Writers' Workshop General Chat Thread

[Cresselia92]

@Cresselia92 Have you seen A New Generation? Because that's what this fanfic is based on. I'm having an easier time coming up with this as I go than most fanfics because I'm following the general plot of the movie (character from Race A wants to meet other races, character from Race B wanders into town, they become fugitives), but it's not a 1:1 retelling, so I still need to figure out some details about the backstory.

Hey! Belated reply, but I didn’t watch the movie in its entirety. Though I have Netflix, so I can watch it whenever.

I can help you figure out details, but if you want we can communicate through DMs or PMs to not hog the thread. ^^

 

[Nitro Indigo]

I already got other people to help me with it, but thanks for the offer.

 

[Greninjaman]

Do lore and backstory mean the same thing? I ask so that I can refresh my memory.

 

[BackSet]

Not necessarily. While backstory is almost always Lore, lore isn't always backstory. Lore can just as often be how something works as it is the history of that thing.

 

[Palamon]

Could Spears and Lances be considered ranged weapons as opposed to swords, which are not as long?

Probably not? They're long but not long enough to be ranged weapons.

I don't write spears/polearms to be ranged weapons.

 

[Greninjaman]

Not necessarily. While backstory is almost always Lore, lore isn't always backstory. Lore can just as often be how something works as it is the history of that thing.

So the two are not always interchangeable?

 

[BackSet]

So the two are not always interchangeable?

No, they're not. The way I see it, all backstory is lore but not all lore is backstory. Though that first part depends on whether you consider character backstory to be lore.

 

[Greninjaman]

No, they're not. The way I see it, all backstory is lore but not all lore is backstory. Though that first part depends on whether you consider character backstory to be lore.

I could consider a character's backstory as lore if it is tied to the overall lore/backstory of the story in some way.

 

[Cresselia92]

From what I understand, lore is basically any information that expands your knowledge about elements of a story.

That could include a character’s past, some historical fact, a curious fact about a location in a fictional world, folklore and myths, and so on.

 

[Nitro Indigo]

I'm making a YouTube video where I ask a non-fan to name Pokémon. I'm picking three from each generation, and I'm including a mix of ones that are iconic/popular, memey, weird-looking, and my favourites. So far, I've picked Pikachu and Porygon for the first generation, but I can't decide on a third. I've considered Sandshrew/slash (because it's one of my favourites), Wigglytuff (because this person is into Smash Bros and I want to see if he knows about evolution), and Seel (because it's one of the go-to examples of boring gen 1 Pokémon), but none of those felt fitting. Any ideas?

 

[BackSet]

I'm making a YouTube video where I ask a non-fan to name Pokémon. I'm picking three from each generation, and I'm including a mix of ones that are iconic/popular, memey, weird-looking, and my favourites. So far, I've picked Pikachu and Porygon for the first generation, but I can't decide on a third. I've considered Sandshrew/slash (because it's one of my favourites), Wigglytuff (because this person is into Smash Bros and I want to see if he knows about evolution), and Seel (because it's one of the go-to examples of boring gen 1 Pokémon), but none of those felt fitting. Any ideas?

What about a Jigglypuff seen from above.

 

[BackSet]

I've been having some difficulties with introducing characters (note that this is a visual medium I'm working with). Currently I've got two options I've come up with. One is using essentially Boss Subtitles where a character's name and Codename will appear next to them when they first show up. The other is have a character describe each character as said characters demonstrate their powers (with the justification being that this character is proving that they know who each of the characters are to another character).

 

[Welkamo]

I've been having some difficulties with introducing characters (note that this is a visual medium I'm working with). Currently I've got two options I've come up with. One is using essentially Boss Subtitles where a character's name and Codename will appear next to them when they first show up. The other is have a character describe each character as said characters demonstrate their powers (with the justification being that this character is proving that they know who each of the characters are to another character).

The former option sounds more interesting and concise, in my opinion. The second one feels like it could vere into exposition dump. However, that could be an interesting way to establish character relationships. It boils down to execution.

 

[BackSet]

Basically the deal for the second one is I've got a group of Magical Girls in training and their current main teacher is retiring so they're bringing in a new one who has powers but outside of that knows little about how Magical Girls work (she's mainly being brought in for her years of military experience) and she's watching a training session with the old teacher and she's like "hey do you know who these kids (actually college age) are?" and the new teacher is like "yeah, I read their files" and she lists all of them and their technical details as the camera focuses on whichever one she's currently talking about and displaying the powers/personality traits she's listing while she's listing them with the old teacher interjecting occasionally to be like "You gotta stop treating this all technical and military-like. These are regular people (for a certain definition of the word) not soldiers."

 

[Welkamo]

Hey howdy, how has writing been?

I've been doing good in terms of IAM progress over the past month. Maybe I'll actually finish it by my self-imposed deadline of December 3rd.

 

[Lord Kyuubi]

Hey howdy, how has writing been?

I've been doing good in terms of IAM progress over the past month. Maybe I'll actually finish it by my self-imposed deadline of December 3rd.

The prospect of finishing soon sound exciting. I believe in you, you can do it!


For myself, I'm doing... reasonably well? Questionably. Well, I just decided a couple of days ago the best thing to do was to restart my outline from the beginning, since I now have a much clearer idea of where it was going than when I did the old one. So it feels like good progress at least, though it probably doesn't sound much like it.

I'm also still writing extracts from whichever random bit of the story takes my fancy at the time, which isn't very productive, but it's fun.

 

[CynthiaLover]

Hey howdy, how has writing been?

I've been doing good in terms of IAM progress over the past month. Maybe I'll actually finish it by my self-imposed deadline of December 3rd.

That's great to hear. The goal is in sight and I know you can do it. Just keep on truckin' and you'll reach it in no time.

As for me, I'm doing fairly well. As evident by the "What Did You Write Today" thread, I've managed to get a good 4 chapters done for Dawn of Courage in rapid succession. They've since been given to my proofreader so hopefully I can post them soon. But autumn is also migraine season for me so getting more work done is going to be difficult (which is a shame since it gets so beautiful around her during autumn, as we have a huge variety of colors in the leaves). Hopefully winter will be good, as I do very well during the colder, snowy months (especially since my migraines fizzle out during that time).

I'm hoping to finish this mini-arc that I'm working on soon, as I only really need to do 2-to-3 chapters more before I can move onto the next events. I know one chapter will be action-based (with a scene that resolves part of one character's quest) while the one that follows will be a slow-paced one (as it focuses on Nova recovering from getting pushed way beyond his limits). Not sure if I'll need a 3rd chapter after that to wrap things up but at least I know what direction I need to take in order to wrap up this mini-arc. While this arc seems filler-ish it actually serves a key purpose in the final battle, but that's all I'll say for now. Hopefully I can get it done soon as there are a handful of other events I want to write that I've had planned for a bit now. Wish me luck.

 

[CynthiaLover]

Forgive the double post but how is everyone doing on the writing front lately? Hopefully no one has had any problems like lost/corrupted data, power outages, or worst of all... dun dun dun ...writer's block. Hopefully everyone's creativity gears are well greased and doing good.

As for me, I decided to end the mini-arc that I was doing at the most recent chapter ("Recovery"), as there isn't much else that needs to be done or can be done now that the main "conflict" of said mini-arc is over. So I'm moving on to the next events, with another character focused chapter, this time Sir Reginald (as we had mostly Nova-focused chapters lately, with a Kettu-focused one sandwiched in between). I think I've possibly reached the halfway point of the series now, give or take a chapter or two, and my writer's block seems to be gone now. So hopefully that means I can get more work done, especially now that I also got some more printer paper. But as I said before, autumn is a tough time of the year for me, mainly thanks to migraines. Let's hope I can keep the momentum going.

And hopefully everyone else can keep their momentum going, too. Good luck everyone and happy writing.

 

[Welkamo]

I have been doing okay on my end. Managed to find some motivation for my oneshot finally, and I'm making good progress on a few other stories.

 

[MisheardWhisper]

I haven't gotten back into the swing of writing yet, but I did realise I had an unposted chapter that I wrote like a year ago, so what the hell, I posted it to see if I can rustle up some interest (both from the community and myself, tbh).