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I'm not feeling super hyped about any of my Christmas story possibilities, and I'm running out of time, so I may just need to settle for a Christmas story in one of my established worlds. So I'll make it a poll

Trust me, they're both Christmassy.

Mia would be in a time just after Danny went home, so now she's queen and is feeling very alone, and Ben has to provide some much-needed timey-wimey support from the rest of the family.

David's got a bit of a King Wenceslas vibe going--he's been troubled by dreams, goes out in the snow, finds someone who needs help. Considering making it from the POV of a page who idolizes this legendary king who has crossed worlds, but could also stay in David's POV to see the ordinary guy who's dealing with being a legendary king.

I'm thinking it's a win-win--either the poll gets me excited for one, or it makes me terrified to mess it up so I procrastinate with the other.

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2024 Tumblr Top 10

1. 286 notes - Jul 3 2024

I love how a well-written romance is so often structured as a mystery. A person starts with a certain idea about another person,...

2. 242 notes - May 17 2024

For Love of the Princess: A Sleeping Beauty Retelling

3. 216 notes - May 16 2024

Good Rich Earth: A Science Fiction Retelling of "The Secret Garden"

4. 209 notes - Jun 13 2024

Reflection: A Retelling of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves”

5. 192 notes - Jul 5 2024

The trick to writing a good story is to make sure it has at least one element that people like so much that they don't care if...

6. 174 notes - May 16 2024

Heartsong

7. 169 notes - Jul 3 2024

For me, the best way to come up with an interesting Beauty and Beast retelling is to focus on the character dynamic between the...

8. 145 notes - May 2 2024

The Beggar's Door: A Retelling of "King Thrushbeard"

9. 129 notes - May 29 2024

A Garden of Wishes: A Retelling of “The Twelve Dancing Princesses”

10. 116 notes - Jul 11 2024

Now that I know more about writing, I'm upset at all the writing advice that urged new writers to find the one best way to write...

Created by TumblrTop10

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I have a million ideas for Inklings Christmas fantasy or sci fi stories, but unfortunately all of them are either:

Not Christmas enough

Not fantasy/sci fi enough

Not story enough

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Thinking about how Marastel's coming-of-age virtue name meant "joy", because with her melancholic temperament, she struggled with that virtue. And then her life was full of struggles and tragedies that gave her endless opportunities to practice that virtue.

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Of the long-running ideas I posted about yesterday:

Book I'd Most Like to See on Store Shelves: Lily Between Worlds. It's got a solid character-driven story that could have a wide appeal within the more domestic side of the fantasy genre. It also feels like the most developed of my original ideas. The broad-strokes story is mostly there--I'd just need to develop the setting and culture--and I wouldn't need to do significant research.

Story I'd Write If I Could Only Write One More Story in My Life: Shadowstruck. The worldbuilding conceit is unique and the themes are important to me (though it's so personal that I can't envision it in wide release on bookstore shelves--at most an indie release for a targeted audience). I'd have to develop the characters more so I can make sure the story flows from them rather than from the message, and thus nail down the plot.

Story That Should Be Easiest to Finish: "The Dust That Falls From Passing Stars". It's a short story and I know the whole plot. If only I could find my way through the tricky second act.

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🤡 and 🍄 for the WIP asks.

🤡How many Wips are you actively working on?

Actively, as in wrote in the last two weeks? Zero.

Actively, as in they're at the top of the list of things to work on/finish next? I'll say four: the Riquet of the Tuft retelling, the Arateph Rapunzel, Shadowstruck, and an Inklings Christmas story.

🍄Describe your wip/one of your wips in the format of “_ + =__

Russian Revolution + alien planet + astronomy + romance + Rapunzel = Arateph Rapunzel retelling

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Long-Running Story Ideas That I Very Much Wish I Could Actually Write

Original Fiction

Shadowstruck

Lily Between Worlds

Cardinal's Map

Paper Wings

A Beautiful Tomorrow

Henry and Mouse

Starfall

The Dust That Falls from Passing Stars

Cinderella retelling

Starfall novel

Arateph

The Princess and the Pea

Rapunzel

Snow White

Cinderella

Half-baked ideas for Little Red Riding Hood, The Goose Girl, and the romance of Auren's parents

Other Fairy Tale Retellings

The Tattercoats Retelling

Traditional East of the Sun, West of the Moon retelling

Political Goose Girl retelling

The Servant's Crown

Twelve Huntsmen retelling

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Potential Christmas Inklings Stories

Time travel story told through a child's letters to Santa (as she and her time-traveling parents are in various time periods across centuries)

Through a time-warping mishap, a woman from today gets transported to a spaceship far in the future and has to hitch a ride with a family going back to Earth for Christmas while dealing with their disdain for the "barbaric" past

Christmassy portal fantasy

A married couple rescues a time traveler. Turns out that the husband is from the past and several years ago made a Hallmarky decision to move to the future to be with his wife. Time traveler gives them a chance to go to his time period for Christmas, but they wind up bouncing around time and working out some issues with their relationship along the way.

Athelor story about Thomas (now more than a hundred years old and firmly, firmly ensconced in his life) meeting his terrified newly-arrived ten-year-old brother Danny and having to introduce him to Athelor while being reminded of a home he hasn't thought of in decades.

As you can see, some are more developed than others. All have at least some hold on my imagination, but I'm not sure which will stick out enough to lead to a completed story. Opinions (which one is most intriguing?), comments, thoughts about story directions, etc., all welcome.

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8 and 9 from the WIP ask game? (I think these have already been asked but I don't remember the ask game protocol about repeats, I get nervous 🥴)

Don't worry, there's no protocol against repeats. Personally, if I get asked a question twice, I just come up with another answer.

♻️A scrapped idea for your current WIP

My Arateph Rapunzel retelling has so many scrapped ideas that it's hard to move forward with the ideas I do have (because the odds suggest most of those won't work either). One of the most significant changes is that originally, Zemma was the equivalent of a doctoral candidate, working underneath the authority of a mentor, near a university campus. However, that campus setting made it really hard to justify the logistics of a fugitive repeatedly returning to the tower, and it was hard to justify why Zemma would take such risks when she was so close to attaining her degree. Now, Zemma is a full-fledged scholar at an isolated research site, who still has frequent contact with her mentor, but doesn't have to worry about the restrictions of a campus setting.

🤔What’s a story you’d love to write but haven’t even started yet?

I've got three ideas for time travel stories that I like for the Christmas Inklings Challenge, and I'd love it if at least one could come together as a full story.

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Writers asks: ⚠️❤️

⚠️Which wip your most likely to finish or update next?

Probably the "Riquet of the Tuft" retelling, because it'll be the shortest.

❤️Not a question, just a second kudos to send.

Aww, thanks!

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this from the WIP ask game

🦈, 🖍, 🛠

🦈Tell us the name of your/ one of your WIP(s)

The only one that has a title right now is Shadowstruck.

🖍Post any sentence from your WIP

Here's another sentence from the "Riquet of the Tuft" retelling.

She only smiled knowingly and said, "My sister has always been a romantic little fool."

🛠Is there a scene or anything in the WIP you are struggling with right now?

With the "Riquet of the Tuft" retelling, I'm struggling with scene-setting, and debating about the exact progression of the conversation between these characters--do I want it to resolve in one scene or would it work better to extend the story across a longer time frame?

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🧭🖍️♻️ for the WIP ask game!

🧭An alternative title to your/ one of your WIP(s)?

The original title to this version of Shadowstruck was The Shadows We Hide. I'm still debating whether the original title fits the new story better.

🖍Post any sentence from your WIP

Unfortunately, Shadowstruck is on the computer currently having technical difficulties, so here's a sentence from my other stalled WIP, a flash fiction retelling of "Riquet of the Tuft".

"What do you think of your sister's intended?" he asked.

♻️A scrapped idea for your current WIP

Originally, heartlight in the Shadowstruck universe was just called "magic". Personhood was defined as "the ability to enforce your will upon your environment/non-persons", and the colored light was the physical manifestation of that magical ability. However, even in the original version, the magic's ability was very limited and not well-defined, so the story didn't come together until I called it "heartlight" and spoke of it more like a medical condition than a magical one. Treating the lack of heartlight as a disability that people with heartlight have to figure out how to integrate into society works better as a parallel to the real-life issues I'm exploring, and this system is much easier to wrap my head around.

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2 and 9 for the writing asks?

2. Describe your wip/one of your wips in the format of “___ + ___ =___”

Victorian England + 1850s American politics + pro life debates + glowing people = Shadowstruck

9. What’s a story you’d love to write but haven’t even started yet?

I'd love to write the portal fantasy culture shock romance of Lily Between Worlds, but I've yet to write a word of an actual draft.

Also, over the past day, I keep seeing things that make me want to read/write my retelling of "King Thrushbeard" set during the Great Depression.

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🛠

Is there a scene or anything in the WIP you are struggling with right now?

In Shadowstruck, I'm struggling with overthinking. There were a couple of very clear scenes, but now that I've allowed myself to step back, I'm considering different options for the characters and plot, and I feel like I can't write until I decide, but I can't decide until I write, and it's this horrendous feedback loop of indecision.

I took a stab at my Arateph Rapunzel retelling yesterday, and aside from the computer problems that kept shutting down my computer and erasing everything after two sentences (not even exaggerating), my main problem is proving to be style and scene setting. I know what needs to happen in the story. I just don't know how to translate it into words. It's made worse by the fact that there are so many drafts of this opening, and knowing that I've failed at all of them makes it hard to believe that this effort is going to result in anything worthwhile.

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An ask game for writers to procrastinate working on you WIP(s)

I am also procrastinating actually writing. If you’ve multiple works in progress you can give a different answer every time!

🦈Tell us the name of your/ one of your WIP(s)

🍄Decriscribe your wip/one of your wips in the format of “___ + ___ =___”  

🌍What tags or warnings will your / one of your wip(s) need if you intend to share it?

🧭An alternative title to your/ one of your WIP(s)?

⚠️Which wip your most likely to finish or update next?

💾What is your document of your wip/ a wip called? (not the stories actual title but what you’ve saved it as)

🖍Post Any sentence from your wip

♻️A scrapped idea for your current WIP

🤔What’s a story you’d love to write but haven’t even started yet?

🤡How many Wips are you actively working on?

🛠Is there a scene or anything in the WIP you are struggling with right now?

❤️Not a question, just a second kudos to send.

Enjoy!

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Story List

Fairy Tale Retellings

The Beggar's Door: King Thrushbeard

A Daughter's Gift: Beauty and the Beast

A Day Late & A Christmas Alone: Beauty and the Beast

Beneath the Surface: The Frog Prince

For Love of the Princess: Sleeping Beauty

A Garden of Wishes: The Twelve Dancing Princesses

The Golden Shoe: Cinderella

Jack and His Wife: Jack and the Beanstalk

Length of Years: Rapunzel

Loving Memory: East of the Sun, West of the Moon

Marks of Loyalty: Maid Maleen

More Than All the Gems on Earth: Diamonds and Toads

The Nightingale Returns: The Nightingale

The Other Option: Rumpelstiltskin

Purity of Mind: Bluebeard

Reflection: Snow White and the Seven Dwarves

Those Who Sleep: Sleeping Beauty

The Turning of the Year: Cinderella

The Unseen Soldier: The Twelve Dancing Princesses

A Wise Pair of Fools: The Farmer's Clever Daughter

Without Words: The Six Swans

Woven Together: Clever Anait

Fantasy

Daughter of the House of Dreams

Fable: A Portal Fantasy

A Feast in the Lanternwood

From the Other Side of the End of the World

Heartsong

Honors From the King

In Chains

Instructions

The Memory Garden

The Return of Queen Emma

A Song of Starlight: A Starfall Story

Stars and Shadows: A Fairy Tale

Stolen Moments

Sylvia

Queen of the Fairies

The True Story: An Epistolary Novelette

Warning Signs

The Waters of Time

Science Fiction

Christmastime Again

Beyond the Legend: An Arateph Fragment

Beneath the Surface: An Arateph Story

Good Rich Earth: A Retelling of "The Secret Garden"

Until Death: An Arateph Fragment

Unfinished

After Midnight: A Cinderella Retelling

The Dust That Falls from Passing Stars: Part 1

The Christmas Card Caper: Part 1

Letters from Athelor: Part 1

Light of the World: Part 1

Shadowstruck: Chapter One

Shadowstruck (previous edition): Prologue, Chapter 1

The Sylph in the Storm

The Tawny Mouse: A fragment from a post-WWI historical fantasy

Fragments

Arateph Fragments: One, Two

Cinderella Retelling

Small Wonders: A Thumbelina Retelling

The Star That Stays

Time Travel Story Idea

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Maybe the truth at the heart of Shadowstruck is the importance of family. Because the most compelling stories in this universe are about what happens when you tell parents that some of their children have no right to their love, care, and protection. It destroys what should be the strongest and most natural bonds of love, and that simple horrible thing leads to all the complicated problems in their oppressive society.