User blog comment:Varkanax39/Q&A with Varkanax39/@comment-2026417-20121005010850/@comment-1788742-20121005160439

Okay, then, that's perfectly fine, so here I go...


 * About writer's block, yes I do get it, painfully frequently. Even though I had a carefully planned storyline, turning ideas into words is much more difficult then it seems. I had several bad cases of it over the course of the Xaterex storyline, but none was more painful then when I was stuck on the beginning of Into the Darkness. I wrote three drafts, but nothing seemed to fit. I had a similiar case midway through The Final Prophecy. What I tend to do when writer's block seems overpowering is to take a step back, for a time, from whatever I'm writing. I find it counter-productive to keep plowing ahead when the words don't flow off my fingers, so to speak. I take a break when I get writer's, a few days usually, and then get back to writing. It may not work for everyone, but it did for me.


 * Regarding complex characters, I don't tend to think up archtypes first, but nor do I just wing it. I started with a few basic traits that I wanted the characters to have, and then they gradually took on a life of their own. While at first I was sketching out the characters, long before the series ended the characters were telling me how they reacted to my storyline, and their reactions to the events I created were their own, not mine. Short answer, though, while I don't think I just throw it out there, neither do I think of specific archetypes. For example, Shardak, Fairon, and Valkyria's fates were all planned out beforehand, but their reactions to what happened to them across the series became their own, not mine, as the series progressed. I'm sorry if that answer's very confusing, it's very hard to explain. Sorry if I disappoint.


 * Ideas that I make up on the spot are incorporated into the XMS. While I had the endings of each book and the main plot planned out, I didn't sketch out every scene. It was more like "I have to get from A to B, but it's up to me how I do it." The XMS contains quite a few ideas that were spontaeneous, but I usually tried to figure out how they'd fit into the broader continuity before I wrote them in.


 * I usually write at my desk in my room, though I didn't just write there. I finished the last words of the XMS in a chair in our living room. (In addition, the times at which I wrote, especially while I was working on Part III of Eternal Darkness,  were very odd. I often woke up at 5:00 AM to write on weekdays before leaving for school. Now that I write less, I tend to take more frequent breaks, though I still wake up fairly early).