TGRF's Fan Fiction Chronicles - Entry #55

When I wrote the last FFC, Blood, my vampire story, had just imploded spectacularly. Uninterested at the time in redoing what I had just spent a month working on, I let my interest wander towards an HiS sequel idea.

That also imploded, though not to the extent that the idea is impossible.

But the implosion left my interest wandering, with no clear direction or story to latch onto. I was left to ponder what I really wanted to write, what was really causing me problem after problem.

So today I looked over my more recent failed stories, and tried to piece together what exactly had gone wrong so many times. Here's the list I came up with:

• Isolated scene - The inspiration deals with a single scene or idea. Core parts are often missing, and when attempting to attach a buildup to get to the scene, those missing parts lead to incomplete characters and/or plots. Also, the inspiration

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TGRF's Fan Fiction Chronicles - Entry #54

So for those among you who avidly follow my signature, you might have noticed that the vampire tale, now tentatively titled Blood, is paused. Mentions of a 'character deviant' are made.

Deviants are what I call things which find their way into the development/story, but don't actually belong there. Like if I have an idea in my head about how a story can play out, but that idea really has nothing to do with how the story should play out, that idea is a deviant. I have to watch out for those things, because the further they get woven into the development/story, the bigger the chance I'll have to start completely over.

Well that's exactly what has happened: the basic idea for this vampire story has been floating around so long that it's accumulated a ton of ideas on exactly how it could play out. Some of those ideas stuck through the development, and unfortunately, they not only have nothing to do with...

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...