#I have had a rough outline of this in my drafts FOREVER

[directdogman]

Dogman, how do you write SO WELL!?!? I love all your characters and I need to know what/where you find inspo from...

Ha. Every writer is just someone who apes the creative processes of their inspirations. For video game writing specifically, there's two answers for me.

Toby Fox is always gonna be a huge inspiration for me. I've written plots and characters before and had to abandon ideas after realizing I'd accidentally written part of UT again. Even some of the ideas I used were undeniably inspired by UT in a subconscious way and ofc, I included several explicit references to UT in my last series. Toby's a very clever guy who likely pays very close attention to the art he consumes and tries to figure out how to maximize how much his work connects with his audience. Whatever his process is, it works.

The other answer is a lil funnier: Scott Cawthon, but specifically the legend, not the man. For context: Back in the earlier days of the FNaF fandom, people had a hyper-inflated view of Scott Cawthon's writing skills that largely came from how little of a presence he had back in those days. In the vacuum of Scott actually explaining his own process in detail, people got caught up in his genuinely creative way of hiding exposition in his games using cryptid and (then) unexpected methods, and a narrative formed (one that he's since refuted.)

While he never implied it tmk, fans broadly believed that he constructed these sweeping and complex narratives with tons of cohesive moving parts, with the games essentially acting like the mere tip of his lore iceberg. People even thought he wrote so much that he had whole games worth of lore outlined from the beginning! In the first Dawko interview he gave, he clarified that this wasn't the case and explained roughly what his process was (basically just outlining rough theme ideas + aesthetics for future titles.)

However, that legend made younger-me's mind run wild and any time I wrote a story, it became very difficult for me to not keep writing down ideas while completing the grunt work that followed me finishing my scripts. When I finished DSaF 1, I already had DSaF 2's draft written and by the time 2 was done, I had enough lore for a 3rd game on paper (and a lot more stuff that I didn't use.) By the time three was out, I had pages upon pages of unused concepts/story ideas and more or less just had to decide to call it quits or else I'd be pumping out entries forever!

That's why if you go back to those older games, there's references that directly refer to future plot-points in pretty casual/easy to miss ways. (Like Henry's mention in DSaF 1, Dave being heartless in DSaF 2, Jack being soulless in 1, and even Blackjack being Jack's soul in 2. Most of 3's major plotpoints are implied somewhere in 2 and some of 2's in 1.)

DT is much the same. By the time I finished writing it, I had fairly detailed drafts for arcs for each of the characters, some early material ended up getting completely recontextualized (and even modified in small ways to not conflict with the wider ideas I came up with.)

I get really into writing my stories/characters and I always wonder exactly how things ended up where they are, what characters think about but don't say, etc etc. This is why I have an obscene amount of Crown lore that I have very little to do with rn (since he impacted the whole world so deeply.)

This extra stuff also includes plenty of sequel material ideas, though I didn't think I'd even get a chance to use them since DT performed pretty meagerly before the big release and I was expecting to have to move onto something new. Though it turned out that Scott didn't actually write his games this way (by his own admission), it's the correct answer for what my core writing inspiration for writing game narratives is.

Hope this helps!

[zarla-s]

Man it's been a long time since I've done an ask cluster! Let's see if I can get some down...

He's an extremely fun character to write for and play with! So in that sense I'm fond of him, haha. He's such a huge disaster of a person, there's always something fun to do with him. Well "fun" in a relative sense.

I don't have anything to forgive him for, he didn't hurt me. |D He hurt the brothers!

I do have an idea for a cute feature inspired by Six-Eared Macaque! I should really sit down and do that already... and finish the one I half started but never finished...

I don't think my opinion on any of them changed! I love them all, haha. Which ones I drew comics about just depends on which ones I get ideas for really. Sometimes I get Alphys ideas and sometimes I get Goatparents ideas! Inspiration is fickle!

I don't have any solid plans or anything. :B Just gonna keep chugging along with silly comics and art! Work on Defrag and such. I'd like to finish a Ladyverse comic I've had lying around forever, and I had vague plans for doing a doujin for them too I could work on... and also seeing if I could format Handplates into a book format... I've always got a bunch of projects, haha.

It works on that level! It wasn't intentional though. |D

I do enjoy speculation! I don't really have much of my own though, I didn't predict anything in chapter 2 so now I'm assuming I can't predict anything in the future chapters either, haha.

Emesis Blue is great! Some really beautiful visuals in there, very striking! Love the mood of it too and a lot of the surreal imagery. I think it helped spur me back into TF2 again, haha. Medic and Scout's relationship was so cute.

I have thought about this! It has its share of challenges though... I outlined them more in this post. A pdf would be more doable though... could even include some extra stuff as well! Hmm...

I can see that! He'd probably spend as much time out in the rain as he could just doing whatever to stay outside.

It was pretty much always going to end like that. I always wanted it to end on a hopeful note! Which might seem weird with how dark it is at the beginning. I DID for a brief period at the very beginning of Handplates think about stopping with the Pacifist run, but that was only because I thought going where I wanted to go would take too long and already the project seemed so dauntingly huge at the time, haha. But it was always going to end in a positive way!

Gaster talks about what he originally intended to create here, and he explains a bit about the physical experiments he runs on the brothers here. They aren't really a solution in and of themselves so much as tools to try and find a way to break the barrier. Really though, Gaster got stuck in the sunk-cost fallacy lol.

I don't really have opinions about what canon Gaster would be like. |D Handplates Gaster is his own thing really. Canon Gaster, who knows! Deltarune Gaster, who knows! I will say I hope Gaster stays a mystery in Deltarune and never actually shows up but I think the odds of that are really low at this point.

I thought about doing a script along those lines! I did a few rough drafts of one, but it never really went anywhere... it'd end up dead-ending or kind of meandering off. I might see if I can get an actual script down for a side-comic or something in the future... it might be better suited for a fic.

I was just thinking about this lately! I was picturing Gaster totally forgetting about that until he sees Papyrus squinting and is like OH GOD YOUR EYES THAT'S RIGHT D: and goes to get him looked at lol.

I couldn't come up with a good idea for Flowey which is a shame, I do like him, haha. If one comes to me though I might make a little side comic about it!

Gaster's LV is complicated... his stats in-game are ludicrous if I recall correctly. Did he carry the damage from his murders into the void, even if those murders weren't his in the new timeline? Deep thoughts.

He fed them anything he could find, haha. Which is why sometimes they just ended up with chocolate bars (which he intended as dinner for himself). He probably fed them more often than he fed himself lol. He did feed them fairly regularly though.

Not about skeletons, probably. |D

Man I know I had an explanation for this but it was so long ago... it's hard for me to remember. It could be that the Riverperson is just weird and has weird insight into elements of things, had a prophetic dream... I don't know! It bugs me now that I can't remember this, haha.

[merelyafigment]

Ask meme - 5 & 17!

Thanks for the ask! :D

5. How do you know when you’re finished writing a fic? At what point do you call it done?

✨️Vibes✨️ ...I would like to be more serious, but uh, yeah I do kind of just go by feel, as far as the first rough draft and the initial getting the whole story down goes. I usually have a vague outline in my head of the scenes/beats/story I want to tell, but not always. Regardless, when writing it just feels done at some point, like I got all I had of the story out.

As far as "done" when it comes to editing the rough draft and posting, it's usually when I am just tired of stressing over editing and can't look at it anymore. 😂 With editing sometimes, if I don't tell myself "okay, this is done now, I'm not devoting any more time to it." I would tweak it forever and ever because I'm too hard on myself. I can fall into a trap of: it's not good enough if it could always be a bit better. So I have to forcibly say, NO, WE'RE DONE NOW.

17. When you get a new fic idea, what does that look like in your mind? Does it play out like a film? Do you imagine lines of dialogue or a certain moment? Does a character just sit there staring at you?

I am highly amused by a character just sitting there staring at me, but sadly that's not what happens for me. I usually get a flash of a moment in my head, with a mix of dialogue (sometimes I hear it in my head in the character's voice), character thoughts, and it playing out like a film (sort of, it's still soft-focus imaginings, not like an actual movie in my head). And I imagine it and play it out in a similar mix of visuals and words. Or sometimes an idea starts from just imagining a character's thoughts, clearly, given how much pondering I write. I do sometimes imagine things from inside the character's head/see it from their point of view.

(One of the things that's hardest for me is getting down the stuff that isn't thoughts or dialogue, because all the setting/movement/action etc does play out as a visual scene in my head, so expressing it in words is fairly difficult for me.)

[graceofgondor]

1, 18, and 25 for the ask game :)

-@the-words-forever-unwritten

hiii!! ty for the ask <33 (post for ref.)

1. do you know how you want the story to end when you start, or are you just stumbling through the figurative wilderness hoping to find a road?

this one is complicated. because it really depends. majority of the time, if it's a oneshot, i have major plot points or ideas of what i want to happen or how i want the events to play out, usually key bits of dialogue are in my head simply by thinking abt the fic for a period of time before writing it. so i'll tend to have a rough outline and then improvise details from there. with something like my lady ginny however, that one was honestly a mix of both. i had some general ideas, and ultimately we had a beginning and end, but i kind of would just write one bit and then try and think of how i could progress the story further next (especially in the context of canon). kind of filling in the blanks situation. i would know generally what i wanted to accomplish thematically and how i wanted it to end, but i thought of major events as i wrote it, and then once i thought of them, i would write it in coherence with what i had/planned.

sometimes for oneshots i'll have an extremely vague vibe from listening to a song or watching a movie and then i just improv all in one go, but that doesn't happen terribly often.

18. what is your most and least favorite part of writing?

omg this is a tough one. i think my favorite part is executing ideas i'm inspired by, where my least favorite part is coming up with those ideas, especially when i get stuck somewhere. sometimes its really hard too when i know point a and point b yet cant figure out the connection, or at least how to execute it. like, when i know what i'm doing it's great, but when i don't its absolute torture.

i also just really love exploring characters in certain situations. playing with characterization is fun especially when i get to implement existing themes.

25. what’s your revision or rewriting process like?

oooh! good question! for my oneshots i rarely rewrite or revise at all, i usually edit as i go and then maybe add a tiny bit of detail in certain spots when i'm done, but otherwise i don't do much there.

with my lady ginny it was interesting for sure. i wanted to try to write the majority of the story before i published it (because in the past i would update by chapter and then end up not finishing said fic). so i did write almost the entire fic before uploading it, at which point i did a "characterization edit" where i edited the fic directly after watching the movie, mostly just editing little things like dialogue and theme consistency to be coherent with the source material. but then i wrote the rest of the fic, and did that same thing over again (+taking notes on little details and such to potentially implement). after that, the entire fic was published, and i then re-read the whole thing and did big edits to find out what exactly i felt was missing, and what plotlines i felt were unresolved (as well as writing style and such, fleshing out scenes in general to help with flow). at that point i added an entire chapter in the middle and added onto almost every single scene.

at this point i can't even remember what the original draft was like. i know most of the events happened the same in general, there's just a lot more going on in the final version, kind of just a more immersive and detailed version of the original. i know we also didn't have the last chapter and epilogue in the initial draft, in addition to chapter 9 (8) which was a result of unresolved things i felt needed adding.

so for that i guess it kind of depends. especially since i don't often write full-length fics. mlg was kind of a lightning in a bottle thing, something i was unusually motivated to write. so for me, i guess that was a rarity, and my revision style could for sure change should i decide to write another full length fic in the future.

[a-pale-azure-moon]

WIP Wednesday

It's done.

There will be revisions and tweaks to make between now and when I post it in a few days, but I have finished the final chapter of Someday We'll Shine Together. At long last, it is complete.

I'm struggling to distill all of my emotions into words at the moment. This fic has been a part of my life for about three years now. I'm feeling accomplished and proud of myself for really and truly finishing it despite the fact that when I first had the idea, I was convinced this was another of those fleeting inspirational flashes that would never go anywhere and would forever languish in my WIP folder. I got very attached to this story in the process of creating it, and I got even more attached to it when it was one of the things that helped see me through a very difficult time in my personal life. As such, I'm also grieving that it's over and that I now must let it go. Sure, it'll always exist for me to revisit whenever I want, but that feeling is never the same as the one derived from actively working on it.

While I'm still digesting all of these emotions, here's a rough timeline and some background of the fic's development, so you can all see how I finally got to this point. This is pretty personal too, because the two are irrevocably intertwined. (Content warning: death/grief)

Summer 2020: Initial inspiration hits after I rewatched Utena during COVID lockdown.

Fall 2020: Brainworms are on-and-off active, writing short blurbs in a Google doc when they come to me, but there's no true shape to the whole plot yet, it’s just random scenes. It's more or less still strictly a 3H-esque retelling of Utena, and I'm not expecting anything to actually come of these blurbs.

Winter 2020: More blurbs trickle in here and there. The story in my head is starting to divert more drastically from the show.

February 19, 2021: Draft of the pivotal scene at the end of Chapter 15 written. I remember the specific day for this because I wrote it the same day we put down our dog, Clancy. (Writing emotional scenes often helps me process my own emotions.)

April 11, 2021: Creation of my dedicated author's notes file to keep track of the various threads and ideas I'd come up with, especially the backstory about Faerghus and how Dimitri became the Lion Prince. I filled it in like an extended summary or wikipedia entry about the 'verse and the overall plot of the story. I jotted a lot of stuff down between April and June as the brainworms really got to work again.

Summer 2021: I'm starting to entertain the idea of actually seeing this project through. Chapters 1 and 2 are drafted over the summer months, but I hit a block and the self doubt comes roaring right in to deter me.  A LARGE part of my struggle with getting this fic out of development hell was me being unable to get out of my own way.  Every stumbling block I hit (especially early on) was an invitation for my inner critic to resume browbeating me into giving up this “stupid” idea.

September 2021: I finally make up my mind that I'm really going to do this, and I spend the next six weeks ironing out the bumps in the plot and making a chapter-by-chapter outline highlighting the key scenes/plot points/character beats within each one. I organized the various blurbs I had into chronological order and put them under the correct chapter headings. I also started thinking of the best way to get myself to see this project through, as well as what would be a realistic timetable for its completion. I estimated that the final length of the whole thing would be around 350 pages or roughly 150K words. (This is hilarious to me in hindsight.  I severely underestimated the scope of this fic!)

November 2021: I try to do the NaNoWriMo challenge (50K words in a month) to draft as much of the fic as I can. I "only" produce about 35K words in the end, but it was enough to draft Chapters 3 and 4 and write at least one decent-sized blurb within each of all of the remaining chapters.

December 2021: I took a short hiatus from working on SWST to finish Beneath the Ethereal Moon. When that's done, I went over my outline yet again to refine it further and then cleaned up my draft of Chapter 1 with an eye on posting it after right after New Year's. I determined that posting (and writing) one chapter per month should be doable, especially since I have a generous buffer to start with.

January 2022: I get a bad case of cold feet/anxiety and don't post Chapter 1. I'm having trouble getting a feel for Chapter 5 and fail to finish it before the end of the month. (This naturally doesn't help alleviate my self-doubt or silence my very loud inner critic.)

February 2022: Cold feet strike again and I fail to post Chapter 1 a second time. I'm still stuck on Chapter 5 (though I've at least made some progress), and while I'm extremely aware that I'm being my own worst enemy, that doesn't make it any easier to beat back old habits.

March 2, 2022: In the wee hours of the night (it was after midnight), I finally posted Chapter 1 and went straight to bed after. I slept terribly of course, haha.

I wish I could say "and you know the rest from here," but that's not true. Posting Chapter 1 was a huge mental hurdle cleared, but there were other things going on behind the scenes that almost derailed this project for good. The timing was such that if I were more prone to hubris, I'd think that the universe itself was testing my resolve. Or possibly mocking me.

On March 3, 2022 (yes, the day after I posted Chapter 1), my father was admitted to the hospital with a debilitating pain in his lower back. Initially, we thought it might be a flare up of his sciatica or maybe something like a kidney stone, but the truth was far worse. What he had was a spinal epidural abscess caused by a bacterial infection in his blood. He was transported to the ICU of a larger (further away) hospital once the severity of his condition was discovered, and he was pumped full of massive doses of antibiotics. Thanks to that, he stabilized, but what followed after was a long period of uncertainty as he would start to make gains only to suffer a setback. Even once the infection and his pain level were under control, he'd been so severely sick that the bacteria had ravaged his various body systems, leading to issues with his kidneys and his heart.

For 91 days, my family and I were stuck on a wretched rollercoaster of getting hopeful (he was transferred to a rehab facility three different times when it looked like he was improving) and then having our hopes dashed when something would happen that would see him sent back to the hospital (falling out of bed, chest pains, difficulty breathing). Hope began to fade in mid May when he was transferred back to the ICU due to diastolic heart failure, which caused his lungs to fill up with fluid. They tapped his lungs thrice, removing at least a liter of fluid each time, but they kept filling up again despite all the diuretics the doctors were giving him. Then his kidneys began to shut down too. We kept hoping right until the end, but he passed away on June 1, 2022, the day before what would've been his and my mother's 49th wedding anniversary.

(Proof that real life can be even crueler than fiction.)

I was only able to continue updating SWST while my father was sick because of that buffer I'd had, and I very nearly deleted the story from AO3 altogether after he died. I remember ruminating about how futile it was to continue with this project; I'd written almost nothing while he was sick, so my buffer was now gone and I questioned whether or not I'd be able to write, let alone write consistently, with the promised months of grief and general upheaval ahead. Even writing a story that I had, to that point, been passionate about felt utterly pointless.

It was strange though. I woke up on June 2nd thinking that maybe I should go ahead and post chapter 4 anyway, since it was already done and it was one of the chapters I particularly liked. So I did. And in the following days, we had my father's funeral and a part of me felt like I could breathe again. I was grieving yes, but the constant daily stress and uncertainty from his illness was gone, and I think that freed my creative drive to start working again. I remember the first day I sat back down at my computer with the intention to write and how much better I felt in general after I got some words onto the screen.

It's hella ironic that I planned SWST with grief and loss as major themes and it turned out I'd be processing such things myself while writing most of it. I know my own grief affected the story, though it's impossible to say to what degree; I get a lot of catharsis in general from writing emotional scenes, so I tend to go hard on them regardless. It didn't change the plot or direction of the story at all, since that was already planned, but it's certainly safe to say that I channeled a lot of my own feelings into some of the most intense moments. The ending of Chapter 9 stands out in particular as something that felt like it was coming straight out of my own heart.

Even on the hard days when I was feeling too overwhelmed and/or the words just weren’t coming, this story gave me a reason to keep going.  Just keeping the goal in mind and reasserting my resolve to be consistent and see this project through to the end helped me cope.  It both kept me grounded and helped me process what I was going through and it gave me something to look forward to when I uploaded each chapter and anxiously waited to see what the readers would think.

I started this fic as a means of testing myself: testing my commitment to writing consistently, to finishing a long-term project, and to getting over at least some of the many, MANY mental hurdles that have held me back from writing for way too long.  I knew that this story would always be near and dear to me if I managed to finish it, but it became even more precious than I ever could’ve imagined back in 2020.  It hurts that I must say goodbye to it, but…it’s forever mine.  I can say with my whole chest that I MADE THIS THING and I’m so very proud of it! <3

[geekyzelda]

Sending u this ask because I desperately want to hear about your post-apocalyptic septimus heap au 👀👀👀

OK. It's been forever but I finally went back through the draft and here is a rough summary.

I was initially calling it the Film Noir AU because I wanted that context to flavor the tone of it. I had 23 pages written out and no outline. Whatever is left has long been lost in my brain.

Here we go:

Picture this: The castle is in ruin. The walls crumbled, people evacuated, and a Darkeness settled over the place like none have seen before.

The Darkeness is controlled by the (slightly more competent than canon) Custodians and is inhabited by all kinds of ugly, creepy creatures.

Our Main Character: Toddhunter Moon, around age 15, arrives at the abandoned ruins of the Castle searching for answers.

Her whole village fell pray to a smattering of Darkeness and she followed rumors and stories south to this place. All she knows is she must find a man named Septimus Heap to help her. Some shop owner along her journey planted the idea in Tod’s head that Septimus is hiding in the Ice Tunnels.

Todd slips into the Darke Castle ruins and is immediately attacked at the hands of a group of Things. They’re making plans to eat her when a young, blonde, green eyed man steps in to save her. He calls himself Sum.

Todd begs Sum to help her find Septimus Heap. After he says no too many times, he agrees to help her find the ice tunnels on the belief that anyone who’s still willing to save the Castle from its downfall will be hiding in the tunnels.

On their way to the ice tunnel entrance, Sum explains the Castle is under a Darke Domain. No one’s positive how it started, but people speculate it was through the actions of a dumb kid. Tod explains she knows absolutely nothing about Magyk.

They reach the Tunnel entrance inside of an old row house (It was Marcellus’s house. In the actual writing I was trying to be clever and imply Marcellus died when the domain took over by saving Sep’s life somehow).

Sum takes Tod into the Ice Tunnel, they stand under the entrance, see it’s uninhabited and mostly caved in and Tod agrees to leave because she’s skeeved out. As she goes to climb the ladder out with Sum behind her, something grabs her ankle and pulls her deeper into the tunnels.

Sum chases after Tod and finds a ghost sucking the life out of her. Sum threatens the ghost but it doesn’t stop feasting on Tod. Half-conscious, Tod watches an incredible amount of purple power flow from Sum. As she passes out, she hears him say something about “angering the seventh son.”

More under the read more

Some time later, Tod wakes up wrapped in blankets. Sum and a new person, Beetle, are arguing about whether or not Sum should have saved her life at all. Beetle is Upset at the amount of power Sum used and is concerned the Custodians will find them.

When Sum sees Tod is awake, he makes her eat a bowl of bland soup and leaves her in Beetle’s care while he leaves for the vault to search for something. (“Why are you going to the vaults?” Beetle asked with suspicion in his voice as Sum stood with a puff of dust. “To search for my long-lost love for you.” Sum winked at his friend.)

Alone, Beetle tells Tod they’re in an office in the old Manuscriptorium. Beetle’s known Sum for years, but befriended his brother first.

Yes, Sum has family, a few brothers. No, he hasn’t known where they are since the Domain began. Me? My mum lives in the port. Far as I know she’s safe. Dang kid, you really know how to endear yourself to a person through a single conversation.

“Can you do Magyk like Sum?”   Beetle snorted and said, “No one can do Magyk like Sum.”   “What do you mean?”   “I mean, no. I can’t do Magyk. It’s an acquired skill.”

Beetle and Tod are bonding when Sum bursts into the room yelling that he’s going out. He won’t answer questions of where he’s going and won’t let either of them come along.

When Sum’s gone, Tod suggests they follow him. Beetle protests saying he is here to protect the manuscriptorium. “If I go down, this place, and most of the Castle’s history, goes down with me!”

Tod leaves the office, meanders through a dusty and decrepit Manuscriptorium and finds the front door. Outside, she realizes she has no idea how to follow Sum when Beetle opens the door behind her. He hands her a tracking charm and says he’s going with her. The tracking charm works for Tod (Obligatory Wow she’s got Magyk! moment) and they’re off!

We switch to Sum’s POV. He is running around the Castle towards the Palace. Dodging custodian guards, he is searching for Dungeon number one on the hope that the answer to the Darke Domain will be in the dungeon.

Fortunately, Sum finds the door to the Dungeon using Magyk. Unfortunately, the Magyk tips the guards off and they catch Sum outside the door and march him off to a meeting with the Supreme Custodian.

I deadass used the phrase “Take him away boys.” I assume I was tired when writing this.

Beetle and Tod happen to be watching from a rooftop above when Sum is captured. They make a plan to follow the guards and see what they can do to free Sum.

Sum is taken away to the Supreme Custodian in the palace. Beetle and Tod manage to sneak in and are listening to the conversation through a crack in the crumbling wall.

The Supreme Custodian threatens Sum for messing around in a place he doesn’t belong. Sum says the custodian is the one who doesn’t belong and the custodian fires back, “Funny for you to say seeing as it’s your fault we’re here, Septimus Heap.”

Tod leans too heavily on the brick wall they’re hiding behind and crashes into the throne room with Beetle tumbling in behind her.

A fight breaks out. Septimus uses Magyk to break his manacled hands and teleports himself, Beetle, and Tod out of there.

This is where the writing I had ends but I had a little bit more planned.

Sep takes them back to the Mauscriptorium where Tod confronts him about lying to her about knowing Septimus Heap.

Sep comes clean and admits to letting the custodians into the Castle and allowing/causing the Darke Domain to settle in.

At some point in this conversation, a sound comes from outside the building. They look out to see a knight of some kind walking unnaturally down the street.

The knight stops in front of the Manuscriptorium and Sep is called out to battle.

An ~intense Magykal battle~ ensues and Sep manages to take out the foe. In the fight, he realizes there’s a person under that armor but they’re moving unnaturally like a puppet.

Sep knocks the helmet off and realizes he’s battling Marcia. Right as he makes a killing blow.

She comes to her senses after the final blow and says something dramatic. “You better save us. I’m proud of you. It’s not your fault.” All that good stuff.

Somehow, the story *resolves* (This is where my draft ended.)

The crew finds Jenna in Dungeon #1 and her release helps fend off the Darkeness.

Merrin was the one who brought in the Darkeness, not Sep, which the audience would learn through some form of dramatic irony.

The Heap family has been hiding out at Draggen island all these years and are alive and well

The Darkeness spread to Tod’s home via the tunnels and when it’s banished from the Castle, Tod’s home is saved too.

Spitfyre was in there somewhere?? Controlled by the custodians maybe? I’m not sure. All I have is one vauge sentence and a 5+ year old memory of wanting to include him.

Funny quotes:

Tod: “Fine. I may be young but I have sailed on my own to another country. Can you say that?”  Sep: “No.” Tod: “That's what I thought.” Sep: “I can say I've flown to another country though.” Tod: “What?” Sep: “What?”

Tod: “I'm 15. Would you stop treating me like I don't know anything, please!” Sep: “Well, I'm older than 15 and I do know everything. So, compared to me, you really don't know anything.”

Tod:  "It’s not every day you have someone save your life.”  Sep: “With the way you act, I’m surprised I’m the first person today.”

Beetle: “By the sound of it she was going to get herself killed before you intervened.”  Sep: “What else was I supposed to do, let her die?”  Beetle: “No-” “Because that’s where she was headed, Beet. Death.”  “I understand that, but-” “I couldn’t just let another kid die, Beetle. I couldn’t.” “I know-” “I can’t believe you would even suggest-” “Are you done with the guilt trip? Yes, I am glad she’s alive, sheez.” 

[emberlyric]

July Goals/Summaries/Statuses

June got skipped, it was a hectic month half consisting of traveling, and while this is late I'm still trying to get back into the swing of things so here we go...

I am officially working on *two* stories at the moment, here are their summaries:

Soulbind - my YA fantasy story. In a world where the gods and goddesses choose each individual's magical attunements based on the strength of their life-bind, Jory is a soulbinder, a unique and rare attunement random given not by any gods, that steals a sliver of another's life-bind - usually those the soulbinder is close to. Soulbinders are shunned in most societies, and Jory's home nation of Losyros is no different. Bitter and arrogant, but cunning and analytical, Jory bides his time, running cons in lower Siolyn, the capital of Losyros. But Jory gets an opportunity from the prince and becomes the prince's Kingsworn, an ancient role reserved only for soulbinders. Everything falls apart when Jory is kidnapped by the Ashborne, the champion for the goddess Gholgane, who wants Jory unbound at once. Now Jory has to rely on his wits, his best friend Nahia, and Prince Cydri to rescue him before he is lost to them forever.

Anomaly - my YA sci-fi/superhero story. Lian, a poor anomaly from District Lacerta in Layer Comet, discovers he is a Class A anomaly - an anomaly with superhuman abilities, in his case super speed. Class B anomalies have been around for centuries, and the Pyramid harvested augmentations from them. Augmentations, or just augs, were simple modifications that non-anomalies used to make their lives easier, such as enhancing memory, sight, reflexes, etc. Lian tries to keep his status as a Class A a secret - society is not reacting well to the discovery of these more powerful anomalies - but he is captured by the Zenith Order, who claims they want what is best for everyone and to keep them safe. A scientist named Rosmyle experiments on Lian, hoping to understand anomalies better. Things turn around when Lian manages to escape - and takes six other traumatized anomalies with him. Now they have to survive a chaotic and prejudiced Layer Comet to make it to an area of the Layer where anomalies can live in peace.

Statuses for these stories:

Soulbind - have a really solid first draft that got stitched together from other possible drafts lol! I now also have a complete online and understand what the first draft is missing, as well as an almost complete series outline for five possible books in the making. It has been really fun getting back to these characters. Jory <3 you are such a little shit.

Anomaly - hit some snags here. I did finish a NaNo rough draft for it of 100k words, but found some problems with it after reviewing it. Realized the premise for the laboratory arc wasn't as interesting as it could have been - basically, initially it had the anomalies surviving within the laboratory, but it would be more interesting if they were already escaped, on the run *from* the scientists and the evil Zenith Order. This way we see more of the Layer and they have more room to grow as individuals rather than being cooped up in the lab. Jaith's arc is unchanged and will remain parallel during the laboratory/escape arc. Meanwhile the outline for book 2 is just sitting there, waiting for me to tackle it again lol.

Goals -

Get a solid start on Anomaly's second draft. Maybe 10k each words for the Laboratory arc and for Jaith's arc - that would be perfect and make me feel much better about these second drafts

Add in the missing scenes for Soulbind and begin to edit it as a whole. Soulbind seems to be going much better than Anomaly at the moment lol!

Get some character design sheets done. I keep putting this off, but It would be *really* helpful if I could do this to introduce my characters and get some comics/reels going. I think I could get Jory, Nahia, Tadani (the Ashborne), and Jaith's all done without issue as their designs are pretty well finalized. I would do Lian and I probably should, but the problem with him is that while is book 2 design looks like this:

His book 2 design is just..some kid lol, it isn't very interesting. Yet. I'm just not sure what to do add to it. But I'll figure it out!

Sooo that's what's going on with my stories! Thanks everyone who has stuck with me <3 I really appreciate the support, hopefully you're looking forward to more updates soon.

[ceph-the-ghost-writer]

Writing Log Aug. 23

This seems like a fun and neat habit that the more responsible writblrs I follow have. So let's give it a shot.

Word Count Roundup

Apophenia Rewrite Attempt #1: 10,521 (like 3k more than the original! :O)

Phagophobia Rough Draft: 39,714

The Primrose Path: 7,291

Target(s) of the Week

Finish sketching out final chapters of Phagophobia

Write a little bit of Primrose Path. Something. Anything. It's been too long.

Some spoiler-y rambles for Apophenia/Phagophobia under the cut

What I naively believed would be just a little polishing or adding a few scenes to Apophenia has completely changed the entire story. Oops. This isn't a bad thing, mind you. It just means there was a lot more work to be done than anticipated.

Renato's motivations have been the biggest driving force behind all the changes. Ever since he stopped just wanting to drink Isaac dry I've had to come up with a lot more complex worldbuilding and personal history. His cruelty towards Isaac in the rewrite comes from his job as one of the Unseen Hand's thugs. As does his guilt when he realizes he grabbed the wrong agent.

This revelation is rapidly setting in on Part 5 of Apophenia. After escaping from the shapechanging ouroboros, the boys have holed up in a motel room while Renato calls for backup. Which is where my outline went careening off course yet again. Rather than let Isaac go for various reasons (one of them being so Apophenia can link up with what I'd written for Phagophobia), Renato has decided to hold on to Agent Soto. It looks like they'll be going on a messed up roadtrip a lot sooner than expected.

Which means most of Phagophobia is moot. I mean, the general shape of some events will remain (Kinslayer showing up to bail Renato out, Renato going to Dorian for help, etc.). But pretty much everything is going to have to be redone. Again, not a bad thing. I can already see a lot of ways this will improve the story.

In light of all this, I've gone ahead and replaced the next chapter or two of Phagophobia with simple explanations in brackets. I simply don't want to spend time on writing out scenes I don't have clear motivations for. However, I am writing the final scenes of the story. While these may completely change in the future as well, I think the general concept is solid enough to give it a try. Anyway, I'd like to at least say I brought Phagophobia to some type of conclusion before continuing with any more rewriting.

Or outlining rather. Which, if you couldn't tell, I'm terrible at.

Anyway, have the first tidbit of that final scene.

They took him out to the woods to die. Isaac wondered if it was meant as an extra layer of cruelty or just the most practical place to murder somebody. Maybe a little of both, he decided. Zamora sat with him in the backseat, gun in her lap, while Quinn drove. The sound system remained off. Nobody talked, not even to gloat. Isaac wished he could come up with some last words. An epitaph that would haunt them forever. Empty fantasies, of course. At best, the enforcers believed they were doing the Coven, the world, a favor. At worst, they just didn’t care. No matter where their reasoning fell, he was trash to them. Something to be buried and never thought about again. So, he stared out the window at the dark trees flashing by and didn’t waste his final breaths. “Seatbelt.” Isaac started at the voice. His eyes darted to Zamora, then Quinn, but neither were looking at him. He tugged on the strap across his chest. The connection point. Both secure.

[citylighten]

Hello! I've been reading Sink or Swim, and I am absolutely enthralled in the depth of your writing. Which brings me to my first of several questions... How long have you been writing? I find Pietro's backstory personality very complex. How he presents himself... Handles obstacles... It's intriguing. How long did it take to create Pietro's... well... life? Did you have to do a considerable amount of research? And for my last question, how long does it take you to caption a scene? Are you editing the dialogue right until you post?

HELLO~!

First off thank you for this message! I'm very happy you're enjoying the story!

In regard to your first question: I began writing at a young age. So young, that my earliest memory of writing is sitting on my grandmother's lap and telling her exactly what to write down in Microsoft Word. (I figure these were probably stories about Simba the Lion) Eventually, I told her I wanted to figure out how to use Word on my own and the rest is history. But yeah, I've always been big on writing and reading, there was always a story of some kind in my head. By the time I was ten, I was on FF.Net posting very shitty fanfics. But that's the thing about writing, you know? The more you do it, the more you read, the more you even do something like observe films and shows for the narrative value rather than strictly looking at it as entertainment the better of a writer you become. I also made the decision back in high school to become a journalist (something I don't think I want to be anymore, but I digress) still, having the responsibility of writing about real events, or about real people, definitely influenced my writing, as well. Especially when it comes to the way people speak or may explain something.

Admittedly, writing a story in the mafia genre isn't easy. A lot of research is involved (ranging from reading biographies to just watching films, but I also love the video game Mafia because their worldbuilding is pretty good😂) and I often take mental notes of things so I can understand/apply similar topics with my characters.

In regard to your second question: We've hardly scratched the surface of who Pietro is as a person! I planned to do a few edits of him as a kid as well as a "mini-story" of how he ran away from home at sixteen but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

Pietro is a very new oc - he was made this year, so understanding him/developing him has been a push-and-pull process. Before Sink or Swim started, he was originally meant to be way more antagonistic, but then I found myself liking him. I thought of Pietro and Rosie hooking up and the drama that could entail of, but then I thought, "what if this guy cared about her?" And boom, I found myself jotting out a bunch of outlines and concepts.

However, because Pietro isn't born in America...er, Simerica, I've found myself reading about Sicily a lot. Since I view that as the real-world counterpart to Tartosa. The norms, the lives of farmers, the way organized crime functions there because Pietro's family suffered greatly due to the local mob. But that's all I'm saying about that!

In regard to your third question: Captioning a scene can take forever. I'm not sure why because all I do is copy-paste pre-written text. But the time it takes to write out a scene can vary depending on its length, relevancy, and tone. Small talk is horrible to write, just plain horrible. Banter is usually quick. But when you have scenes like Rosie reading Pietro's email - that took forever because not only am I writing out Sheila and Pietro having a serious conversation, I had to write out the details of the email. Similarly, in my last post, when Pietro more or less confesses that he's an affiliate of the mob: that conversation took three rewrites before I felt it was good enough to put on caps. The first conversation draft was rough, I kept zoning out. The second was a little easier, but I found myself rearranging the conversation to better flow. And the third edit was the easiest because it was like I was 'smoothing' things over and ensuring the flow was decent. Sometimes though, once I paste dialogue onto a cap I do slightly tweak it to correspond with the expression the sim has. But again, thank you for all these questions! I enjoyed answering them!

[ladyinbooks]

i just devoured all of ur works and they’re AMAZING (like ‘i’m seriously considering learning how to book bind so i can have physical copies’ level amazing). i can’t stop rereading them. i just had a four hour flight and all i did was reread icarus burning on it. also your love in chains au (jay being a prisoner but STILL in charge? chefs kiss) and anything to do with samiel/jay/pallas (i get it pallas) are especially interesting to me with how they change the main story dynamics while still keeping true to the core of the characters. your writing is honestly incredible and ill read anything you write forever. i can’t wait for more of rarely pure and going down (hades and persephone references?? hello)

Ahh, oh my gosh - what a lovely message! Thank you! ❤️❤️❤️

Firstly, I'm sorry but I was grinning so much when I read that you'd spent your four-hour flight re-reading IB. I mean... honestly, that's just so lovely. (And the idea of someone loving it enough to be reading it on a plane just makes me mind-bendingly happy - you have no idea!) I have a similar length flight tomorrow, and now I'm going to spend most of it grinning to myself thinking someone chose to spend their time travelling by reading something I wrote. (Sorry, I can't explain it, but it just has really made my day to know that.)

The Love in Chains AU still sits frequently in my head, and the dynamic is exactly as you described. I've had a rough little draft in my 'random stuff' folder for a while now, that I think I need to tidy up and post. Basically a tiny sequel where everyone thinks Samiel is the most dangerous man in the room and... mm. No. It's the man who comes in halfway through the meeting, distracts 'the most dangerous man in the room' and then quietly derails the whole operation. Jay vs. Samiel in this scenario is... well. I have a whole lot of thoughts about Jay weaponising affection against Samiel in a viciously calculated way, purely so he can continue to undermine Samiel's rule. (And, let's be honest, there's also a part of him that very much loves the idea of having that power over the 'most dangerous man in the room'.)

I'm glad someone else is on team Pallas! (I have such a soft spot for him. He's such a poor bewildered sweetheart! 😂)

The good news is that there is - at last! - more Rarely Pure. I've got another 30k written, so I'm happy I can start posting again now. Which means there will be a chapter up this Sunday.

As for 'Going Down', it's still next on my list, and I'm quietly picking away at all the angst and drama in an outline. (Poor Jack. I'm enjoying making him suffer!)

[haeroniel-doliet]

Bonus content!! Please feel free to enjoy the process timelapse of the most recent thing I made for the Avantris Valentines gift exchange!

I am gonna have a little ramble about some thoughts on this one below the cut, mostly for my own future reference and anyone curious!

Hey there! fun fact I turned on recording a few art projects ago and I think its genuinely helping me a lot to keep a reference like it for how each process vs finished product was!

First of all, please do not pay mind to the janky final few seconds, I cut the canvas size down and clearly the recording did not enjoy that :')

As usual, had a bit of a hard time figuring out exactly what I wanted to do, and just threw shit at the wall literally doodling anything and everything, and literally just ended up thinking lol, thats kinda funny and building from there

Generally, I do a super rough thumbnail style idea, then one of very large shapes to block out what goes where before finally going onto do the first draft, that I try do real fast so I can get all ideas on paper and all mistakes visible before I dedicate in too hard

(I was feeling stuck honestly at this stage, so I decided to slap some colours on for fun to see if I even like the big picture at all, and funny enough a good few friends did suggest that thats totally good enough right? But it didn't feel like something I was proud of so I got a week or so of a break before breaking into the full clean drawing/lining process which does take ages but turned out quite lovely here I think

Praise be references again!! Granted, here I got off quite easy, I really only used the official character art + a few screenshots of Andy + a pretty crow I found online. No, wait actually, I remember I had a terrible horrible time trying to find the exact kind of pose or even hand reference online for some reason, so I did take my own photos to make it work!

Oh so the thing I learned, idk if you can spot it, in the colouring in stage, I was trudging through Jericho on the left as I normally do, dreading the lack of time I had left and how long just flat colours would take, right? Then by Marius I was exhausted, worried I would actually have nothing to gift my giftee, and decided hell at least I can make a highly stylised just filled in with a relevant colour thing, right? And if I do have the time to finish it, I can always use them as a sort of wash/colour unifying overlay! Here, I remembered the fill tool exists hahh, and I just had to make a few lil work arounds like not letting colours touch each other and boom, speed!

but thing is, I was still spending forever gently outlining my tiny 4 pixel wide lines to not make it sloppy, when I learned about this groovy lil contiguous selection tool (lil magic wand icon!) and boom I can select a coloured in region, invert selection and colour in with like a few broad strokes total! Absolutely a game changer

So I did manage to absolutely speed through the rest, deciding fuck it I am gonna do my best to do at least a lil rendering, even if doing a beautiful full perfect job wouldve taken at least an extra week probably, and I think it doesn't suffer much for it!

The background btw is from my lovely friends suggestions, something simple that suggests a vaguely transitional moment in time, and i thought some sunset like colours would also be a bit valentines appropriate!

And, this recording is 69,441 frames long (would've been so god damn funny if it was 69,420 though) and I crunched some numbers, where I wouldve spent at minimum like 20 hours of active constant drawing on this! Thats, a good chunk honestly and maybe hopefully now with this colouring trick I can get even more efficient!

Anyway, despite the rush at the end where I felt like my hand would fall off from drawing so much so quickly (felt about as stressed in a good way as for my thesis lol) I am beginning to be proud of the end result and i'm very glad my giftee liked it too!! Time to face the scary concept of sharing this in the big discord server hahaaaaahh

Heres to trying to draw a bit more and hopefully be more chill about it!! Although, I do love the satisfaction I get from making all the lil details too (fun fact, I hid a ton of tiny lil hearts super subtly all throughout them, i.e. in the rose centres)

I don't imagine anyone has made it here and read all this, but hi! if you did, please do leave a like or a comment or so, I'm very interested to know if this was at all interesting to anyone but me! Also I love chatting about art!!

[catchingbigfish]

2024 review

words written: 222,706 drafts completed: 3 projects in progress: 3

2024 has been, by far, the best year i've ever had writing-wise. i wrote monthly updates here and on my main, @prettytothink-so (although i did private a few because i needed to focus more on getting the updates posted than writing them perfectly for an audience) and one theme emerged a few times -- feeling listless and unproductive only to realize my actual metrics showed i completed far more than i *felt* like i did. it was a good lesson in following the rhythm of my natural creative tendencies and not trying to force anything!

the actual numbers

my GYWO goal was 200,000 words. i ultimately wrote 222,706 words across 111 days, for an average of 2,006 per day. i actually wrote fewer days than last year, but way more words.

i completed three drafts: a second draft of conversion at 84,501 words; a first draft of seed of the woman at 27,594 words; and a first draft of might've been, never was at 56,692 words. i also started multiple new WIPs and have outlined and zero-drafted one that's ready to be written, and outlined/started zero-drafting a second!

below the cut is a general update on my various WIPs, past and present:

let's start with the highlights: my active WIPs!

conversion: i finished the second draft of conversion in a burst of about 24 days during aries season and i even handed it off to beta readers!

might've been, never was: holy shit, this was the biggest surprise of 2024. i came up with the idea and wrote it this year, clocking in with a first draft of 57k words, after abandoning it twice and then picking it back up after finishing seed of the woman and not being able to bring myself to work on the re-awakening. i'm absolutely in love with this story and i can't wait to talk more about it next year <3

seed of the woman: another one of my new WIPs that i finished this year, SOTW was my primary november project and i finished the first draft in a total of 8 days!

heartbeat: this is one i've very, very minimally mentioned here and planned to intro this month until MBNW put me in a chokehold. it's kind of an epic/saga/coming-of-age story and i'm excited to share more about it and officially intro it! i have outlined this project and am currently about a quarter or a third of the way through a rough zero draft for it!

on fire: i have no name for this project yet so i'm using this as the placeholder, but this is the novella i outlined and zero-drafted in one evening! i am so so excited to start writing it and, frankly, only held off to pad my 2025 numbers <3 hopefully, i'll have an intro for this ready soon!

and my older projects that are a mix of on hiatus, shelved, etc.:

so it goes: i tried rehauling the plot early this year but i stopped working on it pretty quickly. i think this will be my forever project; i only wrote about 20k words on this WIP and i don't think i'll ever be happy with it!

decomposing gods: i don't think i've updated my followers on this project this whole year! i did look at some of the outlines, but it's very much on hiatus/transforming into something else, possibly

criminal/cop WIP: i talked a lot about this story at the beginning of the year but i'm struggling to get back to it! i think this one can be formally considered abandoned.

the re-awakening: i wouldn't technically consider this abandoned yet, but full disclosure, i was already struggling with the ethics of writing a project inspired by real people (which became a central theme of MBNW!) when the whole climate around the election really made it difficult to justify writing this story. i have an idea for a way to compost this for another idea as well, though, so it might re-emerge in a new form!

[kimyoonmiauthor]

WIPs I'm working on.

Finally catching up by doing four books at once. Loosely they are with zero spoilers...

Regency Historical Romance Fiction with ND-coded main characters because the ND terms came later in history. It's Rom-comish with some geeky content. The ND is mostly on hyperfocus topics. Is it smutty? Yes. Iunno, I tried my best. I had to background the Diversity of others, but the diversity is 100% accurate and a way to push back on Julia Quinn's but then "I would have to explain why the diversity is there" statement. I haven't written white main characters in forever and a day. But I'm hoping the disability rep and ND rep won't alienate people to my writing. BTW, no magical cures of course are metted out. And maybe heavy political commentary on our current landscape.

Roughly, maybe 3-act, but also I borrowed heavily from Jane Austen and her contemporaries to shape the story structure because I read more than Jane Austen to pull it off.

BTW, to be sure is a quirk of Jane Austen, at least I found, at least when I did searches of her most well known phrases. That phrase isn't found in books by her contemporaries, and is less likely to even be found with men of her time period, which, BTW, matches the pattern in her books too. (She had girly language for her time period, that's why people later talked about how adverbs were evil.)

First book is completed, second book needs the last 4 chapters finished. Otherworld queer-friendly Polyamory default, East Asian-ish fantasy

I rewrote this one about 3-4 times already, but I had a rough outline and wrote the first few drafts out of order.

East Asian-ish here, BTW, isn't like OMG, I pulled kimono from Japan and then went off and pulled Lanzhou noodles from China and then I did kimchi from Korea. Instead, what I imagine it to be is if there was *another* country in East Asia and was influenced by those countries but built its own culture, what would it look like? To pull this off I did a TON of research into the complete history of Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Mongolia, etc in order to get the flavor of what is shared, not shared and pull carefully from that history. As I like to say, if you want pan-anything in your story, you need to do more research, not less. And I wanted it not to be only pan Asian, but also unique unto itself because WTF is that Anthro degree there for?

Main character couple are straight presenting, but they aren't straight. They mention it CONSTANTLY about how they aren't straight. Endlessly, it gets integrated hard into the story as minor plot points. I know how our culture would define it, but they don't quite define their queerness in the same way, because I wanted to fuck around with the European ideals of What is a Straight person™ and What is a Queer Person™ to show that gender and sexuality isn't defined the same way across time and space. So yeah, totally messed with and I'm very, very sure some straight people and some queer people might be like OMG, You can't do that you're messing things up. But chill, like it's fiction and you should think about that. Did I get rid of the patriarchy? Absolutely. 'cause fuck the patriarchy. And I don't want to do white feminism. And yes I wrote this before the Barbie movie came out. And I read enough theory to be able to pull it off.

The story covers theories of activism I've read from various authors over the years and I suppose on the surface it doesn't look that interesting until you get to the theory stuff and the plot kinda builds on itself. I used Dream Record+East Asian 4-Act (a mix between them). It's not beholden to conflict in order to drive the story forward, but conflict is there, its just not how the story moves.

Other World Pure Queer Joy with all of the rainbow in a non-European-eque setting Fantasy (Loose sequel to the previous one) Did I invent my own gender system which I'm not revealing to anyone prior to publication? Absolutely. It's not even in the first few chapters of the book, but trickled out. In fact two systems and a mention of 2 other systems. 'cause FUCK IT, I want to escape the European binary so badly and I put a ton of thought and research into how to do it. I read European stories that broke the binary for them, read East Asian stories fairytales and lit, read South Asian, read South East Asian, and generally mucked around.

The Setting is mainly East Asia-ish, but I also have mentions of African, Indigneous tip offs, and I'm trying very hard to figure out how to get a monsoon system going. If I could only figure out the amount of land mass needed which no geographers can tell me. I want it for two continents which I'm guessing has enough land mass...

And yes, the definition of what straight™ is 100% fucked with in the worldbuilding. 'cause why the fuck not. I'm kinda of sick of white queerness taking over queer spaces and THE conversation, so I kinda want to mess with the whole system because too many queer books still hold to the contemporary white European system instead of uprooting the entire thing.

There are white people, BTW, in the world building, but they are more nomadic and darker shades of white people due to the world building.

Since I wanted JOY in capitals, etc the conflict is downplayed a bit. It is reaaaallllyyy smutty though. LOL. But the first thing I axe is sex scenes when the story runs long.

Roughly 7 chapters to rewrite on the ~11th draft.

Contemporary Corporate Drama Romance (sorta comedy)

This one is smutty as hell and took me forever, I mean forever to get it to the last chapter. I'm not kidding. It was like pulling teeth on this one. I had to change names a few times, the venue a few times, the mechanics of the set up a few times, the timing of the set up a few times. I kept getting stuck over and over again. I changed the race of the characters, the sexualities, the disabilities, anything to get this damned story to work.

I was going to set it in college originally, but that didn't work and fizzled. *sighs*

For this one, I'm not kidding, I dumped the entire draft at least three times and rewrote it from scratch because it wasn't working out.

But the main characters are Latine and East Asian, het romance, one of them is a complicated version of bisexual. *grins* Because I can and I know it exists and people are being assholes about it, so if people are being assholes about it, I can at least highlight and counter some of the ideas about it.

I struggled with including and subtracting diversity in this one, but queerness made it, I don't think the characters are ND coded, but I'm open to people thinking they are. There is mention of composers and artists and how they were shitty people. So it does come off geekish, I suppose. Haha, when the author is ND, but the characters aren't can the characters escape the hyperfocus of the author? Probably not... ^^

Not quite sure of the story structure since it's not beholden to three-act, but it kinda, sorta seems a bit braided to me. Where separate strings come together.

So yeah, that's what I'm rushing to finish before the end of the year. I write interstitial. So Ummm... any agents ready for me to query about 6-8 books in succession?

Oh and I'm not sorry that I don't subscribe to the idea that only conflict is interesting and that's the only way to build tension nor that I truly despise the break up requirement of romance imposed on by the 1950's ideals. Fucking be adults argue and talk it out instead of adhering to unhealthy standards.

[hiraethwrote]

── thank you so much for 1k followers ⋆˚࿔

so i hit 1k followers... wth

gonna start of by giving a massive thank you to everyone!! i greatly appreciate every interaction — every like, comment, reblog and follower — and most importantly, the friends i feel like i've made along the way. it means a lot that you've found something you enjoy in my writing and blog

this is going to get a little sappy so you've been warned

it might be a little cringe that i take 1k followers this serious, but it is a little milestone i take a lot of pride in

(if you wanna skip my sentimental part and just read about my writing plans going forward, that's fine, lol, it's titled "the road ahead" further down)

i had a particularly rough winter — working a lot, making the tough decision of dropping out of university with one year left, going through the worst frienship breakup i have ever experienced, not eating or sleeping well — overall struggling mentally

during all of this, i picked up jjk and was finally blessed with a new hyper fixation. i now had more time on my hands seeing as i was no longer a student. i've always had a passion for writing, so i decided why not

so i made this account just for shits and giggles mostly, not expecting much. but the reception of my works has been beyond anything i could imagine — i am so extremely grateful

it has even helped give me that last little push to pursue writing as a possible future. as a huge reader, i've wanted to be an author ever since i was young, but always been too scared to commit to it, scared i'm not good enough

but seeing how people actually enjoy what i write has given me the motivation to apply for a one year course in creative writing next year. it's rather exclusive, only accepting 12 students each year, but i am going to apply at least lol

that is all thanks to you guys so thank you so so so so much ᡣ𐭩

2024 looked out to be one of the worst years of my life, but it has greatly turned for the better. this might actually be one of my best years in a long time, and a big part of that is actually due to this blog (meaning you guys)

so, yeah, okay, it's just 1k followers at it's core. but to me, it is also a sign of me actually putting time and effort into improving myself, my life and my mental health. therefore you guys are really important to me

the road ahead

now, i have quite a few ideas floating around in my head atm. i'm trying to challenge myself in writing more drabbles, bc i seriously struggle with writing shorter pieces, so expect more of that in the future

i may or may not have a series, that has been rotting in my drafts since early june. as of right now, i only have a rough outline for the story and a rough draft of the first chapter. i might feel motivated to continue this

and, as you might know, i am starting to get a little obsessed with haikyuu... i already have a few ideas. but i have to get further into the series before i feel comfortable writing for it

then, lastly, i am tempted to do a 1k follower event (if you guys are interested. lmk). i really wanna do something to celebrate this achievement. however, i am terrible with deadlines and writing schedules so it would have to be very flexible lol. it might take forever until i get around to doing it hehe. but know, that if you are interested, i do have an idea in the back of my mind

(all that being said, i am working more this fall due to the fact that i start the downpayment on my student loans in october, yikes)

so, one last time, thank you from the bottom of my heart

know that i dearly appreciate all that you guys have done for me, and that you've had a serious impact on my life — more than you know

i am very excited to contiue writing and seeing what i do next

much love, hea ᡣ𐭩

[short-circuit-the-great]

You Didn't Ask And I Answered: A Long Ass Post, Part 1

Questions are from this post. It is an ask game. I answered every single one unprompted. If anyone actually reads this post I will be impressed.

do you know how you want the story to end when you start, or are you just stumbling through the figurative wilderness hoping to find a road? It depends on the story. For all of my fics, I know the ending. For a lot of my books, I know the ending. For one particular project I am thinking of right now, I'm making that shit up as I go.

talk about a notable time a narrative or character has looked you dead in the eyes and said “fuck your plan, here’s what we’re actually doing.” SPIDERSILK SAMURAI. FUCKING SPIDERSILK SAMURAI. Pulled out so much hair over that fic. I'm proud of it but none of the characters stuck to the outline I had.

on a scale of 1-10 how much do you enjoy incorporating romance into the average story? 10, but it's a very specific kind of romance. They need lots of time, they have to have lots of banter going on, and some other stuff I can't put a name to. Read my shit, there's a very specific way I write romance.

what is the plot bunny you’ve been carrying for the longest? optional bonus question: do you ever wonder why you haven’t written it yet and experience deep existential dread? I don't know what a "plot bunny" is.

have you ever made a playlist about something you were writing as an elaborate means to procrastinate when you could have been actually writing and if yes drop a link, son Crossfire's playlist

do you have any kind of consistent writing schedule or just hoping for the best? I write every day.

tell us about the plot of the first fanfic you ever wrote Immortal being reflects on life and death.

what’s your relationship with constructive criticism and feedback like? do you seek it out? how well do you take it? Don't like it.

in an ideal world where you’re already super successful and published, would you want to see a tv or movie adaptation of your work? why or why not? TV show. Animated.

at what point in the process do you come up with titles, and how easy or hard is that for you? Early. Fairly easy.

what’s something neat you’ve learned while doing research for something you were writing? also, how much do you worry about doing research in general? I look things up as needed.

do you ever have trouble focusing on writing? how do you get around that?  No.

talk about a writing experience that has pleasantly surprised you. No idea what this question means.

what’s your worst writing habit?  Can't proofread.

where do you share your writing? AO3.

where is your favorite place to write? Library.

what is your favorite line you’ve ever written? "It won’t be the same, but I’ll keep you close forever, and we can run along the river in our memories, hearts and souls entwined."

what is your most and least favorite part of writing? Like writing fights. Hate proofreading.

what are some books or authors that influenced your style the most? Masashi Kishimoto, Akira Toriyama, Hideaki Sorachi, Hirohiko Araki, Chris Bradford, Chris d'Lacey, Jeff Kinney, others I am forgetting.

what is your favorite trope to write? Found family.

pick a writer to co-write a book with and tell us what you’d write about. @mecha-milkers and I would write about unspeakable cosmic horrors.

describe your writing process from scratch to finish. Hallucinate, fight god, black out, stare at the finished product, hit post.

how do you deal with writers block? Change the last sentence and move on.

on average, how much writing do you get done in a day? Several pages if not many. Not counting.

what’s your revision or rewriting process like? You guys revise? The first draft is the only draft. I have been reworking some of my older stuff (books) but don't have a process for it.

do you like to write one-shots or series, and why? Series, more time to develop stuff.

do you share rough drafts or do you wait until it’s all polished? 28. And who do you share them with? I share them with friends.

handwritten notes or typed notes? Keep notes in brain.

give us a spoiler for one of your stories. Bad guy helps good guy.

most inspirational quote you’ve ever read or heard that’s still important to you. "Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are--it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can GET hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done."

tell us about one of your characters who’s an absolute joy to write Kusunoki Masashi from Our Samurai Souls--he's been through it all but still keeps his head up.

do characters influence your writing style? Yeah they running the whole thing.

do you start with the characters or the plot when writing? They come together, they tell me what to write. Half the time they're the ones writing it.

how do you name characters and places? They tell me their names, they tell me their world.

tell us about a character who’s very different than you who you love a whole lot Yuki from Our Samurai Souls. Despite what he's been through it's very peaceful in his head.

do you base your characters of real people or not? If so, tell us about one. I have a character in one of my old books (not a fanfic) that is based on someone I've heard a lot about but never met. I drew a lot of inspiration from the descriptions and stories I've heard to create this guy.

when creating characters, what comes first: appearance, backstory, motivation, personality, something else? They come in as whole people, I don't know how to explain it. Aside from a few cases (see above) I've never sat down and thought about making a character. They come to me.

how many stories do you work on at one time? Five to ten.

are you an avid reader? I try, it is hard for me.

best piece of feedback you’ve ever gotten. See earlier about "I don't like feedback."

[flame-of-tar-valon]

So yeah I finished my revised draft and the word count went from 3.2k (original version) to 6.2k (current version). I'm gonna try to pare it down because that's too much. but regardless of how long it ends up, one thing I can say with certainty: it's good.

I published my first version of this prologue in July 2024, almost six full months ago. It was the very first glimpse of Lleidspaer, Nia'a, and Vivimani. At the time, I was pushing myself to post a rough draft, because finished was more attainable than perfect. I hadn't posted fanfiction that wasn't for a secret santa challenge in years, and every time I started one, I abandoned it soon after because of nitpicking about quality. I didn't want my ideas to get trapped in editing purgatory, so as soon as I had a halfway-decent draft, I published it straight away.

Having a beta reader for chapter 4 onward has really helped COMPLETELY restructure how I edit fic now. Fundamentally, the mechanics of how I approach editing are the same -- what's different is how I approach diagnosing what needs to be different. It's like as if I caught a glimpse of the rubric and now I know what to do.

So now I'm going back and working on the stuff I never tried to polish. Last July, that's what I needed -- polishing it would have stalled me forever and kept me trapped in being afraid that it wasn't going to end up good enough.

Now, though, I'm in a different place. I have a sustainable income now; I've moved back in with my family instead of living in a cramped and overpriced dorm; I've almost started Endwalker instead of being mid-Stormblood, giving me a lot stronger of an outline to work with -- and I have friends and readers who have given me great feedback. So I'm no longer struggling to have the will to post my work. Now I can devote attention and care into bettering it.

As of the typing of this post, I have turned the very first draft published for How to Go Home Again into a very polished, very long piece of art that I can happily say is good. Maybe it's malms better than the original. Maybe my self-confidence just got a boost and the writing's about the same. Who can say?

Either way, I'll take another look at it in a few days and see if there's any places I can whittle it down without taking out the heart of it. Once I'm truly satisfied with it from all angles, I'll post it to Ao3 -- and then it's onto new territory as I finally get back to Nia'a's trials!

the STRUGGLE!!!!!

every time I try to edit my work I end up DOUBLING ITS LENGTH!!!!

please free me I just wanna post this chapter!!!!!!