Writer's Block Daily

After school started again I've been struggling to make progress with my book. I get some hours down per week, but it's overall measly compared to the near Nanowrimo-levels of productivity I had during summer.

Literal ADHD leads naturally to Attention Deficit Creator Disorder. I've got a good dozen drafts I'm poking at every few weeks, in addition to my one main project.

That's normal and expected. Don't beat yourself up over it. Just write what you can as you have the time (and mental energy) to write it.

Dammit, now I want to do my space mechs idea again. Thing is, I’m not an artist, so I have to describe the world and characters through words alone (and, in the future, hire artists). I’ll keep Vid’s suggestion in mind and go for an episodic format.

That seems cool, Guma!

Lots of projects, not much motivation to write actual stuff.

Wondering how to work Autumn's dislike for shoes into the screenplay. During her walking home from being fired, I am thinking that at some point she takes her shoes off and throws them to the side. Either that or she somehow ditches them sometime else—probably when she gets home.

I also think it could be lampshaded at some point. Perhaps one of my other characters could see her for the first time barepawed^note all the characters are either furries or dragons and ask something along the lines of "Whoever stole those is a strange being—no offense."

It could possibly even factor into the plot; perhaps she could get her foot badly hurt at some point?

Depending on the reasons for being fired, ill-fitting shoes could act as symbol of her employment; perhaps she never fit to begin with. Then, on the way home, the shoes start chafing for the last time, prompting her to remove them and toss them off a bridge or something similarly dramatic.

I could see the ditching of her shoes acting as a symbol of becoming more comfortable with herself (if applicable to the character): no longer trying to force herself to conform to some perceived "normalcy", and just letting herself be comfortable as herself.

Huh. Actually, that could really make sense! Considering that her arc is about being more comfortable being herself instead of conforming to others' whims, it would be a pretty good symbolic representation.

EDIT: Maybe she could finally ditch them when she saves Liz or something—she'll need the shoes in order to sink down, but they'd likely impede her ascent.

Edited by TheWhistleTropes on Oct 3rd 2020 at 12:08:35 PM

Well, I'm gearing up to hopefully launch the new demo of my main video-game project on Monday. o_o

(And on the writing side, I edited a lore-entry for that project earlier today. It was a short history, explaining the reason for the abandoned city-beneath-a-city in which a few levels take place.)

Otherwise, I've been contemplating joining a local writer's circle. (Which meets via Zoom under the current lockdown.)

I'm still undecided on this—on whether it's a good fit for me, both towards growing as an author and as a means of social interaction.

Plot idea: Protagonist finds a mech that lets them rewind time to whenever they want. This is portrayed as ethically wrong, but they do it anyway.

Not too long ago, I was trying to fix a plot hole regarding the timing of a certain plot point, which only had a rather flimsy justification. I ended up with the story of how a previously-unrelated ruin got that way, and a creature I'd designed as merely one of several became more front-and-center. I love getting sucked down rabbit holes like that.

I'm stuck in a perpetually never ending writer block in my Spyro fanfic(Legendverse) with no new game releasing to give me inspiration and wondering how to make two plots, a main plot heavily focused on Fyra in Warfang and the other on a mysterious forgotten continent that I thought if not too controversial to make it be remnants of the classic realms. So far, all I've found is exile Spyro, send Cynder after him so I can introduce the city where the name of my fic come from and make Fyra adopted by Aeria.

I do want to have my main plot being about my Fyra being cursed but struggle to have a proper narrative.

Edited by fyra on Oct 6th 2020 at 7:32:53 AM

I'm wondering how long it would take to climb a hundred-foot-tall tree, especially if it has sticky bark. I want the scene to be tense, but not go on too long.

A long time.

Assuming they're an experienced, fast climber, they could conceivably make it up 100 feet in about 2 minutes. Anything faster than that and they're approaching "world record setting" territory.

Perhaps there's sort of a low branch? Or maybe I could compress it into montage form?

Yeah, compress it.

And I wonder, if the branch is so high up, how my character would get down. Maybe she could try to just drop from that height with the fruit?

But I also want another character at one point to follow her, so maybe there's something that threatens her.

Perhaps something falls on one of the tree's exposed roots and leads it into eating mode, where my first climber starts to slowly get eaten alive. It would get worse when the other one tries to use fire to stop the growth. But then, I wouldn't know how the fruit would be able to be gotten down at such a high height.

Would it hurt necessarily to make the danger-tree shorter? Because a drop of more than about 20 feet is fatal around 50% of the time.

Maybe use a rope to rappel down? Can't be much more dangerous than dropping straight down.

Actually, yes. It could be a very young tree, probably a few years old. The rest are probably more than 200 feet tall due to the extra air pressure.

And yes, I was considering using a rope rappel.

Edited by TheWhistleTropes on Oct 5th 2020 at 11:31:10 AM

One nice thing about screenwriting (and really any type of writing) is that you can compress time. So if you feel like 2 minutes is too long, you can easily cut the screen time down to even a few seconds. What matters are the emotional beats and the tension of the scene. If you want it to be a difficult climb, show the character struggling. If you want it to be easy, you could just as easily show them start at the bottom and, almost instantly, reach the top.

Unless "realism" is an explicit goal for your project, throw it out the window. Characters and conflict are always more important.

Edited by AwSamWeston on Oct 6th 2020 at 10:18:05 AM

All my fiction set in 'the real world' share a 'verse, even the 'fictional' worlds.

So a character in my 2nd Romance mentions a character as a failed date (never seen) who is important in the 1st, completely unrelated, romance novel.

The 1st one has a scene in a café with a background event that stops an argument. That background event is an exposition in the Masquerade one, which has magic, even though the romance ones would treat magic the same as we do.

The magic users in the 21st century have contact with a government agency housed in the basement of the British Museum, which is the same government agency that I use as the basis for my 'Super-spy' 7TV tabletop game.

This Agency I took from my 2 Hour Wargame [ruleset] 'X-Com' campaign.

By coincidence the lead character in the 2nd Romance also deals with aliens - he is lead FX on Doctor Who.

There is no reason to do this, it just makes me happy.

Technically, I suppose this means that Aliens could interrupt the declaration of love in the 2nd Romance.