, the final scene of part one is the rookie main character accidentally admitting that by playing hero and successfully going after and beating the leader of the villains during his first mission, he disobeyed his orders to save some endangered civilians, resulting in his leader confining him to base for more training as punishment.

Problem is, right now the scene literally ends with the leader stating the punishment, and it's way too abrupt. Any suggestions on a more natural way to end the scene?

Turn it into a cliffhanger with the protagonist getting caught or about to be caught by his superior or narrating his thoughts on his superior's potential response (e.g. "Bossman's gonna kill me"), and then pick up part 2 with the protagonist miserably carrying out his punishment in remedial training?

Maybe instead of letting the leader state the punishment directly, you can have him say something ominous like "I think I know exactly what you need".

Then cut to a scene of a trainer in the base addressing the new recruits, going from one soldier to the next saying things like  "Ah, new faces eh? Get ready for some Training from Hell and.............but what have we here? An old friend returns? I am touched".

He says that as he stops at the last recruit, private (Protagonist name).

If he was demoted (say from sergeant to private) this scene will give this information in a more organic way.

Can be a funny ending somehow, if the trainer had appeared at the beginning of the book, giving the same speech, and if he didn't go eye to eye with the cocky protagonist.

It may be a Bookends scene.

Edited by jawal on Mar 20th 2023 at 2:21:52 PM

So, I probably told you before of a scene involving a hero bravely standing up against the collaborator. So, talking with an unofficial editor, it came to me that this one character, the collaborator, could be one who may have been a figure close to one of the protagonists. In fact, they once began as a moderate and tolerant man with genuine charisma due to his teachings. However, this craving for attention and admiration fueled a complex inside of him, one which would make him desperate to crave any sort of attention and adoration, no matter what it takes.

What I'm wondering is in regard to this position of power that corrupted him and made him into a reactionary traitor that is willing to sell his country out. One said he could be president in my world, then he was removed when he tried to smear an opponent or was a failed candidate, but through his legion of new fans, tried to cause terror in protest of it. Would making him a former president in my world work, or is it too on the nose and just being a charismatic public figure work better?

And how close should the connection be with the protagonist he later confronts? Is it more of a case of "Never meet your heroes" where the protagonist just looked at him from afar and initially admired him only to turn away when finding out the kind of man he became, or a case of seeing a man who once mentored you in life and even became close for a while, only for that to be shattered when you reencounter with him and find out he became a reactionary traitor?

Regarding the question of "president/candidate or just-a-public-figure", I think that it may depend on just how on-the-nose the rest of the story is, and to what degree you distinguish the pattern of the character's actions from certain presidents/former-presidents in our world.

If your story is generally pretty on-the-nose, then having an on-the-nose comparison to a president in our world may be fine. If your story is generally pretty subtle, then having an on-the-nose comparison may be jarring.

And if you want to avoid association with a specific president, then it might be worthwhile differentiating your character from that president—not just in personality or details, but in the nature and sequence of their claims to power.

As to the character's association with your protagonist, that, I think, depends on the rest of your story and characters. That is, on how it fits into the plot, how it works alongside extant characterisation, how it interacts with the themes of the work, and so on.

Well, he fits into the plot by being presented as the leader of the American collaborators of the Zlocu, which as you know, is currently full of bigoted traitors. As for the characterization, there are already hints that the protagonist has endured a rather horrible past involving bigotry, something that he hides from others, but it's implied that he could be hiding something even from himself and what it means for the teachings he had. And it can work with the themes of prejudice, trust of others and how sincere you are in the convictions of your ideals.

The thing is, it would still depend on the details of the plot, how all this fits in, etc. Giving more than what I did above would, to my mind, call for knowing the work in detail and depth, rather than just knowing the outline.

(To be clear, I'm not asking for those details; that's a larger additional task that I want to take on right now. I'm just explaining why my answer still comes down to "it depends".)

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Mar 21st 2023 at 6:57:32 PM

Regular reminder that TV Tropes forum users aren't going to write your story for you. But if you have a draft or sample that you want people to look over, we have several Feedback & Critique threads to help with that.

So I'm a little curious/wary of whether or not the following comparison is offensive or not:

The mother of my story's main protagonist was warned at an early age that her offspring would inherit the Story-Breaker Power that painted a bloody target on her family's collective back. She was told that, because of this, it would be better to not have any children and instead let this power die with her.

She later marries and has the main character and his sister with full knowledge of this. A lot of things happen and the result is a ravaged world, millions dead, and several billion people robbed of their very humanity.

Here is where the potentially offensive comparison comes in: in my mind, I likened thus to people know know they are carrying a devastating genetic disease and still choose to procreate and condemn their child to a tortured existence.

I sort of wanted someone to say this to her in the course of the story but am worried it's a little too much.

Is it really that horrible to make this analogy?

Edited by Swordofknowledge on Mar 21st 2023 at 7:06:46 AM

Having someone say "yes, giving birth to a child with a genetic disease is comparable to giving birth to super-Godzilla who causes an apocalyptic event and murders millions", and having that viewpoint presented as implicitly correct within the context of your story? I'd say it's offensive.

People who knowingly carry terrible hereditary conditions yet have kids anyways may do so because they want to take the chance that it won't be passed on, or perhaps because they don't see it as a disadvantage worthy of preventing a theoretical kid from existing at all, especially if the parent exhibits that condition themselves. Sometimes, religious folks may just see it as God's way of testing them (think of that how you will). I'm guessing that in this character's case, there was probably no question as to whether her kids would inherit this horrible power, which brings me to the other reason why someone with a terrible hereditary condition might choose to bear children- the drive to procreate and have kids of their own flesh and blood is just that strong.

The thing about having kids is that it's inherently selfish, because you're not only bringing a being into the world that didn't ask for it, you also chose to do so despite knowing there are millions of kids out there in need of a home and loving parents. And since the consequences of her choice affect many, many more people than just her little family, it might make more sense for her to be accused of selfishness- how dare she bring these two innocent children into a world knowing what their existence would mean, and knowing the danger it would place them in.

I guess that's kinda just the same argument as the hereditary disease comparison, but without naming it.

Edited by CrystalGlacia on Mar 21st 2023 at 8:09:14 AM

If I want to write a book that's reviews of films, do I need permission from film companies to do that, or does that fall under fair use? Even if I don't use any copyrighted images?