The Blue City

Writing is hard: Rant?

Most of you are writers, so this will come as no big shocker, but writing is hard. And by writing I mean more in the direction of storytelling. 

I actually sit here all day at my work desk without much else to think about because my job isn't the most thrilling and so I sit there and think of tales in my mind. I think of tales of Oblivia, Hoenn, and Sinnoh. There's so much going on my mind every day, but I just can't seem to piece anything together in a legible story. 

It's actually like a murder mystery. I have a subject, a time, and a place. But I don't have a smoking gun or motive to commit the crime. 

I've run through so many genres too. There's a lot of sci-fi, but then there's drama, and action, and romance. And like I seem to be having the same couple issues -- outlining problems. I keep hitting this wall when I think about conflict. It's like either I can't find an antagonist or when I think about the conflict it's really hard to place my character in it. 

So then I think to ideas that I've had which would be easier to write. Like the drama series on gym leaders I wanted to do once upon a time. I can write about Candice being a badass who chops wood and scales 500 ft walls of solid unweathered sheets of ice and gets yelled at by the coldest ice-"master" in the entire mastership program while trying to survive on her own. I can write about a Maylene who has to find discipline for herself after being lost in Johto. Heck, I could even write about Skyla going and being an astronaut for Hoenn and having to endure prejudice because she's the only one who can pilot a spacecraft.

I could write all the stories about Oblivia I've dreamed up. There's also Shift which I finally  mentally made some developments in, but not enough to piece anything significant together. I have a retelling of King Thrushbeard which also promises to be a beautiful story, but it's a retelling of a fairytale so I have to adapt certain aspects to the Pokemon world and make it more 3D than it's fairy tale counterpart so that you really see transformation of the character through the story.

There's a plot for a story where a scientist and a chef come up with food supercharged with berry extract that can make the eater feel happy, angry, sad, in love, etc. and like how they become successful in their ventures... 

I even had a short story about an inventor that I almost finished. But then I decided I didn't like the ending and it threw off the whole concept and I'm back to the drawing board, trying to figure out how I should handle it. 

It all seems to fall apart in planning, which is really rough. I suppose the first obvious solution would be to just start writing and not plan. I've also done that one. The problem is, I get to the second chapter and my mind starts working in the complex manner that it does and I try to piece together where things are going and I just can't. 

The strings just aren't tying together. I don't think it means that the stories aren't meant to be told, but I feel like I'm missing some level of something in my plots. Do I need to read more fanfiction? Watch more movies? Do more research on writing and tropes? Can I just go back to the point where I could fully enjoy silence of the lambs? I dunno. It's like there's an answer there but I just can't see it. 

I also kinda blame the recent influx of bad storytelling I've been receiving. I recently played Far Cry: New Dawn and Quantum Break. The former was absolute trash except for one scene that made me feel a smidgeon of sympathy towards one of the antagonists. But nothing else in that game was compelling and made me make want to make choices or enjoy it. It was so bad that I thought about putting the game down like 5 times from straight boredom. (This is in comparison to its prequel, Far Cry 5 which was enjoyable and dragged me in enough to make me feel compelled and interested in that world) 

Of course, the latter was only somewhat bad. There were some relationships in the game that touched me deeply even though I couldn't understand them, but the storytelling mechanics were so bad. Like, it was an interesting story, but they handled in a way that kinda made me just sick at the end. They had these weird junction things where you picked directions as the antagonist, and in a game that just seems...odd?

I mean, I learned a valuable lesson, but I need to exposed to good writing. And by good writing I mean great writing. Like above the level that most people think is good -- Marvel, assorted netflix shows, etc. I need something like The Usual Suspects, Westworld (a HBO show which in its first season was much, much better than GoT which is good but not great), The Natural, The Pelican Brief/assorted John Grisham works, or The Princess Bride. 

I feel like I'm writing the same thing over and over again and I need to just stop. Like I need something new. I mean, obviously I'm not short on ideas, but there's an error somewhere in the math and I just can't write. It's incredibly frustrating to just write words on a page and not know where you're going. Plus, every time I do I put in extensive hours of research into the games. I mean, I've replayed certain games before and watched videos of their DLC and such. I read bulbapedia and analyze a mixture of the character's speech and things others say about the characters. 

It's a lot. I recognize that this part of my own writing process. I'll start like 10-100 many ideas and only finish one before the next cycle. I'm convinced that I have enough ideas and I just need to adjust my storytelling mechanics to write something worthwhile. The last two books I've written were from my extensive depository of ideas where I've taken the concept and decided to use it in a different way than already planned. 

I don't know guys. What sounds interesting? What do you think I should pursue? Are there any ideas about any of my own? Like I want to get out hiatus and talk to you guys but I have to figure out what to write. Writing is what anchors me to this community, you know? But writing is hard XD. 

Tell me what y'all think. 

Thanks,

Blue