espelho-the-wayward-writer-blog

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*stares at the rural slice-of-life fantasy / fantasy political thriller hybrid I’m creating*

Is it even possible to stick to one genre at a time? Asking for a friend.

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This sounds incredibly compelling! I’d love to be on the tag list <3

WIP Intro: Atlas Jump

Space Station by Alexey Pyatov

GENRE: Science fiction; “slice of life” POV: Third person limited FORMAT: Short story anthology STATUS: Outlining, character work, Episode 1 underway SETTING: Atlas Space Station in orbit above Earth FEATURES & THEMES: LGBTQ+ cast, diverse cast(featuring characters of any and all ethnicities and genders as well as disabled characters), family, found family, exploration, relationships, friendships, environmentalism, PTSD, science, philosophy, romance

Synopsis:

 In the year 2370, humanity left a dying Earth on a mass exodus. Forced to flee their homeworld, the migrant fleet headed to settle an already terraformed Mars. 

In the year 2781, humanity is returning home. 

Project Atlas is the first fully fledged attempt to re-colonize Earth post-exodus. The massive Atlas space station in orbit above our former homeworld is built to accommodate teams of scientists and civilians who have volunteered to make the surface livable once again. 

The Atlas Crew and Residents have been chosen to carry on the Project’s objectives. They are to take what lessons were learned from humanity’s past to make a brighter future. 

Finn Russo, Marco Zozaya and Bria Hawkins are three teenage crew members of Project Atlas chosen for their skill and passion for the project. They will have to adjust to life on the space station and learn what it means to be part of humanity putting its best foot forward. 

Juggling life, work and the pursuit of happiness, Finn, Marco, Bria and the other people aboard Atlas Station will have to navigate the paths before them. Family, relationships, successes, failures and exploration await those who are invited on The Atlas Initiative. 

Welcome to Atlas Station

Keep reading

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I thought of three (3) brand new story ideas after eight blissful months of working solely on my main wip so now I know what hell feels like

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Writing a story truly is a "Choose your own adventure"

You must weigh options. You must think ten steps ahead in the plot. You must consider not only how your character would handle a situation, but what implications their choices imply.

But thank the good heavens for the backspace key...

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The OBLIVION BOUND Series a wip introduction

a Bloodbound & Nightbound canon-divergent story arc

GENRE: fanfiction; supernatural, lgbtq+ STATUS: in progress WORD COUNT: 30k+ POV: third person, present tense THEMES: love, good vs. evil, fighting destiny, change vs. tradition, found family, finding identity TRIGGERS: violence, blood, gore, death, trauma, sexual content

SERIES SYNOPSIS: In the heart of New York a young woman discovers a world within her own she never believed possible. To the south the supernatural underbelly of New Orleans threatens the life and identity of one young man. And a vampire searching for his past finds himself ensnared with two of the bloodiest killers in history and a love story spanning millennia.

FEATURES:

three interwoven stories that overlap with the Choices Books canon but don’t focus on them; with numerous events told from the perspectives of the different leads

a large and diverse cast of Original Characters as well as original lore

LGBTQ+ stories at the forefront of the narrative: Destiny focuses on a wlw relationship between two bisexual women, Circumstances focuses on a trans man in a mlm relationship, & Choices puts a healthy and respectful polyamorous relationship at the front of the story

TAGS: SERIES TAG | CHARACTER INTROS | WORLDBUILDING | TAG LIST Find Everything & More on the SERIES PAGE!

Read Now ⇨ BOUND BY DESTINY Chapter 1: The Job

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(via Scene - Checklist - Writers Write)

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I have just written precisely 1,000 words in which:

exactly one thing doesn't even quite happen

two short lines of dialogue are spoken

the rest of the words describe the POV character having and solving an existential crisis in his head

then, there's another, somewhat longer line of dialogue

I have a reasonable suspicion that this can be viewed as a nicely executed "how to bore all the potential readers that you don't have to death" exercise, but for now, I love every word.

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beta reader(s) needed

hello everyone,

i’m about to finish another draft of my novel and i’m looking for a pair (or several) of fresh eyes to take a look at it.

long story short, Empire of Lies is an epic urban fantasy tale of (mostly) non-Western characters in a (mostly) non-Western setting, finding out that everything they’ve been taught in history classes was a big fat lie, and trying to figure out how to live with that and make amends (or “500 pages of queer people, politics, and a moderate amount of anguish”, as @logarithmicpanda puts it).

what you can expect is a really diverse cast and lots of mental health rep (most of it ownvoices). there are parallel worlds, there’s magic, there are djinn, there are complex and complicated relationships, characters, who are very much flawed and very much ancient yet still relatable to tired millennials who hate the governments, there’s me being salty about colonialism and Western supremacists, and an underlying murder mystery fueling the character development of my children.

if you’re interested in reading my manuscript and giving me some feedback on it, please message me!

I’d really appreciate it if you reblogged this post to help me reach more people 💕

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Has this been done yet?

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other writeblrs posting about their work: so here you see a beautiful professionally made aesthetic of my wip and that‘s the well thought-out synopsis and here‘s the links to every introduction post i‘ve ever made about my ocs who have meaningful in-depth backstories and trauma beyond your comprehension and also they represent a wide variety of ethnicities. *tag list*

me posting about my work: so today i cried in the shower because my protagonist is So Gay i don‘t know anything else about her but she‘s Perfect and Gay

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Road to Obsidia • moodboards

"A wolf, a bear, a mermaid, a witch and a human... to anyone looking, they didn't look like much. Just a group of teenagers being young and loud. Yes, to the untrained eye, they were nothing but ordinary people."

wip page

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Writing an Ensemble Piece

What is an ensemble piece? It’s a work that follows multiple major characters of equal importance. While there may be a character or two with a bit more importance, everyone should be well-developed and have a decent amount of time devoted to them.

So let’s talk about writing an ensemble piece!

A diverse cast of characters should all bring something to the story.

Yes, this is an obvious one, but when juggling multiple POV characters it’s especially important. Not only do the cast of characters need to be unique and distinguishable from one another, but they should all make their own contributions to the story. In other words, you need to justify every POV character’s existence.

In Stranger Things, for example, we can split the major characters into three groups: 

Children - Mike, Lucas, Dustin, Will, Eleven, Max

Teenagers - Nancy, Jonathan, Steve

Adults - Chief Hopper, Joyce

These characters are all different and keep the story flowing. What’s important is how they keep the story flowing. The child characters, while arguably the real central characters, wouldn’t be able to accomplish the feats that the adult and teenage characters can, like Hopper’s investigations into Hawkins Lab for example. 

Likewise, the children are vital to the nostalgic atmosphere the show presents itself with and they bring their own plotlines and unique additions to the story. The children are great characters and the story would still be great if it only followed their journey, but it might be a little weaker. Adding the layers of the adults’ and teenagers’ investigations brings so much more intrigue to the story. And when the characters come together with their respective plots and the clues they’ve gathered, it brings the whole piece together wonderfully.

Speaking of which - come-together moments should be satisfying.

If there are multiple POV characters adding unique additions to the story, then of course they shouldn’t be in the same place at all times. Seeing the same events replayed from different POVs is boring and repetitive. Multiple characters should have their own subplots going on to keep themselves relevant.

So when characters come together and their storylines intersect, it should be to the story’s advantage, not to its detriment. This is something that tends to happen naturally if the characters have good chemistry and are interesting enough on their own. Interesting characters = interesting relationships. Reading about each one is interesting enough, but seeing them come together, especially if its at the climax, should be downright exciting.

The characters should be different, but they shouldn’t be a token gang.

When writing an ensemble piece, it can be easy to fall to classic character archetypes to keep the characters from seeming too similar. Certain traits can be lost or become exaggerated (the first Avengers film strips the characters down to their bare stereotypes for simplicity purposes).

The Breakfast Club is a pretty clear example of a token gang. Token gangs can work at times, but it’s usually best to avoid them. Characters can be archetypes without being pure tropes; they should still be unique characters and have something in common with each other, Making them all into tokens risks making them less identifiable, and if these characters are expected to interact throughout the story, they should have something in common.

I shouldn’t use Stranger Things as an example too many times but it just does this so well I can’t help it. The kids’ party have common interests that bring them together, but quite different personalities. This makes them clash at times and also makes their dynamic more enjoyable to watch. You believe these kids would be friends but they’re not all the same person.

Make (selective) use of dramatic irony.

Dramatic irony is when the audience/reader knows something that a character doesn’t. Ensemble pieces give you an opportunity to play with dramatic irony, though obviously too much is overkill and readers will get frustrated.

In A Game of Thrones (Book 1), a young Sansa Stark tells Cersei Lannister of her father’s plans to ship her and her sister home to Winterfell. Sansa doesn’t understand the implications of what she’s done; we see from her POV that she thinks Cersei is kind and wise and will fix everything. Cersei smiles and thanks her and Sansa interprets this as positive because she doesn’t know any better. The reader knows a little more, thanks to having access to other characters’ opinions and knowledge. 

And they just said, “Oh, noooooooo.”

Ensemble piece are fun! But you need to justify multiple major characters; they should all add something to the story. In a way ensemble pieces are tougher; instead making one protagonist, you have to make more and they all have to be interesting enough that the reader will be happy to read about each of them. 

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i just had the weirdest moment, i was feeling my front teeth with my tongue because they’re the tiniest bit crooked, and then i had the thought “i’ll check if they’re also crooked in my other mouth” and then i realized to my shock and confusion that i have only one mouth, leading me to believe that in a past life i was a terrible monster with two mouths

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Asexual spectrum protagonists in science fiction and fantasy books!

If you’re looking for ace or aro fiction, I highly suggest checking out Claudie Arseneault’s awesome database. Link is here. 

A lot of the time people act like there’s no ace fiction, but that’s not true! A lot of these books are by ace-spec authors as well. We’re out here writing the stories we want to see ourselves in. :)

Other queer book PowerPoints:

Trans SFF

F/F SFF

Bi and Pan SFF

I’m not transcribing all the text, but you can find the titles, authors, information on TW, etc beneath the cut.

When possible, I’m linking to my database of queer books. The page for each book includes the synopsis, content warnings under spoiler tags, and links to reviews from queer readers. If it’s not in the queer database at the time of posting (8/18/19), I’ll link to Goodreads instead. 

Keep reading

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I think I’ve fleshed out this project to the point of making an introduction, so…welcome to Midnight Salvage!

Raina Strider is the newly-promoted captain of the Minerva - the smallest nuclear-powered submarine in the fleet, assigned to research and recovery operations on the seafloor. Hers is a ship of rules and regulations, running off the codes and manuals - until, one day, those rules no longer apply.

For something waits in the shipwrecks, lost long ago and never expected to rise again. Something pulled from the mud and sand by an unsuspecting claw, brought into the harsh lights of Irene Wolf’s laboratory. And in the searchlights, in the glare of her instruments, it begins to wake…

Cast:

Raina Strider (she/her): Captain of the Minerva and dedicated to the rules - there’s no room to make mistakes in a submarine, not when one could send them all to the bottom of the ocean. (Also slightly insecure about her position as the captain, and so her strictness is a way of compensating, but don’t mention that)

Irene Wolf (she/her): Science officer, or what she would call a “glorified data-puncher” on the sub. She’s not particularly happy about her posting, nor is she shy about expressing that.  Constantly treading the line of what Strider will tolerate, because Wolf is good at what she does - but infuriating all the same.

Erin Herschel (they/them): The cheery pilot/navigator of the submarine, who responds to almost any situation - good or bad or catastrophic - with a sort of resigned acceptance. An attitude that will be put to the test…

Kallias Azia (he/him): Salvage claw operator and junior scientist, who most certainly does not share Wolf’s worldview but hangs on her every word, willing to do almost anything to find her favor.

Ryu Mäkinen (zie/zir): The enigma (and field engineer) of the submarine, whom no-one, not even those working with zir, know anything about besides zir job. Just that good at sidestepping personal questions, although zie’ll politely deny it if you ask.

Osvaldo “Ozzie” Setebos (he/him): Doctor, chef, and longest-serving member of the Minerva, he knows all the stories of the ship, although who knows if he’s telling the truth?

Keep reading

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There are days when the entire world seems to conspire against me writing a single word. 

This is one of those days. 

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Wow, that’s amazing! 

@espelho-the-wayward-writer asked:  For your OC Thorn: What’s the one thing about your life that you never, ever want to change?

I ended up writing this like a WWE promo, whoops. But, anyway, here’s the answer!