TGRF's Fan Fiction Chronicles - Entry #53

Fifty-three? Man, I've written a lot of these things.

Anyways, I wanted to give you all a brief update on where I am with my writing, and what is hanging me up (because there is, predictably, something hanging me up).

The vampire story - which refuses all attempts to name it - is basically fully developed and outlined. However, upon starting to write it, I found that the main character was very much like a lifeless stick of wood. This wasn't so much because he was underdeveloped as simply because of the unique circumstances I had written myself into, which made showing him rather difficult.

I've researched both how to further develop characters in general, and how to show my main character in specific, and I have some ideas which should work. Right now it's just a matter of plugging them all into the already-existing outline, and tweaking the beginning of that outline to compensate...

TGRF's Fan Fiction Chronicles - Entry #52

tl;dr: I've decided I need to further look into the backstories for the characters of my newest story, to enable me to write about them more intelligently.

Long version:

For those of you following my signature, you might be curious why it now says I am 're-developing' my current story, when before I had begun writing it.

It's because beneath the large and obvious problems of stakes and the second act, there are a few other, less obvious issues I've had with my writing.

One of these issues has to do with characters. I've always put off dealing with it, or else used methods which only covered up the issue without really fixing it. But since I intend for the main character of this next story to be the main character for a series, I wanted to get things right the first time.

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The issue is fairly straightforward: when I write characters,...

TGRF's Fan Fiction Chronicles - Entry #51

Since my last entry, things have improved considerably in the writing department. I still don't have solid control over the second act like I would like, but I at least am getting there, and can reliably get through it now.

I've also settled on the series I want to tell. Where things will end up is still open-ended, but things are starting with a version of the vampire story I've had in my head for some time. Development is progressing steadily, and writing should begin before the end of the month, barring any major roadblocks.

But before I can do that, there is one thing which I could use your help with: names. Naming characters has never been my strongest suit. And the hardest names for me to come up with are vampire names. And considering that this is a vampire story, you can imagine that I need to come up with a few of them.

So to any reading, I would like you to reply with any...

TGRF's Fan Fiction Chronicles - Entry #50

When I look back at what I've written over the years, it becomes clear to me that I've known what I'm doing, while having no idea what I'm doing.

Take Dilmir. I had no idea what I was doing. I had been captured by the setting and story of Dilmir, and just wanted to write it. I barely had an inkling of what development meant at the time, and structure was not even present in my thinking. By all rights, Dilmir should have failed, especially given some of the paths I was considering taking the story at the time.

But Dilmir worked (or at least I feel it did ). As I wrote it, I somehow knew what ideas would work for it and what ideas would make it worse. And with no knowledge of structure, it somehow followed the 3-act structure practically to the letter.

There were some minor deviations. For example, I'm fairly certain the midpoint happened off-screen. *internal shudder* But still, the...

TGRF's Fan Fiction Chronicles - Entry #49

Back in early January, I wrote an FFC about how I had discovered the 3-act-structure, and everything was coming together. Confusion was gone, knowledge was mine, and things were far simpler than they had ever been. I outlining stories faster than I had ever done so, and for the first time was able to break down simple stories into their structural parts.

That's what is known as the second half of the second act. The second half is characterized by victories. The main character, having learned the pivotal truth, goes after the main conflict with command and confidence, and wins many victories.

When I wrote that FFC, I was worried about only one thing:

Well, sure enough, that darkest moment came. My writing...