Writing Tips and Reviews

Lack of Effort

I just love the lack of effort idiots put into their work. Making a character? That is too hard, let us just jump to the drama before we develop them at all and forget what development is after the drama is over. So, nothing matters. What is story telling? Can't we just skip to the halfway mark of a book with no context ever? That is a good idea.

If you cannot tell, I am being sarcastic. Thank you written format for not letting me put in tone into my words. It is fine, I am fine. I will not say anything about the copying and pasting of scripts with the addition of some of lines because that sounds controversial and I do not feel like getting into that.

So, here is a quote instead. "It sounds like the type of story you have could be self-insert or it could be turned into a novelization. These types of stories a lot of times keep Canon script but change enough and add enough details to be considered their own. If you are concerned about plagiarism, I recommend looking up those types of stories and seeing if you could turn yours into one of those. That might help alleviate your concerns, and assuming the reviews are valid plagiarism concerns, it should stop them as well."

To the points.

Characters:

How can we assassinate a character before they are even born? Is that even possible? Well, it is kind of is. Tiny backstory, I was role playing with a guy, he put zero effort into his character, thought he was being a "master manipulator" and was smart, he was being stupid. He wrote things like "he smiled and laughed," like he was writing a good character who was evil. Turned out asking a question was easier and better written than spending two hours failing at being a master manipulator and thinking that you are tricking someone when they are clearly not buying it. That is how you kill a character before it is born.

So how do you do it? How do you fail so hard? Well, to start with, you look at the outcome of a character from their journey, then throw away the actual journey, leave the outcome and call it a day. Basically, they just got to the finish line without running the race. Planning takes effort, and if you do not plan anything, expect things to fall apart. Hey, let us go around saying "I'm your best friend and (random person you just mentioned) is evil and not your friend, so you should trust me and not them!" That will TOTALLY work for everyone you talk to. That will not backfire at all, I swear. No planning is good writing I SWEAR.

But in all seriousness, please have a plan. Layout your characters and their arc, make them developed. No one cares about a character who has no development.

Look at any of the dark edgy Mary Sues and tell me if they had anything planned to them beyond "being cool." The answer is no. Instead of writing a genuine character whose hardships people can understand and feel sorry for, we get a half added backstory, tons of whining if they're not the center of attention, death threats depending on the idiot writer, and then added on garbage to make the writing even worse. Let us have a backstory be "my sister said something mean to me," make the character a psychopathic murderer, then add pity parties when no one cares about them. Like saying "no one loves me," Well if it was not obvious, maybe it is because they are written to be haltable, on accident.

Only entitled little special snowflakes start shit them cry victim. I would know, I have dealt with a bunch of them.

The whole point is to look at the outcome and what came before. Motivation, effort on the character's part, and planning. Things can happen for no reason, but not everything that makes a character who they are. Why does anyone do anything? Real life people have goals, motivations, backstories, personalities and more, do not strip that from a character just because they are fictional. They have a life treat them like they are alive, and you will not run into bad writing. They are like extensions of real-life people, exaggerations if you will. So, to treat them like they can skip over every step that makes a person, a person, is simply wrong.

Do not write a character as a master manipulator but forget the planning and effort that goes behind manipulation. Do not write them as evil if they have no reason to be evil. Do not make the world bend over backwards for them or you will end up with a Mary Sue. Good writing exists, use it. You can even use yourself as a base then work from there. I do it all the time, and it is not that hard to take qualities from your life and write them into an interesting character.

Story:

Please for the love of everything have a plan. It does not take too much time to just think for a second and ask yourself if what you are doing is a good idea. Is it a good idea to go into a situation with no plan? No, it can work, if you are lucky, or have plot armor, but it can backfire. You do not have to be a mastermind to write a story, just plan it out a bit. Stories with no plan go everywhere but where it is supposed to, and that is not a good thing.

There needs to be a world set up and rules to any story, it is the baseline for future development. If you have no plan and are going with the flow, it might not end well. Especially if you do something like contradict yourself. Things should be consistent, and if they are not, give a reason as to why. Keep in mind who the players are in the story and write them to interact with the world around them. Each player has something to contribute, even if it is just to take up space in the background.

When writing with someone else, let us say as a collaboration, know a bit about their story before heading into the connected story. Say you want to manipulate their character but know absolutely no information, the manipulation will not work. Let us me say it again, it will NOT work. Writing a backstory for them and calling it their real backstory undermines all the work the other person has done for that character and it makes you look like an entitled little shit for writing their character the way only you want.

You must be considerate to what they are planning and work with them or around them. Telling them "objection!" To everything they say, even if it is canon to their story, is bad collaboration. You know nothing of what their story is when you ask no questions, so do not be a prick about it just because you must be right.

Solo stories are much easier to work with but somehow idiots still cannot do it. Instead of developing a world and characters they opt to jump right into the deep side of the pool with no floaty, and they do not know how to swim. They do not take time to develop anything and just expect things to go smoothly. It is like a ship, if you push it out into the water with nothing, it might as well be a plank of wood floating around. You need to prepare the ship before you leave so you can be prepared for anything and move forward, that is important.

You do not need a specific outline to what happens, a general outline works simply fine. If you have a plan you can pull it off. But remember, your plans and the characters plans are different things.

People tend to panic when there is no plan, in writing, characters can panic when there is no plan, but you cannot. A zombie apocalypse is not planned, in most stories anyways, and the characters will panic. You as the writer should not be panicking because you should know what happens next. If you are panicking because you do not know what to do next, take a break and look at the outline again. If you have no outline, good luck out their sailor. I am sure you will figure it out, you will just figure it out slower than people who already have the lifeboats out.

Conclusion:

Please put effort into your work. It really shows in the long run. You can look back on it and think, "at least I tried" instead of "I didn't try at all did I?" Because not trying is bad writing and no one likes bad writing. But for some reason all the idiots like their Mary Sues who are dark and edgy and had absolutely no effort put into them. It is all about the show, not the meaning behind it right? RIGHT?