Writing Discussion II

[Pax Nerdvana]

This place dead.

What's everyone working on? Anything interesting?

If you consider a Halloween shipfic about witches interesting, sure.

I'm writing a couple of Transformers fanfics, because I need a life.

[Respubliko de Libereco]

This place dead.

What's everyone working on? Anything interesting?

I got my first ever academic article past peer review. That's arguably "writing" of a sort.

I also decided to start a daily poetry journal thing, and then almost immediately failed to actually write in it.

[Shwe Tu Colony]

This place dead.

What's everyone working on? Anything interesting?

Well, I have a lil' roleplay I'm working on & I have plans for a story involving a kid getting terminally ill, both of which are on this nation. Anyway, I also joined my school's creative writing club, but they meet once a month during a thirty-minute lunch period, so I'm not expecting enormous change.

I got my first ever academic article past peer review. That's arguably "writing" of a sort.

I also decided to start a daily poetry journal thing, and then almost immediately failed to actually write in it.

I've never really kept my writing a "daily" sort of activity, which is ironic considering how much I want to write. Only issue is getting the discipline/motivation to actually get going.

[The first Galactic Republic]

This place dead.

What's everyone working on? Anything interesting?

I have a fanfic for a vidya.

It's novel length now, so that's neat.

[Xmara]

This place dead.

What's everyone working on? Anything interesting?

So I'm entering a writing contest at my college and I only have 3 days to write a short story.

Working Title: The House Where Time Stopped

Story: It takes place in an American suburb where all the houses are essentially the same (think Levittown) except for one in the middle: a 138-year old crumbling mansion. The previous occupants of the mansion mysteriously vanished 30 or so years ago. Two kids decide to go exploring, only to find that the interior of the mansion is in pristine condition, and that the previous occupants are still there and still very much alive- and still the same age as they were when they vanished 3 decades ago.

[Chan Island]

This place dead.

What's everyone working on? Anything interesting?

So I'm entering a writing contest at my college and I only have 3 days to write a short story.

Working Title: The House Where Time Stopped

Story: It takes place in an American suburb where all the houses are essentially the same (think Levittown) except for one in the middle: a 138-year old crumbling mansion. The previous occupants of the mansion mysteriously vanished 30 or so years ago. Two kids decide to go exploring, only to find that the interior of the mansion is in pristine condition, and that the previous occupants are still there and still very much alive- and still the same age as they were when they vanished 3 decades ago.

I like it.

Have you thought about why this might have occurred? Is there a time dilation involved, or magic or something else entirely?

[Xmara]

So I'm entering a writing contest at my college and I only have 3 days to write a short story.

Working Title: The House Where Time Stopped

Story: It takes place in an American suburb where all the houses are essentially the same (think Levittown) except for one in the middle: a 138-year old crumbling mansion. The previous occupants of the mansion mysteriously vanished 30 or so years ago. Two kids decide to go exploring, only to find that the interior of the mansion is in pristine condition, and that the previous occupants are still there and still very much alive- and still the same age as they were when they vanished 3 decades ago.

I like it.

Have you thought about why this might have occurred? Is there a time dilation involved, or magic or something else entirely?

I was thinking that the owner before the current owners (who I'm just going to refer to John and Jane Doe for now until I think of better names) was an eccentric inventor who was working on a time machine in the corner of the mansion's basement, but died before completing it. The machine was left in there for the Does to later find one day when they were cleaning it. John activates it (whether on accident or out of curiosity is something I have yet to decide). The machine basically causes the inside of the house to be trapped in time. The couple is completely unaware that time is frozen until the kids show up.

If it sounds weird it's because I'm still trying to work out the mechanics of it, and I'm rushing big time to meet the deadline (which is in two days).

[Havl]

I like it.

Have you thought about why this might have occurred? Is there a time dilation involved, or magic or something else entirely?

I was thinking that the owner before the current owners (who I'm just going to refer to John and Jane Doe for now until I think of better names) was an eccentric inventor who was working on a time machine in the corner of the mansion's basement, but died before completing it. The machine was left in there for the Does to later find one day when they were cleaning it. John activates it (whether on accident or out of curiosity is something I have yet to decide). The machine basically causes the inside of the house to be trapped in time. The couple is completely unaware that time is frozen until the kids show up.

If it sounds weird it's because I'm still trying to work out the mechanics of it, and I'm rushing big time to meet the deadline (which is in two days).

That’s a really neat idea, and your summaries are engaging. You should write it even if you fail to meet the deadline.

[Forsher]

What have I been writing?

Code: Select all

for(j in 1:2000){
  for(i in 1:10){
    if(trux[j, 1] == i - 1) trux[j, 2:8] = xmat[i, 2:8]
  }
}

That's actually really interesting in context... especially since it's a language where loops are not efficient. They do, however, require very little thought and hence are a time saver in practice.

I've been swamped for a while but in my spare time I've been plotting out a... I'm going to call it a war fiction. The central concept is that a parliamentary cabinet wants conscription but only manages to do it by allowing themselves to be conscriptable. If that sounds nuts... just wait. You see, it turns out the PM has actually been engineering WWIII in order to replace the US Constitution because he's (tl;dr) anti-American. It's also set in the future but not too far in the future; just long enough for the PM to have been forced to watch the "classic" television show Person of Interest in his formative years. This is important since it gives him the genesis of the war strategy: create AI gods who will disable the bulk of the American military infrastructure and (also nuclear weapons) thus allow WWII-esque tropes in the future. This character gets killed off a third of the way through since he does get conscripted and at the point of his death it's still unclear that he's engineered the War.

With the death of the "main character" the story has to switch gears somewhat. This is also where my thinking has fallen apart (quite aside from a further acceleration in workload) since I can't think of a compelling reason to actually start the conflict. Part of the issue is that the two new perspective characters are meant to have contrasting takes on the ex-PM. The one doesn't care at all about the whole starting WWIII thing whereas the other sees it as a gross failing of a former political idol (even before he grasps the entirety of what the ex-PM intended), which rather requires having a convincing fake reason. Geopolitically the world will resemble ours since it's not that far in the future (hey, PoI did posit AI gods in today's society). After this, the ex-PM's allies do not share his ambitions and without his being around there's a very open question of what the war was even fought for since, well, America's going to lose it. This would be the context for the final third of the narrative. Parallels between the ex-PM and Veidt from Watchmen are much more obvious written down like this than as thoughts floating around in my head.

n.b. the ex-PM has a totally different view of the role of the AI gods to Greer etc. (from PoI) even though the way he intends on using them is far more similar to Greer's relationship with Samaritan than even Root's philosophy let alone Harold's over on Team Machine.

I like it.

Have you thought about why this might have occurred? Is there a time dilation involved, or magic or something else entirely?

I was thinking that the owner before the current owners (who I'm just going to refer to John and Jane Doe for now until I think of better names) was an eccentric inventor who was working on a time machine in the corner of the mansion's basement, but died before completing it. The machine was left in there for the Does to later find one day when they were cleaning it. John activates it (whether on accident or out of curiosity is something I have yet to decide). The machine basically causes the inside of the house to be trapped in time. The couple is completely unaware that time is frozen until the kids show up.

If it sounds weird it's because I'm still trying to work out the mechanics of it, and I'm rushing big time to meet the deadline (which is in two days).

So, it's kind of a house out of time? As in, theoretically, the occupants could have stepped outside and ended up in any time whatsoever? I know a book series with the concept to what I've just described (I refrain from naming it since it's kind of spoilery), which is why I ask.

[Infected Mushroom]

I could be inclined to post some of my 1 chapter ONE SHOT short stories/fan fics here... but only if people are interested in reading and reviewing (there's violence but I don't think it crosses the line)

Whenever I've posted them outside of Fanfiction I get DEAD SILENCE

[Third Asopia]

Being a childish adult I am proposing a Paw Patrol fanfic RP for the upcoming WC82 or something. I know. I just need ideas of how the cute and little pups actually play the soccer. Do they turn into humans or something? And I am planning this due to unforeseen circumstances. I acknowledge that fanfic is amazin' and I'm trying to convince others to write fanfic too.
Wait. Isn't this a thread for fanfic shit? What have I gotten myself into?

[Pasong Tirad]

This place dead.

What's everyone working on? Anything interesting?

Been writing copy for my new company for the past few weeks. It's pretty cool. Plus, roleplaying on here helps keep me writing. A former fiction professor noted that writing was more a discipline than anything and, like exercise, you had to keep writing - a sentence a day, a paragraph a day - to keep your knowledge about writing alive.

So, I stay on here to roleplay. It helps me with my knowledge of fiction, since much of my education was geared towards writing plays - which I still am doing, albeit very very slowly.

[Cannot think of a name]

I am currently not writing an article I should have written last week. And it's not even hard...

[Xmara]

I missed the deadline for the story contest. I've had paper after paper after paper to write. Guess the story will be something I write over Christmas break.

[Third Asopia]

Being a childish adult I am proposing a Paw Patrol fanfic RP for the upcoming WC82 or something. I know. I just need ideas of how the cute and little pups actually play the soccer. Do they turn into humans or something? And I am planning this due to unforeseen circumstances. I acknowledge that fanfic is amazin' and I'm trying to convince others to write fanfic too.
Wait. Isn't this a thread for fanfic shit? What have I gotten myself into?

You know what? Forget about this.

[Infected Mushroom]

I missed the deadline for the story contest. I've had paper after paper after paper to write. Guess the story will be something I write over Christmas break.

Will there be another NS contest?

[Forsher]

I missed the deadline for the story contest. I've had paper after paper after paper to write. Guess the story will be something I write over Christmas break.

Will there be another NS contest?

Given all of the last couple had issues with judges and/or the deadlines and the very last one was only even partially completed when one of the contestants gave up and judged all the other stories (joining the promptly completed judgements from one of the original judges)... it seems unlikely.

Probably the only way to do it would be to:

• enforce an even lower word count
• do it as a secret Santa but everyone has (ideally) three judges
• and therefore operate a short entry period so that an even judging pool could be allocated, or
• have a fixed number of contestants but even this way you'd only learn who you'd be judging right at the end of the entry period so it would still be short

[Infected Mushroom]

Will there be another NS contest?

Given all of the last couple had issues with judges and/or the deadlines and the very last one was only even partially completed when one of the contestants gave up and judged all the other stories (joining the promptly completed judgements from one of the original judges)... it seems unlikely.

Probably the only way to do it would be to:

• enforce an even lower word count
• do it as a secret Santa but everyone has (ideally) three judges
• and therefore operate a short entry period so that an even judging pool could be allocated, or
• have a fixed number of contestants but even this way you'd only learn who you'd be judging right at the end of the entry period so it would still be short

I would really like an oppertunity to defend my title as co-champion of the last contest...

[Respubliko de Libereco]

What have I been writing?

Code: Select all

for(j in 1:2000){
  for(i in 1:10){
    if(trux[j, 1] == i - 1) trux[j, 2:8] = xmat[i, 2:8]
  }
}

That's actually really interesting in context... especially since it's a language where loops are not efficient. They do, however, require very little thought and hence are a time saver in practice.

All I'm seeing here is that your arrays are indexed from 1. I don't like it.

EDIT: And I may have been at least partially responsible for the failure of the last short story contest. I said I would be a backup judge, and then disappeared for, like, 2 years Sorry.

[Forsher]

What have I been writing?

Code: Select all

for(j in 1:2000){
  for(i in 1:10){
    if(trux[j, 1] == i - 1) trux[j, 2:8] = xmat[i, 2:8]
  }
}

That's actually really interesting in context... especially since it's a language where loops are not efficient. They do, however, require very little thought and hence are a time saver in practice.

All I'm seeing here is that your arrays are indexed from 1. I don't like it.

EDIT: And I may have been at least partially responsible for the failure of the last short story contest. I said I would be a backup judge, and then disappeared for, like, 2 years Sorry.

In R, the first entry in a vector is [1] and then [2] and so forth. The same is true of lists whose elements are frequently vectors... list elements can be difficult to access, the last time I was doing so [[1]] was the way out of the issue. The moral was really that I've just been spending my time writing R code rather than anything else.

Since then I have made a crack at an idea that's been in my head for a while. Technically it's a fan fic but maybe it shouldn't be. Probably have written enough (below in spoiler) to give anyone a decent shot of guessing of what but maybe it does (in which case, fanfic it shall remain):

It was dark. It often is, of course, but it wasn’t dark for ordinary reasons. No, this felt of darkness, of exclusion and denial. This was stone-born gloom; light trapped and blocked by massive, crudely formed chunks of rock and all that escaped did so by glistening off damp, slimy granite. All of which meant it was also damp. Cold, too. This was not a place for living. It smelt of salt, despair and horror. It chilled to the bone; making acute even the slightest hint of pain. This was a prison, a prison which intended not restoration but death. Lonely, miserable death for a tower of stone coffins on a sea-struck rock; that was the kind of dark that filled the cell. Not an ordinary dark at all.


Yet the darkness was a bit mundane, for it had an observer: a prisoner. Rising out of the middle, the deformed lump of flesh, hair and cloth lay, not yet awake enough to shiver. Not yet alive enough to feel the ache of pain. Not yet dead enough to know the darkness as neither friend nor as enemy, but merely thing, ever-present and inescapable. This was a new prisoner. A new prisoner in an old prison. It, the lump, groaned. It would shiver soon. And soon enough it would perceive its new home. Ten paces wide of rock. Seven paces deep of stone. And a slab rising out of the worst dampness: that was for sleep.


There are no two prisons exactly alike. Some are bigger than others. Some are more decent than the main. But all are unique. Yet even this tower of death placed cells next door. Indeed, it was arranged in blocks of two; splendid isolation sought but not achieved for twin cells could communicate, even as it was quite impossible to reach the nearest other pair. This had caused issues for the guards: many of the tower’s doomed inmates had fought together, as an army and to allow them a comrade’s ear? Well, the guards thought it unwise. And so it came to pass that some of the most dangerous prisoners dwelt in less secure cells: closer to the exits, further from the guards, the integrity of the prison valued more than the imprisonment of any single convict. This brought other challenges: the risk of propaganda and persuasion to the cause was deemed high. The only resolution, at least that occurred to the guards or to their political masters, was the endless shuffle of well behaved criminals from “safe” twins to “risky” twins. The comrades were rarely moved, indeed, in the last fifteen years only once: to accommodate the deformed lump.


Had there been anyone to see, the lump would have appeared less deformed. Even in the gloom of the high security cell, it was possible to tell a lower end (a head?) that rose (for shoulders?) before dipping and rising clearly to a peak before falling away, perhaps one leg tucked in and the other somewhat extended. Had a guard walked past, their own blue light guiding their path (their fellow, for guards never travelled alone, armed and alert), they would have seen more. The low end was indeed a head, covered with short-ish muti-coloured hair and they would have caught the reflection of the pale arms, flapped around at odd angles (the prisoner had quite literally been thrown, totally unconscious on to the floor). With more than a brief glance, the deep purple-black of the heavy prison-issue coats stood out, but, of course, a guard would assume the coat was there and hence perceived it with only the briefest of looks. A visitor, which the prison did allow with Ministerial permission, might have occasioned to ask about these coats but none of the guards knew well the reasoning. There was a theory among the prisoners, spread via the rotating peaceable prisoners, that the coats made less obvious the signs of emaciation which several guards themselves believed. It was close enough to the truth, even more true than the truth: the intelligent prisoners having very little stimulation and endless time in which to think. By consequence, the coat caused the larger part of the lump’s deformed appearance; which was seen as valuable by the chief guard, who perceived a risk in keeping so beautiful and so evil a woman in the tower: it is one of the similarities of all prisons, the guard as security risk.

I read it again this morning and... well, I liked it more on the train home when I wrote it.

As to the last short story contest... I see I made an error before. I was describing the penultimate contest having entirely forgotten the 2016 attempt. Jesus. It feels like just yesterday that the last one closed its doors, but two whole years? Christ.

[Respubliko de Libereco]

As to the last short story contest... I see I made an error before. I was describing the penultimate contest having entirely forgotten the 2016 attempt. Jesus. It feels like just yesterday that the last one closed its doors, but two whole years? Christ.

Lente hora, celeriter anni, as they say. An hour passes slowly, but the years pass quickly.

[Nordengrund]

How does one overcome writer’s block?

[Pasong Tirad]

How does one overcome writer’s block?

You keep writing.

No, really. Have writer's block on one project? Write something for fun. Go on fanfiction.net and make up a story to a show you really like. Go on P2TM and write an RP post.

You overcome writer's block not with looking for motivation, but with instilling in yourself the proper discipline it takes to be a writer. The really experienced writers we all know and love rarely ever rely on motivation for fuel (except for you, GRRM, you rebellious bastard) because it's really unreliable. Rely on discipline, rely on your ability to be able to write anything even when you don't feel like it. Think of the millions upon millions of college students who have to write that crappy paper for that extra philosophy course they had to take cause they needed the units. They may love the class, they may hate it, but they still have to write that paper by midnight.

[Kowani]

All you people over here writin' your shit for fun and I'm just like, I write high school essays. That's almost decent writing.

[Pasong Tirad]

All you people over here writin' your shit for fun and I'm just like, I write high school essays. That's almost decent writing.

We all started somewhere. I started by writing RuneScape fanfiction on pad paper in between classes.

Yes, I said RuneScape fanfiction. I am not ashamed of my past.