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[nicksgal]

I think it's natural for big ideas to evolve that way, starting as one story and eventually turning into more than one as the idea gets bigger and branches off in different directions.  I don't think any of my sequels were planned from the beginning either; they came about toward the end of or even after the first story, when I either realized I had another story arc for the same characters or thought, "That was fun.  I wanna write more stories like that!"  The ones that work best are the ones where there really is another story arc that seems like a logical progression of the overarching plot.  My failed sequels of the past were more along the lines of, "I got tired of writing the first story, so I decided to end it early and save the rest of the idea for a sequel I'll never actually write," or "I enjoyed writing this story about the Boys surviving a plane crash, so now I will write a sequel where they get shipwrecked!"  Lessons learned! LOL

Just once, I want to get a small idea and have it stay small. I'm really hoping with this next one, lol.

I like the idea of "That was fun. I wanna write more stories like that!" but you're right that it can get tedious if you find yourself rehashing the same plot in a different locale, although I love the logic of "surviving a plane crash was fun, now let's see how they do with a shipwreck!" Although now that BSB Cruises have been a thing, surviving a shipwreck makes way more sense, lol. In general, anytime I've had a vague "I wanna write a story like (fill in previous idea or really vague plotline here)" and not "I want to write this story about (fill in unique and semi-detailed plotline here)," it never works out well.

It's interesting that you would get tired of writing the first story and decide that it was better to continue it in a sequel. Why do you think that was? I ask as someone who's solution to "is bored" was "indefinite hiatus." (Let's be honest, they're abandoned.) I know you like to finish your things, is that part of it?

I do think one-shots or short stories are a nice way to expand on a story without committing to another novel.  I wrote a little one-shot companion to Curtain Call after Nick's All American album came out because I was so inspired by a couple of the songs on it, and that was a fun way to revisit those characters.  I don't think anyone would want to read a novel-length sequel to that story or SAMS, nor would I want to write one.  And that's something to consider, too - not only whether or not I really want to write a sequel, but whether or not there's an audience for it.  If no one else is going to read it, then I have to weigh how much I really want to write it.  Is the idea worth spending that much time on when I could be devoting that time to writing something people will actually read?  Some ideas are, and some aren't.

I think they would also be good for times when you've written other scenes, but ultimately ended up not including them in the narrative in some way due to pacing or something like that (as long as it makes sense to add more content, of course.) I agree that it's important to consider the audience, especially if it's something you're on the fence about. Obviously if your gut says "yes, this is what I want to write" and no other idea sparks quite the same way, then I think it's worth writing. If you're on the fence or deciding between two ideas, then the other idea is probably better. Length of time between the original and the sequel probably makes a difference too in terms of readership. If the second one gets published a reasonable amount of time after the first one, then it would probably have more readers than if it's later.

I agree about the challenges.  I had a lot of fun with the few that I did, but I only did the ones I felt inspired to do.  I do think those few helped me broaden my horizons and experiment with different genres and writing styles, so there's definitely value in them.  It sounds like you have plenty of other story ideas to play around with, but if you ever get bored, you could always look back through the threads and pick out one to try.  The April Fool's challenges and the Fairy Tale Beauty and the Beast one were my favorites to do.

I've definitely looked over a few of them, but all the ones that immediately struck me, I definitely had thoughts like "I already did and/or am planning to do this in a novel," lol. Kind of like you and the Pandaskunk challenge.

Tracy, I know you used to do them a lot. Would you say you did most of them or only certain ones? If it was most, did you need to find inspiration or did ideas just come to you right away?

Yeah, I guess so.  I have a lot of ideas that made it as far as being written down, but never progressed to the point of having an outline or a first scene or anything.  I have other ideas that have a solid outline - as in, I have at least a general sense of the beginning, middle, and end - but I haven't tried writing them yet.  And then there are stories I've actually started writing and never posted because I stalled out on them before I hit that point where I felt they were going well enough to post.  Heroic Measures and MBK both started out that way, and I eventually came back to them, so there may be hope for a couple of those.  Guilty Roads was also an idea I'd had in one form or another for like 6-7 years before I finally started writing it, but that one did not turn out so well LOL.  I've had better luck jumping on fresh ideas and writing them right away than going back to old ones I've been holding on to for a while.

I can't remember if I've asked this... I'm too lazy to look it up. Ignore me if I did. How far into the story is "going well enough to post"? I assume at that point (based on things you've said), you'll have a more detailed outline, at least a first scene, a banner, a title, and what else?

And woah! You started posted Guilty Roads around 2011? (Curtain Call was then, yes?), but you'd had the idea since Broken? I'm surprised it wasn't more naggy once you got to it. I get fresh ones being easier to get into; if the old ones were jumpy, they wouldn't have gotten more jumpy over the years. At least more often than not. Although, you're getting back to MBK now, so maybe sometimes they do get more jumpy.

I agree, just making yourself open the story and write anything, even if it's just a word, is important when establishing that routine.  Once it becomes a routine, it's easier to write more than one word, but there are still days when I may only write one paragraph or even just a sentence.  Thankfully I haven't had many of those days this summer because I have more time and energy to make myself keep at it until I come up with more than that, but I still usually don't write as much as I feel like I should be for the amount of time I've been spending in front of the computer LOL.  I would have to write over 2,000 words a day these next few days to make my goal, which I am capable of, yet can't seem to do on this story.  It may just be the the nature of the story and where I'm at in it.  There aren't a lot of big, dramatic, pulse-pounding scenes, and those are the ones I get sucked into and write fast.  This one I'm just kind of strolling along through, slow and steady LOL.  But I'm making progress either way, so I guess that's what really matters.

Same, sometimes I'm just down to words. But I feel a little bummed if I don't at least write something every day, probably because it's a routine at this point.

Yup, I agree to all of that. (I think I said that exact same thing somewhere else in this thread, but in a later reply. We've got to stop repeating ourselves unintentionall y, lol.) I think those big dramatic ones get me and then ones where superb and beautiful inspiration strikes, then the scenes just keep flowing together, even if it's a slow point. They're rare though compared to big dramatic ones in terms of "odds of happening."

Yes! Keep making progress.

I had really gotten away from reading for fun, so I'm trying to get back into that routine.  I have been plodding through "Where the Crawdads Sing" for about a year, so my first priority is to finish that book.  Everyone says it's so good.  It's not bad, but I get bored easily with it.  I'm about 3/4 of the way through, so I'm getting there!  I have a hard copy of that book, but I also took advantage of Prime Day and bought myself a new tablet to replace my broken Kindle Fire so I can read ebooks on a bigger screen than my phone.  That should help too.

I've heard that one's good too! Aww, I wanted to buy something for Prime Day, but couldn't think of anything I needed or wanted that would have been a really good deal. Although I'm now remembering how much I've wanted a Kitchenaid stand mixer and that may have been part of it. Oh well!

I have been trying to do some other creative-type activities, too.  I finished building the Lego Knight Bus from Harry Potter that my niece and nephew got me for Christmas.  I hadn't played with Legos since I was a kid, so that was an experience!  I also started working on the BSB puzzle I bought during the pandemic and never put together LOL.  I hate doing puzzles, so I haven't gotten very far on it, but at least it's started.  I want to finish it and frame it so I can hang it up in my writing room.  And finally, I decided to redecorate my guest bathroom, which is the only room in my house I didn't do anything to after I bought it.  I decided it needs a fun theme.  I got the wild idea to give it a "The Shining" theme (so welcoming, right?) and went on Etsy to see if I could find any bathroom stuff to fit that theme, like a shower curtain or something... and OMG, I found so much stuff!!  The people of Etsy are just as warped as me LOL.  So I ordered a bunch of fun stuff that has slowly been coming in.  You have to be brave to spend the night at my house!

Those all sound so fun! I hope you do finish your puzzle soon. OMG, I love your bathroom! Hopefully it doesn't scare anyone shitless, lol. (We can say badass now, we can say shitless too, right? lol) Etsy is great for that. You can find pretty much anything you'd think to look for, I think. The theme reminded me of this art pop type hotel we have downtown where every floor has a different theme. Anyway, one of them was horror themed, but right when you step out of the elevator, the twins are standing right there. I almost noped out of there, but I needed to stay vigilant in my mission of retrieving something from a room, lol.

Anything with animals is sure to get me, too!  Or those videos of military men and women coming home and surprising their families - I cry at every one of those, too.

I was literally having this same conversation the other day, lol. Same. That car commercial they were running last winter where the little girl is making cards to send to her dad and ornaments for the tree, but then they drive there in the car and the dad surprises her... I cried a lot, ridiculously, because it was a car commercial and not an actual reunion video.

That's a good question.  My first guess was that it's because we came up with the ideas and probably already envisioned the scenes beforehand, but that doesn't explain why we still cry watching sad movies we've seen a million times.  My other thought was that maybe it's because our brains are so focused on the process of writing that we're not feeling the emotions as much as if we were experiencing the story as a reader (or viewer of a movie).  I also get that anxious feeling when I'm writing dramatic/emotional scenes, but usually not to the point of crying or shouting at my screen or the kind of reactions I have when reading/watching other people's stuff.

But that brings up another question:  Have you ever cried while reading a scene you previously wrote?  I don't mean proofreading or editing, but just reading for the fun of it.  I have, but it's rare and not consistent.  There are certain scenes that actually will bring tears to my eyes sometimes, but not every time.  I think I'm more likely to cry if I've immersed myself in the story and read everything leading up to that point than if I just read a specific chapter in isolation.  And even then, it's usually just a certain line that will get me more than the entire scene.

Yes, even in a movie where I could recite all the lines, if I cried at something the first time, I will always cry (or at least tear up). I think it might be the focus piece coupled with meticulous planning. If it's not a surprise, it's not the same effect. As I'm thinking about it, things I meticulously plan to be funny won't get a laugh from me when I write them down. They might have gotten a laugh from me the first time I thought of them and I guess the things that are sad have made me tear up a couple times when I've initially thought of them. However, the funny things that kind of spill out, I will laugh at for such a long time.

Now that I think about it, I did tear up a little last weekend when Nick was being a brat and insisted I include a flashback. I say this because that was both an "unplanned sad thing" and is semi-related to your question in that it was a flashback to a scene that has made me cry during a reread. And like you said, it's usually when I'm rereading and have fully immersed myself in the story. I wonder if since we've both said we'll happily reread certain works of ours if anyone is now analyzing to figure out which scenes get us, lol.

Yay, I love that you used "conversate" in your story LOL.  It's fun to use those real life idiosyncrasies into stories when we can.  I make myself laugh every time I have Howie say "and stuff like that," which is not nearly often enough - but I guess if I overused that phrase, it wouldn't be funny anymore.

Yeah, unless IWITW was actually recorded much earlier than any of us thought LOL.  I guess we don't really know, but I also can't imagine him being younger than 18 when he recorded it.  He clearly was not thinking through all that logic.  And of the five of them, he should have the easiest time keeping track of dates and ages because of his birth year.  It's easy math to figure out how old you were in a given year when you were born in 1980 LOL.

Honestly, the way the rest of the scene went, it just fit perfectly with what Nick was saying, lol. I also love a good "and stuff like that," it's why I was most bummed with making Howie speak so formally in PBox. They're gems when they get in. We need to treat them that way so they don't become cliche, even though it's cannon.

Google says "November 1998," which makes sense to me and thus plants him firmly at 18. No, he just blurted out an answer. He didn't even hesitate to do some math. Which is terrifying in a way, lol. I know. I never have a hard time remembering how old Nick was. Brian is fairly easy because of the five. AJ, just add two to Nick. Kevin, just add eight. Howie always takes me a second to think. Sorry Howie, it's not your fault, sevens are hard.

Yeah, Secrets of the Heart is the AU one I'm talking about.  All five guys are in it, but they don't all know each other.  It's mainly about Brian and AJ, who don't know each other at the beginning but meet over the course of the story.  Kevin is still Brian's cousin, Howie is AJ's friend, and Nick is a substitute teacher who takes over for Brian when he's on leave.  So they don't have the same kind of brotherly/boyband relationship they do in real life where nicknames would get thrown around a lot.  I do think "D" is in there, so I would probably do the same thing Mare did and just give Howie a D name, but I'd have to look and see if there are any others.

I think it's fine to keep Nick's name the same.  Of all of them, that would be the one to keep (in a Nick-centered story, anyway).  When I started OF novelizing Broken, I also kept Nick's name and changed the other four.

It probably easier to OF Backstreet when their brotherly/boyband vibe is absent. Brotherly is probably easy enough to make a way to justify, but boyband is the first thing that would probably need to go. I also think it would be difficult to write a story (non-fanfic) about a boyband in general without it focusing on some other side aspect of celebrity, but that's mostly because the greatest appeal in a boyband (real or fictional) is the music, and a novel just isn't a medium that's conducive to music.

Yes, it would be quite weird to change Nick's name, but leave the more distinct AJ or Howie, lol. Brian or Kevin could be more possible to get away with in the absence of a "Nick."

Regarding publishing, those are all great points.  It's been years since I even half-seriously looked into it, but the more I read about the whole process, the less interested I am in pursuing it.  It does seem like it takes a lot of effort and/or money, depending on how you go about it, for little chance of success if you're going the traditional route.  Even if I succeeded, I don't know that the reward is worth the work and the risk in my case because, like I said, what would I even do with a published book?  I wouldn't want to promote it outside of the internet, and I probably wouldn't make much, if any, money from it, so what's the point?  I already have an internet presence and am fine with writing for free under a pen name, so the only point would be to prove that I'm good enough to published (which, in reality, I'm probably not LOL) and bask in the glow of seeing my book in print.

It seems daunting, right? I've looked a little in Rick Riordian as a person, since he's a similar career background, and I'm pretty sure he stopped teaching once the Percy Jackson books became popular. You would get to put it on your bookshelf and post a picture on twitter. But you're right, that's a lot of effort, time, and cost for simply basking and enjoying. Realistically, I'm probably not either, but that's a few roads from here. Getting a story to potentially publishable is really the first step.

[nicksgal]

Oh wow... that is really interesting.  It's a great point.  If you imagine fantasy cultures as alien instead of drawing from a real culture, you're less likely to appropriate or write something that could be offensive.  And in this day and age, anything could be considered offensive.  It seems like a hard challenge to create four different fantasy cultures from scratch though.  Just another reason I will leave the fantasy writing to you! LOL

Yes, which is my big fear and I guess rightly so these days. Because even if you're coming from a place of love, it's still possible to be offensive. And truthfully, there are probably several places where I would call PBox "potentially (or definitely) problematic." You know, as I've been pondering it, it hasn't been too bad knowing that they all started from the same place, but the thing that happened (woah, vague vagueness, lol) caused them to faction into these four countries so it's just looking at that starting point and then where they are now and filling in the gaps. (And as I've said many times, if I have an A and I have Z, I can generally fill in the middle eventually.) I call them "countries," but realistically, it's more like the difference between Athens and Sparta than say... France and Germany. I think in this case, it's probably better to start looking at how countries develop in broad terms from more concrete things like geography. Like if a country is on a coast, fishing or naval exploits are likely how they survive and make money, so what does that mean for their culture. If a country is surrounded by mountains, how does that affect their food growth (among other things)? What is trade like between these places? And then after that looking at things like "there's this big event in the history of these pretend palces, what has happened in similar instances in our world?" Then looking broadly at several cultures to notice patterns. But as you said, you've left this to me, so I'm just rambling at this point, lol.

My first thoughts were getting kidnapped or getting a disease.  There are exceptions, of course, but usually those things don't seem to happen to AJ in stories, but they happen to poor Nick a lot LOL.

Mine too, so I'm happy to hear I wasn't too far off the mark, lol. I do like to issue personal challenges to myself as I write. I've picked two for this story. One of which is to give AJ some more to do since he usually gets stuck in "major supporting cast" territory in my stories (if not "minor supporting cast"). So in order to be more of a plot changer, he needs to be more mobile than "missing" or "sick" would make him. Which is probably why I've plotted myself into a corner, lol.

LOL You're probably right.  I'm not sure Nick intended for the thing to be a campy SyFy movie in the beginning, but some of them clearly realized how ridiculous it was and had fun with it.  '90s boyband members fight zombies in the wild west... you can't beat that premise!  It's glorious LOL.

Creatively meticulous Nick? No, he probably did not envision Dead7 as a campy film produced by the people who brought us the cinematic masterpiece Sharknado. LOL! In his mind it was probably more "serious horror film set in the west," but then he realized that he would have to pay actors for a pet project and his friends would do it for less, lol. Pretty sure AJ and Joey are at the top of the list of "those who realized this is ridiculous, but awesome," lol. And Howie as we've already discussed. And no, you just can't beat that premise. I'd argue that any premise that begins with "when '90s boyband members collaborate on ______" can only get better from there, lol.

Awesome, thanks!  Just bookmarked that to peruse later.

Any time! Happy to be able to share resources with you for once!

I think there might be, but let's be honest - I like watching those videos, or I wouldn't click on them.  And sometimes I do click on one related to whatever I was researching last time and learn something new, so they can be helpful, too.  Just distracting LOL.

I don't watch too many "react" videos, but I have a weakness for "Real doctors react to medical dramas" and anything related to Titanic.  Thankfully, the Titanic one I watched was edited down to about half an hour, and I still skipped through some of it.  I was just curious to see if the guy cried at the end because it was titled something like, "I Watched Titanic For the First Time and It DESTROYED Me!"  He did not, and I was disappointed. LOL  The "Kids React" videos are fun though!

I know, I know. I just still haven't fully given myself permission to get distracted during working hours, lol.

Yes, something like that would be hilarious. It's the "random dude reacts to blah blah blah" that I like less, especially if it's something random dude should have seen in the past decade. Why would you call it "and it destroyed me" if it did not in fact "destroy [you]"? Clickbait... I would have been disappointed too.

[nicksgal]

LOL That is how meticulous I have gotten about fact-checking because you can find just about everything on the internet these days - so if I can find out for sure, I will.  I see it as a fun challenge of writing stories set in a specific time period, even if I waste time being meticulous with minor details that no one would ever fact-check me on.  But like you said, I would know, and that's what matters.

You're probably right about most places in L.A. being open on Easter.  I'm sure that's true of most big cities, other than maybe in the Bible Belt or deep South.

You're absolutely right on that! I think it's one of those things where if you put it in after doing your due diligence on research, no one notices, but if it's inaccurate, people will notice. And then compound that with the things you would notice and it becomes this rabbit hole of distraction. I think people would notice if you hadn't figured out how they got a movie that wouldn't be on TV yet (or released yet). But you would notice that Ten Commandments was shown the day before. Oh, you should have them watch The Prince of Egypt; that's a fun Easter romp, lol.

This same type of thing has led to a little heartache for me today (tell me why...). I wanted this "Nick avoids being the main character" to be vaguely Millennium in time period (as my writing often is), but I'd forgotten that they started the tour in Europe, which works out less with my plans. They did have about a month long break between the European leg and the North American leg, but I'm pretty sure at least half of that was hurricane season-related (if memory serves correctly), and I can't imagine they'd have a "re-tour rehearsal," even if they had a month off, from a tour they'd been performing for three months at that point. Now part of me says, "Eh, it's a novella vaguely implied to take place before ITM, it's going to be fine" and part of me is like "Someone will know and call me out on it." See? This is the type of stuff that makes me more impressed with y'all's ability to be able to weave story into history instead of my "I can make that up with enough time and related research."

I think it probably depends on the demographic of the area too (and the holiday). If patrons are less likely to come in, then you're losing money being open. There are restaurants around here that would normally be open all day on Sundays, but will do half-days on Easter. Or the sports bar I used to work at was open 365 days a year, but only post-6pm on Thanksgiving/Christmas and pre-6pm on Christmas Eve. And it's not Easter specific, but most malls around here (and even Target) will open late and close early on Sundays compared to the rest of the week. So really, you could probably justify "open" or "closed" depending on the way you wanted to swing it.

As far as AJ's favorite pre-2005 movie goes, this is where those old teenybopper Angelfire sites that list all their favorites from the 90s come in handy LOL.  I found several of them that say his favorite movie is Pulp Fiction, which would fit your criteria.  http://angels_bsb_love.tripod.com/ajbio.html  Here's a more recent article from 2015 where they list their favorite movies, and AJ says his all-time favorite is Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, which would also work since it's from 1988. https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/article/the-backstreet-boys-five-favorite-films/

LMAO! That was my genuine reaction to reading this, but seems out of place. Let me explain. I did vaguely remember that it was Pulp Fiction, but wanted something less... gritty due to what they were talking about in the scene that actually mattered. I enjoyed that you linked me that Rotten Tomatoes article as that is the exact article I used to justify choosing Dirty Rotten Scoundrels for my vague "[movie]" placeholder. I'm sorry, I should have mentioned more explicitly in my recount that I had finished this research project already. I appreciate you taking the time to help me all the same. *hugs*

The first time I read that Rotten Tomatoes article though, I did shout "Nick, The Goonies!" at my phone like an idiot, lol.

The placeholder is a good idea.  I hate doing it just because I'm one of those writers who edits as I go and aims for almost-final draft quality over a "sloppy copy."  But I do have a tendency to get bogged down on dumb, minor details like the movie thing or names for throwaway characters, so sometimes I have to make myself use [Name] if I can't make a quick decision.  This is why I name most of my minor doctor/nurse/therapist/cop characters after readers or people who have inspired me in some way; I keep a list I can refer back to when I need to pick a name so I don't have to make one up because I almost always overthink it.

It also took a lot to not hate it for me, but it has helped immensely knowing that I'll go back and edit as I write and then meticulously edit each chapter prior to posting even if I was happy with it when I finished it initially. So it's a lot easier to tell myself "You know editing is a huge part of your process now, so don't let this be the thing that gets you hung up when you were happily writing away until this moment." I should start using [Name] for minor characters. I would do something equally annoying like writing "the doctor" a million times and growing to loathe it, especially if it's in dialogue where a character wouldn't reasonably say "our gym teacher" or something like that. Thank goodness for the "name thread"! I think it's good that you have a list for names of minor characters. I think that's equally helpful as a fellow overthinker.

I was super productive in the early a.m., but that was before I went to bed.  Now it's 8:30 p.m. and I haven't written anything since waking up LOL.  I have definitely switched from "morning" writing to "night" writing, even though most of it technically still takes place in the early morning.  But then it will count toward tomorrow's word count, not today's.  That is why I'm unlikely to hit 2,000 words, even today, because now I have to start a new chapter, and that's almost always slow going for me.

Yay for finally getting your new washer and dryer and some peace and quiet!  I hope you have a productive night!

What time did you go to bed yesterday/wake up today? Are you liking night writing better due to the less distractions? On NaNo, I feel bad about fudging it, but I will consider post-midnight "today" if I haven't gone to bed yet and started writing whatever during today. If I got back to it at midnight, I would call it "tomorrow." Yay, new chapter! I believe!

Yes! I have done ten loads of laundry so far. I'm slowly getting through my items that need to be washed separately.

We'll see how productive my night goes. Here I am posting on the forum again at 10:30pm, lol. I wrote about 500 words this afternoon, but looked up one thing I thought would be such an easy question and... no, it was not easy. It really derailed me and complicated things leading to further research. So now here I am adding a scene that I hadn't really planned on writing that's just making me feel bummed out because of a dedication to certain types of details (as opposed to accurate timelines, lol). Sigh...

[RokofAges75]

Just once, I want to get a small idea and have it stay small. I'm really hoping with this next one, lol.

I like the idea of "That was fun. I wanna write more stories like that!" but you're right that it can get tedious if you find yourself rehashing the same plot in a different locale, although I love the logic of "surviving a plane crash was fun, now let's see how they do with a shipwreck!" Although now that BSB Cruises have been a thing, surviving a shipwreck makes way more sense, lol. In general, anytime I've had a vague "I wanna write a story like (fill in previous idea or really vague plotline here)" and not "I want to write this story about (fill in unique and semi-detailed plotline here)," it never works out well.

It's interesting that you would get tired of writing the first story and decide that it was better to continue it in a sequel. Why do you think that was? I ask as someone who's solution to "is bored" was "indefinite hiatus." (Let's be honest, they're abandoned.) I know you like to finish your things, is that part of it?

LOL Small ideas are nice!  It's fun to be able to finish a story in under a year.  But there is also something to be said for the feeling accomplishment that comes with finishing an epic story or series.

Don't tempt me with the BSB cruise shipwreck idea LOL.  It's not a bad idea, although it'd be better if it was just the boys and not the boys plus thousands of their fans on the boat.

I agree about the vague "I wanna write a story like this one" idea.  I've always struggled the most with ideas that I forced out while trying to emulate something else I read or watched.  Secrets of the Heart and Guilty Roads were both those types of ideas, and I had a hard time with both of them.  I finished Secrets, but only because I forced myself to.  I've learned that it's better to sit on those vague "I wanna write a survival story" or "I wanna write a bromance" thoughts until an actual idea comes along that works with them.

I really can only remember doing that once, where I finished the first story early and saved the rest for a sequel that I never ended up writing.  It was with The Other Child, my only experience writing on "on demand" story that a reader gave me the idea for.  I thought the idea was kinda cool at first, but I got bored with it and just wanted to finish it, so I slapped a quick ending on it and said I would write a sequel to continue the story.   I guess back then it was more important to me to finish a story before moving on to the next one than to write it well, whereas now I guess I'd rather have on on an indefinite hiatus than ruin it by forcing out a crappy ending.  I have other old stories that I had planned a sequel for and never wrote or finished, but at least the first stories were finished in a way I was happy with at the time.

I think they would also be good for times when you've written other scenes, but ultimately ended up not including them in the narrative in some way due to pacing or something like that (as long as it makes sense to add more content, of course.) I agree that it's important to consider the audience, especially if it's something you're on the fence about. Obviously if your gut says "yes, this is what I want to write" and no other idea sparks quite the same way, then I think it's worth writing. If you're on the fence or deciding between two ideas, then the other idea is probably better. Length of time between the original and the sequel probably makes a difference too in terms of readership. If the second one gets published a reasonable amount of time after the first one, then it would probably have more readers than if it's later.

Yep, I agree with all of this.  If you do have several scenes you wrote that did not make it into the final draft of the story, you could always post them as like a "deleted scenes" bonus feature, too.  That would be fun!  Since I don't write ahead, I don't usually find myself with deleted scenes like this.  When I do hack and slash a chapter, I end up actually deleting what didn't make it into the final draft.  Maybe I shouldn't do that because it might be fun to go back and look at the original versions, but as we've discussed previously, I can't stand having multiple versions of stories junking up my folders LOL.

I can't remember if I've asked this... I'm too lazy to look it up. Ignore me if I did. How far into the story is "going well enough to post"? I assume at that point (based on things you've said), you'll have a more detailed outline, at least a first scene, a banner, a title, and what else?

And woah! You started posted Guilty Roads around 2011? (Curtain Call was then, yes?), but you'd had the idea since Broken? I'm surprised it wasn't more naggy once you got to it. I get fresh ones being easier to get into; if the old ones were jumpy, they wouldn't have gotten more jumpy over the years. At least more often than not. Although, you're getting back to MBK now, so maybe sometimes they do get more jumpy.

I always at least have to have a title, outline, summary, banner, and a solid first chapter before I would post anything, but with my last few stories, I've waited till I finished about ten chapters to start posting, and that has worked out well.  I think I started posting Heroic Measures when I was on Chapter 8 because I knew it was only going to be ten chapters plus an epilogue, so I was close to finishing.  With SAMS, I waited all the way until Chapter 18 because I used a scene from that chapter in the prologue, but I didn't actually write it until I got to that point in the story.  It depends on the plot, too, but I usually wait until I get past the inciting incident and into the heart of the story to make sure it's going well before I post.

I may have been a little off on my conception date for Guilty Roads LOL.  I know that idea was on a poll I posted in the early 2000s about which story I should write next, but I checked, and it was in 2004, not 2001-2002.  It was one of the ideas I accumulated while working on Broken/BMS.  It's listed here under the working title "Austere Refuge," which I later changed.  https://web.archive.org/web/20041121170941/http://dreamers-sanctuary.com/nextstory.html  The idea evolved over time, but the basic premise was always the same.  I probably would have started it sooner if I wasn't in the middle of writing BMS.  Then came the epic collabs, 00Carter and Undead, so I didn't get around to it until 2010.  So I sat on the idea for at least six years before I started writing it.  It's the only one of those six ideas that even got that far.  I did start #2, but never got far enough to post it.

I think there are different levels of naggy/jumpy.  MBK and Heroic Measures were both ideas that I felt strongly enough about that I knew I would come back to them someday.  They were patiently naggy, if that makes any sense LOL.  Whereas the other stories I wrote while those two were waiting in the background, AHTIM and Bethlehem, were more demanding.  AHTIM was one I just had to get out of my head, and Bethlehem was a "must write now" idea because of its timing with the pandemic.  If I didn't jump on it and get it written last year while all that craziness was going on, I probably wouldn't have ever written it.

I've heard that one's good too! Aww, I wanted to buy something for Prime Day, but couldn't think of anything I needed or wanted that would have been a really good deal. Although I'm now remembering how much I've wanted a Kitchenaid stand mixer and that may have been part of it. Oh well!

So I haven't written anything on MBK since my last post, but I did finish reading Where the Crawdad Sings!  It was good.  Not the best book I've ever read, but it definitely got better as it went along.  I liked how it turned out.

That is usually me on Prime Day too; I can never think of anything expensive I want to look for deals on.  I would definitely recommend the Kitchenaid mixer though!  I got one for Christmas a few years ago, and I love it.  It's super cute on my counter (I got the Aqua Sky color), and it makes mixing anything so easy.  I can just turn it on and let it go.  (Only I learned the hard way that if you walk away and leave it too long while whipping cream, it overwhips the cream and makes it all chunky and gross looking.  Whoops!)  Maybe wait and get one on a Black Friday/Christmas deal.

Those all sound so fun! I hope you do finish your puzzle soon. OMG, I love your bathroom! Hopefully it doesn't scare anyone shitless, lol. (We can say badass now, we can say shitless too, right? lol) Etsy is great for that. You can find pretty much anything you'd think to look for, I think. The theme reminded me of this art pop type hotel we have downtown where every floor has a different theme. Anyway, one of them was horror themed, but right when you step out of the elevator, the twins are standing right there. I almost noped out of there, but I needed to stay vigilant in my mission of retrieving something from a room, lol.

Thanks!  I will post pictures when it's all done.  I'm debating if I want to repaint the walls before I put everything up.  They're a neutral beige color that works fine with the stuff I ordered, but there are a couple places where the paint is peeling, and the wall has screw holes in it from whatever the previous homeowner had hanging there, so I probably should do it right, patch up the walls, and give them a fresh coat of paint.  I'm gonna get some paint chips and see if I like another color better.  I'm not a beige fan, but if it turns out beige works best, I probably will just leave it as is instead of wasting my time and money painting it beige again LOL.

OMG, that sounds like a hotel I need to stay at!  I would love that.  Of course I ordered a print of the creepy twins to hang up so they can stare at people as they do their business, hehe.

Yes, even in a movie where I could recite all the lines, if I cried at something the first time, I will always cry (or at least tear up). I think it might be the focus piece coupled with meticulous planning. If it's not a surprise, it's not the same effect. As I'm thinking about it, things I meticulously plan to be funny won't get a laugh from me when I write them down. They might have gotten a laugh from me the first time I thought of them and I guess the things that are sad have made me tear up a couple times when I've initially thought of them. However, the funny things that kind of spill out, I will laugh at for such a long time.

Now that I think about it, I did tear up a little last weekend when Nick was being a brat and insisted I include a flashback. I say this because that was both an "unplanned sad thing" and is semi-related to your question in that it was a flashback to a scene that has made me cry during a reread. And like you said, it's usually when I'm rereading and have fully immersed myself in the story. I wonder if since we've both said we'll happily reread certain works of ours if anyone is now analyzing to figure out which scenes get us, lol.

All that makes sense.  I agree about things that come up in the moment having more of an emotional impact than things you've planned out in advance.

I would guess it's usually the same scenes that make readers tear up, but maybe not always.  Everyone reacts differently, and you never know what's going to trigger someone.  There's a part in Curtain Call where Charlotte's Web is quoted, and that's what will get me.  I don't know if I'm tearing up because the scene itself is sad, which it is, or because Charlotte's Web is sad.  Probably both.

Google says "November 1998," which makes sense to me and thus plants him firmly at 18. No, he just blurted out an answer. He didn't even hesitate to do some math. Which is terrifying in a way, lol. I know. I never have a hard time remembering how old Nick was. Brian is fairly easy because of the five. AJ, just add two to Nick. Kevin, just add eight. Howie always takes me a second to think. Sorry Howie, it's not your fault, sevens are hard.

Thanks for googling that!  That aligns with what I was thinking as well.  Maybe Nick was just annoyed with those guys interviewing him who didn't seem to know anything about him.  I haven't watched the whole video in years, but I remember being annoyed with that interview until it got to the pubic hair part LOL.

It probably easier to OF Backstreet when their brotherly/boyband vibe is absent. Brotherly is probably easy enough to make a way to justify, but boyband is the first thing that would probably need to go. I also think it would be difficult to write a story (non-fanfic) about a boyband in general without it focusing on some other side aspect of celebrity, but that's mostly because the greatest appeal in a boyband (real or fictional) is the music, and a novel just isn't a medium that's conducive to music.

Yes, it would be quite weird to change Nick's name, but leave the more distinct AJ or Howie, lol. Brian or Kevin could be more possible to get away with in the absence of a "Nick."

Yep, I think taking away the boyband thing is an important step.  A band/musician story really is better suited to TV or movies where you can actually show them performing and play the music.   The brotherly relationship could work in a lot of contexts, though.  Mare kept it in her published novel by making them actual brothers.  In my Broken OF novel idea, they were all going to be high school friends/teammates.  They could also be coworkers, college friends/roommates or frat brothers, neighbors, etc.

I think with Broken, I just cared most about preserving my couple, "Nick and Claire."  It just wouldn't sound right with different names LOL.

[RokofAges75]

Yes, which is my big fear and I guess rightly so these days. Because even if you're coming from a place of love, it's still possible to be offensive. And truthfully, there are probably several places where I would call PBox "potentially (or definitely) problematic." You know, as I've been pondering it, it hasn't been too bad knowing that they all started from the same place, but the thing that happened (woah, vague vagueness, lol) caused them to faction into these four countries so it's just looking at that starting point and then where they are now and filling in the gaps. (And as I've said many times, if I have an A and I have Z, I can generally fill in the middle eventually.) I call them "countries," but realistically, it's more like the difference between Athens and Sparta than say... France and Germany. I think in this case, it's probably better to start looking at how countries develop in broad terms from more concrete things like geography. Like if a country is on a coast, fishing or naval exploits are likely how they survive and make money, so what does that mean for their culture. If a country is surrounded by mountains, how does that affect their food growth (among other things)? What is trade like between these places? And then after that looking at things like "there's this big event in the history of these pretend palces, what has happened in similar instances in our world?" Then looking broadly at several cultures to notice patterns. But as you said, you've left this to me, so I'm just rambling at this point, lol.

All that world-building seems like a fun challenge, but definitely daunting!  I love your attention to detail in thinking about how geography would affect each country's economy and culture; that makes a lot of sense.

As far as being problematic, I'm sure we can all look back on our older stories and find examples of that.  I know when I was reading Broken last year for my blog, I was struck by how misogynistic it sounded.  I have always said Broken Nick acts like an emo teenage girl, but I forgot how much he gets ripped on for being that way in the story, by the other guys and even by himself.  I apparently had more of an awareness of that as I was writing it than I realized LOL.  There are so many jokes to the effect of comparing Nick to a girl on her period, as well as jokes about the actual women in the story.  Reading it back, I'm not sure if I wrote it that way because that's how I thought real guys talked and thought (which is probably not too off-base) or if I was being the misogynistic one LOL, but it's definitely something that hadn't stood out to me that way before.

But as far as PBox goes, any potentially problematic parts can hopefully be edited out as you're reworking it for OF.

Mine too, so I'm happy to hear I wasn't too far off the mark, lol. I do like to issue personal challenges to myself as I write. I've picked two for this story. One of which is to give AJ some more to do since he usually gets stuck in "major supporting cast" territory in my stories (if not "minor supporting cast"). So in order to be more of a plot changer, he needs to be more mobile than "missing" or "sick" would make him. Which is probably why I've plotted myself into a corner, lol.

Kidnapped doesn't mean he has to be missing from the story.  Maybe he and Nick get kidnapped or put in a hostage situation together, but AJ gets to be the hero who fights back and plans their escape, while Nick just cowers in a corner and sleeps LOL.  Giving AJ a disease is also a way to make him the center of attention.  Just don't put him in a coma or cripple him if you want him to be mobile LOL.

Creatively meticulous Nick? No, he probably did not envision Dead7 as a campy film produced by the people who brought us the cinematic masterpiece Sharknado. LOL! In his mind it was probably more "serious horror film set in the west," but then he realized that he would have to pay actors for a pet project and his friends would do it for less, lol. Pretty sure AJ and Joey are at the top of the list of "those who realized this is ridiculous, but awesome," lol. And Howie as we've already discussed. And no, you just can't beat that premise. I'd argue that any premise that begins with "when '90s boyband members collaborate on ______" can only get better from there, lol.

LOL Absolutely!  AJ and Joey were both fantastic in that movie.  Remember when it was originally going to be a movie called Evil Blessings about backwoods cannibals or something?  Obviously I love zombies, but I still wish he would write that movie too.  I also wanna see him play the villain instead of the hero!  I guess he was kind of a villain in The Hollow, but not the main one.  I'm also still disappointed that he did not get decapitated in that movie LOL.

[RokofAges75]

You're absolutely right on that! I think it's one of those things where if you put it in after doing your due diligence on research, no one notices, but if it's inaccurate, people will notice. And then compound that with the things you would notice and it becomes this rabbit hole of distraction. I think people would notice if you hadn't figured out how they got a movie that wouldn't be on TV yet (or released yet). But you would notice that Ten Commandments was shown the day before. Oh, you should have them watch The Prince of Egypt; that's a fun Easter romp, lol.

I thought about The Prince of Egypt!  But in the course of my research on when The Ten Commandments aired on TV in 2008, I learned that Passover was almost a month later than Easter that year, and Prince of Egypt is technically more of a Passover movie.  I even looked up other Easter movies for ideas, but nothing really stood out to me as something I needed Nick and Kevin to watch, so I just left it unnamed.  Some of the titles that came up as "Easter movies" were pretty funny though.  Like Monty Python and the Holy Grail??  It has a killer bunny in it; I guess that makes it an Easter movie?  LOL  I thought about using that one because I felt like they would pick something light and funny if it wasn't just whatever was on TV at the time, but I've already referenced that movie in another story.

This same type of thing has led to a little heartache for me today (tell me why...). I wanted this "Nick avoids being the main character" to be vaguely Millennium in time period (as my writing often is), but I'd forgotten that they started the tour in Europe, which works out less with my plans. They did have about a month long break between the European leg and the North American leg, but I'm pretty sure at least half of that was hurricane season-related (if memory serves correctly), and I can't imagine they'd have a "re-tour rehearsal," even if they had a month off, from a tour they'd been performing for three months at that point. Now part of me says, "Eh, it's a novella vaguely implied to take place before ITM, it's going to be fine" and part of me is like "Someone will know and call me out on it." See? This is the type of stuff that makes me more impressed with y'all's ability to be able to weave story into history instead of my "I can make that up with enough time and related research."

That is the downside to using real timelines, when the real events of that time period don't work well with your story idea.  Does it have to be Millennium era?  Could you use Black & Blue instead?  The B&B tour started in the U.S.  But I get the appeal of using Millennium; that whole era was so iconic, between the album, the tour, and their popularity at the time.  It was a better era than B&B, even though they're so close together.

Although I like to use real details when I can, I will say that since you're already taking BSB fanfic tropes and twisting them by making Nick a background character, you could keep the setting intentionally vague.  A lot of fics, especially back in the day, weren't very specific about where or when they were taking place, and if they were, it wasn't always true to life.  So I think you could get away with that if you wanted to.

LMAO! That was my genuine reaction to reading this, but seems out of place. Let me explain. I did vaguely remember that it was Pulp Fiction, but wanted something less... gritty due to what they were talking about in the scene that actually mattered. I enjoyed that you linked me that Rotten Tomatoes article as that is the exact article I used to justify choosing Dirty Rotten Scoundrels for my vague "[movie]" placeholder. I'm sorry, I should have mentioned more explicitly in my recount that I had finished this research project already. I appreciate you taking the time to help me all the same. *hugs*

The first time I read that Rotten Tomatoes article though, I did shout "Nick, The Goonies!" at my phone like an idiot, lol.

LOL Great minds think alike!  Dirty Rotten Scoundrels sounds like a great choice.  I did the same thing with Nick's pick, except I was like, "Nick, what about Aliens??"  In his defense, it is hard to pick just one favorite.  Not for me - mine will always be Titanic - but I have a much harder time picking, say, a favorite song because there are so many good ones.  Jaws is a great movie though.

I should start using [Name] for minor characters. I would do something equally annoying like writing "the doctor" a million times and growing to loathe it, especially if it's in dialogue where a character wouldn't reasonably say "our gym teacher" or something like that. Thank goodness for the "name thread"! I think it's good that you have a list for names of minor characters. I think that's equally helpful as a fellow overthinker.

The name thread was so helpful!  Erik, my douchey frat boy character I started that thread for, finally made his first appearance a few chapters ago.

What time did you go to bed yesterday/wake up today? Are you liking night writing better due to the less distractions? On NaNo, I feel bad about fudging it, but I will consider post-midnight "today" if I haven't gone to bed yet and started writing whatever during today. If I got back to it at midnight, I would call it "tomorrow." Yay, new chapter! I believe!

Yes! I have done ten loads of laundry so far. I'm slowly getting through my items that need to be washed separately.

We'll see how productive my night goes. Here I am posting on the forum again at 10:30pm, lol. I wrote about 500 words this afternoon, but looked up one thing I thought would be such an easy question and... no, it was not easy. It really derailed me and complicated things leading to further research. So now here I am adding a scene that I hadn't really planned on writing that's just making me feel bummed out because of a dedication to certain types of details (as opposed to accurate timelines, lol). Sigh...

Ugh, my sleep schedule has been so messed up the last few days, even more so than usual.  My current pattern is that I will go to bed well after sunrise, sleep until early afternoon, get tired at night because I only slept 5-6 hours instead of my preferred 8-9, think "Oh good, I will go to bed at a normal time tonight and reset my sleep schedule," go to bed at a normal time, wake up around 2 a.m., get back up, and don't go back to bed until well after sunrise, thus continuing the cycle.  I went to bed at like 10 last night, read for an hour or so, and fell asleep.  Woke up at 1 something, wide awake, and tried to read until I got sleepy again.  I finished my book and was still wide awake, so I got back up.  Now it's 7 a.m. LOL.  So much for resetting my sleep schedule.  I also still haven't started my chapter because I spent my pre-dawn writing time watching TV and replying to posts on this forum instead. LOL

How did the rest of your night go?  I hope we both have a productive day today!

[nicksgal]

LOL Small ideas are nice!  It's fun to be able to finish a story in under a year.  But there is also something to be said for the feeling accomplishment that comes with finishing an epic story or series.

Yes, all of this. This is where I get in trouble for comparing again. I have to stop looking at r/fanfic because all the people that talk about how many stories they finish in a month and I always think "how?!" lol

Don't tempt me with the BSB cruise shipwreck idea LOL.  It's not a bad idea, although it'd be better if it was just the boys and not the boys plus thousands of their fans on the boat.

Always here to make joke and tempt, lol. See, the Boys get in a lifeboat, but the regular boat manages to be just fine. All the fans get saved, but now the Boys are adrift in a lifeboat, lol. I think these days, a shipwreck on a cruise boat would be way less common than in Titanic times.

I agree about the vague "I wanna write a story like this one" idea.  I've always struggled the most with ideas that I forced out while trying to emulate something else I read or watched.  Secrets of the Heart and Guilty Roads were both those types of ideas, and I had a hard time with both of them.  I finished Secrets, but only because I forced myself to.  I've learned that it's better to sit on those vague "I wanna write a survival story" or "I wanna write a bromance" thoughts until an actual idea comes along that works with them.

I really can only remember doing that once, where I finished the first story early and saved the rest for a sequel that I never ended up writing.  It was with The Other Child, my only experience writing on "on demand" story that a reader gave me the idea for.  I thought the idea was kinda cool at first, but I got bored with it and just wanted to finish it, so I slapped a quick ending on it and said I would write a sequel to continue the story.   I guess back then it was more important to me to finish a story before moving on to the next one than to write it well, whereas now I guess I'd rather have on on an indefinite hiatus than ruin it by forcing out a crappy ending.  I have other old stories that I had planned a sequel for and never wrote or finished, but at least the first stories were finished in a way I was happy with at the time.

It's why I've sat on my jokes until I thought about them solidly enough. I think that's something I needed to learn back then too. I feel like my life was WADD until PBox, really. I'd write and post any old thing in my head. And then at some point during PBox (probably about a year in?) I made the conscious decision to put everything on hold until PBox was finished, of course that took a whole other year and a half, but I stopped starting new things. And then after that, I decided to only focus on Beta Sig. I think it's been better for me in the long run to only focus on one thing at a time without getting too derailed. I was thinking just the other day that I should do my utmost to make AJ important in a story at some point and here we are, a good place to do it.

I remember you talking about that one before. If a reader suggested it, I can see why you want to make sure it had an end, rather than leaving them hanging for an indefinite amount of time. But that the idea came from someone else probably also had something to do with you getting bored with it.

Yep, I agree with all of this.  If you do have several scenes you wrote that did not make it into the final draft of the story, you could always post them as like a "deleted scenes" bonus feature, too.  That would be fun!  Since I don't write ahead, I don't usually find myself with deleted scenes like this.  When I do hack and slash a chapter, I end up actually deleting what didn't make it into the final draft.  Maybe I shouldn't do that because it might be fun to go back and look at the original versions, but as we've discussed previously, I can't stand having multiple versions of stories junking up my folders LOL.

If I don't rework mine, I do save them, but not to the extent that they would be any good bonus feature. Some chapters I ended up writing for OF PBox are the only thing I have like this because they would fill something that wasn't there before. In writing PNecklace, with the extensive editing I do, I've found that I'm usually able to work ideas in at different points, at least in spirit. There's definitely part of me that wishes I could do it with a whole novel before posting, but I don't have that kind of backlog at the moment, lol.

I know you don't. So you've got to weigh the options: fun bonus content or peace of mind? lol

I always at least have to have a title, outline, summary, banner, and a solid first chapter before I would post anything, but with my last few stories, I've waited till I finished about ten chapters to start posting, and that has worked out well.  I think I started posting Heroic Measures when I was on Chapter 8 because I knew it was only going to be ten chapters plus an epilogue, so I was close to finishing.  With SAMS, I waited all the way until Chapter 18 because I used a scene from that chapter in the prologue, but I didn't actually write it until I got to that point in the story.  It depends on the plot, too, but I usually wait until I get past the inciting incident and into the heart of the story to make sure it's going well before I post.

I agree that ten chapters seems like a solid backlog. I feel far enough in to keep going and reasonably feel like I can get another ten chapters finished within ten weeks. I'm probably a little faster than that, to be honest (at least for the most part).

With SAMS, do you mean that you planned for a scene from Chapter 18 to be in the Prologue, but didn't write the prologue until after you'd written Chapter 18 or that you wrote the tiny part that was in the prologue in the beginning, but didn't finish the whole scene until you got to Chapter 18? Either way, interesting way to do it.

I think it makes sense to get past the inciting incident because then you know that the action's kicked off. I feel like I always put my inciting incidents fairly early in the story, within the first chapter if not the second. Do you feel yours are a little later? Or just that the "heart of the story" takes more time to get into after that?

I may have been a little off on my conception date for Guilty Roads LOL.  I know that idea was on a poll I posted in the early 2000s about which story I should write next, but I checked, and it was in 2004, not 2001-2002.  It was one of the ideas I accumulated while working on Broken/BMS.  It's listed here under the working title "Austere Refuge," which I later changed.  https://web.archive.org/web/20041121170941/http://dreamers-sanctuary.com/nextstory.html  The idea evolved over time, but the basic premise was always the same.  I probably would have started it sooner if I wasn't in the middle of writing BMS.  Then came the epic collabs, 00Carter and Undead, so I didn't get around to it until 2010.  So I sat on the idea for at least six years before I started writing it.  It's the only one of those six ideas that even got that far.  I did start #2, but never got far enough to post it.

It might not be you, I might have been off on my math! I guessed around 2003 (which is fairly close to 2004), but couldn't remember if you'd finished Broken by then or not. Was Guilty Roads the one that had won that poll or was it a different one? I get starting #2, you've gotta love a good reincarnation plotline. Did you do these types of polls often or was this more of a one time thing?

I think there are different levels of naggy/jumpy.  MBK and Heroic Measures were both ideas that I felt strongly enough about that I knew I would come back to them someday.  They were patiently naggy, if that makes any sense LOL.  Whereas the other stories I wrote while those two were waiting in the background, AHTIM and Bethlehem, were more demanding.  AHTIM was one I just had to get out of my head, and Bethlehem was a "must write now" idea because of its timing with the pandemic.  If I didn't jump on it and get it written last year while all that craziness was going on, I probably wouldn't have ever written it.

They're your AJ compared to Nick, lol. "Hey, if you've got time, I have some stuff to do... No pressure." versus "I'MMMMM BAAAACCCCKKKK, ALLLRIIGHT!" I get it. I felt the same way about my little holiday story as Bethlehem. I could have written it for this Christmas, but the time just seemed right last year. I like the patiently naggy ones. They feel much more comforting.

So I haven't written anything on MBK since my last post, but I did finish reading Where the Crawdad Sings!  It was good.  Not the best book I've ever read, but it definitely got better as it went along.  I liked how it turned out.

That is usually me on Prime Day too; I can never think of anything expensive I want to look for deals on.  I would definitely recommend the Kitchenaid mixer though!  I got one for Christmas a few years ago, and I love it.  It's super cute on my counter (I got the Aqua Sky color), and it makes mixing anything so easy.  I can just turn it on and let it go.  (Only I learned the hard way that if you walk away and leave it too long while whipping cream, it overwhips the cream and makes it all chunky and gross looking.  Whoops!)  Maybe wait and get one on a Black Friday/Christmas deal.

Glad you finished it! Now if that's out of your head, you'll have more space for your puzzle and MBK, lol.

Your poor whipped cream, lol! I'd asked for one for our wedding, but I think I haven't been thinking about it because we just don't have space for it on our counter or in our cabinets. Once I get back to organizing, maybe I can make some space for it though. I like the yellow one. I keep vaguely telling hubs that a yellow kitchen would be nice, but then he reminds me that I also want a yellow house. I know better than to ask for AJ's pink kitchen, haha.

I did get my old fitbit on Prime Day a couple years ago and that was awesome. My new one just came after not having a working one for a couple months, so that's been exciting. I wish they warned me Prime Day was coming, so I could start thinking about what I might need, lol.

Thanks!  I will post pictures when it's all done.  I'm debating if I want to repaint the walls before I put everything up.  They're a neutral beige color that works fine with the stuff I ordered, but there are a couple places where the paint is peeling, and the wall has screw holes in it from whatever the previous homeowner had hanging there, so I probably should do it right, patch up the walls, and give them a fresh coat of paint.  I'm gonna get some paint chips and see if I like another color better.  I'm not a beige fan, but if it turns out beige works best, I probably will just leave it as is instead of wasting my time and money painting it beige again LOL.

OMG, that sounds like a hotel I need to stay at!  I would love that.  Of course I ordered a print of the creepy twins to hang up so they can stare at people as they do their business, hehe.

Yes, can't wait! "Redrum" would really pop if the background was beige or neutral, just saying, lol. I wonder if you could cover up the screw holes with some other picture.

I know, I'd temporarily forgotten about it, but knew it was up your alley. There's also the actual Stanley Hotel if you're doing an epic Colorado tourist trip, lol. I'm glad you did. I would expect nothing less for this "Shining" bathroom.

All that makes sense.  I agree about things that come up in the moment having more of an emotional impact than things you've planned out in advance.

I would guess it's usually the same scenes that make readers tear up, but maybe not always.  Everyone reacts differently, and you never know what's going to trigger someone.  There's a part in Curtain Call where Charlotte's Web is quoted, and that's what will get me.  I don't know if I'm tearing up because the scene itself is sad, which it is, or because Charlotte's Web is sad.  Probably both.

Do you often have ideas that come up in the moment as your writing or do most of them end up in the outline ahead of time?

You're probably right on all of that. And Charlotte's Web is so sad, so I can imagine being doubly sad if the scene itself is sad.

Thanks for googling that!  That aligns with what I was thinking as well.  Maybe Nick was just annoyed with those guys interviewing him who didn't seem to know anything about him.  I haven't watched the whole video in years, but I remember being annoyed with that interview until it got to the pubic hair part LOL.

I guess I would have been annoyed too. They were really focused on Nick, but not on Howie at all. Poor Howie. They finally let him talk and he's hilarious.

Yep, I think taking away the boyband thing is an important step.  A band/musician story really is better suited to TV or movies where you can actually show them performing and play the music.   The brotherly relationship could work in a lot of contexts, though.  Mare kept it in her published novel by making them actual brothers.  In my Broken OF novel idea, they were all going to be high school friends/teammates.  They could also be coworkers, college friends/roommates or frat brothers, neighbors, etc.

I think with Broken, I just cared most about preserving my couple, "Nick and Claire."  It just wouldn't sound right with different names LOL.

...Heroes thrust together by destiny, lol. I think of all the things I've cut, the brotherly relationship and Nick as is are what's been most important to keep for me. It's just really not the same story without it. Now I've had to tweak it some to make it feel more earned, but on a whole, it's been preserved.

LOL! I get that. I wanted to keep Nick the same because he's my tiny muse. And I could see myself flubbing it up if I renamed him more than the others.

[nicksgal]

All that world-building seems like a fun challenge, but definitely daunting!  I love your attention to detail in thinking about how geography would affect each country's economy and culture; that makes a lot of sense.

Yeah, there's the online software called "WorldAnvil" that makes all of this much more streamlined, that I've looked into, but have been hesitant to get, and it's probably time to just do it. It keeps everything on the cloud too, which is nice. It's like having your own complicated wikipedia, lol. And thanks. What else would I do with my now vast knowledge of the desert? lol

As far as being problematic, I'm sure we can all look back on our older stories and find examples of that.  I know when I was reading Broken last year for my blog, I was struck by how misogynistic it sounded.  I have always said Broken Nick acts like an emo teenage girl, but I forgot how much he gets ripped on for being that way in the story, by the other guys and even by himself.  I apparently had more of an awareness of that as I was writing it than I realized LOL.  There are so many jokes to the effect of comparing Nick to a girl on her period, as well as jokes about the actual women in the story.  Reading it back, I'm not sure if I wrote it that way because that's how I thought real guys talked and thought (which is probably not too off-base) or if I was being the misogynistic one LOL, but it's definitely something that hadn't stood out to me that way before.

But as far as PBox goes, any potentially problematic parts can hopefully be edited out as you're reworking it for OF.

OMG, yes! The misogyny! It's interesting that you had an awareness for it that seeped into the writing without you realizing. I remember doing the same thing back then. I cringed a little rereading Beta Sig when Nick was monologing about how much he liked talking to Brian and literally thinks something to the effect of "I sound like a girl that wants to date Brian." (Misogynistic and homophobic! I'm the worst!) I think that's something that can happen with all creative works. They're really a product of their time, so even something praised can become something with cringey aspects over the years. Heck, look at Hamilton. Initially praised for its diversity in cast, now judged for "Founders Chic" and lack of diverse characters.

I think so. Awareness is the first step! Action is the second!

Kidnapped doesn't mean he has to be missing from the story.  Maybe he and Nick get kidnapped or put in a hostage situation together, but AJ gets to be the hero who fights back and plans their escape, while Nick just cowers in a corner and sleeps LOL.  Giving AJ a disease is also a way to make him the center of attention.  Just don't put him in a coma or cripple him if you want him to be mobile LOL.

A valid point! AJ would be pretty badass, but probably sprain his ankle from his tight pants, lol. What do you mean I can't put AJ in coma and have him be important? I thought this story was "AJ is Nick's guardian angel"?! LMAO!

My next related thought, and I'd love to be corrected if I'm wrong. Brian's been involved in pretty much everything Nick's been involved in to some degree, though not in a while, if I'm remembering correctly... I'm probably fine to just pick whatever, yeah?

LOL Absolutely!  AJ and Joey were both fantastic in that movie.  Remember when it was originally going to be a movie called Evil Blessings about backwoods cannibals or something?  Obviously I love zombies, but I still wish he would write that movie too.  I also wanna see him play the villain instead of the hero!  I guess he was kind of a villain in The Hollow, but not the main one.  I'm also still disappointed that he did not get decapitated in that movie LOL.

I do! I wonder why he changed from backwoods cannibals to zombies? I'm guessing Kevin hated it. LMAO! Nick the villain. He would be such a large ham! You watched Dr. Horrible, right? That's the type of villain I see Nick being.

LOL! The Headless Horseman would be lucky to get Nick's head, even though his hair was only okay in that film.

[nicksgal]

I thought about The Prince of Egypt!  But in the course of my research on when The Ten Commandments aired on TV in 2008, I learned that Passover was almost a month later than Easter that year, and Prince of Egypt is technically more of a Passover movie.  I even looked up other Easter movies for ideas, but nothing really stood out to me as something I needed Nick and Kevin to watch, so I just left it unnamed.  Some of the titles that came up as "Easter movies" were pretty funny though.  Like Monty Python and the Holy Grail??  It has a killer bunny in it; I guess that makes it an Easter movie?  LOL  I thought about using that one because I felt like they would pick something light and funny if it wasn't just whatever was on TV at the time, but I've already referenced that movie in another story.

You're totally right, it is more of a Passover movie. It's just the second thing I think of when I think of The Ten Commandments, lol. LMAO! If "has a bunny" is the only qualification for an Easter movie, then is Donnie Darko an Easter movie? Monty Python and the Holy Grail is a classic though.

That is the downside to using real timelines, when the real events of that time period don't work well with your story idea.  Does it have to be Millennium era?  Could you use Black & Blue instead?  The B&B tour started in the U.S.  But I get the appeal of using Millennium; that whole era was so iconic, between the album, the tour, and their popularity at the time.  It was a better era than B&B, even though they're so close together.

Although I like to use real details when I can, I will say that since you're already taking BSB fanfic tropes and twisting them by making Nick a background character, you could keep the setting intentionally vague.  A lot of fics, especially back in the day, weren't very specific about where or when they were taking place, and if they were, it wasn't always true to life.  So I think you could get away with that if you wanted to.

It's not really anything tied to an era outside of being "classic Backstreet," but as usual, it's easier to blissfully avoid their lives away from BSB if you go earlier than Brian and Kevin's weddings, lol. I think I could get away with it too. It being a dramedy poking the edge of satire doesn't require intense grounding in reality. Although, now that I'm thinking about it, how would they get their stage set overseas? Did they have a second one constructed over there or did it just fly over in a cargo plane? I could probably still make my idea work just fine even if they had to go to Europe first; it really ends before the tour starts. What are the chances anyone has created a detailed timeline of their lives between Millennium getting released and embarking on the tour? This would probably help me out a lot.

LOL Great minds think alike!  Dirty Rotten Scoundrels sounds like a great choice.  I did the same thing with Nick's pick, except I was like, "Nick, what about Aliens??"  In his defense, it is hard to pick just one favorite.  Not for me - mine will always be Titanic - but I have a much harder time picking, say, a favorite song because there are so many good ones.  Jaws is a great movie though.

Indeed. It's not Nick's fault. The majority of movies that came out in the '80s were awesome, so it's hard to choose between them. I'm very loyal. I pick a favorite and I stick with it. Movie, band, song, Backstreet Boy, whatever. Stuck, lol. All good, because Titanic, the Boys, QPG, and Nick are all great, lol.

The name thread was so helpful!  Erik, my douchey frat boy character I started that thread for, finally made his first appearance a few chapters ago.

Yes! Thank you for creating it. Ooh, glad Erik has finally come around. Hopefully he's working out for you.

Ugh, my sleep schedule has been so messed up the last few days, even more so than usual.  My current pattern is that I will go to bed well after sunrise, sleep until early afternoon, get tired at night because I only slept 5-6 hours instead of my preferred 8-9, think "Oh good, I will go to bed at a normal time tonight and reset my sleep schedule," go to bed at a normal time, wake up around 2 a.m., get back up, and don't go back to bed until well after sunrise, thus continuing the cycle.  I went to bed at like 10 last night, read for an hour or so, and fell asleep.  Woke up at 1 something, wide awake, and tried to read until I got sleepy again.  I finished my book and was still wide awake, so I got back up.  Now it's 7 a.m. LOL.  So much for resetting my sleep schedule.  I also still haven't started my chapter because I spent my pre-dawn writing time watching TV and replying to posts on this forum instead. LOL

Oh no! Sorry you're waking up in the middle of the night. I absolutely hate when that happens. I hope you got some good sleep in eventually. Maybe if you're up at 7am tomorrow, you can take a quick nap instead of sleeping until you wake up and that will right it a little. Hopefully writing is going productively since you woke up.

How did the rest of your night go?  I hope we both have a productive day today!

It did not, lol. Instead of writing, I decided now was a great time to start making a Google Sheet to keep track of my word counts, lol.

Today was cooking day, so I got a later start, then tried to get on with my next scene, but ended up texting my BFF to get some medical issue questions answered in more layman's terms than google was giving me, lol. So now I have a bunch of medical knowledge for only a scene, but it will be so accurate. Unlike my Backstreet timeline, lol. I've written 47 words today, lol.

Edited to Add: Oh, I didn't name the story yet, but the first chapter has a name "Chapter One: My World is Half Asleep, or How I, Nick Carter, am a Victim of Circumstance"

[RokofAges75]

Yes, all of this. This is where I get in trouble for comparing again. I have to stop looking at r/fanfic because all the people that talk about how many stories they finish in a month and I always think "how?!" lol

Yeah, but just think, most of those are one-shots.  For novelists like us, it's more comparable to talk about how many chapters we finish in a month LOL.

Always here to make joke and tempt, lol. See, the Boys get in a lifeboat, but the regular boat manages to be just fine. All the fans get saved, but now the Boys are adrift in a lifeboat, lol. I think these days, a shipwreck on a cruise boat would be way less common than in Titanic times.

Yes, and then their lifeboat sinks LOL.  Love it.  Yeah, in reality, a shipwreck nowadays would be much less disastrous because of all the safety regulations that were put in place BECAUSE of Titanic.  They have to have enough lifeboats for everyone now and do a lifeboat drill before departure.  When that cruise ship capsized off the coast of Italy a few years ago, I think only 30 some people died compared to 1,500 with Titanic - and that was probably a bigger boat with more people on it in the first place.  So it would definitely be a stretch.  I would probably stick with Nick's personal boat sinking over an entire cruise ship because that seems more plausible.  He seems to have had a lot of issues with boats over the years LOL.

It's why I've sat on my jokes until I thought about them solidly enough. I think that's something I needed to learn back then too. I feel like my life was WADD until PBox, really. I'd write and post any old thing in my head. And then at some point during PBox (probably about a year in?) I made the conscious decision to put everything on hold until PBox was finished, of course that took a whole other year and a half, but I stopped starting new things. And then after that, I decided to only focus on Beta Sig. I think it's been better for me in the long run to only focus on one thing at a time without getting too derailed. I was thinking just the other day that I should do my utmost to make AJ important in a story at some point and here we are, a good place to do it.

I was pretty good at only focusing on one story at a time until my novels started getting longer and it took me longer than a month to finish them.  That's when I started overlapping stories, which can definitely become overwhelming.  I used to like having a main project and a side project so I always had something to work on even when I was feeling uninspired on my main story, but even that seems like too much for me now.  Like you, I've found I'm most successful at finishing things when I stick to one story at a time.  Hopefully your Nick-is-not-the-main-character story will give AJ a time to shine.  It took me me 13 years to write a Howie novel and 21 to get to Kevin, so I hear you.  But I also see nothing wrong with writing lots of Nick stories.

If I don't rework mine, I do save them, but not to the extent that they would be any good bonus feature. Some chapters I ended up writing for OF PBox are the only thing I have like this because they would fill something that wasn't there before. In writing PNecklace, with the extensive editing I do, I've found that I'm usually able to work ideas in at different points, at least in spirit. There's definitely part of me that wishes I could do it with a whole novel before posting, but I don't have that kind of backlog at the moment, lol.

I know you don't. So you've got to weigh the options: fun bonus content or peace of mind? lol

Yeah, I'm the same as far as not having enough for fun bonus features.  Whatever I originally wrote is usually similar enough to what I ended up with that I'm not sure anyone else would enjoy reading it.  The only ones I kinda wish I still had are the original beginnings for AHTIM because they were both so different from each other and from the third and final version.  That was a lesson in perseverance for me, and it might have been interesting for people who read that story to see all the different ways I planned for Nick to get from Point A to Point B in the first few chapters.

I agree that ten chapters seems like a solid backlog. I feel far enough in to keep going and reasonably feel like I can get another ten chapters finished within ten weeks. I'm probably a little faster than that, to be honest (at least for the most part).

With SAMS, do you mean that you planned for a scene from Chapter 18 to be in the Prologue, but didn't write the prologue until after you'd written Chapter 18 or that you wrote the tiny part that was in the prologue in the beginning, but didn't finish the whole scene until you got to Chapter 18? Either way, interesting way to do it.

I am usually a little slower than that, but have managed to stay 8-9 chapters ahead of myself most of the time.  I was able to maintain weekly updates all the way through my last three finished multi-chapter stories - AHTIM, Heroic Measures, and Bethlehem - and so far so good with MBK.

With SAMS, I wrote everything in order except the prologue.  So I wrote Chapter 18 after 17 and then used an excerpt from it as my prologue.  I didn't originally plan on having a prologue, but I felt like my beginning needed a little something extra to create suspense.  I knew that scene would be coming eventually, so I waited until I got to that point in the story to write it and put it in as a prologue.  Then I was finally ready to start posting the story.

I think it makes sense to get past the inciting incident because then you know that the action's kicked off. I feel like I always put my inciting incidents fairly early in the story, within the first chapter if not the second. Do you feel yours are a little later? Or just that the "heart of the story" takes more time to get into after that?

From a storytelling perspective, that seems like the best place for the inciting incident - within the first couple chapters.  As I think about my stories, that's usually about where mine fall, too, but sometimes there's another pivotal moment or twist that comes up a little later, and that's really the point I want to get to to feel like I'm in the heart of the story.  Like with Bethlehem, I guess the inciting incident is the guys going to the cabin in Chapter 1, but really, the part I was waiting to get past was the car crash in Chapter 5 that kicks off the survival part of the story.  Curtain Call was similar - the inciting incident technically happened in Chapter 2, but the cancer bomb doesn't get dropped until the end of Chapter 5, which is a bigger moment in the story.  I have definitely shored it up since Broken, where it took me like 18 chapters to get to the point LOL.

It might not be you, I might have been off on my math! I guessed around 2003 (which is fairly close to 2004), but couldn't remember if you'd finished Broken by then or not. Was Guilty Roads the one that had won that poll or was it a different one? I get starting #2, you've gotta love a good reincarnation plotline. Did you do these types of polls often or was this more of a one time thing?

No, I think I said it was 2001 or 2002 and was off by a couple years.  I was happy I could still click on the results of that poll and see them!  Guilty Roads/Austere Refuge actually came in 4th place.  The winning idea was the Brian romance, Divergence, which evolved into an idea called Surrender My Heart that I still have a folder for in the Future Stories section of my bookmarks.  It's there waiting for me if I ever feel like writing a historical romance AU or OF, but I have not had that urge LOL.  I enjoy history, but not so much historical fiction.  That was also the problem with the reincarnation idea, which was going to take place partly during the Civil War.  I loved that damn reincarnation idea and also still have bookmarks saved for it.  It evolved into a Brian idea since that poll, though, which lists it as an AJ one LOL.  Sorry, AJ.  I actually have a decent start to an outline and eight pages of actual story written for that one too, but for whatever reason, I stopped writing it in the middle of Chapter 1 and never went back to it.  According to my notes, the last time I added anything to the outline was in 2013, which was a WADD year for me.  I eventually started SAMS toward the end of that summer, so I guess that's why I never went back to the reincarnation one.

I love doing polls like that, but don't do them very often.  Besides this one, I only remember doing one other where I described several ideas I was considering and asked readers to vote.  That was in the summer of 2017, after I finished SAMS and was having major WADD trying to figure out what to write next. http://dreamers-sanctuary.com/2017-07-01/  I actually have since finished two of the four ideas on this one (#1 was Heroic Measures, #2 was A Heart that Isn't Mine) and am working on a third (#3 was My Brother's Keeper).  And #4 is the same Brian horror story I wrote the first scene for earlier this year.  So either I'm getting better at bringing ideas into fruition, or I just have fewer ideas to choose from these days LOL.

They're your AJ compared to Nick, lol. "Hey, if you've got time, I have some stuff to do... No pressure." versus "I'MMMMM BAAAACCCCKKKK, ALLLRIIGHT!" I get it. I felt the same way about my little holiday story as Bethlehem. I could have written it for this Christmas, but the time just seemed right last year. I like the patiently naggy ones. They feel much more comforting.

LOL Yes!  Glad you jumped on your holiday story and got it written when the time felt right.  I did not do that with the fourth pandaskunk story idea I had last year (well, I started it, but did not finish it), and now half the idea won't work anymore unless I still set it in 2020.  But since I wrote the others all in the year they take place in, that takes some of the fun out of it.  This must be how the Boys feel about failing to deliver a Christmas album year after year LOL.  It's such a time-sensitive thing, and they are not good with being timely.  But hopefully this is the year!

Your poor whipped cream, lol! I'd asked for one for our wedding, but I think I haven't been thinking about it because we just don't have space for it on our counter or in our cabinets. Once I get back to organizing, maybe I can make some space for it though. I like the yellow one. I keep vaguely telling hubs that a yellow kitchen would be nice, but then he reminds me that I also want a yellow house. I know better than to ask for AJ's pink kitchen, haha.

I love yellow!  My kitchen is yellow!  Aside from my soon-to-be-redecorated guest bathroom, it's the only room in my house I didn't repaint when I moved in because I fell in love with the bright yellow walls the first time I looked at the house.  I decorated it with teal and red accents, and it's so colorful and cute.  It makes me happy.  So I say go for the yellow kitchen and the yellow house!  A pink kitchen would be super cute too, but yellow is probably a better option for the hubs LOL.

Yes, can't wait! "Redrum" would really pop if the background was beige or neutral, just saying, lol. I wonder if you could cover up the screw holes with some other picture.

I know, I'd temporarily forgotten about it, but knew it was up your alley. There's also the actual Stanley Hotel if you're doing an epic Colorado tourist trip, lol. I'm glad you did. I would expect nothing less for this "Shining" bathroom.

So this is my other dilemma.  I'm planning to put REDRUM on the back of the door, cause he writes it on a door in the movie, but in the movie, the door is white.  My bathroom door is currently stained wood, not painted.  It's pretty the way it is and goes with the current bathroom better than white would, but REDRUM would definitely pop more on a white door.  So I have to decide if I want to paint it or not.  I can definitely cover up the screw holes in the walls with artwork, but not the places where the paint is peeling a bit.

I would love to visit the Stanley too!  I definitely need to plan a vacation to Colorado sometime - so much to see!

Do you often have ideas that come up in the moment as your writing or do most of them end up in the outline ahead of time?

You're probably right on all of that. And Charlotte's Web is so sad, so I can imagine being doubly sad if the scene itself is sad.

The big ideas are usually planned in advance in the outline, but I come up with a lot of little things on the spot as I'm writing.  I'm counting on that happening in the Kevin chapter I barely started today because I'm worried it's gonna be a boring one otherwise LOL.

...Heroes thrust together by destiny, lol. I think of all the things I've cut, the brotherly relationship and Nick as is are what's been most important to keep for me. It's just really not the same story without it. Now I've had to tweak it some to make it feel more earned, but on a whole, it's been preserved.

LOL! I get that. I wanted to keep Nick the same because he's my tiny muse. And I could see myself flubbing it up if I renamed him more than the others.

Heroes thrust together by destiny - absolutely!  I mean, that's basically what they are in real life LOL.  As far as their relationship goes, my favorite AU I've written is Song for the Undead because it has the found family trope.  Other than Brian and Kevin, none of them knew each other at the beginning, but they developed that bond as the story went on.

Gotta keep your muse's name the same!

[RokofAges75]

OMG, yes! The misogyny! It's interesting that you had an awareness for it that seeped into the writing without you realizing. I remember doing the same thing back then. I cringed a little rereading Beta Sig when Nick was monologing about how much he liked talking to Brian and literally thinks something to the effect of "I sound like a girl that wants to date Brian." (Misogynistic and homophobic! I'm the worst!) I think that's something that can happen with all creative works. They're really a product of their time, so even something praised can become something with cringey aspects over the years. Heck, look at Hamilton. Initially praised for its diversity in cast, now judged for "Founders Chic" and lack of diverse characters.

They are definitely a product of their time.  And I think we also have to remember that just because we write characters saying or thinking certain things doesn't mean that those words reflect something we ourselves would say.  My older stories also have the guys using words like "gay" and "retarded" as insults, which I myself would never say now and hope they wouldn't either, but that was the way people talked among their friends not so long ago.  It's true to the time, even if it's not PC now.

I also saw something about Book of Mormon cast members petitioning for revisions to that musical because of the way the Africans are portrayed or something.  The article I read did not say what, specifically, they wanted changed, but my thoughts on that are, there are so many things in that musical that could be considered offensive, but that's kind of the point!  The stereotypes, like that all Africans are poor and live in mud huts and have AIDS, are there at least partly to mock how naive Americans like the Mormon missionaries would see them.  I'm curious to see if Matt and Trey comment on it because they are so against PC culture.

A valid point! AJ would be pretty badass, but probably sprain his ankle from his tight pants, lol. What do you mean I can't put AJ in coma and have him be important? I thought this story was "AJ is Nick's guardian angel"?! LMAO!

My next related thought, and I'd love to be corrected if I'm wrong. Brian's been involved in pretty much everything Nick's been involved in to some degree, though not in a while, if I'm remembering correctly... I'm probably fine to just pick whatever, yeah?

I stand corrected - definitely make AJ Nick's crippled guardian angel who's actually in a coma!

Yeah, I agree about Brian.  He's definitely been kidnapped, held hostage, stricken down by disease (especially heart disease), and involved in romantic storylines.  Seems like nowadays he mostly exists to to have angsty sexual relationships with Nick, judging by what I've read on AO3 LOL.  So I'm not sure what you would do with him, but yeah, probably anything you come up with will work.

I do! I wonder why he changed from backwoods cannibals to zombies? I'm guessing Kevin hated it. LMAO! Nick the villain. He would be such a large ham! You watched Dr. Horrible, right? That's the type of villain I see Nick being.

LOL! The Headless Horseman would be lucky to get Nick's head, even though his hair was only okay in that film.

I know his original co-writer or producer (can't remember his exact role) passed away, and that's when the idea changed.  Nick would make a great cheesy, over the top villain!  Definitely something like Dr. Horrible LOL.

Yeah, The Hollow was not Nick at his finest in terms of looks, but I'd still take his head, long hair and all.  He was sure hot in those football pants though!

You're totally right, it is more of a Passover movie. It's just the second thing I think of when I think of The Ten Commandments, lol. LMAO! If "has a bunny" is the only qualification for an Easter movie, then is Donnie Darko an Easter movie? Monty Python and the Holy Grail is a classic though.

Same!  LOL Apparently so, because Donnie Darko also came up on Google's list of "Easter movies," as did Zootopia LOL.

It's not really anything tied to an era outside of being "classic Backstreet," but as usual, it's easier to blissfully avoid their lives away from BSB if you go earlier than Brian and Kevin's weddings, lol. I think I could get away with it too. It being a dramedy poking the edge of satire doesn't require intense grounding in reality. Although, now that I'm thinking about it, how would they get their stage set overseas? Did they have a second one constructed over there or did it just fly over in a cargo plane? I could probably still make my idea work just fine even if they had to go to Europe first; it really ends before the tour starts. What are the chances anyone has created a detailed timeline of their lives between Millennium getting released and embarking on the tour? This would probably help me out a lot.

I totally get the "no wives" thing.  You could also go with the Backstreet's Back tour.  They started that one in Canada in December 97 and then had shows in the States in January 98.  Then they had a second U.S. leg that started in July 98 after a two-month break for Brian's surgery.  I could see them doing some rehearsal before that second leg just because of Brian needing time to get back into the swing of things.

Those are really good questions about how they get their whole stage setup overseas.  I have no idea LOL.  See, that's the kind of stuff they should have covered in the documentary!  It would have been so helpful to us fanfic writers to see all that behind the scenes tour stuff.

Good ol' Backstreet.net is still online and has a timeline that may be helpful for keeping track of events from back then: http://backstreet.net/timeline.html

I'm very loyal. I pick a favorite and I stick with it. Movie, band, song, Backstreet Boy, whatever. Stuck, lol. All good, because Titanic, the Boys, QPG, and Nick are all great, lol.

Same here!  My favorites are so engrained in me at this point, it would take a lot to make me switch.  Even Brian promoting Parler couldn't make me revoke my Brian girl card.  The favorite song is a tough one though.  My favorite BSB song is Don't Wanna Lose You Now, with Siberia as a close second - but sometimes I go back and forth between which one I actually like better because I love them both so much.  I can't pick an all-time favorite song by anyone though.  I guess maybe it should be DWLYN, being my favorite song by my favorite group, but I don't know that it actually is LOL.  There are just too many good songs in the world.

It did not, lol. Instead of writing, I decided now was a great time to start making a Google Sheet to keep track of my word counts, lol.

Today was cooking day, so I got a later start, then tried to get on with my next scene, but ended up texting my BFF to get some medical issue questions answered in more layman's terms than google was giving me, lol. So now I have a bunch of medical knowledge for only a scene, but it will be so accurate. Unlike my Backstreet timeline, lol. I've written 47 words today, lol.

Edited to Add: Oh, I didn't name the story yet, but the first chapter has a name "Chapter One: My World is Half Asleep, or How I, Nick Carter, am a Victim of Circumstance"

LOL It happens.  I also have not had a productive writing day so far and chose to reorganize my bookshelves and weed out some books instead of writing.  Then I watched the gymnastics Olympics trials, and now I am here.  I'm glad you at least got some research done! 

LOL I love the first chapter's title!

[nicksgal]

Yeah, but just think, most of those are one-shots.  For novelists like us, it's more comparable to talk about how many chapters we finish in a month LOL.

You're totally right! I keep forgetting! lol This is one of those stupid bias things. I just kind of assuming everyone's up to the same thing as me if not told otherwise (e.g., writing fanfic = writing novel-length stories); I have to stop doing that. I only finished five this month... but I finished nine the month before. Maybe I am prolific, lol.

Yes, and then their lifeboat sinks LOL.  Love it.  Yeah, in reality, a shipwreck nowadays would be much less disastrous because of all the safety regulations that were put in place BECAUSE of Titanic.  They have to have enough lifeboats for everyone now and do a lifeboat drill before departure.  When that cruise ship capsized off the coast of Italy a few years ago, I think only 30 some people died compared to 1,500 with Titanic - and that was probably a bigger boat with more people on it in the first place.  So it would definitely be a stretch.  I would probably stick with Nick's personal boat sinking over an entire cruise ship because that seems more plausible.  He seems to have had a lot of issues with boats over the years LOL.

But they save it and end up capsized on that island with a million venomous snakes near Brazil. And you just know one of them would start quoting Snakes on a Plane, lol. But also they would probably die... or at the very least get arrested because it's illegal to go there.

I've done a lifeboat drill. Hubs was distracting, because our meetup spot was a bar, so he kept asking me if they would give us drinks if the boat was sinking. And I was like, no I'm pretty sure that bar service is at the bottom of the list if this drill becomes reality, lol.

It is surprisingly easy to sink a pontoon or smaller! I know several people who have done it (and been shamed). Larger than a pontoon, it gets more difficult. So yes, I'm sure Nick will sink several more boats in his lifetime. That said, it's much easier to get yourself to safety if you're sinking a smaller boat -- it has less of that undertow(?)... I looked it up, this is called cavitation (where the boat makes that suction as it sinks by pulling air down with it).

I was pretty good at only focusing on one story at a time until my novels started getting longer and it took me longer than a month to finish them.  That's when I started overlapping stories, which can definitely become overwhelming.  I used to like having a main project and a side project so I always had something to work on even when I was feeling uninspired on my main story, but even that seems like too much for me now.  Like you, I've found I'm most successful at finishing things when I stick to one story at a time.  Hopefully your Nick-is-not-the-main-character story will give AJ a time to shine.  It took me me 13 years to write a Howie novel and 21 to get to Kevin, so I hear you.  But I also see nothing wrong with writing lots of Nick stories.

I think that was why I stopped. I figured if I kept writing a bunch of other things, I'd never get them done, lol. I am giving myself PBox related leeway, since I'm still editing PNecklace. So if PDemons or OF PBox strikes me while I'm writing NABTMC, I'll probably still work on them. Or Snail, of course. Anything else, I'll get out the jabby part and then move on.

You know, it is so far. He popped into the second chapter for something really mundane and pretty much took charge of the scene he was in, so... I have high hopes for him going forward.

Yeah, I'm the same as far as not having enough for fun bonus features.  Whatever I originally wrote is usually similar enough to what I ended up with that I'm not sure anyone else would enjoy reading it.  The only ones I kinda wish I still had are the original beginnings for AHTIM because they were both so different from each other and from the third and final version.  That was a lesson in perseverance for me, and it might have been interesting for people who read that story to see all the different ways I planned for Nick to get from Point A to Point B in the first few chapters.

Does word do version history? I wonder if they'd be recoverable at all. That would be interesting because they're so different.

I am usually a little slower than that, but have managed to stay 8-9 chapters ahead of myself most of the time.  I was able to maintain weekly updates all the way through my last three finished multi-chapter stories - AHTIM, Heroic Measures, and Bethlehem - and so far so good with MBK.

With SAMS, I wrote everything in order except the prologue.  So I wrote Chapter 18 after 17 and then used an excerpt from it as my prologue.  I didn't originally plan on having a prologue, but I felt like my beginning needed a little something extra to create suspense.  I knew that scene would be coming eventually, so I waited until I got to that point in the story to write it and put it in as a prologue.  Then I was finally ready to start posting the story.

I believe in you! I think it's great that you've gotten to keep weekly updates going without having to take a brief hiatus. My real goal, hopefully, is to be able to get to the end of posting PNecklace and be able to start posting PDemons right away. My dream would be to finish this new story while I'm still posting PNecklace, actually. Like I still think it's a pretty short idea, so I'm hoping I can finish it up quickly.

Interesting! Is that typically what you'll use prologues for and are they something you use often?

From a storytelling perspective, that seems like the best place for the inciting incident - within the first couple chapters.  As I think about my stories, that's usually about where mine fall, too, but sometimes there's another pivotal moment or twist that comes up a little later, and that's really the point I want to get to to feel like I'm in the heart of the story.  Like with Bethlehem, I guess the inciting incident is the guys going to the cabin in Chapter 1, but really, the part I was waiting to get past was the car crash in Chapter 5 that kicks off the survival part of the story.  Curtain Call was similar - the inciting incident technically happened in Chapter 2, but the cancer bomb doesn't get dropped until the end of Chapter 5, which is a bigger moment in the story.  I have definitely shored it up since Broken, where it took me like 18 chapters to get to the point LOL.

I get it, you like to make it to the turning point for the first act. That makes sense, because that forces the characters to make a decision they usually can't go back from. Like Brian could have decided not to drive in the rain (not that I think he would have in those circumstances), but once he did, there was no turning around once that moose appeared.

I know it feels long in Broken, but Broken's also a long story and the turning point usually happens a little earlier than a 1/3 of the way through the story. I think Chapter 18 is totally justifiable for its length. Now, would you put it earlier, thus making Broken a shorter story if you wrote it today? That's possible.

No, I think I said it was 2001 or 2002 and was off by a couple years.  I was happy I could still click on the results of that poll and see them!  Guilty Roads/Austere Refuge actually came in 4th place.  The winning idea was the Brian romance, Divergence, which evolved into an idea called Surrender My Heart that I still have a folder for in the Future Stories section of my bookmarks.  It's there waiting for me if I ever feel like writing a historical romance AU or OF, but I have not had that urge LOL.  I enjoy history, but not so much historical fiction.  That was also the problem with the reincarnation idea, which was going to take place partly during the Civil War.  I loved that damn reincarnation idea and also still have bookmarks saved for it.  It evolved into a Brian idea since that poll, though, which lists it as an AJ one LOL.  Sorry, AJ.  I actually have a decent start to an outline and eight pages of actual story written for that one too, but for whatever reason, I stopped writing it in the middle of Chapter 1 and never went back to it.  According to my notes, the last time I added anything to the outline was in 2013, which was a WADD year for me.  I eventually started SAMS toward the end of that summer, so I guess that's why I never went back to the reincarnation one.

Of course a Brian romance would win. That's what the people wanted back then, lol! The amount of research historical fiction takes is crazy. Didn't Julilly used to write a bunch of it? I was always really impressed. Dare I suggest a Brian reincarnation horror story? lol

I love doing polls like that, but don't do them very often.  Besides this one, I only remember doing one other where I described several ideas I was considering and asked readers to vote.  That was in the summer of 2017, after I finished SAMS and was having major WADD trying to figure out what to write next. http://dreamers-sanctuary.com/2017-07-01/  I actually have since finished two of the four ideas on this one (#1 was Heroic Measures, #2 was A Heart that Isn't Mine) and am working on a third (#3 was My Brother's Keeper).  And #4 is the same Brian horror story I wrote the first scene for earlier this year.  So either I'm getting better at bringing ideas into fruition, or I just have fewer ideas to choose from these days LOL.

So you do polls when you're WADDing? Interesting. We're always here to bounce ideas too. Not totally quite the same as what your readership might want, but... it's good to get some outside perspective. Or vague questions, whatever.

LOL Yes!  Glad you jumped on your holiday story and got it written when the time felt right.  I did not do that with the fourth pandaskunk story idea I had last year (well, I started it, but did not finish it), and now half the idea won't work anymore unless I still set it in 2020.  But since I wrote the others all in the year they take place in, that takes some of the fun out of it.  This must be how the Boys feel about failing to deliver a Christmas album year after year LOL.  It's such a time-sensitive thing, and they are not good with being timely.  But hopefully this is the year!

If they get this far into it and don't finish it this year, I will laugh so hard. Not even be surprised, just laugh. I feel you on your Pandaskunk story though. Maybe something will strike this year or you can figure out a way to set the last one in 2020 and 2021 at the same time.

I love yellow!  My kitchen is yellow!  Aside from my soon-to-be-redecorated guest bathroom, it's the only room in my house I didn't repaint when I moved in because I fell in love with the bright yellow walls the first time I looked at the house.  I decorated it with teal and red accents, and it's so colorful and cute.  It makes me happy.  So I say go for the yellow kitchen and the yellow house!  A pink kitchen would be super cute too, but yellow is probably a better option for the hubs LOL.

Same. And I think it's a great color for a house because it feels both neutral and cheery. Your kitchen sounds adorable! I haven't really redecorated yet, but our next home, I have big plans, lol. Yes, the pink kitchen would make him sad.

So this is my other dilemma.  I'm planning to put REDRUM on the back of the door, cause he writes it on a door in the movie, but in the movie, the door is white.  My bathroom door is currently stained wood, not painted.  It's pretty the way it is and goes with the current bathroom better than white would, but REDRUM would definitely pop more on a white door.  So I have to decide if I want to paint it or not.  I can definitely cover up the screw holes in the walls with artwork, but not the places where the paint is peeling a bit.

I would love to visit the Stanley too!  I definitely need to plan a vacation to Colorado sometime - so much to see!

What if you got a Redrum needlepoint thing, framed it, and hung it on the door? It's not quite the same, but it would probably be white and would pop against the door that way and you could still keep it's nice stained wood look. Peeling paint is the worst.

Yes, we have so many wonderfully weird and macabre things, lol.

The big ideas are usually planned in advance in the outline, but I come up with a lot of little things on the spot as I'm writing.  I'm counting on that happening in the Kevin chapter I barely started today because I'm worried it's gonna be a boring one otherwise LOL.

How's it going? Glad you were able to get something started.

Heroes thrust together by destiny - absolutely!  I mean, that's basically what they are in real life LOL.  As far as their relationship goes, my favorite AU I've written is Song for the Undead because it has the found family trope.  Other than Brian and Kevin, none of them knew each other at the beginning, but they developed that bond as the story went on.

Gotta keep your muse's name the same!

lol! I don't know that I'd call Lou Pearlman destiny, but sure. I'm glad they were heroes thrust together by a ponzi schemer, lol. Love found family. That's PBox too.

I think he would be mad if I didn't, lol!

[nicksgal]

They are definitely a product of their time.  And I think we also have to remember that just because we write characters saying or thinking certain things doesn't mean that those words reflect something we ourselves would say.  My older stories also have the guys using words like "gay" and "retarded" as insults, which I myself would never say now and hope they wouldn't either, but that was the way people talked among their friends not so long ago.  It's true to the time, even if it's not PC now.

I also saw something about Book of Mormon cast members petitioning for revisions to that musical because of the way the Africans are portrayed or something.  The article I read did not say what, specifically, they wanted changed, but my thoughts on that are, there are so many things in that musical that could be considered offensive, but that's kind of the point!  The stereotypes, like that all Africans are poor and live in mud huts and have AIDS, are there at least partly to mock how naive Americans like the Mormon missionaries would see them.  I'm curious to see if Matt and Trey comment on it because they are so against PC culture.

That's a valid point. If anything, characters should be different from us and if that's something they would say, they should say it (and get called out on it, and hopefully the Boys don't speak that way now, if they did then). But it's also good that we recognize it in our earlier works and are making the necessary adjustments to do better for our community when we catch ourselves writing something that could be problematic.

Uhhh... what? Like, they've seen the show right? I think you're totally right, that's the exact point of the show. If it gets changed, then that satire level is just absent. See this is what I dislike about PC culture. Something where the whole purpose is to say "this is crazy and offensive" is being called crazy and offensive. We should recognize our biases and have conversations with people when they are being biased (or racist, homophobic, etcetera), but we've gotta stop "canceling" everything.

I stand corrected - definitely make AJ Nick's crippled guardian angel who's actually in a coma!

Yeah, I agree about Brian.  He's definitely been kidnapped, held hostage, stricken down by disease (especially heart disease), and involved in romantic storylines.  Seems like nowadays he mostly exists to to have angsty sexual relationships with Nick, judging by what I've read on AO3 LOL.  So I'm not sure what you would do with him, but yeah, probably anything you come up with will work.

LMFAO! It was my joke initially, but just seeing you write it made it funnier.

Okay, well the way to subvert that is writing Brian in a relationship with his wife and I just don't feel like writing about her, so... I'm going to go with my original plan, lol. Which was not an angsty sexual relationship with Nick, lol.

I know his original co-writer or producer (can't remember his exact role) passed away, and that's when the idea changed.  Nick would make a great cheesy, over the top villain!  Definitely something like Dr. Horrible LOL.

Yeah, The Hollow was not Nick at his finest in terms of looks, but I'd still take his head, long hair and all.  He was sure hot in those football pants though!

Oh, that's sad. I didn't know that. Nick would be great at that, especially if he could be a singing supervillain!

Can't give a cute butt a bad haircut! lol Football pants, baseball pants, all great.

Same!  LOL Apparently so, because Donnie Darko also came up on Google's list of "Easter movies," as did Zootopia LOL.

WTF google? This belongs in that thread apparently, lol.

I totally get the "no wives" thing.  You could also go with the Backstreet's Back tour.  They started that one in Canada in December 97 and then had shows in the States in January 98.  Then they had a second U.S. leg that started in July 98 after a two-month break for Brian's surgery.  I could see them doing some rehearsal before that second leg just because of Brian needing time to get back into the swing of things.

Those are really good questions about how they get their whole stage setup overseas.  I have no idea LOL.  See, that's the kind of stuff they should have covered in the documentary!  It would have been so helpful to us fanfic writers to see all that behind the scenes tour stuff.

Good ol' Backstreet.net is still online and has a timeline that may be helpful for keeping track of events from back then: http://backstreet.net/timeline.html

Hmmm... that might actually work too! Great suggestion to go further back. Good ol' Backstreet.net! I haven't thought about you in forever, but what a blessing!

Next time they solicit fan questions, this is what I'm going to ask. What's the process of preparing for a tour? Please tell me about your job and not your underwear preferences! lol My first thought was actually boat, but then I remembered that cargo planes are a thing and not just passenger planes, lol.

Same here!  My favorites are so engrained in me at this point, it would take a lot to make me switch.  Even Brian promoting Parler couldn't make me revoke my Brian girl card.  The favorite song is a tough one though.  My favorite BSB song is Don't Wanna Lose You Now, with Siberia as a close second - but sometimes I go back and forth between which one I actually like better because I love them both so much.  I can't pick an all-time favorite song by anyone though.  I guess maybe it should be DWLYN, being my favorite song by my favorite group, but I don't know that it actually is LOL.  There are just too many good songs in the world.

Even Nick's whole blah. But we've discussed that already.

There are so many great songs! But favorite song by favorite band makes the most sense to me, so I've stuck with it.

LOL It happens.  I also have not had a productive writing day so far and chose to reorganize my bookshelves and weed out some books instead of writing.  Then I watched the gymnastics Olympics trials, and now I am here.  I'm glad you at least got some research done! 

LOL I love the first chapter's title!

I ended up writing around 500 words yesterday, and then about 200 editing, but yeah... Not productive at all. I mean cooking and laundry, sure! I think I just need to get into the groove with this story. I envisioned it as some sort of hilarious thing and it ended up more serious than I'd planned on. Curse you, Team Dark!

Thanks! I wanted them to be funny, but the idea of using song lyrics as chapter titles was also too good to pass up, lol.

How's your writing going today?

[RokofAges75]

You're totally right! I keep forgetting! lol This is one of those stupid bias things. I just kind of assuming everyone's up to the same thing as me if not told otherwise (e.g., writing fanfic = writing novel-length stories); I have to stop doing that. I only finished five this month... but I finished nine the month before. Maybe I am prolific, lol.

Yeah, even when I was an enthusiastic and prolific new teenybopper writer, I only averaged one "novel" a month - and I have since written short stories with a higher word count than some of those "novels" LOL.  They definitely wouldn't qualify for NaNoWriMo.

I think averaging a chapter a week is a good pace.  That's what I've been doing, too.  You doubled that in May; that's impressive!  It definitely makes you prolific in my book.  That's 14 stories in two months if each chapter was a one-shot! LOL

But they save it and end up capsized on that island with a million venomous snakes near Brazil. And you just know one of them would start quoting Snakes on a Plane, lol. But also they would probably die... or at the very least get arrested because it's illegal to go there.

I've done a lifeboat drill. Hubs was distracting, because our meetup spot was a bar, so he kept asking me if they would give us drinks if the boat was sinking. And I was like, no I'm pretty sure that bar service is at the bottom of the list if this drill becomes reality, lol.

It is surprisingly easy to sink a pontoon or smaller! I know several people who have done it (and been shamed). Larger than a pontoon, it gets more difficult. So yes, I'm sure Nick will sink several more boats in his lifetime. That said, it's much easier to get yourself to safety if you're sinking a smaller boat -- it has less of that undertow(?)... I looked it up, this is called cavitation (where the boat makes that suction as it sinks by pulling air down with it).

"I have had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking island!"  LOL Yeah, I could totally see that.

I dunno about the drink thing; remember Benjamin Guggenheim in Titanic who was like, "We are dressed in our best and prepared to go down as gentleman... but we would like a brandy!"  He was last seen sipping brandy by the Grand Staircase, so someone must have served him.  Of course, they also had music to drown by.  I do think things would be a little different nowadays LOL.

That makes sense that a smaller boat would be easier to escape from.  Thanks for teaching me a new word!  Jack Dawson didn't use that term when he was describing the suction. LOL

I think that was why I stopped. I figured if I kept writing a bunch of other things, I'd never get them done, lol. I am giving myself PBox related leeway, since I'm still editing PNecklace. So if PDemons or OF PBox strikes me while I'm writing NABTMC, I'll probably still work on them. Or Snail, of course. Anything else, I'll get out the jabby part and then move on.

You know, it is so far. He popped into the second chapter for something really mundane and pretty much took charge of the scene he was in, so... I have high hopes for him going forward.

That sounds like a good compromise.  And go AJ!  It's your time to shine!

Does word do version history? I wonder if they'd be recoverable at all. That would be interesting because they're so different.

No, but they were written in Google Docs.  I remembering making the choice to delete them and not back them up once I had my third beginning that I was happy with, knowing I would never be able to recover them, so they're gone forever.  They exist now only in my memory. LOL  The third version was more similar to the first version than the second; I even used some of the same dialogue from it, so at least there's that.

I believe in you! I think it's great that you've gotten to keep weekly updates going without having to take a brief hiatus. My real goal, hopefully, is to be able to get to the end of posting PNecklace and be able to start posting PDemons right away. My dream would be to finish this new story while I'm still posting PNecklace, actually. Like I still think it's a pretty short idea, so I'm hoping I can finish it up quickly.

That's a great goal!  I wish I could get to that point too, but I haven't managed to transition from one story to another without taking at least a few weeks off from updating.  But if you have enough chapters hoarded and the new story is short enough, you can do it!!

Interesting! Is that typically what you'll use prologues for and are they something you use often?

No... I think that's the only one where I used the prologue for a flash forward like that.  Most of my stories don't even have prologues; I only use them when I have some kind of introduction or shorter beginning that I want to be set apart from the rest of the story.  And now that I'm posting on AO3, where the first chapter posts as "Chapter 1" no matter what, I will probably go out of my way to avoid prologues altogether LOL.

How about you?  Are you a fan of the prologue and/or epilogue?

I get it, you like to make it to the turning point for the first act. That makes sense, because that forces the characters to make a decision they usually can't go back from. Like Brian could have decided not to drive in the rain (not that I think he would have in those circumstances), but once he did, there was no turning around once that moose appeared.

I know it feels long in Broken, but Broken's also a long story and the turning point usually happens a little earlier than a 1/3 of the way through the story. I think Chapter 18 is totally justifiable for its length. Now, would you put it earlier, thus making Broken a shorter story if you wrote it today? That's possible.

Yep, that makes sense.  I guess it's also like a turning point for me as the writer - once I have them make that decision and there's no turning back, it's full steam ahead, so I might as well start posting it LOL.

Yeah, relative to its length, I guess Chapter 18 isn't bad, but that also shows me that Broken could have been shorter LOL.

Of course a Brian romance would win. That's what the people wanted back then, lol! The amount of research historical fiction takes is crazy. Didn't Julilly used to write a bunch of it? I was always really impressed. Dare I suggest a Brian reincarnation horror story? lol

Yep, and I'm sure I had a lot of Brian girls reading because most of my stories were about Brian back then.  A lot of my ideas came from the desire to write another Brian romance without finding a way to get rid of Leighanne, hence the AU... except I don't really like AU, so I didn't get anywhere with them LOL.

I'm sure historical fiction does take a ton of research.  The closest I've come to that is Guilty Roads with the Amish aspect of its storyline, and I did not enjoy researching for that as much as I thought I would, so I think historical fiction would be a challenge for me.  Yet I can spend hours researching medical stuff LOL.  Julilly did write historical fiction - kudos to her!  It is definitely impressive.

There was a supernatural element and kind of a suspense/mystery subplot to the reincarnation idea, but not full on horror.  The horror idea I do have also contains a supernatural element, but no reincarnation.  If I had an idea for a reincarnation horror story, that actually sounds cool!  Maybe I'll be able to merge some ideas someday.

So you do polls when you're WADDing? Interesting. We're always here to bounce ideas too. Not totally quite the same as what your readership might want, but... it's good to get some outside perspective. Or vague questions, whatever.

Yep.  Thanks!  Maybe I'll bounce some ideas around here when I'm ready to start a new one.  I'll appreciate any perspective I can get!  As of right now, I have no idea what my next story will be (unless it's a MBK sequel), but I don't think that will be until next year, so I'm not worried about it right now.  I usually end up changing my mind anyway, or a new idea comes along.

If they get this far into it and don't finish it this year, I will laugh so hard. Not even be surprised, just laugh. I feel you on your Pandaskunk story though. Maybe something will strike this year or you can figure out a way to set the last one in 2020 and 2021 at the same time.

LOL I know, same here.  And shake my head.  Oh Boys...   But I have faith in them this year, knowing they've already recorded.  In this day and age, it can't possibly take that long to put together a Christmas album.  They don't even have to have all original songs!

So my Pandaskunk idea had a main plot and a subplot.  The main plot I can still use if I decide to write another one.  The subplot was specific to 2020, so I'd have to either scrap it, change it, or just keep the story in 2020.  It was going to be a parody of A Christmas Carol with the three ghosts visiting Brian to try to convince him not to do that Littrell family Christmas show everyone was mad at them for doing in the middle of the pandemic last year.  The three ghosts were going to be characters I'd already killed off in the previous pandaskunk stories, so it would have been perfect.  But I may be able to use the basic idea with a different goal.  I'm sure the Littrells will do something cringey again this year that I could make incorporate LOL.

Same. And I think it's a great color for a house because it feels both neutral and cheery. Your kitchen sounds adorable! I haven't really redecorated yet, but our next home, I have big plans, lol. Yes, the pink kitchen would make him sad.

Yes, exactly!  Yellow goes well with most other colors.  Decorating was my favorite part of buying a house instead of renting - so many more options!

Here's a pic of my kitchen: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jSIeTE__GaA8qIH5KTKPguNZGhxl9lAn/view?usp=sharing  It's very kitschy, but I love it.  My house was built in 1952, so kitschy works.

What if you got a Redrum needlepoint thing, framed it, and hung it on the door? It's not quite the same, but it would probably be white and would pop against the door that way and you could still keep it's nice stained wood look. Peeling paint is the worst.

Yes, we have so many wonderfully weird and macabre things, lol.

That's a good idea!  I do love those needlepoints that look so sweet and pretty and then say horrible things LOL.  But I already have the vinyl wall cling, so I'm gonna use that.  I think if I end up painting the walls, I will probably also do the door... but if I don't, then I probably won't.  I am indecisive right now LOL.  I did already paint the back of the door to my writing room, which was identical, so I might as well paint another one if it will look best.  My shower curtain came today, so now I can go look for paint chips and get a feel for what will work best with the color scheme.

Weird and macabre things are the best!  Ask Rose about her zombie-themed bathroom LOL.

How's it going? Glad you were able to get something started.

I actually ended up having a pretty good writing night last night!  Once I got off here and went upstairs to write, I churned out about 1,300 words and got a good start on my chapter.

lol! I don't know that I'd call Lou Pearlman destiny, but sure. I'm glad they were heroes thrust together by a ponzi schemer, lol. Love found family. That's PBox too.

I think he would be mad if I didn't, lol!

I mean, yes, they were clearly manufactured in the beginning, but I do think there was some destiny involved with the other original members quitting and them finding Kevin, who brought in Brian.  They would not be the same group without Kevin and Brian, so that part seems like it was meant to be.  LMAO at "heroes thrust together by a ponzi scheme."

[RokofAges75]

That's a valid point. If anything, characters should be different from us and if that's something they would say, they should say it (and get called out on it, and hopefully the Boys don't speak that way now, if they did then). But it's also good that we recognize it in our earlier works and are making the necessary adjustments to do better for our community when we catch ourselves writing something that could be problematic.

Uhhh... what? Like, they've seen the show right? I think you're totally right, that's the exact point of the show. If it gets changed, then that satire level is just absent. See this is what I dislike about PC culture. Something where the whole purpose is to say "this is crazy and offensive" is being called crazy and offensive. We should recognize our biases and have conversations with people when they are being biased (or racist, homophobic, etcetera), but we've gotta stop "canceling" everything.

Yep, I totally agree with everything you said here.  We can always learn more and do better.  I'm all for education, but not a fan of cancel culture either.  People who are truly committed to learning and growing deserve a chance to do so.

There's definitely a difference between ignorance, intolerance, and satire.  Being PC is fine in society, but it takes the fun out of satire.  And, again, I don't know the specifics of who exactly made the complaint about Book of Mormon or what they were complaining about, but so many times, it seems like it's "woke" straight white people getting all offended on behalf of minorities who may or may not actually be offended themselves.  Having those conversations before launching into social justice warrior mode is so important, and while it's great to be an ally, sometimes we need to take a back seat and let whatever group we're fighting for be in the driver's seat.

Okay, well the way to subvert that is writing Brian in a relationship with his wife and I just don't feel like writing about her, so... I'm going to go with my original plan, lol. Which was not an angsty sexual relationship with Nick, lol.

LOL Totally understand that.  Although I actually kinda like writing Leighanne in small doses; even before last year, she was so easy to poke fun of.  Now I don't even feel remotely bad about doing so.  But go with your original plan!  I'm sure it'll be great!

WTF google? This belongs in that thread apparently, lol.

LOL For sure!  I forgot to mention The Passion of the Christ, which also came up and is a valid choice for an Easter movie, but damn... my story is depressing enough already LOL.

Hmmm... that might actually work too! Great suggestion to go further back. Good ol' Backstreet.net! I haven't thought about you in forever, but what a blessing!

Next time they solicit fan questions, this is what I'm going to ask. What's the process of preparing for a tour? Please tell me about your job and not your underwear preferences! lol My first thought was actually boat, but then I remembered that cargo planes are a thing and not just passenger planes, lol.

That would be a great question!  I imagine you're right about the cargo plane; they probably sent the stage over in pieces and build it there.  But really I have no idea.  I think that's also part of the reason I hate writing tour/concert stuff, because I have no idea what goes on behind the scenes besides the little snippets we've seen in their videos, so I can't draw on my own experience, and it's not an easy thing to research.  So much of what comes up when I have tried to look stuff like that up is geared toward garage bands, not famous pop groups on world tours.

I ended up writing around 500 words yesterday, and then about 200 editing, but yeah... Not productive at all. I mean cooking and laundry, sure! I think I just need to get into the groove with this story. I envisioned it as some sort of hilarious thing and it ended up more serious than I'd planned on. Curse you, Team Dark!

Thanks! I wanted them to be funny, but the idea of using song lyrics as chapter titles was also too good to pass up, lol.

How's your writing going today?

Aww.  It's hard to be a productive writer when you have stuff to do around the house too.  I hate adulting. LOL  It's also hard when you're not quite in the groove yet, whether it be with a new story or just a new chapter.  So it'll be a black comedy!  Those are the best.

I haven't even opened my story since waking up this afternoon LOL, but last night/this morning was good.  Hopefully tonight/tomorrow morning will be too!