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The Last Road Warrior

@thelastroadwarrior

Horror, movies, comic books, art and tv.
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halloweenhundreds

Terrifier 2 was one of my most anticipated this year despite everything. I mean it was just such a moment in the theaters with crazy stories surrounding the screenings. I think that Art delights and the lead is good and these gore effects can get pretty intense but I also think the sort of scrappy diy magic trick has been lost to a big extent.

#terrifier#terrifier 2#art the clown#horror movies
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i-will-write
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dduane

No matter how many people have ever written their take on an idea... no one will ever write yours the way you do.

And when you've spent enough hard work on your idea, it's entirely possible that your idea will be better than all the ones that came before.

We'll never know until you write it.

If you're scared that you'll spend a lot of effort on an idea and it won't be any better...?

Welcome! You're now suffering the same uncertainty that every writer ever born deals with, every day.

There's no guarantee that you'll win. But until you start, it's guaranteed that you never will.

Putt your butt in the chair, start working, and begin the daily challenge of taking the same gamble that all of the rest of us take, every day.

It's all any of us can do. :)

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wilwheaton

I wrote a story for one of the Star Trek manga releases back in the early aughts.

My idea was to show one of the events that could have helped move the Klingon Empire from its warlike posture in TOS to its membership -- and subsequent bureaucratic in-fighting -- in the Federation.

The idea was to put Kirk and a Klingon commander in a situation on a planet where they had to work together, and at a moment when Kirk could save himself or risk his life to save the Klingon, he makes the ethical, moral, Star Trek choice to save him.

They get out of danger, and the Klingon commander's crew beams down to rescue him. When they see Kirk there, they are like "FUCK YEAH! JAMES KIRK IS OUR PRISONER!" But the commander relates the story of Kirk saving him, and wonders if maybe not everything about humans and the Federation is true. Some other stuff happens (I forget what made the final draft) and the last couple pages are this Klingon commander facing a tribunal, and hoping that, somehow, his very public execution will not be in vain.

I had such a good time working on it, putting the guys in a collapsing dilithium mine (CAVES!) and treating it as if it were an actual episode where they only had the budget to work in the caves on Stage 16, and maybe one day on the bridge. From limitation comes creativity, they say.

About 2/3 of the way through my second draft, I realized that I was essentially writing Enemy Mine, which I have not seen, but know enough about to recognize the similarities. I called my friend, Andrew (may his memory be a blessing) and asked him what to do.

"You're writing two men on an island," he said. "It's one of the seven stories. Just make it your own and have fun doing it."

When I was younger (I did this in my 30s), I was terrified to make mistakes. I was convinced that everyone would know that I was the fraud and failure my father made me believe I was. I was so certain that I would be excoriated for stealing an idea, I almost sent the (very small) check back and bailed on all of it.

But I found a way to listen to Andrew, and keep my dad out of the room and out of my head while I told my version of two men on an island.

The book went on to sell about how they expected. It's been out of print forever, but I still have a couple of my contributor's copies on my shelf.

My long-winded point, OP, and my "yes, and," to Diane's post, is that there's no such thing as a totally original story, but nobody else will ever tell YOUR story the way you tell it, so that doesn't matter. Truly. Nobody who matters cares, because everyone who matters knows this.

So when you feel uncertain, please remember that the way you tell your story will be special, unique, and entirely yours.

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onetwistedmiracle

This is a lesson one can also learn from reading fanfiction. If you doubt what these good people have to say about all this, just go look at the comments on a popular fanfic. Any fandom, any pairing or none, it doesn't matter. A well written fanfic is the absolutely Platonic Embodiment of this concept. It's all been said before? There's nothing new under the sun? Originality is dead? And yet, a thousand people have squealed with joy over this re-telling of an old trope with characters someone else invented.

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wilwheaton

May fanfiction writers be blessed by all the gods, old and new!