The Double Fine Group Of Doubly Fine Writings

[Noname215]

I at least figured you would be aware of the line "Yo Adrian, I did it!" 

[Noname215]

You know what, you guys made me watch Galaxy Quest, so now Alcoremortis has to watch Rocky.

[𝙱 𝙾 𝙾 𝙺 𝙳 𝚄 𝚂 𝚃]

3 hours ago, Noname215 said:

You know what, you guys made me watch Galaxy Quest, so now Alcoremortis has to watch Rocky.

First of all, you're welcome!

Second, she said she would after NaNo.

[Noname215]

You guys by chance looking for a good female led horror film?

Diabolique and Inside.

[Noname215]

When I was in college my Literature professor went on a long rant about how she believed that genre was a crutch. What do you guys think?

[Alcoremortis]

Like in general? I feel like genre is more defined by the critics and marketing than the original creator, though.

[𝙱 𝙾 𝙾 𝙺 𝙳 𝚄 𝚂 𝚃]

I agree with Al and to a less extant your lit professor.

Genre is more useful for marketing a book than for writing one. It's useful for a writer to have a genre in mind for pitching their project to a publisher or what have you, or maybe to help narrow your options when setting out.

But an over adherence to genre convention can be a terrible thing. Just look at how overwrought Tolkienesque conventions are in the Fantasy genre. For decades those conventions were fantasy wholesale.

So the deal with genre for me is that it's a tool for focus, it isn't a off the shelf kit you use to build a whole story.

[Noname215]

I like mixing genres. Like a western and film noir, a chanbara mixed with science fiction and fantasy, science fiction and historical epic. That sort of thing.

[𝙱 𝙾 𝙾 𝙺 𝙳 𝚄 𝚂 𝚃]

I used to think that I liked to do the same thing, and then I realized that there's a point where that kind of thinking was limiting and now I accept embrace that I just create the settings and characters that I do, and tell the stories with them that I want. And the rest is just marketing

[Noname215]

I'm putting a bunch of my other stuff aside and working on an old manuscript I never finished to submit to this publisher. I'll probably be done around Christmas, maybe early 2018.

http://www.hardcasecrime.com/index.shtml

[𝙱 𝙾 𝙾 𝙺 𝙳 𝚄 𝚂 𝚃]

1200+ words into a new Outline for Soar, I'm prepping for NaNo.

[Alcoremortis]

I... am still trying to come up with a title. 

I need something that says "This will be 1920s pulp" and also something that says "Cthulhu might show up"

[𝙱 𝙾 𝙾 𝙺 𝙳 𝚄 𝚂 𝚃]

22 minutes ago, Alcoremortis said:

I... am still trying to come up with a title. 

I need something that says "This will be 1920s pulp" and also something that says "Cthulhu might show up"

An Unremembered Madness

[Alcoremortis]

53 minutes ago, Tiny Dust! said:

An Unremembered Madness

I might steal that or parts of that.

[𝙱 𝙾 𝙾 𝙺 𝙳 𝚄 𝚂 𝚃]

9 minutes ago, Alcoremortis said:

I might steal that or parts of that.

Happy to help.

[Noname215]

You guys ever try writing out a plot for a video game.

[Alcoremortis]

I once thought it'd be really cool to have an RTS based on the Redwall books, but other than that, no. Actually, I still think it'd be cool. 

But actually writing one, no. Writing games is hard, because if there isn't enough variation, the players will get bored.

[𝙱 𝙾 𝙾 𝙺 𝙳 𝚄 𝚂 𝚃]

Without being involved in the making of a game I don't see what the point of it would be.

[Noname215]

I did it twice. Both times I was paid. Unfortunately neither is likely to see the light of day.

[Noname215]

What's the longest thing you've ever written

[Alcoremortis]

Probably last NaNoWriMo at ~120 pages

[Noname215]

I wrote a draft of Under The Black Flag when I was a junior in high school. Came out to 423 pages. It was very sloppy and tonally inconsistent. I scrapped a bunch of it but kept certain pieces for future reference.

Also I wrote a 413 page written screenplay based on Lone Wolf And Cub. It wasn't much of a script so much as a damn manifesto, but in my head I pretty much just compiled a whole trilogy's worth of paper into one.

[Noname215]

So I went back and looked over that Lone Wolf script. This is the gist of it.

Ogami Ittō, formidable warrior and a master of the suiō-ryū swordsmanship, serves as the Kogi Kaishakunin (the Shōgun's executioner), a position of high power in the Tokugawa shogunate. Along with the oniwaban and the assassins, Ogami Ittō is responsible for enforcing the will of the Shogun over the daimyōs (lesser domain lords). For those samurai and lords ordered to commit seppuku, the Kogi Kaishakunin assists their deaths by decapitating them to relieve the agony of disembowelment; in this role, he is entitled and empowered to wear the crest of the Shogunate, in effect acting in place of the Shogun.

After Ogami Ittō's wife Azami gives birth to their son, Daigorō, Ogami Ittō returns to find her and all of their household brutally murdered, with only the newborn Daigorō surviving. The supposed culprits are three former retainers of an abolished clan, avenging the execution of their lord by Ogami Ittō. However, the entire matter was planned by Ura-Yagyū (Shadow Yagyu) Yagyū Retsudō, leader of the Ura-Yagyū clan, in order to seize Ogami's post as part of a masterplan to control the three key positions of power: the spy system, the official assassins and the Shogunate Decapitator. During the initial incursion, an ihai (funeral tablet) with the shogun's crest on it was placed inside the Ogami family shrine, signifying a supposed wish for the shogun's death. When the tablet is "discovered" during the murder investigation, its presence condemns Ittō as a traitor and thus he is forced to forfeit his post.

The one-year-old Daigorō is given a choice by his father: a ball or a sword. If Daigorō chose the ball, his father would kill him, sending Daigorō to be with his mother; however, the child crawls toward the sword and reaches for its hilt. This assigns him the path of a rōnin, wandering the country with his father, who vows to destroy the Yagyū clan to avenge Azami's death and Ittō's disgrace.

So the first movie is all about Ogami becoming a ronin, and how his son views these terrible acts of horrific violence with innocent eyes and how Ogami's furious bloodlust masks an agony he feels over his family's death. He wanders the countryside while on the run from a group of Yagyu assassins, culminating in a blood soaked showdown in a rice paddy. During the slaughter, one of the assassins, Retsudō's son, attempts to flee and Ogami throws his sword like a javelin, running through his back. Ogami then takes his head. He and Daigorō resume their journey, Retsudō receiving word of the failure of the assassins and the death of his son.

The second one takes place three years after the first and establishes how Ogami has become infamous and is now a sword for hire. 500 pieces of gold for the Shogun sword. The Kurokuwa ninja clan, two of Retsudō's other sons and his seductive daughter conspire to send him on a suicide mission. However, not only does Ogami survive, he faces down thirty of the Yagyu and Kurokawa in a forest at the foot of a burning Buddhist temple, killing Retsudō's daughter and one of the sons. Retsudō himself appears with his personal guards and goes head to head with Ogami, proving to be a formidable opponent in combat. In the middle of the fight, Retsudō is blinded in one eye, Ogami is severely wounded, and Daigorō is kidnapped. Retsudō leaves Ogami to bleed out but underestimates Ogami's will to live. Picking up his weapons and the cart he pushes Daigorō around in, he sets out to rescue his son.

The third opens with Ogami raiding a bathhouse owned by one of Retsudō's sons. He slaughters everyone inside, prying the location of Daigorō from a survivor and then disembowling him. Ogami finds his son beaten and chained, takes him in his arms and vanishes. Retsudō has become desperate, word coming down of his failure to handle the former Shogun executioner and the fact that he is running out of children. The final two are sent to defeat Ogami: Retsudō's final son and daughter, the son a deranged psychopath and the daughter a highly trained swordfight and assassin who has a habit of stripping down when she goes in for kills. Ogami faces the two down in a snowy mountain range, hunted like an animal but finally overtaking the son and sparing the daughter, who acknowledges that she can't defeat him. Ogami later takes his heavily damaged sword to be repaired (the swordsmith sabotages it, being the last of the secret servants of the Yagyu clan) and sneaks into Retsudō's room, telling him that his legacy is no more and his clan is no more. He will see him where the sun rises and the journey along the road to Hell shall finally be complete. The next day, Ogami and Retsudō meet on a beach and duel to the death. Ogami's sword breaks mid-duel and the two find themselves dead locked. Ultimately, Ogami succumbs to fatal wounds and finally dies after years of bloodshed and fatigue. Daigorō, distraught, picks up a spear. Retsudō holds out his arms and Daigorō runs him through. Retsudō hugs Daigorō, shedding tears and referring to him as 'grandson of my heart' before collapsing from his wound. Daigorō is left standing on that beach, beside the body of his father, holding a broken sword and looking to the red of the rising sun.

[Alcoremortis]

Okay, at the end of the day, I took none of the suggestions! I'm going with Empire of the Obsidian Sun because that's what my brain spat out and I liked it.

[Noname215]

How often while writing do you guys kill your babies

And before anyone talks about smothering a crying infant on an airplane, I'm talking about the act of doing away with characters, scenes, sentences and entire chapters you like for the sake of the story 

[𝙱 𝙾 𝙾 𝙺 𝙳 𝚄 𝚂 𝚃]

You mean Killing Your Darlings?

Often, mercilessly. I'm not sure I so much kill my darlings as I genocide them until I'm basically writing a completely different story.

[Alcoremortis]

Usually I get rid of them before I start writing or I set them aside for a potential sequel. Or I shuffle them off into another story.

Though, Killing Your Darlings would assume that I've actually ever made it to the editing phase.

[𝙱 𝙾 𝙾 𝙺 𝙳 𝚄 𝚂 𝚃]

2 minutes ago, Alcoremortis said:

Usually I get rid of them before I start writing or I set them aside for a potential sequel. Or I shuffle them off into another story.

Though, Killing Your Darlings would assume that I've actually ever made it to the editing phase.

Okay this might describe my experience better.

I never really stick to a plan for a story long enough to execute it so that I have extraneous material to cut. 

[Alcoremortis]

Hahahaha! 

Yep, gotta finish something first. I have high hopes for this new story though. It like has a plot and stuff. Not a super great plot, but fixing that is just engineering.

Really, one of the most inspiring things I've seen recently is "The History of Middle Earth", which my dad is reading. It's not actually like a fictional history, it is quite literally a complete step-by-step recreation of the steps Tolkien took to create Lord of the Rings. It's twelve volumes long.

Basically, he just started from the beginning and wrote until he ran out of steam and got bored with what he was writing... and then he'd start over from the beginning and change some things and try again. And slowly he started approaching the ending and kept on adding new characters and locations and various things until he ended up with the rich Lord of the Rings world we know and love. But the early drafts were terrible! Frodo was named Bingo and was Bilbo's son and there was no Sam, Merry, Pippin, or Aragorn. They barely made it to Tom Bombadil before Tolkien gave up and started again from the beginning. Hell he wrote a version that got all the way to Rohan without Aragorn and then he got stuck on what to do next. 

But yeah, it's kinda heartening to know that one of the classic worldbuilders struggled massively with plot and writer's block and still managed to completely define an entire genre of literature.

[Noname215]

The entire history of me writing Under The Black Flag has been tossing stuff out the window with draft after draft. I've done away with eight characters that I held very dear, ranging from a Don of the Spanish Armada to a cabin boy who loses his hand to a saltwater crocodile.