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Writing Discussion Thread

The_Wright_Way

VS Battles
Retired
15,431
7,851
During my time here, it's come to my attention that there are many users on this site who either write for a living, write as a hobby, or want to be writers. I'm personally in the lattermost camp. This thread exists so that those people can come together and share ideas, discuss tropes, give advice, abd bounce story ideas off each other. They could ask for advice on a particular genre, fish for ideas regarding concepts, and discuss potential character arcs. Anything to do with writing, whether it be deep discussion or just story and fanfic sharing, is welcome here.
 
There was a story I had in mind a long time ago that I still think about today

A story of a Sniper and a Spotter, a two man team sent across the world taking out select targets during war time. no help, not much talking, just the two of them, the sniper being a Young Man who was drafted away to serve despite living a comfortable life. The other an older Veteran who joined to escape his poor life at home.

The two would go out to be sent on selective missions alone, as they not only fight to protect their country, but also witness the horrors of war, both of destruction and loss, and how that affects both of them

More importantly I want to showcase a story we're no two sides are right or wrong, that no one man makes up everyone in their respective country.

I had a bunch of ideas in mind for what I wanted the story's setting and characters to be.
 
I have a few ideas. In fact, I have several word documents filled with ideas that I won't be able to access over Thanksgiving vacation (and hence, can't post here), but I'll share a few for now.

The Church of All Gods and The Godless Imperium.

It started eons ago, before the first dated recording in Intergalactic History, on a planet forgotten by time. On it, lived two twins. Identical in body, separated by war. Their planet had descended into a viscous civil war, the two head religions seeking to wipe each other out. The Older Brother went out to fight on the front lines, indifferent to the religious causes of either side and looking merely for provide for his Younger Brother. The Younger Brother stayed home and worked as a commoner.

The Younger Brother lived a quiet life, keeping his head down as he saw his neighbors executed for "heresies" and "sins". He smiled and prayed like all the rest, for he dare not do otherwise. The Older Brother fought on the front lines, giving no mercy abd expecting none in return. The enemy was his enemy abd his allies were his allies, moral superiority meant nothing. They would write to each other, lamenting the horrors of war and the corruption of faith.

The Older Brother would get his eyes gouged out by an enemy soldier. They would call him The Blind. The Younger would have his voicebox crushed for stealing bread one day. They would call him The Silent.

One day, The Silent would overhear a complaints about they way things were. He mistook it for his own thoughts at first, but then he heard it again. "This isn't what the Scripture means. They don't understand." The Silent followed, hoping to hear more, and stoped in shook at who he saw speaking it. The Head Priest himself, muttering brokenly in a desolate corridor. "Do we not preach love? Are we not to accept those who differ from us?" From that day on, The Silent walked by that corridor everyday to listen to the Priest.

He wrote all that he learned to his brother, but his brother could no longer read them. The Blind sat in his new office, directing battlefields from afar as a General. "You're wasting resources." He complaigned. "He came to us from their side to join our own. He has intel we need!" The clergyman scoffed. "He has rejected the Scripture. There is no turning back. Oblivion is all that awaits him now."

It was not the first, nor the last time he complained.

"He is merely a child!"

"He rejected the Scripture."

"They would've killed him otherwise!"

"There is no turning back."

"He's your son!!"

"Oblivion is all that awaits him now."

The Blind fell to his knees. "I just don't understand."

"You either follow the Scripture or you don't. There is nothing else to understand."

One day, the war ended, as did their world. It matters not who was winning, when both sides saw defeat as unacceptable. Neither could lose, so they made sure no one won.

The Silent and The Blind escaped separately, each with a band full if survivors. They watched as the twisted war they had fought tore their home down to its last atom. Both brothers swore on that day "never again" and both founded new Empires under a solemn vow.

"Let it never be forgotten the day faith tore the world in two." Wrote The Silent.

"Never forget the corpses we've marched over in blind faith." Spoke The Blind.

"If we are to swear never again, if we are to promise those fallen that they died for better lives, we must change how we view the world." Both continued. "The Old World fell because it lacked one thing:"

"Love." Wrote The Silent.

"Logic." Spoke The Blind.

"If we are to survive we must unite as one and accept the differences of those who stand beside us. We must accept that our gods are no more powerful than any other." Wrote The Silent.

"Faith is an instrument of the cowardly and weak. The use it to justify what compassion and reason can not. They hide behind books never written and voices never heard." Said The Blind.

"If all men are born equal, then so to are all Gods. And we must love them and their followers equally. Faith is a strength no matter where it lies and it will keep us whole." The Silent concluded within the halls of The Church of all Gods.

"Only Men truly choose, Gods and their followers simply obey. Gods are constructs of men who wish for others to obey. If we are to ever choose peace, we must eliminate the Gods who preach war." The Blind conclude from the capital of the Godless Imperium.

Both Brothers looked out to the stars that night and believed, wholeheartedly, that they were honoring the memory of their brother that day.
 
I'm currently working on a character and drawing blanks.

His role in the story is to act as this disgusting person who kidnaps an orphan and torments her secretly for his own twisted desires, and he's the main reason for the villain-protagonist to go apeshit. But like, the problem is he's too flat when the story presents itself as questioning the morality of actions, so he stands out like a sour thumb, and at this point he's too integral to the plot to just cut out.

I've tried to like, make him more humane by giving him a family he treats extremely well and him showing remorse for a few deaths in the story, but idk, he's the weakest link so far. Any thoughts on how to improve such characters?
 
The character doesn't need to be extremely evil to make the protagonist go ape shit, the act of him tormenting someone no matter what the reason is, is more then enough.

I need a bit more context on what you're writing though
 
The context is of an ambigious supernatural entity being infatuated with a human girl who had been a victim of frequent abuse and violence, and thus saves her from a "death scenario", but the girl is still scarred and affected by her life, so the entity attempts to convince the girl to motivate herself to do something better, but due to a flawed understanding of humane morals, the entity convinces the girl to do increasingly horrendous crimes for the sake of enjoyment.

The character mentioned above is kinda essential to the plot as he's the main motivation for the girl to get her first giant descent down the spiral, and is closely connected to the main anti-villains of the story.

But the problem is that he'd either have to be notably poor-treating of the MC or it may feel like pointless whining I'm afraid
 
Mainly because that act is being used to justify the motives of a serial killer essentially, where I want the audience to be on board with the MC until a certain point at least.

Though yeah, I guess toning down the "evilness" may be more beneficial now that I think about it.
 
Eh, debatable. It leads to interesting exploration of morality and faith alongside the true definition of greater good if done right, and allows the character to fight back against a system without having deal with all the legal jargon. You can personally dislike it, but I think it's a fine enough trope
 
It's literally just backstory for the two characters though. Not to mention, the story as a whole is about how religions should acceot abd embrace each ither abd that denying people of their beliefs is ultimately amoral and wrong. It doesn't matter if you're religious yourself, suppressing other people's beliefs just because you don't agree with them is wrong. The Blind is the villain of the story, albiet an understandable one. He has tragic motives, he saw firsthand the brutality of religion taken to far, of the message being lost for the sake of power, but he's ultimately no better than the people he thinks he's opposing.
 
I'm actually writing a story called the Tales of Death.

Basically a metafictional tale about death throughout history and it's perspective on certain events in conjunction to how it sees fiction immortalizing certain figures and archetypes when they have long since died
 
@TheUnknownWarrior1 That sounds so rad tbh, though I'm curious whether it's a single individuals narrative, or if there'll be more characters involved
 
The Wright Way said:
It's literally just backstory for the two characters though. Not to mention, the story as a whole is about how religions should acceot abd embrace each ither abd that denying people of their beliefs is ultimately amoral and wrong. It doesn't matter if you're religious yourself, suppressing other people's beliefs just because you don't agree with them is wrong. The Blind is the villain of the story, albiet an understandable one. He has tragic motives, he saw firsthand the brutality of religion taken to far, of the message being lost for the sake of power, but he's ultimately no better than the people he thinks he's opposing.
The payoff is always Ôëñ whatever it took to get there.
 
A friend of mine and I have been working on writing a show and animating it. It's a comedy, but it also has serious lore to it if you want that. It's about time travel, which obviously is not all that original in and of itself, but what we are mainly doing is exploring people maintaining the time line having to do really horrible things like, if a general decided to spare a village that was meant to be destroyed horribly, then they would carry out these atrocities themselves. The only show I've really seen explore anything like this is Umbrella Academy, where the antagonists are time travelers attempting to ensure the apocalypse to avoid a time paradox.

The characters should carry out death note like mind games but also be really bad at their job at the same time. We have almost 30 pages of planning into this and are writing the script for the first episode atm.
 
@God

"The Payoff is always < whatever it took to get there"

If there's one thing you can learn over examining tons of fictional stories, anything and everything can is possible. Execution is the key to this
 
One of my stories included a story who i believe can reconstruct the whole magical girl series

Problem is.......this story is kind of combination between shonen magical girl series with Kamen Rider so pretty much its not fully a magical girl story
 
Yeah, it doesn't sound bad at all, i just wondering if this truly a magical girl story or not. Even the protagonists are kind of not so "magical girl-ish":

1. One is a professional kick boxer who back to her homeland after done her last match, find out to be kidnapped and turned into pseudo-monster called Linto modification

2. One is a amnesiatic girl who founded by the first MC in the beach, who secretly an rare magical girl
 
Schnee One said:
@God

"The Payoff is always < whatever it took to get there"

If there's one thing you can learn over examining tons of fictional stories, anything and everything can is possible. Execution is the key to this
Examples?
 
Inception is a prime example of Payoff > whatever it took to get there. The entire movie is an overly long buildup to the dream sequences with expostion over exposition and planning (I still love that part tho), but the payoff of those sequences and the ending are what make it a modern classic.
 
Schnee One said:
What are your thoughts on silent protagonists in games?
Tbh the lowest part of any game the silent protagonist to me. Especially if that character shows little to no personlity in his actions as well.

Like, if you play like, Fortnite alone, you wanna feel like you wanna die, but let's say you're playing TF2. Due to the amount the characters talk, you always felt interested in whatever was going on, because I wouldn't even bother if the generic "over the radio" voicelines in Call Of Duty or something said thanks to me, but for some reason having that personality-heavy response makes it fun even if it's the scout's overconfident snarks at me.

Silent protagonists lose that immersion since a blank slate never invests someone in their game solely. It'll be like, playing DnD with only that stats filled out
 
To me it really depends on the premise and basis of the story, works perfectly for some, badly for others.

Of course my profile picture kinda gives away that I like silent protags
 
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