What's your biggest struggle as a writer?

Based on self-assessment, I’m absolutely awful at comedy. It always gets way too serious and way too dark. (And yet I still try to come up with comedic games? I’ll never learn)

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Trying to write a serious scene. I am absolutely terrible at writing serious stuff because I either add a zany factor or just end up making it more bland than oats. It also probably doesn’t help that I write with no plan, but go with a weeks worth of thoughts compressed into a fluent idea.

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Oh god. I’m absolutely terrible at writing action scenes.It’s my weakness as a writer. I lack the imagination of writing a good fighting scene.

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Word choice… That’s maybe because of being non-native but i don’t seem to like my word choice. It’s either too literary or too slangy :expressionless: . Also opposed pairs are a headache for me. Like what’s the opposite of reckless! I can’t seem to come up with something solid with these kind of things…

Also being a perfectionist is one of the worst things when writing especially the first draft.

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Actually writing the thing. :laughing:

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This article has helped me getting the concept of action scenes, though i still avoid to write one.

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Seconding @leo on comedy. I tend to take myself and my characters too seriously and forget to let them be their dumbass selves

Also outlining and committing to a long-form story. Which I am currently doing as I’ve been outlining and planning my own game for the past week so that’s been, a struggle

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I’m a major perfectionist. That doesn’t just go for writing – it’s true for when I’m designing or painting. I have to have whatever I do be immediately perfect or lose motivation. It makes it extremely hard to write because if I find myself struggling with a scene, I want to stop, which is the worst thing I can do for me. It makes writing anything take forever as I have to have the perfect word choice, the perfect name, the perfect description. Rough drafts? Never heard of her.

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Titles. I am unbelievably bad at coming up with titles, and I feel like I can’t start writing something until it has a name. I’m also rather bad at planning and taking notes, which means that half my stories are plotted entirely in my head, and even when I do write them down they end up being frankly weird and nonsensical.

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I’m pretty good with comedy, serious stuff and whatnot but I’m not that great with actually doing the writing-- although I’m assigning this to both my mum and exams.

I think if I really wanted to I could finish the game over the summer, before A-levels but I kinda wanna enter a comp for the monies.

We’ll have to wait and see whether it’s exams or procrastination that’s holding me back, though!

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And when people talk about you having to turn off your internal editor, you just want to laugh, because that is so never gonna happen!

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Yes, exactly! It has no off-switch.

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Haha, actually writing is definitely the hardest for me.

When I’m writing just to write, a short scene or little blurb, it’s fun. It’s easy. I just picture the scene, the characters, and the words just form in my head.

When I’m actually writing for something, it turns into a puzzle. A long, grueling, tear-your-hair-out, puzzle. Creating every character from the moment of their birth, to all their little quirks, why they hold their beliefs and how much influence the main character can have, how you go about doing that through an evolving relationship, to the heartbreaks and happy times, to their internal wounds and current emotional struggles to how they are going to be brought into the plot in a way that allows for growth without trivializing their journey to how they show outwardly and then what they see over what others see. The plot itself, and how there will be just enough tension and twists and how those are established and hinted at, how to relay this amount of information at the right time to have build up without exposition, how this will reveal itself and work with the protagonist at the right time to realize this thing, how to sympathize each opposing force just enough to allow for this thing, etc. It’s so rewarding once it all comes together, all the little pieces forming something coherent and wonderful, but building all the little pieces into existence, cutting them up, shuffling them up, and throwing them onto the table to somehow get them to fit together when there’s no instruction manual is blah. I put so much into outlining it all and getting it nailed down that by the time it’s done, I get burned out before I actually start writing. But if I don’t, then I lose interest because it’s not what I want it to be and feel like I’m trying to build a house out of loose sand. :weary: The writer’s struggle.

For specifics, action is definitely something I can’t seem to get. You have to make it interesting without being ‘flashy pow pow.’ You have to use the environment as something material without really describing it or relying on it. You have to show physical emotion without telling it outright. It’s.so.hard.

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Like most comments here, actually writing is the hardest for me.

For the past two years, I haven’t wrote anything except little drabbles on anything that pops into my mind. I’m a procrastinator at heart, so when an idea or a little scene comes into my head, my usual thought goes straight to “I’m going to write that down later” and never actually do.

Rereading my stories are also hard. Literally, I hate editing my own stories because I’m like “Oh, obviously I should’ve done this instead of that.” and having someone else edit my stories is worse. Most of the times I feel like they don’t understand the idea that I have, and instead of telling me, they would just sorta change the whole story.

There is one thing I DO like about writing, though. I have a really vivid imagination. Like, I can just casually be scrolling through my phone, and BAM! Next thing you know i’m in the backseat of a car and I somehow need to escape. Cue the action scenes, please. So, whenever my vivid imagination comes into play, I start writing and writing until I run out of ideas or can’t seem to remember it all. :woman_facepalming:

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Torturing my characters. They all tend to have backstories involving childhood abuse, and other damages. Sometimes I just put them through hell for the sake of drama. And I always assume the most extreme. For example if a father just smacks around his daughter but is still only sexually active with his wife I assume he’s sexually abusing his daughter because he smacks her around. There are no half evils only full evils and the monsters I create can not be destroyed painfully enough imo. Anything less than breaking their mind spirit and body is unfulfilling.

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Funny thing: Five years ago I would have said my biggest struggle was writing dialog and romance. So I set out to write an epic 200 000 words fanfic incorporating those things, and it turns out that I’m actually not that bad at it. I just needed practice in a non-serious setting.

These days my biggest struggle is focus. I am getting better at it, but there’s still like five things I REALLY want to write. The only thing that’s keeping me on track is that I have two ongoing things I need to publish until done, so the rest will have to be on the backburner.

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Action scenes and romantic ones.
I can’t seem to wrap my head around those

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Beginnings. I’ve got 5 beginnings for 5 different stories at this point and I don’t like any of them. It is so frustrating, because I have the stories.

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History and continuity.

I’m not well-read enough to focus any of my work on time periods that actually happened, and I’m also hella lazy and can’t be assed to do any research on what I want to write about.

For continuity… yeah, I’m just shit at remembering what I did. XD It’s a miracle that I can put pen to paper at all. I’d need a journal to keep track of what I’ve done in a project of mine and even then that only helps me if I remember enough to go back and read the damn thing.

Writing… is hard.

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My biggest struggle is actually finding the time to sit down and actually seriously focus on writing,

I work a 7 1/2 hour shift at a hospital pharmacy Monday to Friday and then I come home and spend time with my wife and kids. Then on the weekends I’m looking after the kids while the wife works. Usually by the time I get to write I can be too tired to do it.

Its a vicious cycle but even still I love being a dad.

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