Writus Interruptus - TV Tropes

Senior Fish: Oh, it's finally finished! A memoir of my life written in red ink!
[a wave of juice floods the screen and soaks the manuscript]
Senior Fish: Awww, barnacles!

• Used for an incomplete word in one of the omake strips in the back of one of the Fullmetal Alchemist volumes — Roy reveals that he wants to make all the women in the military wear tiny miniskirts, but then also admits that he'd fire all of the men at the same time, which prompts them to shoot him. His last words are written in his blood on the floor next to him: "Miniski..."

• The French comic Les Profs has a Running Gag that the history teacher never manages to finish his opening sentence ("That day, Napoleon said to his generals...") because he's interrupted by the strip's gag (a student asking a question, another explosion in the chemistry lab...).

• Dungeon Keeper Ami: In "Kept Busy", Ami's scribe has her pen break while she's writing.
• Played for drama in Thundercracker's Glory when Thundercracker gets ahold of his sister's journal. The last entry ends mid-sentence, indicating she was writing in said journal right before the Autobot attack that claimed her life.
• Triptych Continuum: In Triptych, Chapter 47, the convenient interruption of a "book of what could, in some ways, be termed as 'unicorn history'", which hints at a big revelation, where the Dramatic Irony kicks in and the out-of-universe reader suspects the writer got killed by said "powerless", which have been revealed to exist, unbeknownst to Quiet:

  that mindless ramble about how unicorns had to beware of those with no true power at all...

• Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio: When Sebastian J. Cricket settles into the pine tree to begin writing his novel, he's interrupted by Geppetto chopping the tree down. The chopping shakes the tree so hard that he starts the page off with a massive scribble.
• Kung Fu Panda: While Mantis and Viper try to give Po acupuncture, his yells from getting needles in his back end up bothering the rest of the Furious Five. Crane is in a neighboring room practicing Chinese calligraphy when the noise makes him paint a heavy stroke that goes off the paper.

• As Good as It Gets: Melvin is working on a new romance novel and struggling to describe what love is when Simon knocks on his door to confront him about mistreating Simon's dog. Melvin goes berserk and reduces Simon to tears with a furious rant, ordering him to never interrupt again.
• Frankenstein: The True Story: Just before Clerval and Frankenstein are prepared to animate their creation, Clerval discovers that an arm they had reanimated earlier is becoming horribly deformed. He has a heart attack and leaves a partially-completed note: "The process is re—". He intended to write "reversing", Frankenstein interpreted the note to mean "ready."
• A Series of Unfortunate Events: When the Baudelaire children are first introduced by Uncle Monty to the Incredibly Deadly Viper, the snake in question launches itself at Sunny. The scene abruptly cuts to Lemony Snicket dealing with a jammed typewriter ribbon. He apologizes to the audience as he adjusts it, then, trying to remember where he was in the story, brings the scene back.
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail:
  • The cartoon Title Card for "The Tale of Sir Lancelot" is being drawn by a Terry Gilliam animation, but right as the author is about to finish filling in the final T, an earth-shaking boom shakes his hand and forces him to scribble all over the page. Perturbed, the author gets up to investigate, finding that the cause of the disturbance is the sun and the clouds, who for some reason have muscled legs and are doing calisthenics. He yells at them to stop and clear off, which the clouds do immediately. then tells the sun to clear off as well, forcing the sun to set. As the night sky appears, the author mutters, "Bloody weather..."
  • Discussed and parodied when an Aramaic message on a cave wall is translated as saying that the Holy Grail is located in "the Castle of aaargh". It's debated whether this means the carver was killed mid-message, and why he would bother to carve "aaargh" if that was the case, with Galahad suggesting he was dictating to someone else. Ultimately subverted when it's revealed that the castle in question really is named "the Castle of Aaargh".
• Love Actually: Jamie, an author, loses half of the book that he's writing when his housekeeper/love interest Aurelia picks up an empty mug that was on top of a stack of papers, allowing the wind to blow them into a pond. By his own admission, he should have made copies.

• Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency makes a (plot-critical!) Historical In-Joke about the reason for Kubla Khan's unfinished state: the infamous "person from Porlock" turns out to be one of the time-traveling protagonists. The novel begins in an alternate timeline where Coleridge did finish writing the poem Kubla Khan. So when the protagonists discover the poem is a vital part of their antagonist's scheme, they time-travel back to the night Coleridge wrote it, where Dirk Gently knocks on Coleridge's door and keeps the poet distracted long enough to forget how to end the poem.
• One For Your Safety story has a guy trying to take advantage of humanity's conquest by a Benevolent A.I. to write a novel, only to get constantly interrupted by his paranoid mother and his drunk college friend and his former boss trying to get him to go back to his obsolete job, among others. Eventually the Groupmind locks him in a bunker with no phones or social media access until he's done with his novel, for which he's very thankful.
• One of the most prominent scenes in Little Women is when Amy burns Jo's manuscript in retribution for not being taken to the theatre with her. Not only has Jo been working on the novel for years, it's irretrievable as Jo destroyed the original manuscript after copying the stories to the one Amy burns, meaning it's gone forever.
• In Memory Miles is concentrating deeply on writing his Auditor's report when Ivan bursts in and speaks firmly at a high volume, resulting in Miles trying and failing to remember the brilliant way he was going to finish his current paragraph.

  Ivan: I am not bellowing [...] Simon Illyan is sleeping with my mother, and it's your fault!

• Invoked in the pilot of the show Legend. Writer Earnest Pratt is putting down his latest Nicodemous Legend story. The writing gets away from him as the villain shoots our hero. The sound of the fatal bullet instantly transitions to the sound of Pratt's pencil lead breaking. Pratt is shocked by the combination.

• Sesame Street: In one episode, Bert's writing a letter to Fred Rogers is cut short when Ernie brings in an electric fan and turns it on all the way, blowing Bert's papers all over the room.

• The Simpsons: In "Two Bad Neighbors", Bart accidentally shreds George Bush's newly-completed memoirs.
• Spongebob Squarepants:
  • In "Suction Cup Symphony", Squidward tries to write a symphony piece for the Bikini Bottom orchestra. He's constantly interrupted by Spongebob and Patrick playing doctor, and unknowingly incorporates the sound effects and their actions into his composition, not realizing so until opening night. Surprisingly, the crowd loves it.
  • In "Doing Time", one of the senior citizens at Shady Shoals is shown to have finally completed a memoir of his life, which was written in red ink. However, as a result of Spongebob once again failing his boating test by crashing into a tanker, a wave of juice obliterates the manuscript, to the senior's disappointment.

• Supposedly, the poem Kubla Khan was cut short by this. The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge famously reported how, while asleep under the influence of medicinal opium, he dreamed an incredible vision of Mongol emperor Kublai Khan's palace, and awoke to realize he had thought up an epic poem in his mind, some two to three hundred lines long. Having woken up, he got to work writing the poem down, but he only managed to get as far as line 54 when a person from the nearby village of Porlock showed up wishing to discuss some minor business matter, and was insistent that he couldn't leave until it was sorted out. By the time he had left, Coleridge had completely forgotten his dream and the rest of the poem. (Whether the story is true or simply an excuse he made up to explain a case of Writer's Block is debated to this day.)
• John Steinbeck had to rewrite about half of his book Of Mice and Men after his dog Toby chewed up the manuscript.