Writer's Block Daily

I think I've mentioned this before, but my middle school Mary Sue self insert was a dude. He was basically me, but older, and a dude. And he got together with his female best friend who was a really pretty Italian chick. There's possibly some interesting implications there, but I'm not sure what they are.

And the character from my current writing project that is the most like me? Also a dude. But he's a butt monkey and a chew toy and the traits we have in common are really bad things so I'd hesitate to call him a Mary Sue.

why do I keep writing myself into stories as dudes? that's weird

@hermie: I'm gonna say coincidence. It could also be that your image of yourself happens to fit better with "Dude" in your writing. My characters who are most like me tend to be women. Probably because I don't actively change them to be less like me.

Well... Actually, I lie. I have a character that is specifically supposed to be me in my current story. He's the quasi Big Bad engaged in Xanatos Speed Chess for the continuation of reality. So... I don't even WANT to know what that says about me.

edited 2nd Apr '14 7:30:32 PM by Poisonarrow

I was the unnamed intelligence officer in one of my stories. I am currently a lurking member of the squadron support staff in Wings to Fly.

Oh lord... I didn't write fanfiction when I was a kid (Al Gore hadn't invented the internet yet), but I daydreamed about it. My characters tended to be love interests for conflicted, emotionally unavailable men — the Spocks, Bruce Waynes, Edward Scissorhandses of the worlds...

Yeah, no alcoholics in my family.

I've never had someone who is me, but I have some characters who are partially based on me, although they're both from different stories. One of them's the slightly-talky and I-can't-wait-to-share-trivia-with-you scientist. The other's a bionic limb developer who gets stabbed in the back with a sword in the middle of his greatest moment.

There was a character named after me in my old comics, but he was very explicitly not based on me (all of the protagonists and a smattering of antagonists were named after people I knew). As I've said before, I think my learning path to becoming a non-terrible writer was pretty different from the "standard" one that involves Mary Sues. In fact, I think part of the reason I'm so fascinated with horrible fanfiction is that it involves such a different kind of mistakes from the ones I've made.

In general, I don't think I could base a character too closely on myself, because I would be incapable of properly responding to my plots.

edited 2nd Apr '14 8:36:31 PM by nrjxll

Characters who are like me in my works also tend to be male.

edited 2nd Apr '14 9:21:44 PM by OhSoIntoCats

Nothing non-traditional about it; the truth is that a surrogate character is actually very recent for me as a thing, usually a supporting cast member who doesn't appear often.

I'm more or less doing it for the hell of it.

How much of an audience do you think there would be for a fantasy travelogue?

Is it funny? I'll read a lot of things, if they're funny.

Seconding the person above. If it's funny, and has an interesting world, I'll read it.

Re Mary-Sues, I've moved past writing them, but a lot of characters in my stories are indeed modeled on me. The two biggest self-inserts have to be the snotty, extremely passionate and intelligent but self-righteous terrorist-in-training, and the entitled, intelligent but naive child-genius heir to the throne. Both of them are male. Draw whatever conclusions you will.

I feel like I should clarify that my Big Bad self insert is neither all that big... or that bad. The premise is pretty much, "My friends as deities."

He's just a very, very... determined... Cosmic Keystone who's a little hazy on the whole, "That KILLS people!" thing.

Random thought: How do you write two characters' development arcs when they're flawed to opposite extremes? For example, one is overly protective, while the other is overly reckless. So the former needs to give the latter some space, but the latter needs to hold back sometimes.

This relationship can be interesting because it's not simply a matter of "I'm right, you're wrong", but realizing that both need to drift to a medium.

What are some examples of this in fiction?

You want a character who takes risks and a character who doesn't...? Or a character who takes risks and a character who frets and mother hens about those risks?

I'm only coming up with examples of characters who take risks and mother hen the character that doesn't... Riker and Picard, Inuyasha and Kagome, Sarah and Chuck...

Either way, getting them to come to the middle should be simple enough. When the extreme behaviors start getting in their way, they'll move — one takes a risk that ruins everything. One is overly cautious and misses a crucial opportunity. Wackiness ensues.

What would you say is the scariest scene you've written?

That's for the readers to say, really. I'm not really capable of scaring myself.

Maybe scary isn't the right word for it. Squicky? Uncomfortable? But I wrote a scene with a guy who has a huge oedipus complex coming onto his mom and kissing her, and she did not reciprocate at all. It was also from the guy's point of view. So it made complete and total sense for him to do it and it was explained and justified and I had to get into the character's head for it and it was awful.

So, I've been trying to actually start and finish writing something, starting with a Pokémon fanfic.

The thing is, the main character is a little boy who's an Idiot Hero in comparison to his friend who's of the same age as him, but more mature and intelligent, but I don't want the MC be as much of an idiot as much as he is just inexperienced, naive and just a bit clueless at times due to being somewhat sheltered. That said, there will be a few gags on him causing the occasional Epic Fail.

So how should I go about making him an Idiot Hero who is such not because of a lack of intelligence, but just inexperience and being naive to a fault? He does act sort of like the usual Idiot Hero in that he's Hot-Blooded and is quick to get himself into trouble, but I don't want him to come off as an actual idiot.

Show him being intelligent in things outside Pokemon training, and show him attempting to apply that intelligence or outside knowledge to Pokemon training in a logical manner.

My motivation to write is gone.... I gotta ask, what keeps your motivated/restarts your motivation when it's lost?

You're talking about a cossetted child with helicopter caretakers...?

It could be he never had a chance to fail or never felt the consequences of failure, leaving him weak on cause and effect with poor judgement on what are small risks vs big risks. So he will do stupid things until he figures it out. If he has a temper, he could be just a little spoiled and used to getting his way — not enough to make him unlikable, but just enough to give him somewhere to grow. I don't know how Pokemon works, but maybe he never had to worry about losing or killing them, because his family always got him a new one (again, I really don't know how Pokemon works).

Or he could just be kind of daft. I'm thinking of the Little Mermaid's "Part Of That World" where she demonstrates ignorance of basic objects. Also Cheers, and explaining subways to Woody's girlfriend. She refuses to believe them and thinks it's a joke, dismissing them with, "Underground trains... Toot toot!"

Oh no, I'm falling headfirst into the wonders of Future Slang.

Essentially, Pokemon are intended to be one's friends and partners, and battle each other for sport rather than to the death. A big thing in-universe is sending ten-year-olds out into the world with just a single Pokemon that they raise and use to capture and befriend others for a team. In essence, a new trainer would run into the same problems that any ten-year old would if they were thrown into the wilderness and expected to get between the various cities without adult supervision. They might have to search for food to hold them over until they get to the next town, deal with sleeping outside, or deal with figuring out how to train their Pokemon properly so they can better protect the trainer in tougher areas or win more battles (losing trainers have to pay the winner).

• Alluded to earlier, a minor character slowly dies of blood loss while walking through a snowy forest, and their reality begins to fall apart. The end of that scene, which transpires in an empty church, is easily the most direct channelling of my own existential fears into prose. I can't think about it before I sleep.
• An antagonist of a highly sadistic disposition expounds upon her history and personal philosophy. Getting into the mind of someone this morally repulsive and trying to write them truthfully is not only difficult, but trying in that you end up asking yourself a lot of strange questions about what you're writing that are not very fun to answer.
• A certain confrontation between a protagonist undergoing an emotional breakdown and an antagonist with a lot of irreparable psychological damage. Basically a riff on the Hitchcockian trope of filming murders like love scenes, but turned in on itself in a very nasty way. Plays on some deep-seated insecurities that I have with myself and others, then exaggerates and crystallises them to horrific effect. Some of the scenes that set the stage for it are similarly numbing.

Huh, that sounds rather interesting.

As for the question, well... I don't do scary. It's not something I enjoy, either as a reader or a writer.