Writer's Block Daily

My human OCs all live in the same universe actually

They just don't acknowledge each other at times

I just had a major "Eureka!" Moment.

If I remove Katie from my story altogether, nothing changes. As a matter of fact, the story gets even better. The fact is, she was only created to die. Her characteristics can be easily folded into Liz and Eco—Eco and Katie's dreams are both to fly.

How would this change things? Instead of her being captured and killed to revive the villain, it's Liz—Autumn's lifelong best friend—who is killed^note she is revived at the end, however. Since she is killed to revive the villain, who is Autumn's brother, which gives her more reason to go on a Tranquil Fury Rampage Of Revenge a la Carrie.

This helps to create an even darker darkest hour, streamline my cast list, and clarify the plot.

I was worrying that it may fall into the Bury Your Gays trap because she is one of two trans characters in my screenplay—the more significant overall—and she dies.

But I'm trans, and she lives in the end, so...

Aww, Liz dies? What a bummer.

I usually find, however, that being able to revive dead characters significantly lowers the stakes.

Unless, of course, the revival method makes the character worse off or is generally treated as a bad or near-impossible idea; something that can be done but probably shouldn't. It might not preserve the fear that the character will die, but it does at least create new conflict out of it.

One of the best examples I've seen of this is in The Young Elites. The protagonist's love interest got murdered in one of the books and was then revived by a woman with necromantic powers, but he Came Back Wrong and spent the entire time acting very out-of-character and staring at the ground, wanting to be back in the underworld. And come the third book, all the characters are at risk of dying horribly due to their powers and this includes the necromancer, so their deaths can't exactly be undone at that point. A good way to conserve the drama and the stakes while still bringing the character back.

Gah...

I think what makes it work, however, is that the villain was revived by the totem, although it took tons of magical power. Liz's revival takes place near a Gateway, where magical abilities are amplified. So while a totem will completely store a soul on a normal area and has to be forced out with another, a soul is more finicky closer to a gateway, and thus it helps make revival easier.

That, or I could maybe pull off an Only Mostly Dead justification or something. Maybe that a little bit of the soul is still stored inside, and as long as you have that the rest will come to it.

Edited by TheWhistleTropes on Oct 18th 2020 at 12:31:27 PM

I'm inclined to think that, if the revival comes near the end of the tale, and if it's well-foreshadowed but not explicitly described as a possibility, then it may yet work.

Coming near the end it doesn't undermine the threat of death for anyone else. Being without specific mention, it may yet be a surprise. And conversely, being well-foreshadowed, that surprise may feel supported, and not something pulled out of nowhere.

The villain's revival occurs about 70% of the way through. Liz's revival occurs 90-95% through, and even then she is almost immediately put into life-threatening danger.

Dragon Ball Z is the one work where I’ve seen resurrection done right. The Dragon Balls can bring people back, but there are always limits to what can be done—when the heroes run out on the regular Dragon Balls, they need to travel to another planet and use theirs until their own are recreated. Most of the villains want to destroy entire planets or galaxies all at once, anyway, so the death of one person is insignificant by comparison.

If by "done right" you mean "doesn't cheapen the deaths", then DBZ is by far not an example you want to cite The practice has constantly degraded in difficulty through the show. Early in classic Dragon Ball, gathering them was an epic quest. Then it became offscreen activity. They had a limit of once per person, but that still meant one free ticket for everybody in the cast.

And after they got rebuilt, they could resurrect multiple people at once multiple times over and got used constantly. Death of entire humanity was done and undone in a snap.

The villain's revival doesn't worry me overmuch—that just seems like a turn into the third act.

As to the other character, if it happens at ninety to ninety-five percent of the way through, then I stand by my feelings in my previous post, above.

Yes. I'm thinking at the Midpoint my MC finds out that her brother—who is the villain— is dead. But we don't know that the brother is the villain until the death. And plus, the other character is killed by it anyway.

Definitely why I was feeling healthy enough to share it. I feel there's enough foreshadowing and tension to allow for it.

Edited by TheWhistleTropes on Oct 19th 2020 at 12:48:06 PM

So here's some Showerldbuilding

I came up with this in the shower last night.

The Gateways aren't triggered to open by any specific item or object; they open when it gets dark enough. Hence why the one in the cave in pleasant valley is always open, whereas the one in the middle of the ocean on Melechi (changed the name due to phonotactics) only opens during a total eclipse.

Remember when I talked about Autumn's abusive mother? I wonder how she seems.

Edited by TheWhistleTropes on Oct 22nd 2020 at 2:32:13 PM

Does she have to deal with this every single day? It’s no wonder she’s socially distant.

That's quite nuanced and understated. Yet effective.

Yeah, I liked it. Felt more realistic than other takes on abuse, which is pretty extreme and makes the abuser act very 2-dimensional. I myself am trying to add more depth to my abusive characters.

I'm glad I could get that. To me she just seemed a bit too cartoonish.

I mean, abusers always sort of come off as cartoonishly petty if you don't water them down to the point of not actually being abusive anymore. Obviously some are worse than others or are more subtle than others, but she didn't seem super cartoonish to me- the end with her "apologizing" seemed more realistic than other takes. I think in general we're all conditioned to expect characters to act reasonably or at least understandably, even if they're evil, so abusers might come off as too "out there" by comparison even if they're written very realistically.

Like I said, I have abusive characters in my own story and I'm trying to give them nuance. I'm worried about them coming off as too cartoonish as well. I might do a Villain Critique thread post on one of them at some point...if the thread is ever posted on again

Edited by WarJay77 on Oct 22nd 2020 at 10:42:12 AM

Oof, that excerpt above was disturbing to read! (Which is to say, it was well-done, and effective!)

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Oct 23rd 2020 at 6:31:12 PM

Thanks for all the constructive criticism. Part of me wonders whether it might be inconsistent with the mood of my story, however. While the real world is shown as something unforgiving and harsh for Autumn, the planet of Melechi offers a very slight release^note even though it is currently reeling from the death of a dictator in a tsunami that wrecked the capital city. So perhaps showing that Autumn doesn't feel safe at home could bring her some motivation to actually go and see the actual place, if only to find out the truth that her mother has been keeping from her.

I think it would actually enhance that mood my creating a bigger contrast between the real world and Melechi.

I agree. It'll enhance her feeling of being an outsider.

A short while ago—a week, perhaps?—I asked a question in this sub-forum about how long one should wait before querying a story. The expected ninety-day response-time was drawing close, and I'd heard nothing—on top of which, I'd recently learned that a spam-filter had been eating messages without notice.

The ninety days expired today, and so I sent in a query. Thankfully, I received a response rather quickly, and thankfully it indicated that my story was still in the queue.

Something interesting came out of both this and a previous such query, however—based admittedly on only those two points of data. It seems that in the time of COVID-19, publications have been somewhat flooded with stories.

I suppose that, with people more-often stuck in their homes, they're more often sitting down and writing something, and more often taking the step of sending that writing off for potential publication!

Good to know! I wish I could publish something!