Random Stuff X: Something Weird

[Darkness Ascendant he/him]

3 minutes ago, Quiver said:

Certainly! I like it -it lets me pretend I'm a real writer!- but it does sort of handicap whatever team I'm on, since I don't do ANY strategic planning

A writer writes  

[Quiver he/him]

Just now, Darkness Ascendant said:

A writer writes  

Guess what thing I don't do 

[Darkness Ascendant he/him]

Just now, Quiver said:

Guess what thing I don't do 

accept that your a writer?

[Quiver he/him]

1 minute ago, Darkness Ascendant said:

accept that your a writer?

Write.

Seriously. I have written anything in... lord. More than a year?

[Darkness Ascendant he/him]

Just now, Quiver said:

Write.

Seriously. I have written anything in... lord. More than a year?

well, you have been busy with work lately (I think)

Perhaps make some time at the end of every week to write 1000 words? I have recently started doing that, and it helps a tonne. I'm slowly raising the word-count each week as well. SO I'm writing 1K each day now.

[Quiver he/him]

4 minutes ago, Darkness Ascendant said:

well, you have been busy with work lately (I think)

Perhaps make some time at the end of every week to write 1000 words? I have recently started doing that, and it helps a tonne. I'm slowly raising the word-count each week as well. SO I'm writing 1K each day now.

Yeah, it's...

Honestly, I keep hitting a pretty serious writing block wall: I have absolutely no plots.

[Darkness Ascendant he/him]

2 minutes ago, Quiver said:

Yeah, it's...

Honestly, I keep hitting a pretty serious writing block wall: I have absolutely no plots.

Want me to send u a daily prompt or something.

I honestly have the opposite problem. I'll have the ideas, but no motivation to pull them off

[Quiver he/him]

Just now, Darkness Ascendant said:

Want me to send u a daily prompt or something.

I honestly have the opposite problem. I'll have the ideas, but no motivation to pull them off

Well, I also have THAT problem. I have...

I've had a few concepts for fantasy worlds that Ive wanted to write for a while now. But they are only large scale conceptual stuff; no actual worl building or plots involved.

[Darkness Ascendant he/him]

Just now, Quiver said:

Well, I also have THAT problem. I have...

I've had a few concepts for fantasy worlds that Ive wanted to write for a while now. But they are only large scale conceptual stuff; no actual worl building or plots involved.

mhm I see.

Have you tried experimenting with characters and things? just throwing them around.

[Quiver he/him]

Just now, Darkness Ascendant said:

mhm I see.

Have you tried experimenting with characters and things? just throwing them around.

Not exactly got many characters. either. Frakly, my ieas keep floating at the "Oh, would it be cool if" stage.

[Darkness Ascendant he/him]

4 minutes ago, Quiver said:

Not exactly got many characters. either. Frakly, my ieas keep floating at the "Oh, would it be cool if" stage.

Characters honestly develop over time.

Start of by calling the character he/she whatever, then throw them into scenarios and sort of just slowly ease out their personality and ideals etc

on another note, got Stardew Valley

Spoiler

*sniggers

Edited March 25, 2017 by Darkness Ascendant

[A Budgie she/her]

@Quiver I'm really bad at coming up with plots too. I have random ideas, and stuff I want to happen, but no idea how they happen...

[TwiLyghtSansSparkles she/her]

So far as plots go, what I usually do is I'll get a scene in my head, a scene that's so powerful to me that I have to write it. But it doesn't make sense out of context. So I'll have to work backward, figure out the world that the scene came from and what happened leading up to it. As I develop all that, the scene itself will undergo many iterations as I work toward the final version, the one that makes the most sense in the story that has coalesced around it. 

[Kobold King he/him]

11 minutes ago, TwiLyghtSansSparkles said:

So far as plots go, what I usually do is I'll get a scene in my head, a scene that's so powerful to me that I have to write it. But it doesn't make sense out of context. So I'll have to work backward, figure out the world that the scene came from and what happened leading up to it. As I develop all that, the scene itself will undergo many iterations as I work toward the final version, the one that makes the most sense in the story that has coalesced around it. 

 

If I recall correctly Brandon Sanderson's said he works in much the same way!

Me, I mostly start with characters and then struggle to figure out worlds to give them birth and scenes to have them play out.

[Jondesu he/him]

2 hours ago, Quiver said:

Yeah, it's...

Honestly, I keep hitting a pretty serious writing block wall: I have absolutely no plots.

I know what you mean, I have the same issue with songs. I've tried some of the prompts on Reddit, maybe that would help you? Just to spark ideas.

Edit: https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts

Edited March 25, 2017 by Jondesu

[Edgedancer he/him]

6 hours ago, Quiver said:

Write.

Seriously. I have written anything in... lord. More than a year?

On the bright side, this statement is objectively not true. So that's a pretty important step.

Edited March 25, 2017 by Edgedancer

[Darkness Ascendant he/him]

I just make it up as I go heh.

Half the time, it's like everything is falling into place. Usually, if it's not like that, and I dislike the idea, I scrap it before I do anything more.

Edited March 25, 2017 by Darkness Ascendant

[Quiver he/him]

The problem I keep running into is...

I might have a single idea. "Oh, it'd be cool to do a naval fantasy setting." "What is clothes gave people magic?" "MLP expy musicians in a world where music is magic."

... but then I never really know what to DO with any of that. World build? Okay... I have no diea what I'm worldbuilding to. Characters? I have a vauge, detached concept for one, but they don't seem connected to the world itself. Plots? Yeah, got nothing on that front...

It's... depressing. 

...

On a side note, I'm gonna go see Power Rangers this afternoon

[A Budgie she/her]

I want to buy something off the Brandon Sanderson site but I want to buy everything...but since it's too expensive I'll only get one thing.
I was thinking jewellery, probably one of the SA glyphs because they're the cheapest, but I don't know which one I should get...

[Jondesu he/him]

Quiver, those ideas sound awesome! I'm not much of a writer myself, but how about this approach? Take the idea (the clothes granting magic, for instance), and just start expanding it a bit. What would a hat grant? What would a pair of pants grant? What could someone do with the power it grants?

Let the story ideas grow out of expanding the original idea, rather than trying to create a story you can fit the idea into.

[+Slowswift]

14 hours ago, Darkness Ascendant said:

Characters honestly develop over time.

Start of by calling the character he/she whatever, then throw them into scenarios and sort of just slowly ease out their personality and ideals etc

That... is a lot smarter than the whole "ZOMG I MUST HAVE IT ALL FIGURED OUT BEFOREHAND OR IT IS NOT VALID!!1!" thing I've been doing, actually.  

[TwiLyghtSansSparkles she/her]

6 minutes ago, Slowswift said:

That... is a lot smarter than the whole "ZOMG I MUST HAVE IT ALL FIGURED OUT BEFOREHAND OR IT IS NOT VALID!!1!" thing I've been doing, actually.  

I'm about a third of the way through my rough draft, and I've already changed at least one fundamental aspect of the world, as well as some characterization details and motivations. 

[+Slowswift]

Just now, TwiLyghtSansSparkles said:

I'm about a third of the way through my rough draft, and I've already changed at least one fundamental aspect of the world, as well as some characterization details and motivations. 

Yeah, I'm a lot more flexible when it comes to worldbuilding and plot, but characters? I have this weird idea I'm trying to kick that if I make them up as I go along, then that trait isn't "real", or "valid" or whatever -- that just because I made it up on the spot, with no particular reason, it can't be a "real" part of them.

It's stupid, I know, but...  

[TwiLyghtSansSparkles she/her]

17 minutes ago, Slowswift said:

Yeah, I'm a lot more flexible when it comes to worldbuilding and plot, but characters? I have this weird idea I'm trying to kick that if I make them up as I go along, then that trait isn't "real", or "valid" or whatever -- that just because I made it up on the spot, with no particular reason, it can't be a "real" part of them.

It's stupid, I know, but...  

I like to flesh them out before I start--but just enough that they interest me. That way, when I add things as I go, it feels more like I'm discovering something new about a character I already knew. 

[Hemalurgic Headshot he/him]

I like to really build my world before writing-- worldbuilding is my favorite part. However, my plots are lacking, so I can't get very far into the story before it becomes an uphill battle to piece everything together. This time around, I did pretty well, because I did some planning beforehand, but now I've hit that wall of determent. It really hit from a lack of writing, I was very busy for two weeks or so, so when I got time to write again, I had too much time to think about how all of my ideas were going to fit together, and realized that I didn't have a good enough plan. So now my writing has stagnated.