PenStoryTeller

Oh I hear ya. I’m not saying you should remove the old one or destroy it…or even publish the revised version. Just to perform this as a writing exercise. The reason is many aspiring writers tend to hit a point where they are plagued by self doubt. This happens to pro writers too. Sometimes looking back at what you’ve done can give you a bit of perspective. It can also advise you as to what your style may have lost as you developed and what you can do to get it back.

Looking for a Beta reader to help me tighten up my story a little. Punctuation, grammar, narrative, all that stuff. You don’t have to be an expert . this is one of those cases where just having a different pair of eyes on it will be a big help. The piece is part of the Animaniacs/Pinky and the Brain fandom The story is essentially an M/M slash fic. Some use of drugs involved. So if you’re interested . The story will be broken up into one chapters for easier /faster reading and commentary.

A simple challenge to those of you have written a few stories here… Go back to the first fan-fic you submitted here. Read it. Now assuming you haven’t gouged out your own eyes, re-write/re-edit it. Then compare the two. I recently did this m’self and it was.. eye opening. to say the least. ‘IT BURNS USSS!!!’ is the only phrase that does the experience of rereading my old fan-fic any justice. It also showed me in a very palpable way how much I’ve progressed in writing. Try it and see what happens.

You know I just thought of one rather stinging case of where characters get bent out to push the writer’s agenda. Remember when Iceman turned gay?

The reason fan-fiction makes such a great writing exercise for many is that the characters are already done up for you. You know the characters, you know the world, you know the possibilities of both so all you have to do is come up with an interesting arrangement of events.. It’s good practice for when you start doing original works with original characters because believe it or not, once you’ve defined a character you’ll have just as much of a constraint as if you were writing with someone else’s character. that is, there is a limited set of actions that will ‘feel’ right for any character. Embrace the box. It’s a common thing , even among pro authors to simply have a character be whatever they need the character to be to make a scene work and this can create some narrative dissonan ce. Have you ever seen a story where a character just does something that doesn’t fit well with how they’ve been characterized Or their actuions over the course of the book don’t seem to flow from one to the other in any logical pattern? Yeah That’s what hapopenbs when a character is bent to fit the story. The reall question is. How many OC’s do you need to add to tell an interesting story? Or to quote a piece of whriting advice. Try to tell the story with as few characters as possible,

OP You suffer the same problem as many, many writers, aspiring and otherwise. Myself, not so much. I rarely write down an idea the moment i have it. I like to let it rattle around in a steel cage deathmatch that is my brain for a day. The idea is that what every survives or sticks is usually the best stuff and the part of what sticks that resonates is the core you build around. Scrivener I can say many great things about and a few not so great things about yWriter does much of what Scrivener does and is free. It even does a few things that Scrivener does not like POV charting.

Antagonist are best conceptualized as the protagonists of a different story. As in the need to have a goal and a reason or desire driving them towards it The worst thing you can do with an antagonist is to use them as plot-spackkle.

Taking a break doesn’t need to mean not writing. It can simply mean switching styles and trying something new. As said. There’s a reason many authors employ pen names when they wish to do something different. My preferred tactic is to basically keep some dribs and drabbles. Nonsense pieces that aren’t meant to be serious, or even read by anyone. It’s a great way to stretch your imagination. Stopping also simply means ending a story and actually starting a new one with new characters, new themes. Identify tropes you commonly use in your works and then challenge yourself to not use those tropes.

The only way to avoid stagnation is to stop writing. Really thats it. There’s also author stagnation and imposed stagnation. One is where the author themselves has no new ideas or point to the story and is just churning out stories strictly for the money, and to accomplish this they retain a tried and true formula. The second is where it is teh audience that is unwilling to accept new ideas and therefore the author is forced to basicallky conform to the expectations of the audience they have cultivated over the years. This is one of the reasons many authors have a pen name or two where they can actually break out of their moulds.

Generally speaking the sex scenes should serve some purpose. Like any other scene. If the scene only exists for the sake of having a scene, as in it is not the goal, nor does it change the character’s relation to the goal, then the scene can feel empty. IN short a scene should either be build-up to something else… or the climax at the end of the build up.

Leaving breadcrumbs is fun but dangerous. You have to ask. WHo am I leaving these crumbs for? SOmething that will be apparent to people from one cultural or educational background. may not be apparent to another. The problem is, you don’t want to hint too much since people with certain knowledge of genre conventions run the risk of figuring things out first. The best clues, are the ones the reader picks up the second time they read. They will ideally remark. “ohhhhh so that’s why showering in spite of the watter being cold. It was to wash off the blood and mud.” Once your story is resolved and you’ve basically completed your final draft. Go back and sprinkle some details here and there. Not additional details but rather details that one could otherwise infer from what was already there.

Don’t create antagonists as Villains. An antagonist at heart, the person who’s goals run counter to the protagonist. THey are just both people that desire something and are journeying to get that thing. The first thing to humanize an antagonist is that very few people see themselves as the ‘bad guy’. Everyone thinks they have good reasons for what they do and that they are doing what is best for themselves and those they care about. Give them goals, , give them a reason for their goals and ask yourself why this person and the protagonist are at odds. Is it a grudge against the protagonist specifically or is the protagonist just an obstacle to be over come. Or to put it this way. is it personal, or incidental. personal indicates that the character holds a sepecific and focused hate for the the protagonist specifically. Incidental just means it was a matter of chance , that in the course of their own independent goals they wound up in opposition. It’s sort of like how soliders are. VEry seldom is there any actual hatred for the enemy soldier, not genuine hatred. They are just there and you have your orders, and they have there’s. If you want to get advanced, you cmake the antagonist be essentially be the protagonist, just facing the opposite direction. Give them the same trains, qualities and etc as the protagonist.

Much like naming characters, do not over think the names. Think about the culture and the people. Any name sounds silly if you take it out of context. America? What’s America. Its the opposite of Asadca. What kinda of name is Derry? Or Hogwarts? See what I mean. The most important thing is how it sounds when said out loud. The sound of certain words will evoke a certain sense or mood. Kinda like how it’s almost impossible to say the word ‘Hugbees’ without smiling a little. If you’re basing a name around teh real world. Study the culture a little. Don’t just rely on google translate. Trust me when I say this is a fast track to outting yourself as someone who is clueless. You’re better off finding someone who knows or is a part of the culture for advice. One safe bet though is to name the place after people.

How to fend of stagnation. Easy. Know when to stop writing. The biggest problem with stagnation is when a work gets trapped by it’s own fandom. Star trek and Star Wars have fared better than many. where this is most prevelant is in the world of comics. What was the last major change that occured tro batman as a character, and I mean as a person, not a change in his ability. The trust is a story is an idea, a question. But once the question is answered you have to know to move on. When a series exists only to please fans , then it becomes beholden to those fans. You can’t change things up majorly because the fans will in most cases hate that. Fans, for all their complaints, generally want very little deviation from the status quo. If you must keep writing, one good trick is to take the same world but approach it from a different angle. But again, this also creates a problem with publishers. Publishers don’t like, strange and different, they don’t know how to market that or who to market it to. Once a series makes a name for itself as X, publishers generally want it to stay as X. This is why Sherlock holmes novels begin to fall into a pattern after about the 5th story Stagnation comes when the story exists for the sake of the readers, not for its own sake. granted, a story must always factor the desires of the reader, but it should never be beholden to those expectations. TLDR: If you want to prevent stagnation: Stop writing that story and start a fresh story, ine fresh setting with fresh characters., Or even in the same setting with fresh characters. Make sure your story has a message, and make sure its not a message you’ve already written a story on. If the reason for writing is, for the fans, or for the money, then you probably shouldn’t write it. You can also embrace the stagnation and make it the theme of the story itself.

EMotional Devastation changes the way a character thinks, behaves and reacts. So the first thing is you have to spend a good deal of time letting us get to know the character and their foibles. That way when the emotional devastation hits you can show the subtle effects in their reactions, their mannerisms, the changes in their speaking pattern.