Writer's Block Daily

Everything is worshiped by somebody, esp on the internet. Since any use of any mythological or legendary figure at all is going to intrude on someone's professed religion, the best thing to do is treat them all with respect.

one thing i've been doing with the Djin is that they once plunged the earth into a decade of darkness until they overthrew their king, azazeal. in order for them to atone their ways, most were willing to work along with humans, even if they have to give up their free will to do so. A human has to prove to them they can tame them, however.

It's a work in progress, why I felt it was....questionable.

Edited by ewolf2015 on Aug 20th 2018 at 5:45:18 AM

Just hit publish on my second book! I'll post a link when it's available for buying ^_^

What is it about?

It's a sequel to my first book!

I want you to know the only reason I haven't bought it yet is because I'm poor as shit.

Congratulations, Mr AHR! I hope that it does well! ^_^

Oh gosh thanks to the both of you ;_;

good luck with your book. i'm really proud of you.

it's live!

If you don't see an image/cover, don't worry about that, that's what happens when a book just goes up. It will be there eventually.

Yay, the sequel! I'll add it to my reading list!

So, for the last week or so I've been kicking around an idea for a romance story. I've got it mostly settled, but I'm not quite set on the ending yet. I have a couple of options, but there's pros and cons to both of the options I've come up with so I wanted to run them past some other people to see if I could get some opinions.

The core premise of the story is that the protagonist was, for whatever reason, born with moderate shapeshifting powers. I have some ideas how to justify that, but I might not even bother—stuff like The Time Traveler's Wife can get away with random magic, after all. The shapeshifting is enough that the protagonist can change most general features at will, ie. height, weight, muscle and—most importantly for the story—physical sex.

The protagonist starts a relationship with a guy and lets him in on the secret fairly quickly (Since they met as both guys first, the protagonist felt bad about possibly misleading a guy who knew them in multiple ways). It proceeds well for a while, but the longer it goes on the more a hitch is apparent: The guy in question is dead straight. The protagonist was born with their powers and has a gender identity that encompasses both sexes, and wouldn't feel comfortable remaining female on anything resembling a permanent basis, but the guy just... isn't attracted to the protagonist as a male. They can be close friends, the sexual vibe just isn't there.

So all of that I feel relatively solid on, but I'm not sure how to ultimately resolve it. As I can think of it now, I see two significant possibilities:

A) The love interest realizes he does love the protagonist as a man—just not sexually. He still cares deeply about him and realizes that the protagonist never really 'switched'. He was always the same person the love interest fell in love with at the core, he just looked different. Nobody loves every single thing about their partner in the exact same way to the exact same degree, but what's important is that the caring is still there. They resolve that, even if the relationship is difficult, they can make things work out.

B) They struggle with it for a while, but eventually come to the conclusion that the relationship isn't going to work out, and resolve to end it before it damages what they do have. The protagonist deserves someone who can love all of what they are, and there are people out there who fit that bill. It might take some time to find, but in the meantime that protagonist has friends—and 'friend' isn't a runner-up for 'lover', after all. They agree to take some time apart to let things resolve, but eventually get back together as friends.

I think that both possibilities have their merits, both in terms of narrative and in terms of overall themes. Both the ideas of 'You don't have to love them 100%, 100% of the time' and 'friendship is not a runner-up', and I feel like they'd take roughly equal effort to not misrepresent their themes as encouraging settling/sticking it out for an impossibly perfect partner. So they're weighing roughly equal in my mind.

Anyone have any thoughts?

I think B sounds a bit better to use, given that it can avoid the cliche of the love interest staying as the lover all the way through.

It depends on the needs of the larger story. You have to decide what kind of romance you are writing, a happy ending or a tragedy. Try writing the climactic scene both ways and decide how you feel about each of them. The entire story from beginning to end should possess a narrative integrity that comes from the author knowing what type of story he or she wants to write-characterization, plot, even details of the setting should all contribute to and integrate into a cohesive narrative framework. However, that framework has to come from your desire and imagination; no one can make this decision but you.

I've been slowly working away at my current short story.

I had been somewhat uncertain of how to handle my two principle characters—whether I should focus on just one, or jump between them. I've somewhat settled on the latter for now, albeit with more focus on one than the other.

This has proven a little tricky, in particular in the order in which I place their various sections, but I feel that I'm making progress.

There are some matters of structure and style about which I am a little worried:

Firstly, I spend a lot of time doing what I worry is "telling", rather than "showing", especially in the middle of the story: It essentially summarises several weeks of relationship development.

Being a summary, it holds few to no detailed descriptions of specific events, or any dialogue. Instead, I describe how the pair relate to each other, what they love about each other, and so on—along with how they feel about these things.

I could detail events from those weeks, expanding the story significantly, but I fear that this may cause it to drag a bit. So I feel that I'm somewhat left with my current approach.

Conversely however, the feelings that the couple hold for each other, the relationship that forms between them, is important for the climax and resolution of the story, I feel. I'm a little concerned that an undetailed summary might not convey those things sufficiently well.

Nevertheless, I feel that it's slowly shaping up, and I've been very much enjoying writing it. ^_^

I've also been tempted to start writing some lore-entries for my game-project, but I have a bit of an aversion to actively writing two stories at once—I suppose that I fear that they'll become muddled in my head. I may give it a shot anyway, however!

Sounds like you are making progress, tell us how it comes along.

So guys, what do you think of this poem I made for one of the protagonists of my story? In-universe, it's a poem his mother gave to him as a way to remind him how combining leadership with kindness can lead to good things, and it becomes some sort of mantra whenever he feels unworthy.

It goes like this:

Such is the beauty of having the results to be done...

To gain the will to be the one...

An earned leaf...

To turn the next day with own fief...

What's to cherish, comes to devotion

Bearing the kindred filled with emotion

Yet, through the reality of the purest

Brings halt to the fullest

I beg thou, my beloved

Be for the homecoming...

Aaaaaaa poetry. Is it something that his mother wrote herself or is it a pre-existing piece? Cause I think that we gotta break it down line by line and see how to best present the idea in context.

Okay, you're opening with a demonstrative. What is the "beauty" that the first line is referring to? Does your protagonist find his feeling of low self-worth beautiful in any way? Why are there "results to be done" and not, say, "work to be done"?

Is there an in-universe significance to the phrase "earned leaf" like, say, "breadwinner" in real life? And the next line is a tad difficult to decipher - the writer is turning a day with their feudal land?

I don't really see anything wrong with the individual lines, but the way the two are written feels disjointed somehow. The message I'm getting is that the joy of bringing happiness and pride to one's family and friends makes the struggle worthwhile?

These are a pretty good pair of lines, apart from the awkward "fullest", which looks like it's there mainly for the rhyme and doesn't really fit with the image of "halt"-ing. Maybe change the rest of the line to refer to living out their potentials to the fullest, or something along those lines?

Surprise Middle Early Modern English! "Thou" is indeed the appropriate archaic informal form of "you", but do the people in your story speak like this? I feel that it would come off as dispassionate and detached to most readers. Aaand I think you might've missed a word on the final line - "Be home for the homecoming"?

-crithat off- Dang, SingPoWriMo really did mess with my brain.

This is a big YMMV, but I think that what makes this piece feel kinda emotionally off to me is the way it focuses on abstract/Romantic concepts and misses out on actual imagery, barring "a new leaf" which I can't really visualise out of context. If your setting is culturally pre-modern, then you might want to lean more on immediately impactful imagery. Natural similes/comparatives are still used a lot as a shorthand for spirituality, which is why propaganda literature like the Japanese Imperial Rescript and Soldiers and Sailors have such delightful lines as:

In fact, most classical poetry traditions around the world tend to skip the high-concept references (devotion, emotion, purity, fullness) and cut straight to the juicy visuals to get their point across. When the 7th century pagan Arab Warrior Poet 'Antarah ibn Shaddad wanted to write about trying to find meaning in physical struggle and combat, he wrote the following war song:

No abstractions. No philosophising. Just straight, hard-hitting images getting the message across. This isn't to say that the kind of language you went for is invalid, but there's something in the immediacy of the emotions evoked by such imagery that I feel is easily lost when you focus too much on the abstract.

Have you posted anything on this story and setting elsewhere on the fora? If it's a constructed world, I think that knowing the context could help us rework it into something leaner and more efficient. And finally, the AABB rhyme scheme is fine, but do consider writing it in an alternate form. Apart from the obvious ones like the haiku and the ghazal, there's a whole bunch of culturally specific forms out there that I think can help you fine-tune your poem for maximum feels. (Pushkin sonnet, ho)

Edited by eagleoftheninth on Sep 11th 2018 at 5:55:26 AM

Thank you! I intend to do just that. ^_^

Work on the story has continued. Some of this has been general polish, but some ideas have also come to me regarding the uncertainties that I've had regarding story-structure, and the establishment of how the couple feel about each other.

Part of this has been simply fleshing out interactions between the two, even in general, such as their sharing meals or watching TV.

In addition to helping flesh out their relationship, these sections have offered some opportunities for characterisation. For example, it turns out that one of the pair hates nature documentaries—they make for an unpleasant reminder to her.

I even found a place in which I could add some dialogue, thus showing some of what I was previously telling.

So—progress, I hope! ^_^

Regarding the "leaf" line, I'm guessing that it's the "leaf" that is being "turned over" in the next line—that is, that it's a reference to the idiom of "turning over a new leaf". I would then read it as something about earning the opportunity to redirect one's life.

Ah, thanks! Missed that connection at first.

Print book of book 2 is gonna come out soon, I'm excited =3=

I loved book 2! I was so happy with the way the climax came about, and delighted by the ending!

Oh gosh, thank you!

Got one of my stranger (yet also very appealing) bits of praise today: apparently, I write really satisfying onomatopoeia. Context: a Mama Bear saving her daughter from a vampire by pinning it to a wall with a nailgun. Whenever she pulled the trigger, I wrote whchunk. This particular commenter really liked that.

Edited by TeraChimera on Sep 28th 2018 at 7:43:50 AM

I... I've created an abomination: screaming dragons.