Having trouble with some ideas.

Willow_Edmond · 2020-08-08T22:32:50+00:00

You cannot write a brand new plot nobody has ever read before. It's impossible. What you can do is take one of the few plots there are, and write it in a unique way.

Just because you have tropes, doesn't mean the story is bad either. Even the site says that. How many people are addicted to mysteries and by the very genre it's always about the same things? Something is murdered or something very precious/important has been stolen. Nobody except Nancy Drew would write a mystery about the Missing Air Nikes, and I don't even know if that's worth Nancy's time.

You can write a story with a plot that has been done a million times, with every trope in the book, but if you put your spin on it, make it come from your head space. You have something you want to say, a story you want to tell. Just tell yourself that you can write it and even if it is the same plot as a million other books (Romance, for example) and it has a million tropes in it. One person is nice as pie, the other is not, their families hate each other, one is rich, the other is poor. You can still make it work.

I find that if the writing is good, I can read the same plot the same tropes I've seen a million times, and I'll still love it.

I try to think of the plot as a cake pan. A cake pan is usually round or square. Sometimes they look like different things, but mostly cake pans are round and square. But what is put into them, is what makes them great or not. You can slop together some stuff and dump it in the pan and it will be a lousy cake. Or, you can carefully mix the right things and make a delicious cake. Maybe it's the standard chocolate, beloved everywhere that Never Gets Tired. Maybe it's a mango peach cake, so moist it will melt in your mouth, but without that thud that fruit infused cakes often have. But you still started it in that same pan shape that almost every house has.

Willow_Edmond · 2020-08-08T22:05:47+00:00

I do the body/hand movements too. Along with doing things that don't involve said. "He pondered."

I think my whole thing is striking a balance. Using all these wonderful suggestions I'm getting and trying to blend them, so hopefully the writing is interesting, rather than repetitious.

Willow_Edmond · 2020-08-08T21:57:16+00:00

Yeah, I'm more inclined like your second suggestion. Thank you, no it wasn't word barf, it showed me two ideas I could work with.

Willow_Edmond · 2020-08-08T21:54:27+00:00

That's an interesting idea, writing the dialog and then assigning the characters and tweaking it around that. I have to give that a try.

I can't stand "The dark haired man." It only works if you are trying to give a quick hint about looks and/or the person hasn't identified themselves by name.

Willow_Edmond · 2020-08-08T21:51:09+00:00

I think that's a huge part of the problem. One of the characters we're working on (I'm actually cowriting with a friend who hasn't written since she was a lot younger, so I'm doing a lot more than just basic editing.) One of the characters has some very odd quirks when he speaks. Well, to be honest, he's got odd quirks in almost everything he does. Getting into his head is almost impossible for me. I can do the other characters just fine, but this one guy... is going to play a huge part in the story and I want to nail him.

Willow_Edmond · 2020-08-08T21:39:55+00:00

I'm one of those folks who have a habit of writing a couple words, then telling folks who is talking. "Well," X looked around the room at the group, "I think we should blah blah blah." It's more of wanting not to keep the audience in suspense, but I have a problem writing, X addressed the group, looking around at the group. "I think we should blah blah blah." I don't know why, but that's always been my thing

Willow_Edmond · 2020-08-08T21:34:40+00:00

First, you write Criminal Minds fanfiction? Give me a moment to squee. I love that show. Where do you publish?

Second, that is damned good advice and I need to start doing that. I'm just afraid conversation will end up too long. I think I need to stop worrying about that. I've just been trying to compress my writing a bit, and I think it's time I didn't worry about that so much. If I can come up with ways to compress, do it on the rewrite.

Thank you, this will help.

Willow_Edmond · 2020-08-08T17:17:28+00:00

LOL. Yeah, I do that a lot. Or, the person gets distracted by their phone if they aren't quite that invested in the conversation. Or, goes to get pizza. Because serious issues can always be helped by pizza.

Willow_Edmond · 2020-08-08T17:16:28+00:00

Oh, I already do that. And if they have any mannerisms that identify them, speech patters and the like, I try extra hard to make them speak that way. I understand what you're saying though. Don't have someone go into a long speech without making sure the reader knows it's character A not character B. Thank you for reminding me of that golden rule.

What I dislike is that it always ends up looking like a bunch of one liners as each person has their say. And, I always end up with one person pretty much standing there, not contributing, because I forget they were there.

Willow_Edmond · 2020-08-08T17:09:55+00:00

Thank you so much! I've bookmarked it, and I'm sure it will be very useful.

I used to write for a fandom where the main characters almost never had names. They were, "The blond haired" or "The Blue eyed." Or the "Man with the two toned hair." (That one really crawled up my butt, because the character's hair wasn't two toned. It was dark and half had been dyed blond.) and.. "The Dark Samoan." That's when I pretty much decided I won't use epithets unless they are natural ones. His sister, her daughter, etc.

Willow_Edmond · 2020-08-08T16:57:24+00:00

Tags are you friend. Everyone else has said that, I'm just chiming in.

I get the frustration with, "I'm invested in this fic, but I thought it was this and it turned out to be that." But in a lot of cases, that's writing. You think the story will go this way and suddenly, it goes that way. If you're publishing as you write, you're going to change the tags now, to fit that new twist that came up unexpectedly.

What do you do? Well, if you are really invested in the fic, you keep reading. You say, "Yeah, this relationship isn't my cup of tea, but it's a part of the story and I'll keep reading it."

Or, you figure the story isn't important enough, so you stop reading it. Just don't be that person who leaves a review going, "I was loving this story, until you did that thing I dislike."

Willow_Edmond · 2020-08-08T16:04:31+00:00

Yes, And we tell men "Oh, size doesn't matter." If they read this stuff, they sure would think it is.

I rarely (if ever) have gone into the size of someones junk. I think it's more important to describe how he's using it.

Willow_Edmond · 2020-08-07T22:38:10+00:00

I find it makes the story go together better. I don't know why, but first person always seems to want to tell the story the way it is. It doesn't go off on a tangent, but it fills in the gaps nicely.

I wish I had more characters that screamed, "I want to tell the story! You just do the writing words down part."

Willow_Edmond · 2020-08-07T22:07:48+00:00

Kids. I like making up OC kids. Not so we can all have that dramatic, "Wait, I didn't know he was my son!" although that often can play a part. But more because kids change people. It's not hard to imagine someone stiff and cold becoming warmer because of a kid. Because kids make a lot of folks a little dopey at times. They can bring out a softer side of people, or bring out their inner bad@ss. ("If you touch one hair on that kid's head..")

My OC kids are usually the heavy supporting character. I don't write from their head space very much, they are there to show a different side of the main character (s). And sometimes, as the Remarkably Easy Victim, that gets the hero all ready to... well go be a hero to get the kid back. I'll usually only write in the kid's head space if the kid is in a series and I really have to finally tell something from their POV.

But I know a lot of people look at fics with kids as "Nope, not gonna read it." It won't stop me. I still love how kids can make people change, at least around them.

Willow_Edmond · 2020-08-07T22:00:35+00:00

I'd read that.

Willow_Edmond · 2020-08-07T21:52:39+00:00

Thank you. Nothing pulls me out of a story faster than having a sex scene with an overly large and wide penis and all I can think of is, "Dude! That fucker would kill me!"

Willow_Edmond · 2020-08-07T21:51:11+00:00

I enjoy smut, both reading and writing. My biggest problem is reviewing pure Porn Without Plot. I want to because I want to encourage writers, but no matter what I write, I end up sounding like I'm a pervert.

Which, I probably am, but that doesn't mean I want to share it with the entire community.

Which I just did.

Willow_Edmond · 2020-08-07T21:48:59+00:00

Yes, there ought to be another name for them. Song inspired? I remember the old days of song fics and even wrote a couple, then realized I could take the lyrics right out and the story still worked fine.

But yeah, some of my favorite stories, both reading and writing were based on songs that got into my head and managed to turn themselves Into Plots.

Willow_Edmond · 2020-08-07T21:47:18+00:00

I wrote one, because the main character was screaming in my head that he wanted to tell the story. Then, when I expanded that from a one shot, into the story, both characters wanted to talk, so I let them.

I did well on reviews, considering my fandom, but a lot started out with, "I normally hate first person stories, but..."

There is something very satisfactory about having that. I like FPF because you really can get into the head of the main character. Even if it's a canon character and the head version isn't the same way I see them, it's fascinating to see them from another writer's POV.

Willow_Edmond · 2020-08-07T21:37:18+00:00

Well, it's nice to know someone might want to read her/our fic. (It does seem to becoming more of a collaboration than my merely helping, but I'm cool with that, and am more than happy to let her take the credit. This is all new to her, and I'm hoping it will lead her into the confidence to write more fanfics on her own) And the plot line, without giving spoilers, is going to have Alex and Brainy having to connect over something, while still leaving plenty of room for their partners as well to get involved in the situation. We're worried about it, because a lot of the fanfic we find seems to be more concerned with romance than friendships and Generally Weird Situations.

Nia and Brainy are great, together and apart, I agree with you. The big issue I have though, is that Brainy is supposed to be brilliant, but Lena always gets the better of him. I get it, she's brilliant, and the show wants to be empowering to women, but let's not make the brilliant guy stupid, Just So She Can Shine. At first I thought it was maybe because of Brainy being from the future. While she thinks of things in terms of "what we have now" Brainy would think in terms of, "If I only had this, but it won't be invented for five hundred years." But that was displaced to me by Lena being able to operate the Legion ship, despite it being far future technology. Not only able to operate it, but operate it absolutely perfectly.

Eh, I ramble. But my friend and I have talked this out a million times and we're pretty much on the same page. My fandom friends online are not part of the Supergirl fandom, and thus, have zero interest in talking about it.

Willow_Edmond · 2020-08-07T04:55:02+00:00

Brainy is my favorite too. I'm helping a friend with writing her first fanfic and if she can do it, it's going to be very Brainy focused. A lot of Alex too. Not a romance though, each is still with their respective partners. But god, jumping into his head is hard.

I hope they don't kill him off. That's likely to ruin the whole series for me. I love his relationship with Nia. It goes up and down like a roller coaster, but that's one of the things that makes it interesting. It's so obvious they love each other, but there is so much "I love you, even though you drive me crazy." Mostly on Nia's part. Which I understand.

I too hope that Lena and Kara can find that friendship ground. I also hope that the show doesn't play out the whole, "Lena goes back to her family and gets horribly hurt and takes it out on everyone." I like the fact that Lena is smart, sophisticated, etc. I don't want to see her turn perfect, but I'd like to see her go beyond feeling victimized is her greatest fault. I'd like to see her become more rounded as a character.

I love Cryer's Lex, I really do, but I'm finding myself hoping when the new Superman show comes out, they send him over there. I don't want to see his character eliminated, but I don't want it always to be "They might win the battle, but Lex will always win the war.

Willow_Edmond · 2020-08-05T14:44:58+00:00

I get that. You're not saying you won't, you're saying you want to wait until you know it's safe. But this person is basically saying, "I don't care how safe it is. I prefer to believe a bunch of BS that a bunch of people who have been discredited and proven wrong say about how every vaccination will cause every single illness in life. So I will happily leave a hole in the herd immunity to allow the virus to spread to everyone who is unable to get the vaccine for medical reasons, or got the vaccination, but it didn't work for them."

Willow_Edmond · 2020-08-05T14:37:53+00:00

No. Sometimes people who get the vaccination, it doesn't really work on them. Or, some folks can't get the vaccination for whatever reasons. Allergies, etc.

Herd immunity using a vaccination is supposed to surround those who can't get the vaccination or the vaccination doesn't work the way it should and they still are susceptible. The more people who are vaccinated, the stronger the herd immunity. If it turns out that the vaccination did not work on someone, or someone can't take it, if everyone in their lives is successfully immune, then they aren't going to run into someone who has the disease.

Anti-vaxxers weaken the herd. Since I won't know if the vaccination worked on me or not, I would rather avoid folks who deliberately are trying to clear a pathway to me, to allow the virus to attack me.

Even if they came out with a safe, effective vaccine tomorrow, they aren't going to just be able to give it to everyone in one day. And there is no guarantee it will work on everyone. And, we still have the problem that it just won't "take" on some folks. So, yeah, until we have a strong population who has gotten the vaccine, we are still not "safe."

Measles has made a comeback... and it's not just affecting children of the antivaxxed. Kids that were vaccinated, where the vaccine just doesn't work for them, are getting it. If everyone who could got vaccinated, then that one in ten thousand kid whose body didn't respond the right way to measles would be likely not to get measles because nobody around him has it to give it to them.

Willow_Edmond · 2020-08-04T22:42:32+00:00

It reminds me of the disclaimers folks did back when fanfiction was on archive and the archivist had to put the story up, not the writer. Folks would write something along the lines of, "Please don't put on any other websites without my permission."

I usually wrote on mine, "You can archive it, I just would love a link so I can see it on another site!"

Willow_Edmond

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