Writer's Block Daily

@WarJay I'm glad then that you got back into it, and for that clarity and inspiration! ^_^

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Jun 11th 2023 at 11:30:01 AM

Ah, Jesus.

I'm struggling to keep my political views out of my World War II alternate history webnovel, or at least don't make it blatant. As the story is heading towards the endgame it's only getting harder.

It's not controversial to call the Nazis bad (at least, outside of America that is), but discussion on why and how they came to power, as well as how to prevent the future rise of fascism...is treading on thin ice. XP

What are you trying to avoid and why?

Well, despite the whole story focusing around an Asian-American admiral who becomes the commander of the US Navy AND the Chief of Naval Operations (it's a very long story - literally, it's over 650 chapters), he's very critical of many aspects about America.

So in the process, I very often touched on darker parts of US history, such as various genocides, racial lynchings, and how several major corporations like Ford, IBM, Coca-Cola, etc helped the rise of the Nazis, as well as the fact that the Nazis got inspirations for concentration camps from US' brutal persecution of Native Americans, and so on.

You can see how I already made a lot of readers, who are not Americans but from a country with long history of pro-American sentiments, very uncomfortable.

Edited by dRoy on Jul 31st 2023 at 9:38:59 PM

This is gonna be a weird question, but how common is it for female misogynists to think men can't cook?

I ask because in a novel I'm writing, a character is frequently set up with women who buy into "men can't cook" and "women belong in the kitchen" nonsense.

I, for one, consider culinary proficiency a survival skill.

seems like one for the Random questions thread here, or any of the relevant topics at OTC

Take what I say with a huge grain of salt since I'm someone who avoids politics like the plague (I'm American tho so there's that), but you can always try toning the anti-American sentiment down. It's fine to point out America's flaws and fucked up history, but don't go full blown "America is very bad, evil and utterly irredeemable,". It would help to at least bring up a good thing or two America has done such as helping to liberate the concentration camps.

I suppose women with such mindsets are rather conservative, so it might be plausible but IDK as I haven't encountered such people.

Also yeah, both are better suited for the Random Questions thread.

Edited by Cutegirl920fire on Jul 31st 2023 at 7:21:07 AM

Come into the cooking subs on Reddit, and you'll find people posting every day who live off of takeout and microwave ready meals and can't cook anything more complicated than pizza rolls and Kraft dinner. Adults certainly exist who are capable of paying taxes and holding down good jobs and, whether due to circumstance or willful ignorance, do not know how to cook and have the money to get away with it. And some of these people are men who would be eating just that if not for their female significant others who know how to cook actual food- I'm a woman in tech and I've encountered a lot of techbros who look at me and my homemade cookies and bread like I'm a goddamn wizard. So it's not a stretch of the imagination for there to be women out there who assume that men are generally not capable of cooking for themselves.

If you can think of a "basic" skill that you consider absolutely essential for adult survival in the modern developed world, I assure you that many perfectly intelligent adults exist out there who don't know the first thing about it and rely on others to do it for them, and that there are also people out there who make unfair assumptions about people who do and don't know that skill.

I'm finally editing a novel-length story that I've been working on, and it feels good to be doing so! ^_^

The story does very much want for the editing, I am confessedly finding: I've found quite a few changes that seemed called for. Few have been major—most frequent are the addition of paragraph-breaks, I daresay. But many in number, at least, and with at least some rewriting.

I do still find myself with one significant quandary, however:

Having a work on this length, my instinct is to divide it into chapters.

However, the work is already divided into "parts", separated by "intervals"—a result of it having originally been written as a set of short stories.

Which leaves me uncertain: uncertain as to whether chapters are called for; and if so, where to place the chapter-breaks; or whether the chapter-numbering should continue through the parts, or reset for each part...

found a writing blog named Mythcreants and I want to ask if anyone had read it before and if so what did you think of it?

Never heard of it that I recall, I'm afraid.

(The name is vaguely familiar—but I suspect that I may have just seen the same wordplay elsewhere.)

I remember binging through it once several years ago, but I don't remember specifics.

okay I decided to take a break from posting questions on the Random Questions Thread out of fear that I might be misusing it for things that aren't quite germane to its purpose (on top of not getting any answers regarding a certain niche topic). I had also decided to attempt to flesh out my magic system and made a thread on the world building board to that end.

I'm running a little low on concrete story ideas for my WIP setting so I'm prolly gonna try to make documents that better explain key worldbuilding concepts until inspiration strikes.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Aug 9th 2023 at 3:26:02 AM

Y'know that writing advice where writers are told to read a lot to get better at their craft and a common social media tactic where you post everyday to get traction?

As someone with ADHD, it's difficult for me to do both lmao.

Lmao, I know what you mean though for me it's more to do with anxiety (if I stop posting somewhere for a while I get anxious and dread going back).

Anyway, I'm currently back in that phase where I have visions of scenes I want to write in my head but it's too early for them so I've got to write the connecting tissue first, which I currently don't have a plan for

The fourth episode of my story is almost done - I reread it and made some adjustments during a road trip the other day, and I plan on it finally being released sometime this month!

I have... certainly been in both situations myself, or ones like them, I do believe! ^^;

Nice! Congratulations on that! ^_^

Anyone else just create elaborate stories you don’t write down and just develop in your head?

I don't know how elaborate is "elaborate", but I have had my personal fantasy tales, I do believe. ^_^

I do have some ideas locked in my head, but most of them are at least written down to some degree.

When I'm very tired I'm more likely to fully zone out and get wrapped up in my daydreams. So it does happen to me but I usually try to "save" these stories for while I'm going to sleep.

Ah, crap.

Starting next week, I will be covering what is quite possibly THE single most important event in my WWII alternate history webnovel.

I have like around 600 pages of history/military texts and like 5 hours of documentary to watch. This is going to be a long and hectic weekend...

I'll say. I think it might need more than two days to cram everything in.

While I was already planning about this part for months, unfortunately there are just so, so many other things to research as well.

Jesus, how come my past self never realized the fact, that you have to be a history buff before writing an alternate history fiction.

Edited by dRoy on Aug 11th 2023 at 9:31:19 PM

Got a message after posting in another thread, so I wanted to introduce myself here.

I'm actually not that experienced in writing in a more conventional literary style, but for about three years now I've been involved in the roleplay The Chaos Zone; as someone who grew up fascinated with dream crossovers like Super Smash Bros. (especially the Subspace Emissary story from Brawl) and mods for M.U.G.E.N, I've always enjoyed the idea of giant ensemble crossover casts, and while a lot of my earlier stuff in Chaos Zone was a bit more like bashing action figures together, I've begun to seriously make an effort at writing characters who coexist in a "melting pot" of ideas, including re-imagining obscure, 1-dimensional characters, and even making a few fan characters of my own.

While a lot of my mind is occupied with how I've written characters in Chaos Zone (and how I want to write them in the near future), I do have a couple of lingering ideas for characters invented whole-cloth, and maybe I'll find out how to bring them to life somewhere down the line too.