General Writing Advice 4 How 2 Write Anything/Anyone

[SuperPulp2789]

Just a thread for advice on how to write well, anything

Though I do got a question

How do write multiple protagonists at the same time? Or have a team be the protagonists instead of just one guy?

 

[Biigoh]

Just a thread for advice on how to write well, anything

Though I do got a question

How do write multiple protagonists at the same time? Or have a team be the protagonists instead of just one guy?

Click to shrink...

Best recommendation is to get other people to do their perspectives. As it lends a different 'voice' or way of speak.

Basically, speaking is the tricky part.

 

[BronzePlaceWriter]

Just a thread for advice on how to write well, anything

Though I do got a question

How do write multiple protagonists at the same time? Or have a team be the protagonists instead of just one guy?

Click to shrink...

The same way you'd write one protagonist but several times. Make sure their personalities are different and they have different and specific goals they each want to accomplish. Give each of them their own time in the light because if you don't, it just becomes ''Main Character and Friends''. Preferably, give each of them a major arc and develop them as the story goes even during someone else's arc.

For having the team be the protagonist, I would recommend ''The Chronicles of the Raven'' which is a series of fantasy books based around a team of mercenaries. Very well written, but one of the defining elements is that it's about the team, not any singular member. Indeed, it's not shy about killing off well established characters who would be protected in other works. This isn't treated lightly, but happens enough that you're never sure just who will actually live in a fight.

By the end of the series, I am pretty sure nearly all the original characters are dead or retired, but the team is still the team.

The Raven is also a good place to learn how to write characters that genuinely like each other, male characters that are bonded as close as family, and how to generally write elite groups or teams who know they're good and seem arrogant about it while also depicting the sheer work and effort that goes under the surface when you have to maintain that rep.

 

[SuperPulp2789]

The same way you'd write one protagonist but several times. Make sure their personalities are different and they have different and specific goals they each want to accomplish. Give each of them their own time in the light because if you don't, it just becomes ''Main Character and Friends''. Preferably, give each of them a major arc and develop them as the story goes even during someone else's arc.

For having the team be the protagonist, I would recommend ''The Chronicles of the Raven'' which is a series of fantasy books based around a team of mercenaries. Very well written, but one of the defining elements is that it's about the team, not any singular member. Indeed, it's not shy about killing off well established characters who would be protected in other works. This isn't treated lightly, but happens enough that you're never sure just who will actually live in a fight.

By the end of the series, I am pretty sure nearly all the original characters are dead or retired, but the team is still the team.

The Raven is also a good place to learn how to write characters that genuinely like each other, male characters that are bonded as close as family, and how to generally write elite groups or teams who know they're good and seem arrogant about it while also depicting the sheer work and effort that goes under the surface when you have to maintain that rep.

Click to shrink...

This fic is doing what I am sort of aiming for

Goddesses and Guardians - Blue_Jello_Mello - 니케: 승리의 여신 | Goddess of Victory: Nikke (Video Game) [Archive of Our Own]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

archiveofourown.org

I can tell who's who

But I am pretty sure it's clearly not 1st Person Perspective

The writer said "I don't want to write four protagonists at once" which was why he ended up having the Guardians be the Commander, but now he technically has six protagonists because the Ghosts always accompany their Guardians

Like writing a NIER Automata fic, but gotta remember that the Androids have their Pods following them

 

[Evillevi]

Just a thread for advice on how to write well, anything

Though I do got a question

How do write multiple protagonists at the same time? Or have a team be the protagonists instead of just one guy?

Click to shrink...

Smart Structure and lots of hard work.

There's no one fix method to do it IIRC, but the issue with doing it well is that it legitimately requires that you are smart about the events occuring.

Take Hunter x Hunter. It currently has 3 protagonist, 2 antagonist and 2 Anti-Hero going on simultaneously with different plots and events surrounding them. And in this case to make it work Togashi made all of the plot revolve around 1 singular keystone event. He then shows what each person is doing at a particular moment in time where relevant.

 

[SuperPulp2789]

How do you guys make a fight scene with different weight classes, with the smaller guy or even lady, winning against the way bigger and muscular dude?

Specifically unarmed combat, no CHI/KI

 

[BronzePlaceWriter]

How do you guys make a fight scene with different weight classes, with the smaller guy or even lady, winning against the way bigger and muscular dude?

Specifically unarmed combat, no CHI/KI

Click to shrink...

How realistic are you looking for?

 

[SuperPulp2789]

How realistic are you looking for?

Click to shrink...

Think somewhere between Karate Shokushou Minoru and Kengan Asura/Omega

Oh wait, there's already too much obvious lifelong injuries there that should have crippled them all

TBH, I don't really watch actual fights like MMA, so I don't see much of the effect of a lower weight class hitting someone of a larger one


I am thinking, just enough "realistic" so that physique is still a factor in the fight for increased damage to give and receive

 

[BronzePlaceWriter]

I am thinking, just enough "realistic" so that physique is still a factor in the fight for increased damage to give and receive

Click to shrink...

Then plan the fight scene around that. ask yourself how a smaller fighter make get an advantage over a larger one. Don't make it too easy, have them struggle. Explicitly bring up how a smaller fighter is at a disadvantage. use it as a point of tension. Have your smaller fighter be on the defensive, have them scramble for any edge they can get.

Have you ever seen the Indiana Jones movies? Do something like that. When Indiana Jones fights a bigger enemy, he usually gets thrown around a fair bit. He pulls a lot of tricks to try and win over them, and a lot of them don't work and end with him taking a hit and suffering for it. Maybe try to weave in something like that?

 

[SuperPulp2789]

Then plan the fight scene around that. ask yourself how a smaller fighter make get an advantage over a larger one. Don't make it too easy, have them struggle. Explicitly bring up how a smaller fighter is at a disadvantage. use it as a point of tension. Have your smaller fighter be on the defensive, have them scramble for any edge they can get.

Have you ever seen the Indiana Jones movies? Do something like that. When Indiana Jones fights a bigger enemy, he usually gets thrown around a fair bit. He pulls a lot of tricks to try and win over them, and a lot of them don't work and end with him taking a hit and suffering for it. Maybe try to weave in something like that?

Click to shrink...

I was thinking of adding in a bit of "Wuxia-Glazing", as in sure there's skill and planning and it's a hard fight, but to an extent the smaller guy makes it look "easy"

One critique I have heard a number of times relating to Judo and Aikido is that "it's fake, they're cooperating"

 

[BronzePlaceWriter]

I was thinking of adding in a bit of "Wuxia-Glazing", as in sure there's skill and planning and it's a hard fight, but to an extent the smaller guy makes it look "easy"

One critique I have heard a number of times relating to Judo and Aikido is that "it's fake, they're cooperating"

Click to shrink...

That's unlike to be an issue in a writing format. People can say someone is faking if they watch it, but when they read it, they know a character isn't faking. They're more likely to feel that a given fight was just too easy and that you as the other are playing favourites. but that's why I said to make it so your character visibly struggles or gets hit a few times.

Having the smaller guy make it look easy can work too, just be careful not to overdo it and make it look like he's never going to face a challenge at all.

 

[Arc-on-Fire]

Huh, this thread reminded me of one I created just like this one!

General Writing Development/Self-Improvement.

What is this general for? It's as the title says. This is thread dedicated to providing writing resources, tools, motivation and as a side-dish, general self-improvement cause why not. Okay but why tho? Sometimes I see posts from people lamenting about their lack of style, confusion of...

forum.questionablequesting.com

 

[humon]

Talking about multiple protagonists, I think there's a writing exercise you can do where you try to write the same thing being said by different characters, but make it sound like it's unique to that character. That will give you some practice in keeping their 'voices' distinct. It also helps to imagine characters in dialogue, like the kind that Plato wrote.

Fundamentally, you have to take the time to get into each character's worldview, recall what information they have access to (which events they witnessed, combined with past experiences), and then think of what they would do next. Because it's multiple characters, it's going to take more time than if you were writing a single character (which can be exhausting if you're doing play-by-post on a forum). But you have to do that anyways when you're writing villains and side characters, so why not do it for multiple protagonists too? Just be careful not to get lazy and start writing them so they all sound like the same personality. If you catch yourself doing that, then you need to take a break and think about it a bit before you come back and re-write it.


Talking about weight differences in a fight... if we're assuming the fighters have equal skill and neither of them can use a weapon, then it's going to be a hard sell, because of how much size and strength actually do matter. Typically the way that a smaller fighter (or a woman) offsets this disadvantage is by having a weapon, or cheating in some other way. If their skill is unequal, and the purpose of the fight is to demonstrate this, then that's another story, and you can show this by having the larger fighter make predictable attacks and fail to defend himself adequately against advanced techniques. The biggest opening for doing this is in the realm of grappling, where a trained fighter can do a bunch of things an untrained fighter would have never expected, and suddenly the untrained guy finds himself in a joint lock or being choked out or whatever.

Typically shorter fighters who face taller fighters will try to attack the legs and bring a fight to the ground as fast as possible, because on the ground longer limbs are a liability and a shorter more compact body gets an advantage. But this assumes a similar level of strength, and so if the smaller fighter is too weak, he or she may just fail in the takedown and get stomped out, or simply overpowered on the ground and pinned.

If we're talking about something like Bruce Lee facing a 250 pound biker dude, then probably Bruce is going to rely a lot on positioning--being at the right exact distance--so that he can evade his opponent's strikes and deliver maximum force with his own. Something Bruce liked to do was kick a guy just as the guy is about to close in for a punch, so he can take advantage of the reach difference between a punch and a kick to land his strike a split-second earlier than his opponent can. Aside from that, if you're the weaker fighter you generally just want to keep your distance and look for good opportunities to strike and retreat, maybe take out a knee and unbalance him, then you can come in for a more critical attack to the chin or wherever else. No matter how big a fighter is, he can always be knocked out with a strong enough punch on the chin, so it would be all about creating an opening to do that without getting pounded to paste in the attempt.

The trouble is always, if you go in and start trading blows, or you let him grab onto you, then you're probably toast. You always have to keep moving until that opening appears. And then this presents its own problem, where the fighter who is always moving is going to get exhausted quickly compared to the one who is remaining mostly still and threatening the other. So if the smaller fighter can't find that critical opening early in the fight, he's going to eventually lose.


I've written a scene in the past that I'm happy with, where I had a smaller protagonist paired against a stronger opponent (by this I mean a 6-foot 180 pound guy against a beast of the arena who was something like 6'5" 250 pounds). It was a gladiatorial fight (an execution, really: damnatio ad gladium), rather than unarmed, but some of the same ideas applied. I had the smaller guy moving around a lot more and keeping distance, making probing attacks and occasionally getting lucky and drawing blood (there was also a weapons difference, he was armed with a spear, against a murmillo gladiator). But ultimately as the fight dragged on, he ended up completely gassed while his opponent was still full of energy, toying with him. He finally he got run down and knocked on his ass. His opponent planted a foot on his chest and showed off for the crowd, and my protagonist would have been killed, except that there was a spike within reach (a whole other story about how it got there, but it was all part of the action of the scene), and so while the victorious gladiator was still cheering for the crowd, my guy picked up that spike and jammed it in the fucker's knee. Ultimate ruling was that it wasn't an official win--he was disqualified for using a weapon that wasn't part of the kit he'd brought into the fight--but the good news was that he got to stay alive and not be executed. After the fight, he earned a reputation for having a rabbit's foot up his ass, and became sort of a minor celebrity. So ultimately the smaller guy also had weaker skills, but he won by cheating, and taking advantage of good fortune.

 

[Clevyby]

Hmm, gotta say this Youtube channel has a lot of insights on writing (read: follow the opposite of the guy's writing advice.)