Writer's Block Daily

Anyone willing to be a collaborator on group-writing a family survival suspense story?

Anyone ever done a major rewrite because a plot point is a bit too similar to a well-known work? I'm trying to rearrange large blocks of my story because it turned out that Fro2en also had a past monarch damming up a river to cripple its resident spirits and force the people who depend on them into subservience, and I really don't want the readers' minds to jump to another story when this thing comes up.

Edited by eagleoftheninth on Dec 15th 2019 at 1:33:59 AM

I did. The first version of the horror short story The Cambion was too similar with The Girl With All the Gifts and Elfen Lied, so I had to clear up the narration to be less sterile, streamline the plot and toned down the carnage in the story.

Anyways, eagleoftheninth - do you want to be a collaborator in group-writing a short story?

Not in the shape to do an active collab right now, sorry. I can give feedbacks, though.

Lost my account for a while, but I'm back and I've done a loott of writing while I was gone

Whenever I can't think of what character should say I keeping finding myself saying they shrugged their shoulders,really need to stop that

Finally got back into writing. After a long dry spell I've started reworking on my comic script!

@Ultimatum: Do you use any character worksheets? If not, you might find one helpful.

I don't generally use character worksheets,whatever those are,but I'll think about it

Was randomly thinking about witchie names again and the name 'Toadstool' springs to mind so that one is probably way too on the nose..

It's been a hot minute since Gleahan and the Knaves of Industry came out, but I finally finished the first draft of the script for my next movie!

Edited by AwSamWeston on Dec 25th 2019 at 10:27:44 AM

Well, I just wrote (a draft of) the epilogue to a story that I've had in progress (much on the back-burner, admittedly) for the past several years.

To be clear, the story itself isn't done: aside from editing, there are still bits that I intend to write, I believe.

But this is the story's end that I've now written, the mirror almost to its prologue, and something that I've had in mind for quite some time.

I'm a little emotional. (Helped in part by the fact that, well, the story in question is a life-story, and thus its epilogue...)

(Also, I've been meaning to come back to this story for quite some time, so it feels really good to finally return.)

Congrats to both of you.

Thank you, and indeed, on that note congratulations to you, Aw Sam Weston! ^_^

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Dec 31st 2019 at 2:41:42 PM

hey guys! happy New year

I'm currently spending the last days of my trip to Disney world. I definitely needed that trip, and now I feel much better and calm.

just wanted to say thank you for taking your time to give me tips on how to improve as a writer. it opened my eyes to a lot of things concerning writing and myself.

and, after taking the time to think about all of this, I've decided to stop doing narrative writing and do something else instead...namely doing informative/humorous commemtary on games, movies, manga, music (mainly heavy metal) and sports, except that, for sports, I concentrate on more obscure/international sports like soccer,motor racing, euroleague basketball and Japanese baseball as those are the sports I love (and also because Urinatingtree already covers the American sports market), as well as motor racing championships using modded racing sims on PC.

I came to that decision because I found myself enjoying writing about sports and giving my opinion on things than writing a story. i feel like my casual writing style and my more visual way of storytelling would be put to good use for that kind of video, and I am just more relaxed and self-confident making jokes and informing people than constantly pressuring myself to depression trying to write a good story.

besides, I don't even know how i got 107 kudos and counting and people actually telling me they liked my fanfic despite it being pretty bad. it's highly unlikely I'll ever continue this fic anyways, and even if, one day, I'll go back and finish it, it'd probably won't come in a long, long time.

so yeah, i am already writing the script for a video, which is predictions for the Euro 2020 soccer tournament. I'll take things one video at a time. don't wanna rush things.

happy New year, everyone!

If that's what you enjoy making, if that's where you feel comfortable and happy, then it does indeed seem like a good idea to me. I hope that it goes well, and that your work is well-received! ^_^

Also, congratulations on receiving those 107 kudos on your fic! Well done on that, I think. ^_^

Re-reading my work I'm starting to think this fanfic went from joking about Homoerotic Subtext to being straight up yaoi.

Maybe I should tone it down for my rewrite.

Well, I just received another rejection message for a short story that I've been submitting to magazines. I know that it's normal to have a huge pile of rejection slips, and when there has been more than a form-rejection the feedback has been encouraging. Still, it's a little dispiriting—and a little heartbreaking, because I love this story, and I really want to see it well-placed.

That said, I'm not giving up; indeed, I already have it submitted to another magazine, and we'll see whether the editors there take it up.

(In all fairness, I have only been submitting to pay-magazines; if none of those take it, I'll likely start in on token magazines.)

In other news, I recently concluded that one of my larger projects—a hoped-to-be novel—was missing a piece. I've started some work on what that piece might be—but I've also realised that the supporting cast skews a little heavily toward the male, so I'm considering looking for another episode to take its place. (As well as checking the genders of some extant characters.)

It is a pity, as the episode that I have in mind does seem to have all that I want—in particular, the protagonist starting to come into her own as a leader, depiction of her adventuring without her mentor/friend/eventually-more—and development of her relationship with said character by virtue of showing how she feels about the lack of his presence.

But it would be nice to find an episode that both includes the desired narrative elements, and that includes some other significant female characters...

A while back I asked a question in another thread trying to figure out how my protagonist could identify The Mole who had a piece of information she couldn't get on the record anywhere else, only to be told (politely) that the situation didn't really make sense in the first place. After much freaking out over "how the heck did I miss THAT?!", going over it looking for solutions, and ultimately concluding that no matter how I sliced it the scenario I had in mind just wouldn't work, I may have found a viable alternative for it.

So now the previous source doesn't go Off the Record (making an alternative source unnecessary), but instead tells the protag everything about the stolen artifact... except who it's being used on and where, knowing that the technical information is useless if no one knows when or where the villains will strike. However, the fact that said villains are now confirmed to be using a method they typically avoid is still something of a clue.

I've just now started revising my screenplay. To be honest, I don't know if it will ever be produced since it is meant to be practice in that medium and I have no screenwriting experience beyond taking a summer class on it.

I was stuck on what set the hero on the main plot, and found something that worked, or was at least as good of a reason as any. The protagonist wants to be a martial artist and protect people, and his girlfriend's brother is killed by a gang, so he sets out to fight the gang. Now the main issue is why didn't he just call the police to take care of it?

Obviously, it's a martial arts story, so calling the police would be too easy and there would be no story.

Answer: the police suck/are overworked and they've proven to be useless against this gang in the past, so why bother. Or maybe he did call, and they couldn't find enough easy evidence for who did it, so they just shrugged and let the case go cold.

Yeah, Police Are Useless is a trope for a reason. Maybe they're outright corrupt and taking bribes to wink at things, maybe they're trying to work the case but understaffed and underfunded, or maybe they're just doing their LITERAL job of making arrests and writing up tickets/fines for people.

Literally any of those reasons would work in real life, and there's more on the actual trope page.

Edited by Sharysa on Jan 26th 2020 at 8:40:03 AM

Yesterday I finished the second draft of the script for my next movie. Now it's out to some beta-readers. Woo!

Very nice! I hope that you get excellent feedback, both in quality and reception. ^_^

I've been interested in self-publishing an e-book compiling most of my short stories that I wrote in the interm and posted on Constructive Criticism.

I need some advice on E-Book self-publishing on Google Play Store and some materials so that I can research the market for that type of books.

What happened to the script for your first movie?