my advice

I need help. by Legacy on 2014-04-26 17:35:00 UTC Reply

I have been sitting here for the past… six months? I can tell. Anyways, I've got Permission. Yay! Big celebration! Write missions! Unfortunately, I have a massive case of Writer's Block. As soon as I sit down to write the first Interlude and Mission, my mind immediately goes blank. I need help.

So, could anyone help me with this? I need… just about anything that *could* help.

*Apologetic grin*

I Hope this Helps by sjosten on 2014-04-28 05:14:00 UTC Reply

What I would do is take that little chart Huineroson made for the new writing samples to be submitted with a permission request, and write a bunch of them. If you just keep writing your Agents, you'll get a plethora of ideas.

Here's the link to HS's chart:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IE81HONRJnp0IaK92GvzyL00CZYNZG_pvdo93gRMIhY/pub

About that... by Legacy on 2014-04-28 19:38:00 UTC Reply

I already looked it over and planned out what would happen in every single set of circumstances that interested me. …heh.

It did help though. :)

my advice by 7.65x54R on 2014-04-27 16:18:00 UTC Reply

Don't try to edit your work as you go along.

at least,That's what I've heard.

Also,do you have any books on writing? they could give you tips.

Writing Magic by Gale Carson Levine is goodÂ… (nm) by Legacy on 2014-04-27 22:27:00 UTC Reply

My Advice by Dark Brother 16 on 2014-04-27 02:09:00 UTC Reply

I find that what helps me write is doing something that gets me pumped. I don't know if it's just me, but I tend to get some sort of random inspiration when blood is flowing through my brain.

What do I mean? Well, what I do- I do many things. I listen to intense music, specifically, Slipknot. But it doesn't have to be heavy, intense music. Just listen to what music you love.

Also what you could do is watch Youtube, Netfilx, Hulu, or just DVD's. Watch a movie that you find inspirational. Or you can read a book that you love, or even talk to someone about ideas you have.

That is how I get ideas when I am having trouble. In your case, though, I expect that it will get you going, since you have your ideas already ready to go. But I get my advice from sources like Writer's Digest, so they may really work. It's not for everyone, but still...

Hope it helps.

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Ask, and you shall receive! by Iximaz on 2014-04-26 18:26:00 UTC Reply

Well, when Randa and I worked on our first mission, what we did was print off the badfic (obviously, you don't want to print all of it if it's really long- maybe just the first ten pages?) and we went through it together with pencils, circling stuff like spelling errors and unintentionally funny sentences, and we also wrote in little comments about what the agents might say to seeing it in person.

(We also kept tallies for the number of times out 'Sue said 'EK!', which made it a little more bearable.)

Once the initial sporking was done, I started the mission by plopping the agents directly into the fic and working from there. Any particularly atrocious lines, or funny lines, or relevant lines were included, along with the agents' reactions to them.

After the mission itself was finished, I went back and wrote the intro bit and then gave it to Randa to check over for SPaG and for Randa's (the agent) characterization.

Tl;dr I suggest MSTing the thing first. It doesn't require characterizing or plot and it can help you spot some particularly good gems of bad lines you might want to include.

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That's pretty much what I do, too. {= ) by Neshomeh on 2014-04-27 17:27:00 UTC Reply

Except I do it all on my laptop, highlighting misspellings, funny bits, and other things I definitely need to include; leaving comments for myself if I think of particularly good jokes or gags; making note of any outside information I've looked up; etc. I also choose the point where I want to kill it ahead of time—it helps a LOT to know where the story is going to end. Then, with all the highlighted stuff, you end up with a pretty good road map of the story, and you just have to get the characters from start to finish in a fun way. {= )

One important thing to note is that I don't include EVERYTHING I mark up in the document. You have to pick and choose the things that are vital to the story—things that demonstrate particularly well what the fic is doing and why it doesn't work—and not be afraid to leave out redundancies and distractions, even funny ones.

Also, some advice I gave someone else recently: beware of Talking-Heads Syndrome. Agents in a mission ought to be actively doing things and reacting to the terrible things being done to them. If all your agents are doing is standing around in undescribed space, in undescribed spatial relation to each other, merely inserting snarky comments between chunks of fic, that's a drag, and you might as well just write an MST.

A tip I learned for getting started on a story is to just write some kind of introduction, even if it sucks. It's allowed to suck, because once you get going, you can chop it off. Think of it as an on-ramp or runway: you need it to get going, but once you're off, you leave it behind.

Hope that helps!

~Neshomeh

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Here's something you could try... by Tigeress on 2014-04-26 17:44:00 UTC Reply

I really, really hate writer's block. Some of my advice... Write the start of the mission on paper. Then, when you get to a point where your imagination is flowing, copy it onto the computer and go from there. If you come up with another case of writer's block, do the same thing. It may or may not help. :)