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Why I'm a Bad Writer


Delibirb

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I like telling stories. I have to physically hold myself back from spoiling things that excite me (which fortunately, I do a good job at). So when I started developing the world, characters, and events of my own superhero "franchise," I got super hyped to be able to share my own ideas with an audience that would be getting all the information, all the thrills and emotions, exactly as it was intended, because I was deciding the intention.

 

At first I was planning on comic books, perhaps the first natural medium of super powered beings and evil plots dwelling in an otherwise mundane world. As I became more serious about the people I was devising, the events I was dreaming, the world I was building, and furthermore, as I was getting closer to being ready to start my work, I realized something. I am great at writing, but I can't draw for sheet. And that's a bit of a problem for a comic book writer with no budget to hire an artist(s). So I decided to just make it a novel, the first successful superhero novel franchise.

 

Well at the moment I have the first and last chapters done. Right now though, I'm having trouble getting back into the writing mood, and it's because I realized something. The first chapter moves too quickly, it introduces the deus ex machina, the hero's power, his quest, far too early than any novel has any business doing. And that realization lead me further in thought and epiphany.

 

Novels are very different than comic books and movies. Not in what they can do narrative-wise, not in the time it takes to write them or the writing skills of their author. They are different because novels require complete and explicit spelling out of every action, every costume, every location, and every blink of a character's eye. Stories are driven by their imagery just as much as their dialogue, but in novels' case, it takes much longer and requires much more on the author and the audience's part to make use of it. Comics and movies can have their creators draw or shoot the movements of the characters and the locations they are set in, leaving the only thing the audience has to read into, the dialogue.

 

When I put my mind to it, I can write exceptionally enough, especially if everything is being built in my head at the rate I'm putting it down in the page. But I feel small and outmatched standing before the behemoth of a story that I have laid out before me. If I were to write and direct this as a series of movies with a budget and casting and sets, if I were to have an artist or artists draw these characters and sequences whilst I recite the dialogues and plot points, I could tackle this monster...

 

Recounting the tales of my characters as they fight for their ideals against minor and overarching criminals and villains, to my friends and family, motivates me to be able to bring these people to a wider audience, but with the resources I have, I just can't do it. Perhaps this is why so few superhero novels exist, they may truly not belong solely in type print.

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I totally get your pain 100%, down to making it with superheroes in mind.

 

Unfortunately, I really can't give you anything. Writing is tough, especially a novel. I've written 50+ pages for a superhero story and I still barely feel as though I've captured my characters or the events in enough detail. I've recounted the stories to my younger brothers and some friends and in my mind it's there, but it doesn't feel like the words on the page is ever enough. It's... tough.

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Do you read novels?

 

Novels have their own way of doing things.

I do yeah, and like I mentioned I can do well enough writing in a novel format, my current problem is that this time, I already have the bulk of the story, or in fact, stories, planned out, and the task of writing it all down as a novel series is not only daunting, but more mundane than it would be if I were making up the story as it went along.

 

I've written an outline for the first book but even that will be hard for me to do, because there's more to the story than that and I want to get to those parts, I want to expand and entertain because its the storytelling, the act of entertaining the audience, that is exciting to me, not the creation of it. I motivate myself, but when I sit down to write it, I'm caught in the shadow of this enormous beast looming over my brain, and I back away to look for help and guidance. But in novel form, I'm not going to get much.

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