Concepts you find difficult to write?

[Kelleo]

So in response to that thread about having difficulty writing battles, I got the idea to make this thread for other concepts we have difficulty writing, for any fandom or original story.

For me, I find doing dungeons in a Legend of Zelda story to be really hard at times. I mean, I can come up with the theme and main mission for one as well as a boss with little problem (usually), but designing enough rooms and puzzles for it just gets frustrating. I don't need to do every single room because both I and my readers would find that tedious and maybe even boring, but doing just some gets difficult. Though, when I finally do come up with this stuff, I'm pleased with my result.

In the Zelda fic I'm working on, I've got four dungeons so far. Well, mostly. The fourth one is still in progress and is the one I'm stuck on right now because I can't seem to come up with any puzzles for the rooms or a general layout of the temple. But I have the theme and main mission. The theme is the sun (as the dungeon is the Sun Temple) and in order to conquer this temple, Kelli must find out how to light up all ten flares on the big sun in the main chamber. This will give her access to the boss, the monster fought at the end of each dungeon. And the boss will be some kind of sun-themed sky serpent. But this is all I have so far. xP

In Pokemon, I'd probably have trouble with caves and such for similar reasons.

 

[Warrior of Fire]

For my Yu-Gi-Oh fic, first I had trouble coming up with the last two main protagonists, but with some help from the Dueling Network forum's chat room, I got the final character's name and thought of one for the other one. Each of the characters has a deck that fits them: the first uses a deck that combines his ancestor and various creatures he encountered as both a child and an adult (also includes both ages and the main weapons he used) with Horus the Black Flame Dragon, and uses the power of the trap card Localization (a card of my creation, like the ancestral theme of half the deck) to hit the opponent with the full force of universally-affecting cards like Dark Hole and Heavy Storm (something that happened both during a flashback to a duel against Weevil Underwood in the first chapter and at the conclusion of the first full duel (a two parter that began in the second half of chapter one and ends near the end of chapter two, where the plot starts to take shape and the fic's title ties in finally)); the second is the great-grandson of the original series' Seto Kaiba and uses a Blue-Eyes deck with new Blue-Eyes cards created by another DNF member; the third uses a Gem-Knight deck that has the archetype's lone Xyz monster, Pearl, as a level 7 normal monster due to the character being from the GX era (due to having some trouble thinking of his name, looking at the cards he would use gave me some ideas, as two of them, Alexandrite and Garnet, would, with a tweak to the first one to make it work as a first name, become his full name of Alexander Garnet); the fourth, from the 5Ds era, uses a Naturia deck and her natural charms (including the fact that the main part of that is her long legs, the main reason for her theme song being "Legs" by ZZ Top) to befuddle opponents and lock them down; the final uses a Prophecy deck and is an amateur spellcaster herself.

Anyway, with that brief explanation out of the way, what's currently got me stuck is the short talk between the first two characters that starts forming the basis of the plot, with a focus around time travel (of which both are familiar with a form of it, the first one experiencing magical time travel and the second using scientific time travel), which then goes into a slightly episodic stretch where the team is assembled (chapter three brings the first two into the GX era for two chapters; five sends the three to the 5Ds era, where they not only add the fourth member of the team, but also work with the only canon character to be heavily featured in it, Yusei Fudo, who appears in every chapter in the 5Ds era; finally, the Zexal era comes in during chapter seven, where the first tag duel takes place with characters one and five teaming up, and chapter eight features the first finding a lost card, holding on to it while attempting to find the card's owner, gets into a duel where the opponent uses the first Number in the fic, Yuma shows up just as the Number is summoned, and the first character uses the card he found at the beginning, Yuma's ace card, Number 39: Utopia (as only a Number can destroy another Number in battle, just like in the anime and manga) to win, then returns Utopia to Yuma). Yeah, I've got a lot of ideas for later on, but I'm trying to finish chapter two before finalizing the next chapter's plotline.

 

[LightningTopaz]

I have trouble designing dungeons too--the hard part is trying not to make them a monster or puzzle parade.

 

[AetherX]

I always have the most trouble writing whatever is going on right now.

If I'm in the right mood, I can write anything, but I never am. If I need to be writing character development, then I only feel like I can write action. If I need to be writing action, I feel like I can only write emotion. Right now I'm in the latter phase.

 

[CrystaI]

All sorts of conversation scenes are difficult for me. Whenever one character talk to another character, I always need to consider and make myself absolutely clear on the personality and mind-sets of the characters, mood and mind-states of the characters at the specific moment, and also the relationships between the speakers. So I just spend too much time in thinking but not writing. Sometimes I can ponder for an hour for just one "correct" response that will not make the character OOC.

However, I'm absolutely fine with conference/meeting scenes where characters gathered around and discuss on one specific topic. That is because conference scenes are always used to mention something serious, so the involved characters are not there to joke around, so everyone are just needed to be in their "serious mode". This lessen the factors I needed to consider in thinking the responses, so conference scenes are rather less difficult for me.

 

[SquishyFace]

I usually don't have problems with most concepts unless they involve canon characters. No matter what, I'm always paranoid that I'll make a canon look OOC in the story...

 

[Plumbum]

I usually have problems in the PKMN fanfic I may be about to pen thinking of how to do battles. It's Mystery Dungeon-style, so multicharacter battles aren't really a problem, but I'm finding a tough time making the protagonists (a bunch of ComMons) actually relevant in a rather pivotal fight (Arceus vs. Them, Dialga and Rayquaza, it makes sense in context) without making any of the Legendaries involved look weak.

 

[kintsugi]

Everything.

No but actually.

I struggle a lot with writing endings most of the time--I manage to craft this long and intricate storyline, and then it comes time to tie up all my loose ends, so I either do everything in a super-awful, haphazard, andthenthisistheendhurray fashion, or I drag it on for far too long. Getting that Goldilocks pacing is a pain.

Also, I learned recently that I do next to zero world-building. That's not so noticeable in fan fiction, where I can be like "they went to hogwarts kthanxbai," but I instinctively put no thought into my settings when I write anything (like, my jerkish brain tells me it's not too important, so why bother?).

 

[Glitchipedia]

I usually don't have problems with most concepts unless they involve canon characters. No matter what, I'm always paranoid that I'll make a canon look OOC in the story...

This. The only canon characters I'm comfortable writing are those whose personalities aren't well-defined.