Writer's Block Daily

What's the issue?

I'm writing a rough draft for a cyberpunk-ish story idea I had and want to check for plot holes, pacing issues and feedback in general. The general idea is in the vein of Spy X Family or Buddy Daddies (little girl ends up in the care of two adults with dangerous jobs) but with influence from Greek mythology and a setting in a fictional city near and related to Las Vegas.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Jan 17th 2023 at 2:30:30 AM

Ohhh nice.

What's the summary around 20 words or so?

20 words might be too short but I'll try. Ahem.

• A shady hackette and a rookie detective investigate a string of mental kidnappings (to clarify children are ending up with their minds stolen from their bodies and left in a state similar to Lain's sister) and are investigating mazes in a metaverse. They find a minotaur-esque little girl that is though to be one of the victims. Said child has a deeper connection to the labyrinths and kidnappings, but she doesn't know anything about them (or anything else) beyond being trapped in one.
• The child winds up a part of the investigation as she is revealed to have a special connection with an artifact found in a different maze and the ability to see the entrances to them outside the metaverse (in contrast, finding the mazes otherwise needs a lot of guesswork)
• This is in a setting that actually has a fallen Mega-Corp that is responsible for much of the tech permeating the setting. Said megacorp may be dead, but its shadow still looms. The kidnapping spree evokes similar incidents that led to the corp's fall in backstory, and not by coincidence.
• The antagonist at current is a bullfighter-themed mob, with more antagonist factions to follow later

I can DM you the draft if necessary.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Jan 17th 2023 at 3:05:04 AM

Random rambling.

Before I became a professional writer, writing a draft was pretty easy and fun while proofreading/editing was torturous. Thankfully, after debuting and writing/serializing well over 500 chapters for my story have changed all that.

Now, BOTH writing and editing are absolutely torturous!

That's one reason I'm asking about my pitch (though TBH, I'm now feeling like this was the wrong place to ask compared to the constructive criticism thread).

In other news. I had written some short stories. I haven't gotten them to the computer yet (prolly will do that over the weekend)

While they can be hard to make, short summaries can be useful things, I feel, and worth figuring out.

They can allow you to get across the idea of the work before someone as-yet uninterested becomes bored, to "hook" them before they move on. They're also arguably respectful of the time and energy of their recipient, allowing that person to make some sort of decision without digging into a larger text.

Note that they needn't be full plot-summaries; rather, focus on what's compelling about the story in question, what's "cool" about it.

For example, I might summarise your story (based on your description) something like so:

In the shadow of a fallen megacorp, a shady hackette and a rookie detective investigate a string of mental kidnappings within metaverse labyrinths.

I recently cleaned up the Con Crit Thread after two months. Since two weeks passed and nobody had add an entry in the sandbox, I cleared the previous one and added another one by me. I'm open to anyone who would be willing to critique the work.

I have, at long last, returned to a work of mine that has been sitting for a while! (One that I hope will be larger than most of my stories, and the start of at least a duology.)

(To clarify, this is a different story to the one that I mentioned in the "General Writer's Block" thread.)

I didn't get greatly far, but some cleanup, editing, and further writing was done—and perhaps most encouragingly I believe that I got past an "I don't know what happens next" block that had troubled me. ^_^

I usually just write narrative but I'm doing a reading at my cousin's wedding, and I'm trying to write my own, so I'm trying to write a poem. It's so hard though, idk if I'm just overly critical of my ideas or if I'm just a bad poet but @_@

Edited by WarJay77 on Feb 1st 2023 at 2:51:05 PM

Do you think that the specific occasion might be lending pressure, too?

Either way, that is a difficult situation! And, well, poetry can be tough! It involves its own particular set of skills, aside from those shared with prose, I feel.

If I may, one thing that might help is to get a second pair of eyes on it earlier rather than later—that might help you to "calibrate" your own appraisal of your poetry, perhaps.

Yeah, once I have a draft I'll read it to my boyfriend for his opinion. It's just hard to even make a draft that doesn't get trashed.

Ah, yeah, that is a difficult situation indeed. :/

Well, I hope that you get there, and I'm glad that you have someone to get an opinion from! ^_^

I just saw something incredible today at the library.

I read a book for young people (the tag read teens, but it was in the young people section, so whatev), and i was so surprised at how simple the wording and reading was. It honestly reads like something i wrote. Holy shit...that kind of stuff gets published? So i was worrying about my skills and stuff for nothing?

Now, don't get me wrong, after trying it extensively, i do hate writing, but still, man, i was angsting for nothing...

I mean, younger readers may well have not yet developed the reading skills than an adult might have, and so indeed, texts for them are likely to be simpler.

I'm sorry to read that it turns out that you dislike writing! :(

But, given that it is so, I'm glad that you did discover that fact. I hope, then, that you've found, or come to find, an art that suits you better. ^_^

For people who include historical figures in their stories, have you done any weird shit to them?

Question about a Complete Monster. Is it possible for a villain who are in a relationship where they’re very abusive to count as CM if some types of abuse are not shown? I have an intentional CM who is very emotionally/psychologically abusive to his BF and isn’t physically abusive out of Pragmatic Villainy but sexual abuse isn’t shown to a part of it. Is it possible for him to be a CM since that might count as holding back?

If you're just trying to get approved by the complete monster thread, you should stop worrying about being approved by the complete monster thread and just write whatever you think is sufficiently evil for your own purposes.

Whether or not it technically qualifies by TVT standards is irrelevant to whether or not the character is evil enough for you or your story's purposes. Just write what you want and don't worry about whether it conforms to TVT standards for a specific trope.

Said villain is made specifically to demonstrate the pitfalls of someone who is purely evil by showing how flat and miserable he is. He is meant to the embodiment of just how pathetic of a person being a Complete Monster would make you. The issue is that since one potential avenue of villainy isn’t shown, he might not count. I probably won’t be including sexual violence since it would be extremely controversial and overkill since he does a lot of deplorable things.

Would the story be better as a story if this abuse was shown? Done right, it'll be the point that the reader truly realises how miserable this villain is, make the love interest a more compelling character, or open up parallels between other characters. Done wrong, the reader will just say, "We get it! He's evil! Get on with the story!"

Writing a character with the explicit goal of writing a Complete Monster used to also be a point against them counting, iirc. Just write a story and don't worry about what a loose group of dedicated example curators thinks.

CM thread has some very stringent qualifications that do not matter to the actual writing of a truly monstrous character. Your guy is definitely very, very evil. Omitting something doesn't disqualify him from that. A character is still completely evil even if they manage to pass by an animal shelter without running in to kick some puppies.

Edited by Adannor on Feb 21st 2023 at 12:05:47 PM

I just had an idea yesterday about something inspired by my family and our love for baseball.

So there's this girl who played baseball with his brother and his friends. She was pretty good, and she was fast, so she could catch balls in center field with ease. The only problem is that she can't hit a ball for shit. Nevertheless, she goes to the local amateur club's training camp.

During camp, she struggled against pitchers, but her outfield defense was good enough that the manager kept her on the team for the upcoming season

In the opening games and tournaments, she never started, only coming on as a defensive substitute due to her shitty at bats. She did have a big catch to end a tight game.

However, she was getting furstrated at her lack of playing time, knowing that she needs to upgrade her batting skills significantly to have a starting spot on the lineup. That is where her grandpa came to her and told her that you don't even need to be a good hitter to contribute. That all she has to do is have a good eye at the plate.

She then trains her eye, recognising opposing pitchers's motions and mannerisms.

Eventually, the team's starting center fielder gets injured (i know, cliched, but in real life, many people got their breakthrough taking advantage of an injury. Tom brady is the prime example...as well as the tuck rule, but still.). The girl starts her first game. Her fielding is stellar, as usual, but at bat, she never swung, being too afraid of the ball coming in at 90 mph to swing...though she applied the tricks she learned from papy and used her eye. As a result, she went to first base on every one of her at bats, even bringing in an RBI base on balls during the 7th inning.

Despite the team losing the game and her not making contact with the ball, the manager was satisfied with her to start the next game, though a few sceptics in the dugout thought that it was a fluke, since having everyone of your at bats ending on a walk is extremely rare...unless you're barry bonds.

And indeed, next game, she wasn't so lucky. She got caught looking with a strike that was borderline, much to her discontent. Some made fun of her shaky batting stance, but the team's catcher later comforted her, since he, too, isn't tbe best of batters.

She knew that, to shut them up, she had to hit a ball, at some point. Especially with the main starting center fielder of the team returning from injury soon...

So yeah, i thought about telling a story where the main character is not an ace pitcher or a hitting machine, but a completely ordinary player who can't hit for shit, but has excellent fundamentals, meaning good fielding, plus speed and a good eye at the plate. I could have her arc be that she trains hard to finally hit a ball, or i could also have a plot where, once the starting center fielder retursn from injury, she and the guy competes with each other for the starting spot...or the manager, since her fielding is excellent, decides to move her to right field or even shortstop, thus she has to learn a new position on top of training to hit a ball...

So yeah, i came up with this after thinking about my uncle's amateur baseball club, who competes in tournaments across canada and the US, as well as stories of my Mom playing with the boys when she was younger, my grandpa's stories from his playing days and my dad competing in junior leagues.

...yeah, i don't like it when i reveal my life like that, but yeah, i came up with this shit at work.

Edited by Kinni454 on Feb 22nd 2023 at 4:16:46 AM

I feel super dead inside and although I managed to make a decent plot outline i'm overthinking how to go about writing it as of late. Especially when it comes to dialogue. That stuff has been the bane of my existence since I started writing as a hobby.

If you'll forgive a bit of armchair diagnosis, it sounds like you might be a bit burnt out (at least on writing).

As to dialogue, if I may ask, what is it about it that troubles you? (Which is not to say that I'm incredulous that it might be troublesome—not at all!—but rather that I'm trying to find where precisely the difficulty lies for you.)

Is anyone Jewish here?

I would like to ask if some ideas I have for a fanfic are OK considering that they involve a Jewish character. I'll talk in the PMs about it.