WRITING SURVIVAL!!!

[Suuper-san]

nice story as always! I'm utterly devoid of writing inspiration. Gotta get me some experience :P

That's basically it. It's the blood of pulp. Its the essence of all mass production quantity over quality writing in all its beauty. It's the fever swamp of idea generation that turns the idealistic dreamer into a typewriter warrior. And maybe, just maybe after smashing enough concepts together they come up with a gem. And if not a gem, then they have enough discipline to roll with any idea to create a finished product. Yes, a polished turd may still be a turd, but what of a polished pebble? What of a well moulded piece of clay? It may not be as great as a sculpture, but it is something.

That started off as a genius inspirational quote, but slowly got weirder lol. I will try mixing concepts myself sometime :P

2. The ideas are coming in great, but my narration has no flow. I wish I know what stick figures were for stories, because then I'd have a structure. As things are I can scribble story ideas well, but I have no idea how to draw a head and a body, how to sequentially progress from A to B.

I literally asked this exact same question lol
http://forums.mangaraiders.com/index.php/topic,19670.msg302857.html#msg302857

That's pretty much the same problem I have had.
Let me know if you hit on a proper sketchy writing style as that's what I think I need.
Getting my writing and my art to work together, independently, or sequentially (i.e. one inspires the other) is something that's still completely new.
That's what this page was all about:

Being able to separate different genres or levels of work is good at working out how to progress one to the other. It's a lot easier with art.
Like how do you thumbnail sketch a story, but with words XD

Talking of flowcharts and planning this might be useful https://www.draw.io/
Just found it.
I might try and redraw my entire WIP flow. I'm sure that writing can be separated into levels of WIP and then processed into higher levels until it's a manga or a novel.

[legomaestro]

Man my mind absolutely doesn't work like that. I tried to make a flow chart right now and lost at the second level. I'd scan it but it'd be too embarrassing. Haha you definitely think like a programmer dude.

And oh yeah! You did ask that back then. I think I have an idea, but I'll have to see what the next two days bring in order to be sure about my prognosis.

And yes my rant totally started off OK but sort of mutated at the end there XD



Day 2

Prompt: Alien Viking

I was once called Gabriel Fourty-Fourty-Four, but now I am Ulfur Bloodrock, The Axe of God, Champion, father of twenty, husband of many.

I spend my days providing for my family. I hunt with bow and string, I chop wood, I go to the village meetings, I spend times teaching my boys to be men and show them the gods they need to respect, and the ones they shouldnt'.

I spend most of my days going out to war. My wife loves me, I know. It's a simple love, but greater than all I've ever known.

I am a great warrior. I have murdered many a man. I have killed many, I have bested many. I have ached and hungered, and I've been lost at sea. Thunder once almost took my life. A tick attempted another time.

I live in blood and dirt, blood and *censored*, in soil and field, in mountain and forest, and under a grand indifferent sky.
But I am Gabriel 40-44. Extraterrestial Giga-Intelligence. One Who Once Lived Outside. I've lived in infinite space and I am immortal. Word and script itself is primitive to me. I live in the spaces between spaces. I experience time in all its facets, and I can experience more riches in the universe than any self-respecting highly advanced race could ever experience.

But despite all of that. Despite my power to obliterate planets on a whim. Despite my opportunity to travel through time and experience one of the first moments of creation, my life was hollow. None of that brought me anything.

So I fell to this galaxy. This planet, this rock.
 To a time before computers or steam trains, to this dust- To this meaninglessness...

Because heaven had nothing for me to offer...

...and I've never been happier in my life.

[Coach Fro]

Lego on a writing spree is what I live for.

I gotta go back reread what you wrote so far, but at a glance you're concepts are definitely interesting. Are these actual starts to projects you plan on finishing later down the line? If so, you literally have at least a thousand story concepts to work with already knowing your brain lol.

[legomaestro]

Haha thanks Fro. Muchly appreciated brotherman.

And no ignore the posts hahaha. I'm really just aiming at keeping the streak going for a week, then a month, and then I'll think about completion. Like I said my main goal is being productive on projects I've left for far too long. And yeah I have way too many concepts and they will never stop coming. Now I've got to learn to complete them.


Day 3

Prompt: Fish Cop


Detective Laguna walked down the boulevard with his thumbs in his belt, proudly portraying his DCPD badge to the denizens of Demon City. He was a Hammerhead Huma, so he looked quite intimidating. Other demons looked away or avoided him. The humans in particular looked at him with distaste and mistrust. The Department had a bad reputation.

A ball bounced across the highway, and a human child ran out to it. Detective Laguna sprung into action - he swooped in, dived and collected both ball and human before it was run over by a motorbike.

"Are you okay!?" Laguna asked the crying child.

Looking at his face and his wide teeth, it cried even more.

"There there..." Laguna was aware of the crowd gathering. A lot of humans mixed amongst the demons.

"You should always look where you're going, kid." Laguna reached into his pocket, and he could feel the air tense. His sensitivity to electrical bio-signals made him acutely aware of how scared and angry the humans were, and how expectant the demon onlookers were for a nasty scene.

Laguna brought out a badge. A star badge he'd bought for his son back home, but he could always get another one.

"If you promise to play it safe and always keep a look out, you could end up being a good sheriff. Or something. " It had sounded cooler in Laguna's head.

The child looked at the bronze demon badge and sniffed.

"Take it." Laguna pressed it into the kids hands and stood up. He nodded at everyone and forced himself not to smile,

"Have a nice day, folks."

He saluted instead, and continued his patrol.

He smiled to himself when he sensed everyone calming down. Mission accomplished. Kid saved. Just another day.

His stomach growled. He was hungry.

It was a shame the whole city was vegetarian, but it was a sacrifice worth the relative peace.

[Suuper-san]

awesome idea. kinda fits in with Zootropolis I feel.

and yes I think it's easy enough to have ideas but to polish them up is the battle. all the while having more ideas while you're working on a different one is a pain in the neck.

[legomaestro]

Day 4

Writing this paragraph on a whim on a prompt

Time Thief

He was a thief of time that went stealing peoples' lifespan. Other nefarous time thieves stole lifeforce, but he stole the moments that nobody missed, the moments peoples' thoughts wandered or daydreamed he siphoned off and collected in his infinite time battery. He was a thief of unnoticed moments, of seconds spent waiting for things to happen. Procrastinators were his favourite victims. None of them even knew what they'd lost, and he powered his dimension hopping time hopping space ship with them. A thief that no one was on the lookout for.

[legomaestro]

The fact that I can't maintain a 7 day streak is all that I need to know about why I'm not finishing my writing projects. I'm at a different level with my writing output than my art right now. I've drawn even on really bad days, but writing goes off the table the moment I slack. Until I get this under control I'm going to really put a pause on finishing projects.

Going to try to find some regimen for writing in general. Just need to figure out stick figures for writing.

Ah I've got one. 1,000 synopses out of two word prompts.

Going for it.


For now, Day 1

Nuclear Lion

The Mech used the latest in Israeli biomesh technology. It was the closest composite metal that could emulate biological muscular structures, and so its movement speed was increased. The Americans' Self-healing nanites were still the ideal in terms of durability and flexibility, but being non-American allowed the African meta-state of New Zambia some amount of pride in their technology.

The Nuclear Lion looked nothing like a lion. It's bulky nearly unsavoury exposed look was like that of an anatomical drawing of a human body. For reasons of stealth and to avoid hindering the photosensitive cells that lined its entire surface it had a dark green coat. To compromise, the pilot, Samson Guerilla wore a bright orange pilot jump suit. Like many of the other star pilots on the international field he was somewhat of a public state secret. The Mech itself was top secret, but the pilot was the proud face of propaganda.

In this day and age, if your image was bad, then you were bad. Every country was vying to be as populist and nationalistic as possible, and in the midst of it, The Mechs' Arm race was in full swing.

No major skirmishes had yet been done other than the singular terrorist attack in London that left 20 people dead. The Country responsible for that had promptly been invaded and occupied by a joint collaboration between Russian and English mech strike teams.

The world was very much in flux, an Samson didn't feel ready at all to be the face of his country.

 Especially because he was no patriot.

[legomaestro]

Day 2

Time Woman


"It was the super hero, Time Woman! "

She wrote fan fiction of herself. She looked forward to learning how to draw.

She looked outside at Coal-City, the most peaceful metropolis in the world. She smiled to herself and kept on reading her fan fiction. She found a typo and corrected it. She wrote more stories. In this adventure, she was battling the demon Evos. With a flaming blade, he attempted to destroy the city and Time Woman sprung into action, rewinding time at specific points to stop people being crushed from debris. Mending burnt humans with lost limbs in instant-rewinds.

The story used to be true for her. In her time as a super hero she used to only be able to rewind isolated incidents of time.

As she became stronger and more powerful, she became able to rewind any incident - indeed any evil person - into non-existence.

She hadn't had a fun battle in a while. So she wrote fan fiction that imagined such battles.




---

totally turned into a OPM situation haha

[legomaestro]

Day 3


Systematic Gamer

He started with a laptop that could barely port into the Nu-Universe VMMO. It was only thanks to the technology on the servers that he was allowed to act at all. He was strictly banned from PVP and other high level events, and was only given a blocky avatar to navigate the massive lush landscape - or at least what should've been a massive lush landscape. His laptop was forced to render everything in an over head view with barely any 3d features.

 Yoshi was poor. He was used to having sub-par items, but he'd been searching for a job the last 2 years and it seems the best he could find was picking up trash in the Mid-City and turning it in for recycling.

 Even after a long 9 hour day he still had at least 5 hours of free time. Usually free time meant socializing with friends, but with his particular economic situation that usually meant drugs and alcohol. He'd learnt his lesson vicarously through the abandonment of his father and the death of five of his brothers. His last sister was a prostitute somewhere, and he'd last heard of her six months ago. His mother was, as much as he loved her, a depressed potato that only responded to requests to eat and occassionally take a bath.

No, real life had failed him. He'd become a gamer. Besides, in this day and age if you didn't have a VMMO account on Nu-Universe you pretty much didn't exist. Job interviews asked about what your virtual persona life was like.

So becoming a gamer wasn't really much of a choice.

He decided to pick up a warrior class. A swordsman. He made himself white and blue and called himself, 'Knightdude'.

And thus his story begun.

The legendary story of a mediocre knight begun.

He would not change the world or even become the best, but he would be remembered by thousands.

Little did he know

[legomaestro]

Day 4

Systematic Gamer II

The world was much more exciting than he could ever imagine. He'd never had so much fun fighting slimes in his life.

Once upon a time he'd gotten his hands on a very old retro gameset and played through an RPG. He'd found it interesting, but not all too time consuming.

This time though, sitting on a dirty map with only darkness, the quiet breathing of his sleeping mother and the sound of the fan he felt immersed in this universe.

Smiling to himself, he used public chat a lot, greeting all the other characters on the road. Many swore at him, but he'd heard worse.

Fighting the slimes was good easy fun. At first they could hurt him, but over time it just became a matter of mechanically farming them.

With his low specs and desire to kill time rather than progress quickly, he found himself happily spending his days fighting only slimes.

[Coryn]

These two word prompts really seem to be working for you Lego! The alien Viking was my favorite out of this last bunch.

[legomaestro]

Thank you Coryn! I enjoyed writing it too haha

Day 5

Mathematical Snail

The girl and the boy stood in front of a gigantic snail. Sunlight poked through the cavern and cast all of them in spotlights.

"I mean, I should've expected this, him being called The Great Slug and all."

Kormack had her hands in her trenchcoat. Samuel was besides himself with laughter.

"I don't think laughings' a good idea." Kormach said.

"It's... Fine." Said the gigantic snail. Its eyes glowed. Large circles of glass floated in front of each of its eyes. It was apparently wearing glasses.

"We heard you could give us the exact coordinates to the planet called Earth."

"I could... Indeed... I haven't heard of that world in a long while."

Kormack nodded, "Yeah."

They'd tried everything: Breaking into secret facilities and stealing map-data. Stealing the best artificial intelligences. This latest lead came from a tarot-card reader that happened to know a rumour of a god-like being that lived in a backwater planet. And now here they were, talking to a giant snail.

"You do know this requires payment of at least one soul?"

Samuel stopped laughing, "Soul?"

Kormack sighed, "I heard you would do that so..." She brought out a salt-shaker, "How about we renegotiate?"

The Great Slug immediately gave the coordinates.

[legomaestro]

Day 6

I'm not satisfied with the excecution but I love the idea that it spawned. Was fun to think about it.


Death Water

The alarms had stopped blaring minutes ago. They only flashed red now. It was no use: All the security guards, indeed all living beings in a 50 kilometre radius were dead and gone. Standing in a circle of dead bodies, the girl in black sheathed her starsteel katana and looked hungrily about,

"Where is it !!" She screamed. She'd massacre the whole planet if she had to. She'd done it before. She would do it again.

And she didn't have much time before the other immortals came along.

Her communicator beeped. Her mothership, cruising in orbit, had finished the scan.

"There's no cosmic substance detected here or anywhere within the planets' networks. Chances of Death Water being hidden are at 1.4 %"

Katja screamed. It was amazing after all these millenia, she could still be dissapointed.

But she wouldn't give up hope on finding her quarry.

"Immortals Sam and Terriusius have just warped into the quadrant. Engage?"

"No, dammit. We're getting out of here. I don't want to have to get a new ship."

"Understood."

Her ship teleported her on board, and they left the quadrant before the Megaship of Samson Black and the pirate fleet of Terrisius The Vampire could home in on her position. It seemed they were chasing the same leads.

Everyone was.

Every immortal, without exception came from Earth 15 Billion Years ago.

1 million immortals were crossing galaxies in search of the one thing that could frame their existence in the frame of life-and death.

The one thing that could cure their eternity.

Death water.

[legomaestro]

Day 7

I am a train, a happy train named Thom. I have a passenger today. It's been 500 years. So long.

I greet him. He's a tired old man with a sword. He looks startled when I speak. He looks up at me. He says something. It's an old tongue. I pore through my archives.  I adopt the appropriate language.

The old man asks if I have food or water. I say there are unperisheable supplies in my other wagon, but I'm not sure if they were graded for 500 years wait. He says he'll try his luck.

I ask him where he's going. He says he doesn't know. He said he hopes to find a city of some kind. One where the robots aren't mad and the mutants can be reliably kept out. I wish him luck on his journey. I carry him to his destination. I wish him a nice trip.

[Coryn]

The death water story is real cool! I think most of us might be tired of life after 15 billion years, no matter how much you happen to enjoy being alive.