![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/2iBRBWD:
thebyrchentwigges:
bethagain:
Does anyone else have trouble coming up with action/adventure plots?
I was watching Star Wars Rebels yesterday and thinking, gee, I bet it would be really fun to write for this show.
And then I thought… I don’t think I could ever come up with the action part of each episode. If someone handed it to me, like a little outline, I have no doubt I could flesh it out into a full story. But I struggle to come up with that kind of stuff from scratch.
I don’t know why I’m posting about this, tbh, except that I guess I’m hoping folks will either say YES! TOTALLY EMPATHIZE! COMING UP WITH ADVENTURES IS HARD! or maybe someone will have a suggestion on how to break through this block?
Because I do love good adventure stories. And I think it would be such fun to write some.
Confession: sometimes I base the action part of a plot on something I think would be…cool. An intriguing conflict, or an action sequence. And I have a sound metric for whether I have the inspiration to carry through on it: if I want to describe it in all caps.
AN OLD GUY FIGHTING A DRAGON WITH THE POWER OF LINGUISTICS…A CAR THAT HAS AN AIRCRAFT ENGINE IN A RACE TO THE DEATH…THEY HAVE TO SLICE A MOON IN HALF, FOR SCIENCE…
I get mentally shouty about any fight scene with unusual weapons.
I probably shouldn’t lay my id bare like this but the vast majority of my action plots come from me brainstorming ways to get the emotional beats I want. I have a thing about tormenting characters, and so I often will imagine the scene, of Our Noble Heroine, keeping her voice strong on the mic, not letting anyone realize that she knows she’s taking near-fatal damage from… something… while the others escape… and then she lingers near-death until Character B can Suddenly Realize! and Save Her! And lovingly Nurse Her Back To Health So They Can Realize Their Mutual Feelings! So ok I need something that will slowly and silently cause damage that can be handwavily-believably recovered from in not too long a time, given the tech of this world. Hmmmmm could I use… radiation? or something I invent of whole-cloth in-universe but that sounds suspiciously like work, no good. How about a, ooh, a cave-in and the air is running out and she’s been injured but is hiding it because there’s no point in worrying character B YES PAYDIRT.
And then you stretch out the complications for another few thousand words, then you tack on the plot where Character B has a turn being Nobly Heroic, hmm, maybe that should be emotional torture, yes hmmm, what doesn’t break anyone’s characterization?
It’s literally like that. I don’t have any blinding flashes of insight. But I like there to be plot so my characters have something to whine about, and it turns out I tend to write really plotty things.
Very occasionally I do get a mental image, like, how badass would it be to give Character A a really huge fuckoff gun and let her shoot every single bad guy. That would be so badass. I’m’a make that happen. but it’s usually in service to the emotional drama.
I know let’s give her a secret baby too. EVEN BETTER. PREGNANT LADY WITH HUGE FUCKOFF GUN.
I have never written that scenario and now I actually have to. Thanks for that.
thebyrchentwigges:
bethagain:
Does anyone else have trouble coming up with action/adventure plots?
I was watching Star Wars Rebels yesterday and thinking, gee, I bet it would be really fun to write for this show.
And then I thought… I don’t think I could ever come up with the action part of each episode. If someone handed it to me, like a little outline, I have no doubt I could flesh it out into a full story. But I struggle to come up with that kind of stuff from scratch.
I don’t know why I’m posting about this, tbh, except that I guess I’m hoping folks will either say YES! TOTALLY EMPATHIZE! COMING UP WITH ADVENTURES IS HARD! or maybe someone will have a suggestion on how to break through this block?
Because I do love good adventure stories. And I think it would be such fun to write some.
Confession: sometimes I base the action part of a plot on something I think would be…cool. An intriguing conflict, or an action sequence. And I have a sound metric for whether I have the inspiration to carry through on it: if I want to describe it in all caps.
AN OLD GUY FIGHTING A DRAGON WITH THE POWER OF LINGUISTICS…A CAR THAT HAS AN AIRCRAFT ENGINE IN A RACE TO THE DEATH…THEY HAVE TO SLICE A MOON IN HALF, FOR SCIENCE…
I get mentally shouty about any fight scene with unusual weapons.
I probably shouldn’t lay my id bare like this but the vast majority of my action plots come from me brainstorming ways to get the emotional beats I want. I have a thing about tormenting characters, and so I often will imagine the scene, of Our Noble Heroine, keeping her voice strong on the mic, not letting anyone realize that she knows she’s taking near-fatal damage from… something… while the others escape… and then she lingers near-death until Character B can Suddenly Realize! and Save Her! And lovingly Nurse Her Back To Health So They Can Realize Their Mutual Feelings! So ok I need something that will slowly and silently cause damage that can be handwavily-believably recovered from in not too long a time, given the tech of this world. Hmmmmm could I use… radiation? or something I invent of whole-cloth in-universe but that sounds suspiciously like work, no good. How about a, ooh, a cave-in and the air is running out and she’s been injured but is hiding it because there’s no point in worrying character B YES PAYDIRT.
And then you stretch out the complications for another few thousand words, then you tack on the plot where Character B has a turn being Nobly Heroic, hmm, maybe that should be emotional torture, yes hmmm, what doesn’t break anyone’s characterization?
It’s literally like that. I don’t have any blinding flashes of insight. But I like there to be plot so my characters have something to whine about, and it turns out I tend to write really plotty things.
Very occasionally I do get a mental image, like, how badass would it be to give Character A a really huge fuckoff gun and let her shoot every single bad guy. That would be so badass. I’m’a make that happen. but it’s usually in service to the emotional drama.
I know let’s give her a secret baby too. EVEN BETTER. PREGNANT LADY WITH HUGE FUCKOFF GUN.
I have never written that scenario and now I actually have to. Thanks for that.
