#Storyteller Saturday

[albatris]

storyteller saturday!

I remember when this was a big thing on writeblr, but it seems to have died down a lot so

reblog this post if you'd like STS asks about your story and characters! send an ask back to the people who send an ask to you.... and look through the notes and pick some people to send asks to as well!

you can ask anything you like! how someone came up with their ideas, how their characters would fare in a haunted house, what kinds of symbolism is present in their work... get creative! get silly if you'd like!

I'll be reblogging this post every saturday and sending out asks to people who share it :]

[ashen-crest]

Happy Storyteller Saturday!

Very curious to see your thoughts in the tags on why your process works for you! I want to refine my draft 0/draft 1 process myself.

[dragonfelling]

STS time! tell me about a sedentary lifeform in your world! (plants, fungi, etc)

One of the most prominent plants in Anemoi culturally is the Popflower. It is used not only in bouquets, but also as dyes and ink that reacts to magic use. It is also used in medicine for those who suffer from specific and rare ailments that have to do with their magic turning on their body similar to an autoimmune disorder. The roots are used as a pungent food and the petals are also used for seasoning.

Popflowers glowing on a dark night, releasing seed pods as they are disturbed by an Inland wyvern eating a Pop drake

These pods can only grow in areas of high concentrations of magic. The only place they've been found growing is the mountains of Anemoi where a God was felled and fertilized the silty soil with his blood. It is hard to notice unless you lay within them, but popflowers radiate a bit of heat. This is enough to warm the mountains throughout the winter when north Anemoi hovers around 5c-0c

The popflower does not have an elaborate root system. It has a main tap root that is poor at sucking up water, but specialized towards sapping magic from the earth and just keeping it in place durring storms. Due to heavy and consistent Anemoian rains, they end up sapping most of their water needs through their petals and the rest through smaller roots by the surface.

Popdrake being held delicately in someones hand.

Popflowers are the backbone to the survival of two other species, including the pop drake and the inland wyvern.

Popdrakes are small and hyper specialized to only eat popflowers. they came about at the same time as popflowers emerging from the mountains. They live among them, using their spines to blend in among the flowers. They give birth to live young who are independent from their mothers from their first moments.

They are often caught en-masse by humans to sell during festivals, skewered and either candied or roasted. they are extremely spicy due to a concentration of the same compounds that give popflowers their distinct flavour and moderate spice.

This spice does not deter the Inland wyvern however. These wyverns are actually a type of fish and are related to every other wyvern. Wyvern have the same skin/scale and lung systems as I Peshka, where as they can breathe air and water through a gill system in their throat. They mainly eat these popdrakes. They will stand still for hours, waiting for a popdrake to move. When one does, they will bend down to gobble it up in one quick movement. Their crests and throats glow due to the magic of the flowers being passed down the food chain reacting with what was once regular luminescence.

[marlowethelibrarian]

Writeblr Shop Talk Ask Game! Pt 2

🎓 -How do you like to receive your critique?

📝- Have you beta'd for someone before? Did you like the experience and would you do it again?

🧭- Has someone beta'd for you before? How did you find that experience?

🤩 - Talk about a writer whose style you admire and why.

🛠️- What's a weakness you'd like to improve in your writing?

👌- What's something about your writing style you enjoy?

🏁-Looking back at the first thing you've written/posted, how have you improved since then?

🌓- Show us a snippet of a before and an after between drafts! What did you change and why?

🤯-Tell us about a comment you've received about your work that you still think about sometimes

🎨-How would you describe your own writing style?

🗃️- What do your outlines look like? How often do you stick to them?

🌲- Gardener or architect, or somewhere in between? What's your process?

[draconesmundi]

I just got here from storyteller saturday ask and then this blog so can you elaborate on dragons being crocodile relatives?

HAPPY STORYTELLER SATURDAY

So crocodiles are part of a bigger group called pseudosuchians, which include things like armoured Desmatosaurus, leggy creatures like Saltoposuchus, shark tailed swimmers like Dakosaurus, beaked herbivores like Shuvosaurus... Pseudosuchians aren't often talked about so I was really happy when the little herbivorous Simosuchus had a spotlight on Prehistoric Planet!

Pseudosuchians are my favourite animals, all of them. And dragons are my favourite fictional animals, so basically I made draconic pseudosuchians. They have the same skeletal details and body plan, with a few fantastical elements...

Dracomorpha, the dragon group, split apart from crocodylomorpha back in the Jurassic. Dragons have overlapping scales rather than discrete osteoderms, and also have fleshy projections (fins, frills, wattles, barbels). They have horns, but so did some prehistoric crocodiles so that's nothing new. Many dragons have osteoderm rods on their shoulders and flanks supporting a membrane of skin, but so did some prehistoric reptiles. Dragons are venomous while crocodiles are not, and dragons fly using magical adipose tissue to generate a magic field, while most crocodiles cannot do this.

Many dragons are semi-aquatic and launch themselves into flight with a strong tail-propelled leap...

[multi-lefaiye]

here's a silly storyteller saturday one. top five eden hotboy moments. interpret this however you wish......

happy storyteller smonday!!!! i am answering this. not late at all, fuck you, i'm exactly on time /silly

anyway. i choose to interpret this as iconic eden moments, to me. for now, i'm just gonna do campaign eden, rather than bg3/sunbringer's song eden, bc i am so sleepy <3

before i do. tagging the eden fanclub (silly): @invaderskoodge @skitzo-kero @anexor @vacantgodling @chaieyestea

@astral-runic @paradoxspir1t @moonflowerrss @void-botanist @drawnecromancy

@kk7-rbs (if any of y'all don't wanna be tagged in these specifically just lmk)

Top Five Campaign-Specific Eden Hot-Boy Moments, in no particular order

In a sailing competition/race, he used his eldritch blasts to blast holes through another team's sails, slowing them down dramatically and helping his team to pull ahead. As he did, he made eye contact with the captain (who'd recently embarrassed Eden in front of everyone), winked, and saluted as they sailed away.

Upon finding a riddle with instructions for a binding ritual, Eden managed to deduce that the ritual required a sacrifice of blood, flesh, bone, and spirit. He decided to take it very, very literally, using a blade to cut off part of his tail and break off part of his horn. (This is why one of his horns has a crack in it, and why he has a scar on his tail! Both grew back, but the scars remain.)

When helping his friend associate Hyndrol with the same ritual, he decided not to waste time explaining it to her and instead asked her, "Which of your fingers are you least attached to?" Fully prepared to cut it off for her if she wasn't going to immediately do so herself.

One time he allowed a monster to bite down *hard* on his arm and fuck him up, entirely so he could then use Hellish Rebuke to burn the shit out of it, because he was cornered and pretty much out of options.

Feeling a bit pissy with the rest of the party, Eden decided to go make a new associate and struck up a conversation with the surliest, angstiest-looking bitch with the WORST vibes he could find at the local tavern, determined to convince him to join Eden for the day. And it worked, and now he and James are besties.

[bardic-tales]

happy sts!

gimme a sad snippet :( of anything really.

and then gimme a happy one bc I’m gonna need something to console myself with :)

<3

Happy STS, Star. Thanks for the ask, and I hope you are having a wonderful day.

I have been thinking A LOT on Bianca's final moments before she is reborn like a phoenix four months after this scene.

Sad Scene:

Content Warning: Blood, graphic injury, death or near-death experience, grief, intense emotions, loss, violence.

[. . .]

And then, the earth split open. Bianca fell. Her body crashed to the ground with a heavy thud. Blood pooled around her. A river of crimson stained the snowy, cracked earth beneath her. The battlefield went silent, like the deadly stillness before a tornado. There, amidst the desolation, lay Bianca. Her skin marred by the brutal force of Cloud's final strike. Her wings, once so majestic and powerful, now lay crumbled against the ground. Dark feathers scattered around her like fallen leaves. Her breath slowed, becoming shallow as she stared out lifelessly.

[. . .]

Sephiroth stood in the distance. His expression unreadable. For a moment, the world itself seemed to hold its breath, waiting for the One-Winged Angel's next move. The pain was visceral. The agony in his chest threatened to suffocate him. But, even as the world seemed to collapse around him, Sephiroth moved, slowly at first but soon darted so quickly he had became a blur. He had to get to her. How dare they! The thoughts echoed in his head.

[. . .]

"I will make you suffer for this. You have no idea what you've done." As the very skies darkened above him, he summoned the raw power of his being: Masamune. He was an avatar of wrath: a god incarnate, ready to take vengeance. He would never forgive him for taking her from him.

Happy Scene:

And here is a snippet of an upcoming work I'm writing featuring hot chocolate and holiday cheer. I try to make them embody the Sunshine x Grump shipping trope here.

[. . .]

Sephiroth's gaze returned to the fire. His expression thoughtful. "Cheefulness is foreign to me."

"That's okay," Bianca said, as she leaned her head against his bare shoulder. "We have time. I'll teach you."

His wing shifted slightly, curling inward as if to shield her from the outside world. It was a protective gesture and one that made her feel as though nothing could touch them: at least for the moment.

They sat there like that for a long time. The silence between them stretched with unspoken understanding. Her heart swelled with affection, as it most often did in moments like this. They were rare, but they were precious and a reminder that even in the midst of chaos and destruction that there was room for something softer.

His voice was the first to break the stillness. "You've given me something I didn't know I needed."

"What's that?"

He turned his bright cyan gaze to her. For a brief moment the weight of his usual stoicism lifted. "A reason to remember the world, rather than despise it."

Bianca gasped, but she managed a small, wry smile. "Hot chocolate does that to people."

"Perhaps."

Thank you for the ask, @seastarblue. This ask was brought by the @creators-club.

tagging some fellow mutuals: @themaradwrites @littleshopofchaos @serenofroses @megandaisy9 @watermeezer

@nightingaleflow @prehistoric-creatures @creativechaosqueen @chickensarentcheap

[northwyrm]

hello! happy sts

what's the piece of draconis mundi's narrative you are the most proud of? (like the evolution of two characters' interactions or a particular character growth for example)

- @vsnotresponding

Hello! Happy Storyteller Saturday!

Dracones Mundi doesn't have a narrative, sorry, no characters or anything, just a book of dragon drawings and dragon 'facts' (things I made up like 'stoorwyrms are the largest species' and 'cockatrices eat naga' and 'viridian firedrakes are larger than common firedrakes'). Lots of lore but it's a Field Guide rather than a Story :)

[asher-writes]

Happy STS! Please summarize your WIP in the worst way you possibly could.

[creators-club]

Welcome to Storyteller Saturday. Please refer to the project we did 'Meet the Character / Project' for everyone's talking point, if it is a day where you are encouraged to send asks about characters.

Welcome to Storyteller Saturday. Please refer to the project we did 'Meet the Character / Project' for everyone's talking point, if it is a day where you are encouraged to send asks about characters.

How to participate: Ask fellow writers about their stories, their writing process, or how they tell their story. How to participate: Send an ask to a fellow writer starting with "Happy STS" and ask about their storytelling.

Please tag @bardic-tales after you make your post or answer a question, so I can upload it bother to @creators-club and @bardic-tales.

Until 11.1.24, I will be giving open asks. After that, I will be sending personal asks again. Here is STS' personal asks. Feel free to pick one or all of them to answer.

OPEN QUESTIONS:

Happy STS! What inspired the design of your main character?

Happy STS! How do you develop your characters’ backstories?

Happy STS! What’s the most unique aspect of the world you’ve created?

Happy STS! How do you integrate cultural elements into your worldbuilding?

Happy STS! What’s your typical writing routine like?

Happy STS! How do you overcome writer's block?

Happy STS! What themes do you like to explore in your stories?

Happy STS! How do you weave social issues into your narrative?

Happy STS! What made you start writing in the first place?

Happy STS! How has your writing style evolved over time?

Happy STS! Do you have any writing rituals or superstitions?

Happy STS! How do you incorporate humor into your stories?

Current members:

@bardic-tales @megandaisy9 @watermeezer @littleshopofchaos

@nightingaleflowlibrary @kricketbee

@themaradwrites @pinkevilwriter

@serenofroses @asirensrage @aalinaaaaaa @goldenlilium-ocs @glbettwrites

@wyked-ao3 @badscientist @thebadphilosopher @andromedalestrange

@fantastictrashpolice @seastarblue @happypup-kitcat24 @chickensarentcheap @allaboutmagic

@ryns-ramblings @kathaliabloodyrose @riemmetric @andromedaexists @kckramer

@tales-from-nocturnaliss @pastelpinkhobbies @idonthaveapenname @the-bar-sinister @rosesonkittens

@bloodred2023 @kanobarlowe @aquixoticwrites @new-royston-cursebreakers

@rosemirmir @salmonandfox @fablesandfragments @paganmindidnothingwrong @elshells

@viscerawrites @ellowynthenotking @dawsonskyelar @greenapplespider

[differentprincedinosaur]

December writing challenge

This is a December writing challenge. Have fun right some fics, poetry, short stories. Improve your wrighting meet other writers or show of your books.Please put your submissions on #adventadventure.

[incandescent-creativity]

Happy Storyteller Saturday (Sunday)! Do you have a name/phrase/word/etc. you try to sneak into all/most of your projects?

Surprise! It's Saturday again!

I read the word "opine" once in a Stephen King book (don't remember which one) and had a honest-to-god "angels descending from high heaven" moment when I realized the word "opinion" could be made into a verb.

So now I try to use it in every wip because god damn it that's too fun

[albatris]

Happy STS from @trixierosewrites! I was reading a snippet you shared not very long ago about Nat and Quinn, and I was wondering if you could tell me what their relationship was like? (Or just some fun facts about them, if that's spoilers)

happy sts!! thanks for the ask :3

yesss these two are so dysfunctional haha

Quinn makes a habit of ~befriending~ recently-turned vampires for the purpose of manipulating and using them... they force new vampires to rely on them, or blackmail and bully them, then use them for anything from personal errands to contract killing

Nat is a schizotypal loner who will do absolutely anything to ensure he's Needed and Wanted, so he easily falls prey to Quinn's scheming. the two have some romantic/sexual chemistry and Quinn is initially kind and doting on Nat but eventually becomes volatile and abusive in their affections. meanwhile Nat is managing to worm his way into all Quinn's social circles and make good impressions on them and get some leverage over Quinn

Nat eventually catches on to Quinn's habit of stringing people along while they're useful then discarding them, and he's like "oh no, I don't fucking think so", and threatens to murder Quinn if they ever ditch him 'cause he's got absolutely nothing to lose

Quinn is like. oh?? and is suddenly 10x more attracted to him

they sorta end up having each other in a stalemate and forging an equal partnership and they're both absolutely obsessed with each other to a dangerous degree

Quinn comes to rely on Nat as a way of "feeling like a good person" eg.... they help Nat, and Nat is a good person, therefore Quinn is tangentially a good person.... while Nat relies on Quinn as his permission to be violent and monstrous and angry when he needs to be

also helps that Nat has a giant body horror monster mode and Quinn is a huuuuge unabashed monsterfucker

that's..... the gist of it? over the trilogy they do learn to genuinely care for each other and treat each other with tenderness but they're still absolutely deranged about each other

[dragonfelling]

Happy Storyteller Saturday! Biggest dragon species in Ascendancy?

If you dont include the Gods themselves, then out of all the dragon species the largest is the almost extinct people that once fed off of Exitiums divinity: The Dragonfolk

They are a type of divine thing, like Griffins and Humonculi; who don't function like a mortal thing but they aren't Gods. A divine is a good term I suppose. Unlike other divine however they can reproduce.

After Exitium was almost killed and went into dormancy, their population dipped down from around 100 individuals down to a mere 10.

Even before that their population took a massive hit after a parasite that looked like golden flecks ravaged their bodies. They, and their sister species, the Draken (Known in 'modern' culture as the First Drakes) could not remove these scale parasites through fire nor picking them off themselves. Exitium for this reason relented into allowing a human population under his rule. The humans were small and dexterous enough to pull each parasite from under the scales of their dragon lords.

There are only a handful of these giants left, ones that have survived the ages through finding pockets of magic to feast upon. On the rare occasion, a Dragon will return to its homeland of Aiman to lay an egg after storing up immense energy- enough to last them the process and enough to supply its single young with enough yolk to last them until their first flight.

They are a rather typical dragon in a lot of ways. They carry pyrokinesis but some do have other forms of magic much how other folk have many types of blessings by their gods that have carried through their bloodlines. They also have a tendancy towards hoarding and once they lived very luxurious lives when they reigned over what was once Enkavaima (The territory that was taken over by the Anemoians)

Old art ^^^ Shows the gold fleck parasites being pulled off by humans

Unfished sketch of their whole body

Design wise, I'm thinking of shrinking their heads a bit, making them a tad smaller and making their wings look like oversized an albatross' wings. I also want to change their markings to look closed to an albatross mixed with an orca. Something something metaphors and symbolism

--

As for ANIMALS though, the largest is the Major Pinnae dragons. They are about the size of a tiger if you dont count their tails or wings- males being 5 ft from head to tail base and the females upwards of 7.5 ft They are the apex predator of Anemoi, and Pinna's favourite creation. They have reflective wings and stripes they use both in complex hunting habits and mating rituals

They can spit out a Pyrophoric chemical that allows them to breathe fire in a sense. This chemical acts like napalm and sticks to things. The fire is difficult to put out without the use of water to dilute it, as the fuel will just re-ignite in the presence of air and water vapour until its burnt up.

Female Pinnae Dragon in flight, flashing durring a storm.

Female Pinnae Dragon in flight, flashing durring a storm and displaying with its fire.

Female Pinnae Dragon eating a recently killed Diamonda

[trixierosewrites]

happy sts!!

Who was the first character you ever made? Are they still around? How have they changed?

have a great day!

Happy STS!

This, well. Hm. Now I have to expose my very first ever OC.

Her name was Belladonna Nightshade. She had waist length blonde hair, and heterochromia (blue/green). She was an orphan. She was the smartest person around. She was twelve. She wore the exact same clothes twelve year old me wore.

It's, she, well. I don't use her anymore, but she came attached to a book. It's so bad. Here's some of it (below the cut on account of being terrible and causing me psychic damage):

Belladonna stood outside the house, wrapped in a web of confusion. The murder made no sense, none at all. Opal being the murderer was out of the question, and she was the perfect person to frame, the obvious scapegoat. But, at the same time, there seemed to be no way to prove her long-time friend innocent. Her brain spiralled in different directions, and her battle to hold up her poker face, her smooth stone mask, her calm untroubled stance became extreme. She barely noticed the fain, indistinct tipper-tap of Holly’s distinctive footsteps (everyone walks differently. If you don’t believe me, try it) but managed to pull herself together.  “BOO!” Holly leapt out at her. Not surprising, but she turned around to talk.  “Have you seen Julie?” She hated how her voice became desperate, but Opal’s last hope relied on Julie.  Holly looked wounded for a second. “Not good enough for you, am I? Though I suppose you want to help Opal, the little fiend,” she smirked. Holly leaned towards her. “You do realise, Opal could have done it.” Belladonna was too shocked to reply. Opal was her friend, and she should have been protecting her, not accusing her.  “You should know that Lily Fairweather was dead long before that girl ever set foot here. Her real name is Grace Stanley, and Anne doesn’t know because Lily’s grave is in the abandoned cemetery up in the woods.”

I cannot justify this in any way. Thanks for asking!

[transmasc-wizard]

happy storyteller saturday! whatcha workin on these days?

thank you for the ask and happy STS! I'm working on 3 Things nowadays, because I am a gremlin and I cannot focus on one

1: Arthur WIP

my primary wip, this one doesn't have a name yet. It's a fantasy horror novel told from two POVs; Alexei in Before, Arthur in After, intertwined between each other throughout the story. Alexei's POV shows the two of them growing upbtogether from 16 to 20, Alexei forever struggling to fit in with his community and Arthur being the perfect shining example of success. Arthur's POV shows Arthur at 21, a complete wreck who is totally disconnected from his community and having dreams of a cold, dark place where everything dies. Something very bad happened, but Alexei has not yet seen it and Arthur is trying desperately to run from it, so you don't know what for a good while. themes revolve around responsibility, grief, and closeted queer shame. (these bitches gay.) (Arthur is my DND character transplanted into a novel because I got really attached to him and wanted to fill out his life more.)

2: WIP Bad Things Happen

An apocalypse horror, pre-the apocalypse. Gabriel Shaw is always in the wrong place at the wrong time. And when a car crash he narrowly survives seems to open a hole in the universe, this turns into a worsening and compounding streak of bad luck held by him and the other two survivors. When this luck starts giving way to things like shattered bones, a disappearing lover, and the corpse of the woman who died in the crash appearing in his laundry basket, Gabriel and the other two survivors (Prisha and Jesùs) have to try desperately to close the wound they ripped in the world before their bad luck turns into an apocalyptic-level event. themes are heavily about religious trauma, how being trans and disabled shapes your life, faith, and guilt/shame. this one is always floating in my brain but I don't work on it quite as much. (also, there is cannibalism. Yay!)

3: Valarie Saintly Is Totally Normal

egads! an old wip! a recap: Valarie Saintly saved the world when she was 15. Now, at 19, a whole lot of people want her to do it again. With the help of Mack, an eccentric and overly optimistic genderqueer vampire, Val goes on a string of wild adventures to avoid having responsibility placed on her shoulders a second time. Themes revolve around childhood trauma, neglect, and learning to feel the full spectrum of your emotions. I very recently dug this one up again and am currently in the process of updating character designs, which I plan to post when I'm done :)

I still have a lot of the old wips I used to post about, just a lot more on the backburner. but yeah this is what I'm up to ^_^