When writing, you know you are in trouble when...

[meg_evonne]

What fun to come back and feel the frustration from others. I had several sympathetic smiles and sighs as I re-read this.

this one in particular struck a horrid memory. 

When you have created and deep and beloved character that you really like but you can't find a reason why he is in this story.

I can't help you with guns, but with horses if you decide to use real 3d natural horse... let me at it. No sweat. Love to help.

You know you're in trouble when you plan on going to see HP and still reading JB books to finish up before the release.  *sigh*

[BobForPresident]

...you realize you've been writing part freaking THREE of a series instead of PART ONE.

Yeah. That happened to me. Ob. Noxious.

[meg_evonne]

...you realize you've been writing part freaking THREE of a series instead of PART ONE.

Yeah. That happened to me. Ob. Noxious.

ROFLMAO 

[BobForPresident]

ROFLMAO 

Yeah. Ha-ha-ha. Ho-hee-ha-ho.

[Bearracuda]

...when you have made a character that everyone absolutely despises and can't come up with a good way to kill them. This has happened to me. Twice.

ROFL omg I love it. xD  Just take a leaf out of Dresden's book.  Frozen turkeys coming out of the sky FTW.  Also, mutiny is an option.  Heck, you could probably go with what people do IRL.  Just have every character buy him ignore him until he goes away.  Or an even more common and realistic approach.  Everyone lets him hang around with them, but then the second he's gone they all spend hours bitching and moaning about how much they hate him.

... Hang on a second.  I think your character might be my roommate.

[Quantus]

You know you are in trouble when your narrative requires you to talk about guns or horses.  Because of all subjects, guns and horses are the ones where it is least possible ever to do enough research that an expert specialist will not find some technical error to argue with you over.

One of the best pieces of writing advice I have ever heard was that, if you really want to give a character a gun, whatever it is, describe it as "modified".  If it's a "modified" 1911 Colt, you have a getout clause for deciding it takes 72-round magazines if the story wants.  I kind of took this aboard when it came to horses as well, which is why in the four stories of mine that have characters being mounted for any length of time, in one of them they ride a form of diatryma (terror bird), in one of them the alien animal that serves as a steed is very much not a horse, in one of them the horses are virtual simulations, and in one of them the only horse to appear on-screen has at least a quarter demonic ancestry. Modified horses ftw.

The great thing about writing far-future space opera is how easy it is to avoid horses. (Also, unless like a number of published writers you have a peculiar hang-up with wanting to recreate Napoleonic battles in space, anything to do with sailing ships, which are a good candidate for a third subject on which it is impossible to do enough research.)  And in the central culture of the one I am writing now, they have spent sufficient of their history on spacecraft with hulls that using a fire-arm inside could easily puncture that there is a cultural revulsion at the very thought of projectile weapons as visceral and intense as any culture has ever had for any concept (think of the thing that revolts you most in the world of anything any human being has ever done, and that's how they feel about fire-arms); they use other weapons instead, which I can make up safe, in the knowledge that nobody's going to quibble with me on the precise technical details of antimatter-sparked hand-held fusion reactors based on personal experience.

(There are two incidental cultures that use firearms.  They have deep and bitter divisions over terminology, so that what one lot calls a magazine, the other calls a clip, and either side will argue their point endlessly. This stops me actually needing to remember which is which.)

This qualifies as one of the simplest and most useful pieces of writing advice i have ever heard.  Made me laugh a bit too   

[Frogge]

Pardon my intrusion, please, but would someone pleast tell me the meaning ot "FTW"?

Thank you!

[Quantus]

"For The Win"  ie. random internet speak.  Don't ask what ie. stands for, I have no idea 

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

"For The Win"  ie. random internet speak.  Don't ask what ie. stands for, I have no idea 

id est, Latin for "that is".

("Beware the ids that march.")

[meg_evonne]

You know you are in trouble when...

Your antagonist has ten times more depth and twenty times more 'want' then your two protagonists combined. ARGHHH! 

ok  took workshop from u of i.  Willing to acknowledge that this male villain, at instructor's suggestion, might be the main character in a tragedy rather than my female protagonist. Disappointing, probably not marketable, but she is right. He's
simply too intriguing, too complicated, and too challenging to not write.  That's the writer's life.


[/quote]

[newtinmpls]

Oh, guilty as charged:

You know you are in trouble when your narrative requires you to talk about guns or horses.  Because of all subjects, guns and horses are the ones where it is least possible ever to do enough research that an expert specialist will not find some technical error to argue with you over.

Yes, I use a Glock, and some writer of fantasy had a character mention that "the safety was on" on MC's Glock. For god's sakes the only safety a Glock has is the built in one in the trigger. You can't "turn it on" or off for that matter. I spent an enjoyable 10 min of mockery over that. Lost a lot of respect for the author.

[Quantus]

Oh, guilty as charged:

You know you are in trouble when your narrative requires you to talk about guns or horses.  Because of all subjects, guns and horses are the ones where it is least possible ever to do enough research that an expert specialist will not find some technical error to argue with you over.

Yes, I use a Glock, and some writer of fantasy had a character mention that "the safety was on" on MC's Glock. For god's sakes the only safety a Glock has is the built in one in the trigger. You can't "turn it on" or off for that matter. I spent an enjoyable 10 min of mockery over that. Lost a lot of respect for the author.

fwiw in 2003 they added an optional manually activated safety lock in the grip, if you want to interpret it that way.  But even that option doesnt really work for the typical "oops the safety" trope, as it intentionally has a protrusion on the grip when activated so that you can feel that it is engaged.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

fwiw in 2003 they added an optional manually activated safety lock in the grip, if you want to interpret it that way.  But even that option doesnt really work for the typical "oops the safety" trope, as it intentionally has a protrusion on the grip when activated so that you can feel that it is engaged.

It's very cheering to watch my point being proved before my very eyes.

[Quantus]

It's very cheering to watch my point being proved before my very eyes.

I try 

[Compass Rose]

Two from my own experience: 1) Finished story, off to beta readers. They all want me to write one particular scene - which I am finding very difficult to write. Could be worse, if I had no interest in writing said scene - meeting of two main characters, which at the moment happens off-page...).  2) when you're writing a scene, or worse yet, whole story, and realizing YOU are getting bored...time for a major re-write!

As Kathrine Rusch writes in one of her recent blogs, writers need to be storytellers first. If your story is boring, no one will read it beyond a few pages, no matter how finely crafted the words on the paper are... (admittedly, I stop reading even interesting stories if the spelling, grammar, etc. Is really very bad, but if the technical aspect of the writing is average, I'll put up with a certain amount of errors if the story keeps me interested.)