#WIPstorybible

[the-wip-project]

14 Days of Storybible

Here we go, friends!

Starting this Wednesday, the 19th of January and ending on the 2nd of February, we’ll develop a storybible.

As some of you already know, I’m not much of a planner myself, so don’t fear, I’m not going to make you fill in some super detailed spreadsheet. The idea is that I pose a question every day about your world or your characters, and you write down some notes.

Where you write this down is up to you. You could use an actual journal, made of paper and stuff, you could use a notes app, a spreadsheet, or just a plain document in whatever program you like to use.

I would suggest that you use this with a fresh WIP, a story that you haven’t fully developed yet, just started, or maybe not even have a real idea about, yet.

The storybible we’ll develop, will be the basis for the next WIP project in March, when we’ll WRITE and FINISH the story in 60 days!! It will be done! It will be messy and ugly, and it will need massive revisions, but it will be done!

Let’s do this!

I want you to make posts in the tag #WIPstorybible, so that we can all see it.

So, are you with me?

[kmlaney]

14 Days of Storybible: Day 3

Methods of travel:

How do your characters move across the setting where your story takes place? What preparations do they have to make? Do they have a favorite way of getting around?

Bonus: Sketch out a moment where something went wrong during travel.

@the-wip-project 

In Mistlands, most travel is on foot, on horseback, or in animal-drawn carts and carriages. In the less hospitable places outside of the lake valley, these are pretty much the only means of travel. In the north, animal-drawn may include dogs or large, semi-domesticated deer. In the south, horses, mules, and oxen are typical. 

Most people in rural areas know how to ride horses, though whether they own or have access to one is less universal. Driving a team is a rarer, though not uncommon skill. The larger the team, the fewer people are likely to know how to manage them. A teamster familiar with horses may not know how to drive oxen, and vice versa. 

Southern areas have limited train travel. They connect large towns only. Smaller towns connect via coach services on regular routes, and the roads they travel range in quality from ‘smooth, graded, and well-metalled’ to ‘move the biggest rocks and maybe pull out the brush and call it good.’ Station managers dispatch crews to repair damaged road, but how well they do so and how quickly depends on the whims of the stage company and the personality of the station manager.

The lake valley contains the largest towns and cities. Train travel here is more reliable and common and supplemented with airships. Good roads are common and in good repair. Passengers and freight move by boat on the rivers and around the shore of the lake. All the vessels have trained pilots, usually drawn from the ranks of smaller, similar vessel pilots and taught on the job. The vast majority started out as apprentices, either formal (a contracted arrangement) or informal (it’s the family business). Coaches fill in for the distances between towns not served by rail.

In the largest cities, one will find technological marvels such as personal steam-powered vehicles, mechanical horses, autonomous carts, velocipedes, and the like. For trips within town people employ carriages, rickshaws, or palanquins, all of which are available to hail from the street or engage at stands and carry varying numbers of passengers. Depending on the city the proportions skew toward animal, human, or mechanically powered, though all are present. City-dwellers are unlikely to know how to ride, and unless they operate a for-hire conveyance they won’t know how to drive at all. 

Phil’s seen trains but never ridden one. They know about rowboats, rafts, and canoes from personal experience, but larger boats and ships only from descriptions and drawings in newspapers and novels. Travelers told them about the lake and the sea, but bodies of water that large are inconceivable. They’ve heard of airships and other modern marvels but never seen any of them. 

In life, Phil was quite fond of animals in general and horses and mules in particular. They enjoyed caring for them, riding, and driving, though they didn't routinely drive more than two-in-hand. Death complicated matters. Humans might be easily fooled but animals turn snappish and irritable toward Phil regardless of how well they’re treated. They’ve lost two mounts already. Phil won’t bother wasting any more money than they have to on an animal they’re not likely to have long. Their current mule is deaf and mostly blind, named Lucky, as in “it’ll be Lucky if it don't run off.” He hates everyone but Phil, and he doesn’t like Phil all that much. 

The Dragon and Agnes Gister

Agnes Gister was a ferry pilot on Little Lake, east of Starlight up the Mistborn, near the big Blue Spur river. She learned the trade from her father and inherited the ferry when he passed. It was a pretty thing, bright green with its name, Opalina, painted proudly on its bow in gold. She ran the ferry with her wife Meridith and their passel of children, each assigned tasks according to their age and abilities. They were a well-known fixture on Little Lake.

Everyone knows the stories about the creatures in the lake. Everyone believes them, even if they won't admit to believing the more outlandish ones. The creatures were supposed to stay in the lake, though, the big lake. Starlight Lake. Strange shapes in Little Lake? That’s an eel, or a log, or weed. School of fish, maybe. Definitely not a lost lake creature. Most assuredly not.

It was their last trip of the day, heading back home to their little house on the Blue Spur side of Little Lake. Meridith and most of the children were already there. Agnes had a skeleton crew of the four oldest with her and only a single passenger, a location scout for Walter Green’s Traveling Warehouse. 

The sky was purple and the stars began to poke bright holes in the canopy when they felt the thump. The water was deep and cold with mountain runoff; lantern fishers had yet to put out; nothing had gone down recently. There was nothing to hit. One of the crew--a boy big enough to start out on his own if he wanted--ordered the rest to check for loose line hanging over the side or a buoy gone adrift, while he went to tell Agnes.

The thump came again, from the other side this time. Agnes had the boy dial the engine to minimum and turned the Opalina into the Little Lake’s slow current to hold station. She assigned another to hold the wheel and keep the ferry steady in place while she investigated. 

The children reported there was nothing amiss. All gear was secure and they saw no debris in the water. Agnes peered over the side herself into the indigo depths of Little Lake. She saw a shadow. A shadow that moved. Sinuous but too large for an eel. Too solid to be a school of fish. And dark, so dark it stood out against the background to her experienced eye as wrong, but nothing else. She asked for a lantern to put out over the water in order to see better. 

The light illuminated a pale violet circle beside Opalina’s green side. The water was clearer than it usually was during the melt, when upstream wash brought down all kinds of sediment. As Agnes puzzled over the mystery, the boat rocked with another thump, this time quite clearly from the keel, and the creature swam into the light. 

Its face was a combination of dog and horse, with a long snout and nostrils clamped shut. Weed or hair drifted from its chin and jowls and flowed around its head like a mane. The body stretched out behind, thick and round, legs folded up tight, with a stiff fin along its spine and black irregular stripes on either side. The skin surrounding them shimmered green, blue, and violet, changeable as the water it swam in. It turned that hideous head up toward the light and its eyes, faceted like jewels with neither pupil nor white, shone red and fixed on Agnes. Lips pulled back revealing a maw full of translucent teeth crammed together with no space between them.

Agnes jerked back, bringing the light with her but it was too late. The teeth came over the rail first, snout and nostrils following after. Then the eyes, the great faceted eyes, seeking the light and the person who held it. A six-fingered hand with talons like knives seized the wooden rail. The Opalina dipped to the side with the added weight. A second hand appeared beside the first. Its finned neck rose up behind its head. Its mane hung wet and dripping, flooding the deck with cold lake water. It opened its jaws and flicked a forked tongue the color of unripe apples toward Agnes and the lantern. She ordered the crew--her children, all of them--to collect their passenger and make for the stern and fire the rescue flare. Then she tossed the lantern toward the bow to distract the creature while she joined them. 

The horrible head with its unnatural eyes followed the light. The glass broke and phosphor oil flooded out, coating the deck in foxfire. Then a third hand came over the side. Opalina lurched as the creature heaved its bulk over the rail and onto the deck.

As lake creatures go, it was small. Maybe twenty feet long from its now-gaping-wide nostrils to the tip of its tail still hanging off the side. But Opalina itself was only sixty feet long and fifteen in beam. Almost too small to stay afloat if the thing hauled all the way out, which was what it seemed intent on doing. Three pairs of legs and their taloned feet scrabbled and clawed the little ferry’s polished deck. A fourth set shoved against the abused rail, levering the body out of the water. It opened its mouth and its tongue lapped out to sample the glowing phosphor. It hissed in distaste and sought out new prey more to its liking. 

That was the moment the rescue flare went up. Blue-white against the darkening sky, followed by a red one, together the signal for a vessel capsizing. Little Lake had no signal for creature attack. There had never been one. The light was ill-timed. The beast fixated on the glow. It spotted the six people gathered on the stern and slithered toward them.

“Where’s your lake gun?” the passenger asked.

Agnes stared at him. “We don’t have one.” They didn’t. Why would they? No monsters lived in Little Lake. The biggest fish were no longer than her arm.

They heard a sharp splintering sound as the rail gave way beneath the creature’s weight.

The passenger sucked in a breath. “I’ll check in the back,” he said, and darted off through the door into the pilot house. He reappeared a moment later with a massive, double-barreled lake gun. “Here!” he yelled, pushing the weapon into Agnes’s hands.

The awful head with its dripping head and gemstone eyes passed the corner of the pilot house. One forepaw gripped the rail. The other pushed off the corner. Its forked tongue darted out toward the people clustered at the stern.

Agnes had never fired a gun in her life aside from the signal flares. She had seen it done, of course, but she was a ferry pilot, not a hunter. Still, she shouldered the weapon as best she knew how, heaved it to bear on the creature threatening her family, and pulled both triggers.

The gun flashed brighter than the flare and the report was deafening. The stock slammed into her collarbone, shattering it. Smoke clouded her view of anything beyond the end of the barrels. 

There was a wet gurgle and the monstrous head fell to the deck with a loud thump. The creature inched its way toward the group, teeth gnashing. But it didn't make it. It slowed to a stop with only a few feet to spare. The apple-green tongue lolled out and came to rest on Agnes’s shoe.

She stood stock-still for a moment. The passenger plucked the still-smoking gun from her hands. “I’ll just put this away, shall I?” He disappeared into the pilot house, and returned without it.

By the time the harbor patrol aid ship pulled alongside, the children already had Agnes’s arm in a sling. The doctor wrapped it further to prevent movement but it took half a year to heal. She never recovered full use of her arm. 

Opalina did not capsize. Hauled back into port, the community contributed funds for its repair. By fall, about the time Agnes was on the mend, it put back out on its familiar route with their eldest son at the helm. 

The creature attracted curious visitors from miles around until it rotted and the stench forced a hasty disposal. All attempts at preservation--salt, alcohol, alchemical preparations--failed to halt its decay. 

With the attraction gone, the mayor commissioned a sculpture of the beast. It graces the green in the village square with a bronze plaque commemorating Agnes’s heroism. The two lead balls Agnes fired at it serve as its eyes. It is an impressive feature, if not exactly accurate.

The passenger vanished into the crowd, presumably continuing his work for Walter Green’s Traveling Warehouse. The lake gun, which all agreed was of Old Testament Arms manufacture and given the size of the shot recovered from the carcass most likely their 2-bore Moses model (guaranteed to part the seas), was not found anywhere on the Opalina. No one recalled seeing the passenger take it with him. It seemed to have vanished completely. 

The harbor patrol established two red flares as the signal for a lake creature attack. It’s never been used in the years since. 

It’s said that Agnes rose Anathema later, but that’s a different tale.

[depizan]

14 Days of Storybible

@the-wip-project's 14 Days of Storybible

Day 1: Weather

What kind of weather is normal in your world? Does your world have seasons?

Make up a weather event in the past that people in your world still talk about.

This will have to be an indirect take on the prompt, since I write Star Wars fanfic. Not so much because of the fanfic part as because Star Wars is, depending on your preferred labeling, space opera, space fantasy, or space adventure. And that space part is a bit of an issue for the prompt, since very few things in Star Wars take place on a single world.

(Snarkier people out there are probably also muttering to themselves that no world in Star Wars seems to have proper weather or seasons or a climate that makes any goddamn sense. They're not wrong; Star Wars has a real problem with single biome worlds.)

In any event, I'm not going to try to figure out how Tatooine has an atmosphere, or what tauntauns eat, or the (daunting!) logistics of an ecumenopolis. I'm going to ponder weather in a galaxy with easy space travel and loads of inhabited planets.

It occurs to me that people in the Star Wars galaxy loosely fall into three categories: those who live entirely (or largely) on a planet; those who live entirely (or largely) on board a spaceship; and those whose lives are pretty well split between planetside life and shipboard life. It seems like those groups of people are going to have somewhat different attitudes toward weather when they encounter it, because weather will mean different things to them.

I mean, when you think about it, weather has different meaning and impact to different groups of people across our world. If you have a car and an office job (or work from home) and a sturdy home and don't live somewhere with regularly dangerous weather, it doesn't matter all that much if it rains or not. If you're a farmer, you might care a whole hell of a lot. Or if your roof leaks. Or if you have to walk to work. Or if rain often comes with dangerous lightning, or hail, or tornadoes.

Now, if you're a person who leads a basically planetside life, you know what the weather is normally like where you live. You're aware of any dangers that come with it. Whether it affects you much or not, you have a pretty stable relationship with it, for good or ill. (Assuming, of course, that you're planetside where you normally spend your life, and you haven't gone on vacation to some other part of the planet or some other planet entirely.)

But if you're someone who travels a lot, your relationship with weather is much more uncertain. Say it's started to snow. Is that normal here? Are the locals shutting their stores early to go skiing? Or to take shelter? Was weather mentioned in the tourist guides or whatever research you did before coming to whatever planet you're on? Did you even do any research before landing there?

("Is there air? You don't know!" only with weather phenomena.)

If you spend much of your life living in a climate controlled spaceship, just how do you feel about having to deal with unexpected rain storms, or tromping through snow, or the variability of temperature from day to day? I've got to think some of the people who opt for jobs that keep them on ships or space stations most of the time are probably there because they want to avoid all that mess. It's always exactly 20°C, there's never any mud, there's no wind to mess up your hair, and you never need sunscreen. While other people are there because of some other aspect of the job and miss the sun on their face and the wind in their hair.

People in the first category are probably not going to be happy if they head planetside for some reason and it turns out to be raining when they get there. On the other hand, their crewmate in the second category might be cheerfully splashing in puddles.

Does the crew of a light freighter open all their hatches and set their life support system to clear the ship's air and pull in new fresh air when they land on a planet? Are runs to temperate, not so industrial worlds favored because it's a great chance to change the air? Or do crews get used to the way recycled shipboard air smells and spend all their time planetside sneezing from unfamiliar pollen and recoiling at weird odors?

And what about those ecumenopolises? When it snows on Coruscant (Does it snow on Coruscant? I feel like I should know this.), do the people in the upper levels enjoy snowball fights while the people in the lower levels slog through filthy puddles of water?

There may not be "normal" weather in a sci-fi flavored universe, but that doesn't mean that weather has no effect on the characters or stories therein.

[thehungrycity]

WIP Storybible: Day 14

From @the-wip-project

Plot:

Write down snippets and ideas that connect to the notes you made about worldbuilding and character development.

Sara briefly attempts to get a standing army established in Kirkwall, but this is quickly shut down by Meredith exerting her power over Bethany. She then uses Bethany to force Sara to do a lot of her dirty work, just to show that she can. This indirectly leads to the Chantry boom.

There are rudimentary printing presses in Kirkwall that turn out early forms of newspaper. The Templars use this to spread fear about mages and worn people of the consequences for harbouring them.

No one goes swimming in Kirkwall harbour, and none but the poor fish there. It is far too polluted with toxic waste, heavy metals, and effluent.

There are public baths in Kirkwall, though it costs to visit them. They are like Roman baths, with steam rooms, cold pools, etc. But people wear bathing clothes.

There are pumps in the crossroads between insulae in Lowtown that pull up relatively clean water from cisterns under the city. Running water used to be piped directly into people's houses in Hightown, but many of the old houses have pipes that are breaking down and there isn't the skill or knowledge to repair them. The most noble houses try to keep at least one fountain running to help them look refined. The rest of the time, they source their water from the cisterns in Hightown.

There is some kind of Council drawn from the nobles that oversees the appointment of the Viscount. Hawke is automatically appointed to that Council upon becoming the Champion of Kirkwall. Meredith uses the hostages she has in the Circle to prevent a caucus from forming in the Council, and therefore the appointment of a replacement Viscount. There is basically shit all that anyone can do about it unless the want their relatives to be made Tranquil. Only Elthina can, and well... we know her opinion about that.

Anders talks to Sara about getting a cat. Sara expresses concern that her dog will eat it.

Merrill is a true romantic at heart, and sees Fenris/Hawke as a really romantic outcome for Fenris.

There are factions among the nobles that Sara has to try and court, including those who see different outcomes for Meredith/the Circle, and for the Viscountcy. Fenris wants her to use her marriageable status to help with this, and even suggests that she go ahead and get married to consolidate her position, but she is averse to it.

Sara is disinclined to have children, after her experience growing up. If she did, she wouldn't want to have more than one so that the same thing wouldn't happen to her child. Fenris secretly (even to himself) desires to have a child as a way of grounding his identity. Anders wants the ability to have a child because he is frustrated that it was taken away from him yet again without informed consent but, while he would love a child from Sara/Fenris, doesn't actually particularly care whether a child is of his blood or not.

None of this is plot. But it is something.

[kittynomsdeplume]

WIP Storybible - Day 14

@the-wip-project

Well I made it to Day 14, can you believe it? And I did begin thinking of a lot of details that I probably wouldn’t have considered otherwise, or would have only dealt with at later points in the fic. So I suppose having them in mind from the beginning might help me to make a more cohesive story, instead of my usual pantsing randomness.

Plot:

Write down snippets and ideas that connect to the notes you made about worldbuilding and character development.

So I haven’t quite figured out all the plot yet, but the general idea is that Solona has decided to return to school to complete her degree, after being expelled, along with her friend Jowan, from Kinloch College a decade earlier.

She leaves Denerim, looking for a fresh start and ends up in Amaranthine, where her cousin Carver lives with his partner Rylen. It is at a belated house-warming for them that Solona runs into Cullen - who is now a professor at Amaranthine University. Cullen remembers Solona from College, though he was a few years ahead of her and very quickly feels those old feelings of infatuation returning. 

And then they bang. A lot. The end.

[satashiiwrites]

Storybible Day 10

Today’s prompt:

Worldbuilding: Science / Magic

What do common people know about science/magic? How about the educated elite? How does science/magic influence everyday life?

I’ve long been of the argument that having biotics in the mass effect universe is the way to have space magic™️. I mean the whole reason is so you can magically throw things and sap energy out of your enemies right?  Biotics are a recent development for humans but are much more common among the asari—the greatest majority of Known biotics in this universe appear to be of the asari persuasion. 

In AAT however, I’ve made a few twists on things.  Scott Ryder is a biotic—his twin sister is not.  He’s a bit more accepted into the Alliance military as a biotic but he never tried to be pigeonholed by his biotics—he’s a sniper and an infiltration specialist at heart who just also happens to be a biotic.  All the trouble he got into was because of his father’s meddling in AI research but being a biotic was just thrown on top of his discharge paperwork as the icing on the cake. 

So the prejudice against biotics going crazy never has been Scott’s biggest problem.  He also, in his darker moments, wonders if he’ll survive long enough for that to be a problem. He feels like he’s been on borrowed time since his father sacrificed his own life for his and it’s not like he has a low risk occupation. 

Anyways, Scott is a powerful biotic.  His integration with SAM makes it so his control is much greater than your average human biotic and he spikes higher like the L2 implants do—closer to asari levels than most known human biotics other than Kaidan Alenko. Scott isn’t the only biotic in AAT as we also have a turian biotic—Vestus. Turian biotics are seen as oddities in the AAT timeline but Vestus is a lot like Scott—he’s an infiltration specialist and also has the turian fondness for sniper rifles as well as sharp blades. These two haven’t met in AAT but it’s going to be interesting when they do as they both have strong relationships with Reyes Vidal (close family on Vestus’ part vs romantic partner on Scott’s). 

Reyes doesn’t—for the most part—care that Scott is or isn’t a biotic.  He just worries about him and his safety.  Has Scott eaten enough today?  Is he too cold/hot/uncomfortable?  Being a biotic doesn’t really rate on his scale other than it makes Scott’s basal body temperature a bit higher than most other humans and he has a higher metabolic rate which requires more frequent/higher caloric intakes.  So from a feeding-and-caring for you partner standpoint he adjusts accordingly but otherwise doesn’t really worry about it. (He might have encouraged some experimentation in the bedroom but that’s beyond today’s scope). 

[the-wip-project]

Day 1

Welcome! Welcome!

This is the first day of the storybible project so let me give you a short explanation how I think this could go.

For 14 days I'll make a post on this blog with a little homework. These will be short assignments, I don't think you'll need to spend more than 10 minutes on it. It's up to you how you'll use these assignments and how public you want to make them. Use the tag #WIPstorybible and mention this blog if you want more people to read them. 

I don't plan to reblog all your posts but I'll try to read them all. If I reply to one it will be with my main @barbex​, just so you know. 

I want you to think about a new or an underdeveloped WIP as you write down your notes. In the end, you'll have the beginnings of a storybible that you can expand and refer to as you work on your story. 

Sounds good? Then let's get started. 

Today's assignment is about worldbuilding. 

Weather. 

What kind of weather is normal in your world? Does your world have seasons?

Make up a weather event in the past that people in your world still talk about. 

[the-wip-project]

Day 5

Weekends, man...

We're coming to our second point in the GMC, motivations. The WHY. Why do your characters do the things they do? The answer should not be "because plot"! The characters move the plot forward, not the other way around. The characters have agency, they are the reason why the story develops. Find their WHY.

Personally, I often find it easier to write motivations than goals, so I often switch back and forth between those categories. 

By the way. This is the point where you probably should start organizing your storybible a bit. How you do this is up to you but it's probably a good idea to at least separate the categories Characters and Worldbuilding. 

You could do this in a document with bullet points, be it digital or analog:

Or with paper notes:

This would also work really well with a private Discord server:

However you build your storybible is up to you. You just need to have it in a format that will be easy to read and easy to add entries to, once you’ve taken the next step and write the story. 

Characters, character motivations:

Why do your characters do the things they do? What motivates them?

[the-wip-project]

Day 4:

A bit later today because Saturdays are always so busy for me.

Today, we're moving away from worldbuilding and take notes about our characters. 

If you participated in the 100daysofwriting event last year, you already heard me hark on about GMC. 

GMC stands for Goal, Motivation, Conflict and it's something that will be super helpful to know in the long run. For a great explanation, please check out Rachel Bach’s blog with a friendly post about GMC:  http://thisblogisaploy.blogspot.com/2016/04/writing-wednesday-gmc-stupidly-simple.html

You can think of it this way: The goal is your "what?", the motivation is your "why?", and the conflict is the "why not?". 

Now, you might say, "I don't need this, I know what my character wants, they want to save the world!" Good, that's a good goal. But is that all there is to this character? Do they only have that one goal? And why do they want to save the world? 

You see where I'm going with this, your character can have several goals of different importance, for different reasons, and I want you to think about that. Tomorrow we'll think about the motivations for the goals. Be prepared that coming up with motivations might add more goals or change the goals you initially thought of today. That's normal. The more you think about these things, the more your story grows. 

Characters

Character goals:

What are the goals of your main characters in your story? Make a list of big and small goals.

[the-wip-project]

Day 2

I loved your posts and reblogs. Use the tag #WIPstorybible and mention this blog if you want more people to read your posts for a bit of accountability.

Isn't it interesting to think about the world we're writing in? Today it's another question about worldbuilding. It's about the setting, the landscape, geology, terrain, these sort of things. I want you to think about what different landscapes your character will see and what they'll think about them. 

And as a bonus, for a little flash writing, come up with a feature in the landscape that is special for some reason. Details like this make a world feel real. So think about a special place. Favorite romantic spot? Ghost meetings? Top ten travel destination? High radiation spot? Holy mountain range?

Landscape.

What kind of terrain has your world? What do your characters notice about the world?

Bonus: Come up with a special place.

[the-wip-project]

Day 14

We did it!

Fourteen days of thinking about your story, your world, your characters. This is a good base, you laid so much groundwork. If you're still catching up, don't worry, you have plenty of time. My plan is to start the actual writing of our stories in about two weeks.

Today I want you to look back at the entries you made and see if you have new ideas to add, new categories you thought of. Let your storybible grow and adapt to you. I'm pretty sure, you'll inevitably have new ideas the more you think about these things. You'll think of new worldbuilding details, new character traits, ticks, and habits. Write it all down. Don't worry if it’s messy, this is just for you.

And while you write down your ideas, I bet you'll have ideas about your plot too. So that's your homework for the coming days. 

Plot:

Write down snippets and ideas that connect to the notes you made about worldbuilding and character development.

[the-wip-project]

Day 3

Hello friends!

I know some of you have fallen behind, don't worry about it. You can always catch up.

We're still worldbuilding and today I want you to think about how your characters travel in your world.

Methods of travel:

How do your characters move across the setting where your story takes place? What preparations do they have to make? Do they have a favorite way of getting around?

Bonus: Sketch out a moment where something went wrong during travel.

[the-wip-project]

Day 7

After our three days of character stuff, we're going back to worldbuilding for a bit. That doesn't mean that you will now never touch those character points again, quite the opposite. You storybible is a growing thing, it will grow as you work on your story. 

For me, the characters grow as I'm writing the story. First they are simple shapes, just a cardboard cut-out, and as I write, they develop and become a person. So, give them time, they'll grow.

Today, let's think about the world and setting again.

Worldbuilding: Society / Politics

What kind of society do your characters live in? What other kinds do they know? What are the good and the bad points about how the society is structured? Are there loyalists and rebels?

[the-wip-project]

Day 13

Today, we're getting into the meat and bone of the story. I want you to think about your plot and your theme. Plot is what happens in your story. Theme is what it means, what the message is.  

Now, you might say, "But I don't know that, yet!" and that's fine. If you are more of a discovery writer, a pantser, you might not know this yet. The theme is one of those things that often starts to emerge when you're almost done with the draft. You look at your story and realize "oh, this is about that!". 

But you might have some ideas what you want to convey, what you want your reader to take away from your story. Write that down. You can always change this later but write down what you want to express.

Theme, message:

What is the theme of your story? 

[the-wip-project]

Day 12

Hello writers!

I hope you're all well. This short event will be over soon and then we'll take a little break and THEN — we're going to start writing!

I know some of you are already working on a WIP but I'm sure you can continue on that just as well. I'll make a longer post after the last day about how we'll take what we've built here and use it for the next step. It won't be stressful, don't worry.

Today, we're once again thinking about our characters, main and side ones.

Character: voice, speech patterns

How do your characters speak in dialogue? How do they sound to the others? What distinguishes their voice from the voice of other characters? 

[the-wip-project]

Day 11

Let's go back to your characters today. Not just your main character, but also the side characters, the friends and adversaries. Give them ticks, habits, all these things that make them more human (also applies to non-humans).

Character: habits / ticks / traits

What weird habits do your characters have? What are their prominent and hidden traits? Do they have ticks?