#i also need to write a scene and revise a short play

[horny-ex-catholic]

HELLO, I AM NOT DEAD, BUT I HAVE MANY FINAL PROJECTS AND WILL BE MILDLY INCOHERENT FOR THE NEXT 2-3 WEEKS

[wutheringmights]

Commentary for latest CTB chapter???👀👀👀👀

Thank you! You guys are as prompt as ever. Unfortunately, I needed a few days to get my thoughts together (and honestly would have taken even longer if I wasn't going out of town this weekend).

I kinda struggled a bit to have Important Thoughts about this chapter (I have been so tired all week), but I did my best.

(Triggering content from the chapter are discussed below).

I’ve mentioned many times already that I suffered from a massive bout of writer’s block during this chapter; and it’s a bit hard to pinpoint what exactly caused it. 

On one hand, I think the last chapter was just so much that I may have burnt myself out on an emotional level. Usually, a week or two off is all I need to fix it, but I also had a lot of personal responsibilities that took up all of my bandwidth. 

And, frankly, there’s a part of me that is a little freaked out that I’ve been working on this story for so long, and that I might not be able to finish it within my self-imposed deadline (if I have to see CTB’s 4th birthday, I am gonna lose it). That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy writing CTB or that I feel pressured to keep going; I just felt exhausted and overwhelmed by how much of my life I’ve sunk into a story that not only refuses to end in a timely manner, but that I can’t share with anyone I know in real life. 

My burnout required a few months' rest to get over, but that’s not to say I didn’t try to work on this chapter that entire time. 

So I actually started this chapter back in April, right after I published STP. I wrote this opening scene of Link ruminating over the past and got stuck trying to transition to him being found. I got so stuck that I ended up bouncing over to the present-day section, where I got stuck in a new and novel way (which I’ll talk about more later). 

That means that everything else in the past I wrote the day before posting. On one hand, I was raring to go and I felt really good getting all those words onto paper. It did a lot for my ego. On the other, I really wish I took more time to revise a lot of this. I think the pacing overall is really strong, but there’s a few ideas I threw out into the story that I really wish I lingered on. 

For example, I mention that Link’s physical abuse was a relatively short stretch of time compared to how significant it is. Him being violent towards the engineer feels like it went on forever and forever, but it only lasted about 4 months. I like this detail so much because it helps to illustrate how even short-term abuse has lifelong effects on people. If I lingered on this chapter a bit more, I would have found more ways to ruminate on it. 

I almost had Ayane discover Link in his house. I ended up changing it to Jakucho since, as much as Ayane likes Link, she would not care enough to go check up on him.  

For the longest time, I imagined Link’s room at the Miyashita estate to be the same as the one he was held prisoner in post-Kakariko Well. But I ended up stating in that chapter that the room was located in a part of the house he had never seen before. So Link’s room was changed from a formal guest room to a study.

In universe, this is so that he’s encouraged to read books and is easily within Jakucho’s reach.

I personally got a hearty chuckle out of Link being denied chopsticks by default; he’s probably very good at using them in the present, but during this time he’s probably really shit at it. Real white boy behavior. 

If I gave myself more time to work on this section, I would have played around with the idea of him being haunted by an imaginary engineer, just as he had been haunted by an imaginary version of his old self on the way to the Kakariko Well. I don’t know if I would have committed to it, though. On one hand, it would have been a cool way to illustrate his inner thoughts. On the other, it implies a mental break I don’t think he’s experiencing. 

On a similar note, I worry that this chapter wasn’t that effective because it was way less (for a lack of better words) dramatic than the past few “Link Has A Breakdown” chapters have been?

Let me explain. So nearly every time Link has been under emotional duress before this, I’ve played with the prose to show how his reality is being warped. Take chapter 24 for example. Link gets stuck on the engineer leaving him, so the passage of time in that chapter becomes unclear-- both in him not realizing how quickly time is passing and him constantly going back to the day he realized the engineer was gone for good. The prose is written in a way that conveys that reality has broken. It’s very melodramatic. 

But for this chapter, reality is firm. Link’s mind has cleared enough to see what happened in the past clearly. The prose can’t dramatically screw with perception because that’s not what’s happening. The passage of time and the depiction of reality has to be crystal clear. 

So despite making these long, semi-experimental passages one of my signature moves, I couldn’t use it here without actively detracting from the story. On one hand, a more grounded chapter effectively shows how this breakdown is different. On the other, it’s a little basic. 

I have a bit of a problem where past!Ayane is a bit too similar in personality to Linkle. Ayane in the present day is supposed to be a cool teenager who is probably a bit of a mean girl at school-- the kind that will grow out of it the moment she leaves for college. But I wanted to show her entering this stage of life in the past, so she’s less bratty and more troublemaking.

Speaking of which, any reference to Ayane “going through a phase” is supposed to refer to her becoming a moody teenager. I didn’t realize until literally yesterday that it might come off as her family being transphobic. They’re supportive of her being a girl; they just get fed up with how much of a kid she is. 

The point of the chapter that made me start tearing up in the coffee shop is when Ayane got mad at Link for destroying the journal. I’ve been that kid who understands cognitively that a parent in your life is not well but still struggled with what that meant on an emotional level. Her family definitely explained to her that Link isn’t well and etc, but that can be kinda abstract for kids to really understand. So when the mental illness causes him to react badly, it seems to her that he is hurting her because he does not care about her. 

And there are a whole slew of issues you can explore with that idea alone, like how culpable is Link for his actions when he is unwell but still the adult? I’ve already started exploring bits of it with the child’s relationship with Link and the engineer. But exploring this idea from a different perspective (the child and his fucked up emotional issues vs Ayane’s normal preteen perspective) is always interesting. 

Link impulsively trying to kill himself was not in my original plan for the chapter, but after everything... yeah, he would try. This might have something to do with an episode of You’re Wrong About I was listening to work last week where they talked about the percentage of suicides that are impulsive decisions versus premeditated.

(Of course, today I listened to the episode on copycat suicides and now I am very nervous about this chapter being used as an instruction manuel)

I was going to have his attempt be to freeze to death outside, but then I thought of the obi belt, and I really could not resist alluding back to the hanging scene in chapter 13

It ended up being a good transition into a scene I’ve wanted to do for a while now: Ayane’s mom asking him to continue acting like Ayane’s older brother. 

I originally wanted that moment back when their friendship was just starting out, but decided to toss it to his depression arc to act as a moment of encouragement for him. What I didn’t expect was to stumble into this scene being both a way to talk him out of suicide, as well as him realizing he’s a shitty brother. I’m a terrible brother is a monumental realization for him, and I stumbled into it by accident. 

I was tempted to remove Ayane’s mother from this scene and put Jakucho here instead. But Jakucho would never ask Link to play an older brother role. Plus, I like the idea that a random, near-stranger accidentally talked him down without realizing what they were doing. 

And of course, having Ayane’s mother talk helps to develop the Miyashita family dynamic and give a better idea as to why Shigeo is estranged. 

Ayane’s mother also has a very tiny appearance earlier in the story-- chapter 9, when we meet Jakucho for the first time. Granted, I think I only referred to her as Impa’s sister. 

I also stumbled accidentally into the moment with the koi fish and using them as a symbol for perseverance. I really like that scene. I almost named the chapter “The Koi Pond” in its honor. 

I also admit that until fairly recently, I also didn’t know fish could live in frozen water. 

I went back and forth about whether I wanted to make a big moment at the beginning of the chapter about Link going non-verbal, or if I should let it build up slowly; I ended up going with the latter.

I didn’t want to make his non-verbalness the center of his issues when it’s just a consequence of his depression. He’s not depressed and non-verbal. He’s non-verbal because he’s depressed. So waiting until the second half of this section to address it homely drove home that this is only a symptom of a larger issue. 

This chapter also gave me the opportunity to address my sign language headcanon; it’s standard taught in school, but not in a way where everyone is actually good at it. It’s like learning Spanish in elementary school; you grow up remembering a few phrases and words, but never actually become bilingual. 

I like the way the bell motif is used in this chapter. In the past, Proxi’s bells are a sign that things are going to get better. In the present, the Castle Town bells signal that things are about to get a whole lot worse. 

But, yes! After all this time, Proxi is finally here. Hopefully the long wait for her introduction/return will be worth while.

For the present day:

Remember how I said my writer’s block struck for this part of the chapter as well? I solved it in the dumbest way possible. 

One of my big issues was that I didn’t know how to string everything that I needed to get done into a cohesive chapter (because if the chapter isn’t good, then I would have wasted so much of my time on a story that isn’t good, and etc.). My solution was to write a flat draft with only the stuff needed to move the plot forward (talking to Ganondorf, getting on the boat, etc), and then do revisions where I added character moments.

Except, I did character moments by the character. So I would spent a week adding scenes about Spirit, then another about Time, and so on. I said in this post that I turned a 5k draft into a 12k draft. Yikes. 

Because I wrote the chapter like this, I think the pacing is not great. The dinner scene and the post-Midlink gossiping was originally one scene, which I split into two to accommodate other character stuff. But I also think this is one of the most well-balanced chapters in terms of how many characters got a moment to shine. 

I’m really enjoying how much you all enjoy Ganondorf. I think nearly every comment on the chapter so far has mentioned him. I almost regret keeping him in the Zora’s Domain right now, but have no fear. He will be back. 

I am endlessly amused by this moment when Warriors realizes he has to talk to Spirit again, and he thinks “Spirit. / Fucking Spirit.” Is he cursing him out, or is he remembering... you know...

I mentioned a long time ago that one of the issues I had to fix when starting this chapter was finding something for the rest of the Chain to do in this final act. I figured out what their deal is, and a lot of tiny moments in this chapter is the set-up for that.

In a similar vein, I feel like I lost the thread on Time for a hot while there. I really had to mull over what his problem is, how he was going to respond, and how I can show Time responding near Warriors so that the reader can know. I’ve never had this much difficulty writing him-- or characters in general-- before. Hence, my on-going battle against writer’s block.

Another amusing moment that only I think it funny: Spirit lifting Warriors up by the scruff of his neck to haul into the alley way, like he’s an old cat. Honestly, I should write more jokes based around Spirit being strong enough to lift Warriors now.

Now that I think about it, I have a scene in my head where Warriors bitches so much while traveling that Spirit just throws him over his shoulder and carries him like a sack of rice. Is it out of character for both of them? Yeah, but we can imagine it happens in the AU where they are friends.

I have been wanting to provide some form of a resolution for Midna and Twilight for so long, but there hasn’t been a good moment to make them talk-- or at least, a moment where they can talk while Warriors is nearby to listen.

I really enjoy striking a comparison between how Midna and Twilight hashed everything out versus the bullshit Warriors got up to last chapter, especially because Midna and Twilight’s solution was to just give up. It’s not going to work out ever, so they might as well enjoy themselves now.

I love MidLink so much, but part of that love is in how it 100% would not work out between them. As Midna says, they would hate each other in a year. But they keep trying anyway because they love each other right now and that’s what matters. 

Speaking of which, Midna’s “we’ll hate each other in a year” line is a reference to the Greta Gerwig Little Women movie. I love that movie so much, enough that I can forgive Timothy Chamalet for being in it. He has a scene where his proposal is met with basically the same sentiment from Saoirse Ronan’s character. 

Tiny little headcanon: Skyloft’s theater style is very similar to ancient Greek theater, with heavy use of masks and choruses. That’s why he mimics holding a mask when performing Twilight’s line for Lana.

His line was originally something Twilight actually said, but then I went in a revised the MidLink scene and got rid of it. I kept Sky’s mocking of it because I thought it was more realistic.

I won’t say much about what the boys talked about post-confession scene, except to point out that they were kept up by the noise, they might have an idea of the timing of when everything went down during the Hot Mess

I’m glad everyone found my joke about always going to Wild’s era funny lol

Chateau Milk (aka: alcoholic milk beverages) is a tiny little world building detail I have been dying to do for ages. I wanted to use any scene of milk-drinking to shove in a joke about Hyrule being intensely lactose intolerant (he’s immune to all bad food except dairy), but I couldn’t squeeze it it. 

The ribbon kinda got a disproportionate role considering how briefly I referenced Spirit losing it last chapter. 

The reason Warriors was sharing a room with Four was so that I could finally do a follow-up on the Four Swords stuff I started forever ago, but it has once more been punted off to another chapter. Maybe one day...

By the time I got to this second conversation with Time, I was feeling much better about how I was writing him. Between this and his earlier appearance, this is definitely the stronger moment. 

I also deeply amused by Ganondorf and Lincoln have to pretend to be very bitchy with each other in order to not seem like they were married. I wanted to write a scene where Ganondorf argues that Lincoln needs to show him the proper request so that Lincoln would have an excuse to kiss his hand, but I ended up not having the energy or will power to go back in and add it. 

Spirit is so not used to anyone having a genuine interest in his senses that Sky’s question totally caught him off guard. Thank god Sky is the type of person who would ask because I got a good moment to clarify more of the limits of Spirit’s senses-- mainly, that a lot of the info he gets is so contextual that most of it is nonsense to him

To clarify, Spirit’s senses freak out people outside of his era. In New Hyrule, where the idea is a bit more common place, it’s considered rude to ask just as its rude to tell people what you sense. Lokomo customs, and all that.

I didn’t plan on having Spirit cut his hair, but I was deep in the throes of writer’s block and felt like I needed to write about Spirit doing something a little insane to respike my interest. Cutting off your hair because the guy you hated saved your ribbon fitted the bill nicely.

(Nonetheless-- RIP Spirit’s long hair. You were much beloved)

Spirit and Lana’s relationship has always been very underbaked on my part. I didn’t do a lot with them at the beginning of the story, and I haven’t done much with it now (or even much with Lana in general). Here is a vague attempt to salvage my mistakes. If I could ever revise the whole of CTB (I will never), this would be one of the things I would improve

Oh God... the Nephus stuff...

Like, I knew this was going to happen. What I worry about is whether it feels cheap to just have a character go back on their word like that. It’s realistic, if only because Warriors’s deal was really shitty. But on the other, it’s not very satisfying for the reader. You want the characters to have complex reasons for everything. I’m not sure that this qualifies. 

And this applies to all of the war stuff this chapter. Did Nephus lie about not wanting the Triforce? Whatever the answer is now, it’s not going to be satisfying. 

I know I said previously that Lincoln had no suspicions as to what happened during the Hot Mess. Well, I lied. Guy had it figured out fairly early on and only needed the opportunity to ask.

I just hope this scene with him and Spirit shows how Lincoln can be Warriors’s dad. Warriors is his mother’s son, but some of his insanity is from his father. 

Also we’ll pretend Lincoln has had that arm tattoo this entire time. The tattoo is not plot relevant, but it’s important to me.

Legend’s “it’s always the fucking Triforce” speech is my favorite Legend line in a chapter.

On a subconscious level, I was basing Castle Town on Boston. Why? I have no good reason. Just felt right. 

I really wish I managed to get us to Castle Town any time before this part of the story, if only to explore all the various neighborhood ideas I have. I managed to squeeze in the Gerudo neighborhood, but I have more thoughts on neighborhoods for the Zora, Goron, Rito, and even regular-old humans. 

I’m going to tell you right now that the girl in the graveyard is not plot relevant. I had a whole thing about the grave being a memorial for all the heroes across the eras and her praying to the memorial for a new hero that I just never got around to explaining

“Shines with humility” is another line that deeply amused me. Like, buddy. That is not how humility works.  

The Master Sword rejecting Warriors is supposed to feel very fitting and very unfair, all at once. I wanted people to understand why he’s lost the right to use her while still being frustrated that he was still being punished. I wanted this to be another opportunity for complex feelings. I don’t think the scene hit the right way, but that’s alright.

There was a point of time where I was plotting this half of the story when I realized I could use the Triforce scar idea that I had previously abandoned. I like the idea and the scene a lot, but I wonder if it feels forced? Like the whole story bent over backwards to make my silly idea possible. Let me know if this feels like a natural conclusion, or if I messed up somehow. 

That being said, this whole scene where Warriors and Spirit were cutting the Triforce into his hand was a lot of fun to write. Nothing breaks writer’s block like writing an insane character dynamic. 

I feel like I should talk more about themes and what this means for them, but you have eyes. You probably get the point by now. Instead, I will inform you that I did try to read that section to my writing friends, who all agreed that they did not have enough context to understand what the fuck was going on. And, yeah. That’s fair. 

I really wish I waxed more poetry about Warriors reentering the public eye. I did not have enough willpower to revise the hell out of that scene. However, I love the ending bit with Warriors asking Hyrule to make sure he gets the scar. 

One last thing-- I really should have done a revision because an important plot element may have gotten lost in it. I won’t say what, but hopefully it won’t cause problems down the road. 

And that’s the chapter! I feel like I didn’t have a lot to talk about this chapter, despite taking a near-week to write up all my thoughts. Next one should hopefully come sooner, but note that I still have a few more weekend trips and real life responsibilities to handle. My life is not settling down again until the beginning of October. 

I really want to emphasize that my bitching about my writer’s block and the source of it is not something I really need sympathy for, and it’s really not something encouragement is going to fix on it’s own. I appreciate the thought, but a lot of my issues right now just require some self-reflection on my part. I don’t want anyone feeling forced to drop a nice word or feel worried I’ll drop the story without it; I’ll still dedicated to finishing CTB. I just need some time (and to stop hanging out with my extended family). 

In other news, my friend offered to bind CTB into a book for me. Well, books. She knew the word count going in, but I have heard many complaints about how long CTB is. Apparently, it’s 6 volumes so far. Some volumes only have two chapters. When I told her I updated last Sunday, I saw the light leave her eyes. I love her dearly, and I will find a way to pay her back for this. 

[aquitainequeen]

Aside from news on how things possibly stand for a Shadow and Bone/Six Of Crows renewal (basically no news is good news, keep going with the campaign!) there's also a short interview with Eric Heisserer, which sheds some interesting light indeed on the writing and making of Season Two, and it explains a lot of things:

Here are the questions posed for Eric's interview: 

"I'd like to know if there's a way to liberate the pre-written scripts if Netflix doesn't plan on using them" - Christian Thalmann (creator of the Fjerdan language)

"In my view, 'The Crows' have the potential to revitalize the Grishaverse. Unlike "Shadow and Bone", this new show could rely less on elaborate visual effects and offer a fresh narrative angle. Heist-themed shows are currently in high demand, adding to its appeal. Am I mistaken in thinking that our focus should primarily be on 'The Crows'? The likelihood of 'Shadow and Bone' returning seems slim, but I've always believed that 'The Crows' had a greater change of success." - Joleen

"If/when the spinoff is back (finger crossed) was there anything he had planned that would completely surprised, for good reasons obviously, the audience? And we should hold our breath for that twist/turn??" - Rti

"What are the difficulties you mentioned about filming S2 in that Reddit comment? Don't want to sound negative, but what went wrong?!" - Mitra

"How long was the sizzle reel ready to go but he had to keep it secret?" - Discord Team

"I would love to know his perspective on the impact of streaming on storytelling. Would we have had to launch a campaign like this 10-15 years ago for a show like this? What are the main points when it comes to streaming models and telling unique, diverse stories?" - Acorn_Bri

Eric's Responses: 

1) "There is a way to liberate the Crows scripts from Netflix, yes, and in fact that would be part of the buyout for another streamer when acquiring the rights to Leigh's novels. It would be a package deal." 

2) "The focus on the Crows is helpful in two ways -- first, those scripts were written, which lets us get a running start at production, and second, just from casual analysis of book sales, it's far more popular worldwide than other Grishaverse titles. So it will be a bigger draw for viewers. The trap though is the cost. It's more grounded than S&B, sure, but the Ice Court is a unique location that either requires a really costly set build, or set extensions and VFX work to make it look authentic, which means nearly every shot of the heist once our crew gets there could be a VFX shot. My guess is the budget would be on par with S2 of S&B.

3) "Yes, there is a surprise or two in the Crows spinoff season, but overall it's as close to the novel as we could make it. And Leigh's novel is such an amazing story with natural cliffhangers that work as episode "out" moments, etc. I think the biggest move we made was to feature every single Crow's backstory to go with their episode. So that was fun/sad/exciting." 

4) S2 kept throwing challenges at us, and it started long before we got to production. Like months earlier, when we learned the location we needed for the Little Palace in S1 was closed to us due to the pandemic. So right there we lost out on a ton of S&S scenes, because it wouldn't be a match. But we also had written a compelling side arc for Ivan and Fedyor in S2, these two Grisha trapped on either side of the civil war. Each of them played a big role in the story, but Simon (Ivan) had a feature film that overlapped with our schedule and couldn't move, which meant we lost him. So Daegan worked to revise the season keeping Fedyor and leaving Ivan like dead from the end of S1. He was Kirigan's right-hand man for the season. But poor Julian caught COVID just when we were to shoot out most of his scenes, and after tyring to ake the schedule work, we had to come to the brutal truth that there wasn't a way to keep Fedyor in the story. Our only option was to bring him in at like episode 8, which would've been too little, too late. 

COVID continued to be a monster all through production, requiring us to juggle schedules and miss out on days, and it was madness for the cast, who had to pivot with almost no notice whenever someone was ill and quarantined. This isn't unique to our show of course---it happened with everyone. It's just the challenge. 

Beyond that, we had been given the go to write a special standalone story: The Demon in the Wood. This would have been released on its own around Christmas, like a BBC special but for Netflix, and would help bridge seasons 1 and 2 by showing a little of what Kirigan was doing before we seem him in S2, and also provide more character context, etc. Christina Strain wrote that and did great work adapting Leigh's short story. But it never went the distance. 

There was a lot more to S2 as well, scenes and side stories and little interactions that were lost due to budget or time restrictions. Again, not unique to our show, but agonizing all the same, since what you get is not what we had written, or in some cases even shot. I'm incredibly proud of the cast and the team, and Daegan did the heaviest lifting while I was off finishing the Crows writing room. But we had a lot more thrown at us." 

5) That sizzle reel was put together four months before the second season dropped. 

6) Streaming is a challenge to serialized storytelling in that it looks at 'content' often with a different agenda and uses metrics that can take a creative issue and exacerbate it. Like in broadcast, if viewership and thus ad revenue has slightly declined, the show will ned to find a way to make their 22 or 13 episodes on a proportionally smaller budget. What is not done is reduce episode order. But if a streaming series underperforms or doesn't meet expectations, an the streamer doesn't cancel it outright, the go-to budget reduction idea is to reduce episode order for the next season. When you just have 8 episodes and continue to deal with notes to compress, pace up, or omit for what you'd scripted for a longer season, reducing further to six or four episodes is exhausting. 

This happens due to a slide in autonomy from what the showrunner position has been. What the chatter on the picket lines revealed to us is that most showrunners today don't get to see their own show's budget, and thus don't get the freedom to make budgetary decisions that could better protect the story they're telling. More and more, showrunners not at a legacy network aren't the final say or at times even involved in hiring key roles. I don't have any ideas that aren't already in contract language, I just see how the job on this side has gotten harder and there isn't much of a way for us to make it easier for each other like we could with having writers on set or in post production, because the streaming model has made that impossible." 

[bettsfic]

What should I do if I don’t like drafting? Or drafting feels like pulling teeth? I have brainstormed and I have my outline. It’s just completing this first draft that’s the problem.

My passion for the story dwindles a bit during first drafts. I know that’s not cool to say but that’s what I’ve noticed.

i think i'd need more context here. for example, do you hate drafting but love revising? did you used to love drafting and it's only become difficult recently? or do you just hate drafting, period?

for beginner writers, the first skill to be developed is verbal acuity. by that i mean, practicing sentence writing and paragraphing, which are skills taught in school only for expository writing but rarely creative writing. crafting sentences in fiction is a completely different skill than crafting sentences in any other genre, because you're largely developing scenes and therefore images, and that's a very hard thing to do for basically everyone. words are not images. words can only render a facsimile of an image.

if that's where you're at, my advice is to write very short stories or even poetry, so that way you can really develop a narrow focus on the sentences themselves. when you practice making sentences for long enough, they come a lot faster to you and drafting becomes easier (and more fun).

however, if you don't consider yourself a beginner and you still hate drafting, it's possible that you're in the wrong genre. if what you love about writing is making the story happen, and don't necessarily care about making it beautiful on the page, you might be happier writing scripts or plays. or if you're committed to prose, you can simply stop making scenes, and instead develop a kind of narration that allows you to summarize the events of the story (indirect discourse) rather than actually rendering them in sequenced events (direct discourse).

while i love a good scene, i've noticed that writers that begin in fanfiction tend to force themselves to write that way, where the reader imagines the story like a film, and you can hear the actual dialogue and see bodies moving in space. i think this has a lot to do with the fact fanfic is largely written with canons in visual mediums, and so our writing reflects that. in fact i think our writing reflects that so much that we can sometimes lose sight of the ability to simply narrate the events of a story however the hell we want.

i also wrote a post about how if you enjoy outlining but not writing, you can just keep outlining.

here's an activity: give yourself a stylistic constraint. write a story without any complete sentences, only fragments. write a story without verbs. write a story in bullet points. write a story in future tense. write a story where every sentence begins with "and then" or "he needed." write a story in imperative sentences. write a story that is only one extremely long sentence.

the point is to make exercises where your focus is attending to the sentences. when you outline a long story and sit down to write it the way it happens in your head, the pressure is too high. very few people can say "i'm going to write a book" and sit down to write a book. but a lot of writers can say "i'm just gonna fuck around a while with this one little idea i have" and eventually it turns into something.

[pyrotechnicarus]

Blistered Inkwell: Editing Services for Musicals, Stories, and Novels!

Hi! I don’t think people here know about my editing side gig, so I figured I would make a new pinned post about it. I’m currently doing freelance editing to help put myself through graduate school, and I’m so excited to work on your new project- whether it’s a musical, short story, novel, or standalone song! 

Background

I’ve been prose editing for literary magazines for six years and counting, including running my own litmag twice, and I’ve edited scripts for plays and musicals for three. I’ve also studied creative writing extensively, most recently at Princeton and now at NYU. My framework as an editor is focused on polishing your piece to help you say what you want to say as distinctly and uniquely as possible. 

Strengths

My passion is speculative fiction, which means any story that takes place not in this world. Sci-fi, fantasy, dystopian fiction, myth retellings, magical realism- lay it on me! This isn’t to say I won’t read realistic fiction, just that I feel I can advise speculative fiction particularly well. 

As a lyricist I am best with editing musical-theater-style lyrics (e.g. there is a close attention paid to rhyme and meter, a character development happens in the piece, and it is intended to be consumed by a live audience), though I have a passing familiarity with other styles.

Process 

For most of the tiers below, I will read your piece several times, give you a marked-up copy with detailed feedback, and meet with you to discuss that feedback and answer any questions you might have. My approach bridges developmental and copy editing, so it's best for pieces that you are still in the process of working on (instead of pieces that you really only want a grammar checker for.) Timeline depends on the length of the piece I’m reading, but it usually takes 1-5 days for the initial turnaround. If you’d like more or less involvement, please let me know in your inquiry and we can work out the right price! 

Sounds great! How do I reach out? 

Use the form on my website (www (dot) melhornyak (dot) com) to reach out to me and let me know a little bit about the piece you’re working on and what tier you’d like to work with me under (pricing visible under the cut!)

Tiers

Dabble- $10

The Piece: One song, scene, or short prose excerpt that is 3 pages long or less

You receive: An edited, marked up copy of your piece with comments, questions, and compliments. 

Who it’s for: If you’re just starting a project, or if you want to see if we collaborate well before you commission me for a bigger tier!

Engage- $25

The Piece: One short story, script, or script excerpt that is 20 pages or less

You receive: An edited, marked up copy of your piece with comments, questions, and compliments AND a 15-minute Zoom or phone call to discuss the edits. 

Who it’s for: If you’re ready to polish up your one-act, or you need another eye on your short story! 

Indulge- $50

The Piece: One full script of a musical or play OR several short stories OR one complete novella OR one excerpt of a novel that is 150 pages or less

You receive: An edited, marked up copy of your piece with comments, questions, and compliments AND a 30 minute Zoom or phone call to discuss the edits

Who it’s for: If you’ve finished a short work and you’re revising it, or you want someone else to give it a once-over before submitting it. 

Explore- $75

The Piece: One full script of a musical or play OR several short stories OR one complete novel OR an excerpt of a novel that is 500 pages or less

You receive: An edited, marked up copy of your piece with comments, questions, and compliments AND an hour-long Zoom or phone call to discuss the edits AND a chance to revise your work and have me read it over and mark it up again! Double the editing and twice the collaboration! 

Who it’s for: If you want to work more closely on your piece, you’re still actively modifying it, or you feel like a second round of editing would help your creative process! 

Extravaganza- $90

The Piece: One full script and score of a musical or play OR one complete novel OR 5-7 short stories that are too long to fit into the other tiers 

You receive: An edited, marked up copy of your piece with comments, questions, and compliments AND an hour-long Zoom or phone call to discuss the edits AND a chance to revise your work and receive more feedback AND another Zoom or phone call to discuss that feedback! 

Who it’s for: If you really, really need someone to read your entire 1,000-page fantasy novel, or you want my thoughts on the music of your show in addition to the script and lyrics! 

FAQs 

What do you mean by ‘Zoom or phone call’? 

I personally prefer Zoom, but I know that not everyone is comfortable with a face to face meeting with some stranger on the internet! My availability for phone calls is also generally wider, so I will let you decide whether we call on the phone or via Zoom according to how quickly you want to meet, and what you are comfortable with. 

Can I get you to read over my piece for school/homework/a contest? 

Please check with your instructor or the contest administrator! Most of the time, I’ve found they are okay with outside editors as long as we are properly cited and credited, but it very much depends on your individual situation. You can also always submit your piece first, and then ask for edits afterwards.

Will you read my fanfiction? 

Yes, with two caveats: I can’t guarantee my familiarity with the source material, so if I don’t know the source material I’ll be approaching it as though it is a standalone work of literature. You’ll still receive helpful grammar, style, and arc feedback, but sometimes this means I’ll ask about character development that your main audience would already know from the source. Secondly, I will not read or edit fanfiction of my own creative work. You can understand how the power dynamics of that would be fucked up, right? 

About that Extravaganza option- what sort of feedback can you give on a score? Aren’t you a lyricist and a bookwright? 

Yes, alas! However, I can read music and work closely with composers. I will not be able to give you as specific edits on your music as I can give lyric edits - for that, I would recommend a professional music director, orchestrator, or composer. However, I can approach your score as a lyricist and offer edits on setting, rhythms, tone, instrument choice, and singability, all of which are vital for the success of your music. 

While I’ll listen to demos in any of the tiers if you have them, the distinction in the markup between the Explore and Extravaganza tiers is that I will be making these notes on the actual score of the piece with specific measure numbers instead of on the lyric sheet. 

These are measured in pages... can I make my text real small and get you to edit more of it? 

Please don’t! The prices are calculated based on the estimated amount of time it would take for me to read each of these, so making the font smaller means you’re underpaying me for my work. I provide some fair general formatting guidelines when we enter a working relationship. If I glance at your document and can see you’re trying to pull one over on me, I reserve the right to return any money you’ve paid me and refuse to read your work. 

How much do you actually edit a piece? Will you get offended if I don’t agree with your edits?

It really depends on the piece and what it needs! More edits does not necessarily mean the piece needs more help- I could just have a lot of great things to say about it! I always write a much longer essay-style letter at the end to summarize my overall thoughts, any structural things I want to bring up, and where the next steps are as I see them. 

Whether you eventually take my suggestions is fully up to you! I consider myself an audience member, letting you know about my first impressions, and a fellow writer giving you avenues for changing those impressions, but not an equal creative partner or a dictator telling you what to do with your work.

Should I do this if I can’t afford it?

Absolutely not! I know everyone in the arts world is kind of passing the same $20 around, and that getting a professional editor isn’t something everyone can afford. I am not in any dire financial crisis and if you know someone who is, help them first before thinking about any of these!

Thank you for reading, and I look forward to working with you! If you have any questions, shoot them to me here or on my website above.

[purplerakath]

A Synthesis of Adaptations - Lucas Lee & Roxie Richter

So of the seven evil exists (AN: I will cover the twins in a footnote) two of them are pretty vastly different between the book and the movie. This leads to a problem to solve in the anime, but the anime came up with a pretty clever conclusion.

(This cut text isn't for spoilers, it's just- I write essays, that's what I do. I mean there will be spoilers for the Books and The Film, but I'm talking mostly about Ramona's backstory not... the plot of the anime.)

See, Matthew is the closest any of the exes gets to a 1:1 adaptation. Being first his fight is short, the plot elements around it are easy, and the narrative purpose didn't need changing. So there wasn't any massive revision. The book's call:response format of the song number became Matthew and his Hipsters singing, but that's mostly it.

Todd is the same character, but the movie can't really go in depth on Scott and Envy so it didn't need four different fights (five if we count Envy vs. Ramona). His character is the same even if a lot of his purpose is changed. Gideon is a similar shrunk space issue while staying the same character between versions.

The Books

Lucas Lee, in the books, is a decent guy who is kind of a sell out. He's open and honest (where Ramona lied outright) and generally just- not a very interesting character, there isn't anything there. That Lucas Lee wouldn't grab any attention in a fight scene. Roxie is also painted as 'safe' with how Ramona just lets her stay in her house, and generally isn't painted as a serious concern for Ramona. Ramona isn't worried she hurt Roxie, or that Roxie wants to hurt her. The animosity is Roxie is sure Scott is cheating on Ramona. Another nonthreatening Ex (minus her absolute desire to murder Scott. She has at least that over Lucas).

The Film

Lucas Lee is a bombastic skater boi who is equal parts asshole and sincere, he doesn't seem capable of dishonesty but at the same time you kinda think he needs a punch in the face. He's loud and memorable but there still isn't anything there. Roxie is sassy and pissed, just generally mad at everyone but especially Ramona. She lashes out and is angry and there is no way this Roxie could stay at this Ramona's house. Not if Ramona has any self-preservation skills.

The Synthesis

So how do these polar opposite versions work together? Causation. Taking the books characterization, and having Ramona's haphazard romantic style turn them into the film version. Allowing Chris Evans and Mae Whitman to play fully into skater boi douchebag and feral lesbian goblin respectively. Lucas Lee was a sweet kind dopey himbo until Ramona broke his heart, and on that day he decided his best course was to be a star. Be memorable. Be unignorable. And definitely be better than Todd Ingram. So that gravitas voice Evans does is a part of the trauma Ramona inflicted. Roxie was a sweet, caring, 'there for her' friend/roommate/lover. She was the one who cared about Ramona, share things with her. We can believe that flashback Roxie just cared about Ramona's best interests and taught her Subspace things. And then Ramona left, and it broke her, and she hates everything. Everyone. Until Ramona fixes it. Creating a feral Lesbian hobgoblin who never wishes to feel like nothing again.

It's a clever trick, isn't it. Taking two characterizations each bland in their own way, but making them interesting by basically going with 'both are right' as the answer. One of the anime's better tricks.

Footnote: The Twins

Even if the Twins weren't a nightmare to cast if you're trying to keep race, age, being twins, and hair color all in mind... Book 5 isn't about them. Like Gideon they would be a nightmare to do accurately, but unlike Gideon adapting their plot isn't easy. Gideon is a self-aggrandizing control freak, making that 'he put a chip on Ramona' from 'using subspace to sneak into her mind and fuck with it' is a change, but thematically in line. Book 5 is about Scott and Ramona's love life becoming messy as Scott realizes he and Kim aren't nearly as okay as he thinks they are. Generally they just kind of don't fit into any reasonable narrative without investing too much time for at best a minimum payoff? Their best payoff would be a cool robot fight. (Which I am always for, but again, lot's of invested time.)

[tigerlyla-of-metinna]

Lost scenes/Fics Game!

Thank you for tagging me @valandhirwriter. Im going to copy-paste the rules here:

We all probably have them, those scenes that never made the story, the stories that never went anywhere, all those small and larger bits of love we wrote and still hoard on out hard drives. So now - let's share!

The Rules are simple:

1. Share a piece of fic that you cut out for some reason, or a piece of a fic, that you began and never continued, some lost piece of your writing, be it long or short, prose or verse. Unfinished Art and Illustrations are also welcome.

2. Tag five or more people or about everyone where you are curious for them to share a piece of their writing. Specific questions are welcome, but don't need to be adhered to.

3. Be kind. Let's spread positivity. Show support for your fellow artists and writers. Laughing along is great, mocking is not welcome.

4. Tagging someone back is totally fine, if the person doesn't want to share anything else, or anything at all for that matter, that's fine too.

Mine would be a chapter that I removed from my Emhyr x OC fic A Painting of You. This was before I decided to cut the fic into 3 parts. This chapter would've been a part of Part 2: The Roles We Play. The scene happens after the dissolution of Emhyr and Sarahs' relationship. Morvran Voorhis has a minor part to play here and he reports to Emhyr about his findings (this part was revised in The Roles We Play with Vattier doing the reporting). Read the lost chapter under the cut:

                                               Where Loyalties Lie

Sarah carried a wooden bucket of water towards the southwest part of the gardens, just a few hours after dawn; the wind cold enough to give her goosebumps. It was her job to water the hanging plants decorating the arches that were obviously of elven origins. The climbing vines covered the top half of the arches with its lush foliage and pretty little white flowers. Adjacent to it is a small man-made pond with a fountain in the shape of a miniature tower at its center surrounded by a carpet of white and yellow pansies serves as the central decoration and point of interest.

There were very few guests this early in the morning walking around the imperial gardens. Most were old couples taking in the scenery, admiring the flowers and conversing. They paid Sarah and the other workers in the area no mind.

Sarah lifted a dipper full of water towards one of the hanging plants when she felt something soft brush against her cheek. Startled, she spun around and the water spilled, nearly drenching Morvran Voorhis had he not jumped away in time.

“Easy, milady, it’s just me.”

“Oh General, you startled me” she said, hand against her rapidly beating heart. “Did I get water on you?”

Morvran used his free hand to brush away the few speckles of water off his fine blue-gray travelling coat.

“No harm done. Most will probably think I got caught in a light drizzle”

She noticed he was holding a red rose in his other hand. That was the soft thing that brushed her cheek.

“For you, milady”

Sarah took the rose offered to her. She smiled.

“You should do that more, smiling I mean” he said.

Sarah chuckled, feeling a blush rise. She saw the ragged end of the stem and gave Morvran a scolding look.

“You shouldn’t be cutting flowers from the gardens, even if it’s for good intentions. Especially in this sorry state. The workers carry pruning shears, you know.”

He inclined his head to the right and smiled. “My common sense abandoned me when I saw the rose and thought of you.”

Her face took the same shade as the rose. The general definitely knows his way to a woman’s’ heart, or under their knickers.

Sarah shook her head and changed the subject. “What brings you to this side of the gardens, General? Certainly not to see me.”

He raised his hands in front of him. “Please, call me Morvran. Only my men call me by my military title. And the emperor of course.” He added and shrugged. “I have an audience with the emperor a few hours from now, so I decided to look for the garden trobairitz.”

Apart from the gardeners and the emperor, Morvran also knows her secret role.

Sarah placed the rose inside the bucket in an upright position.

“Haven’t you heard? Concert has been postponed, for the foreseeable future.” she said.

Morvran twisted his lips and exhaled through his nose. “I heard from the visitors about it. Shame, I was hoping to hear you sing while I pass the time until my audience. You are greatly missed, milady.”

Wow, he certainly laying the charm down thick!

“Gen- I mean, Morvran. Just this once, I will grant you an exclusive performance as an apology for the near drowning. And as thanks for being a gentleman.” She added.

Morvran gave her a deep bow. “An imperial officer must also be a gentleman, milady, and I lead by example.” He offered her his arm. “Shall we? The inner courtyard should be available and empty at this time.”

Sarah crossed her arms and cocked an eyebrow. “You expect me to sing in my garden gear? Take me to my cottage so I can get my lute and change into something more suitable.”

He grinned.

“Your command is my wish.” Morvran picked the bucket with the rose and offered his arm once more.

Sarah did not refuse.

The inner courtyard was completely empty. Perfect for a concert of one. Morvran sat on the stone bench, leaning back while Sarah sitting adjacent to him strummed her lute.

She had changed into a more casual wear of white long sleeved cotton blouse, dark green trousers and plain brown half boots. She did not dress to impress nor wore any jewelry. And since it was just the two of them, her mask is on the bench beside her.

She chose to play one of her original compositions: about a young girl who followed a hummingbird deep into the forest and finally found a place to call home. The young man was a captivated listener.

“Ow!”

Morvran was out of his seat in a flash and sat beside her.

“What’s wrong, milady? Are you hurt?” he took the lute from her as Sarah inspected her right hand.

She winced. The nail of her forefinger was split in the middle just enough to break the skin. Blood began to trickle slowly down her cuticle.

Morvran took out a white handkerchief from his trouser pocket and folded it over her hand.

“Thank you, Morvran. I think I neglected caring for my nails for so long. I should’ve heeded the aestheticians and wore gloves when gardening.

“I should take you to the physicians-“

Sarah shook her head. “This is a small thing. In less than an hour the bleeding should stop. Thank you. I’ll return to you your handkerchief after washing the bloodstains off.”

“Please keep it milady. I am just relieved that you aren’t in any danger.”

He was still pressing the cloth against her hand.

“Um, I can take it from here”

“Oh, pardon me.”

It was quiet for a while. Morvran picked up the lute and tried his hand on playing, strumming random notes out of the strings.

“If you don’t mind my asking, Gen- I mean, Morvran, what is your audience with the emperor about?”

Morvran looks up and rested a hand on the strings, abruptly cutting the sound. He reached inside the opening of his coat and showed her a corner of what appears to be a several folded papers. Then he tucks them back inside, close to his breast.

“Not exactly an audience, but to deliver information of significant importance to the emperor. I am required to hand them to him personally.”

He looked glum.

“Is there something on your mind?” she asked.

Morvran exhaled and looks at the decorative tree: the centerpiece of the inner courtyard.

“I know of the troubles the emperor has with the Merchants Guild. I’m sure he has mentioned it since you are a member of his council.”

“No, he hasn’t said anything to me about it” she lied, not giving any hint of her involvement. “What does this have to do with you?”

“I am a member; or rather I inherited the membership from my father.” His eyes looked both ways, confirming the privacy of their conversation, and then he leans forward. “I’m afraid the emperor is excluding me from any meetings involving the guild.”

“You are upset that the emperor doesn’t confide in you.”

“I am in the emperor’s service, and I’ve proven my loyalty to him time and time again. Yes, it troubles me that his majesty doesn’t trust me, or my devotion to the empire.”

“Do you trust the emperor, General?”

Morvan looks up and saw she was serious.

“I trust the emperor”

“Then trust that what he is doing is for the good of the empire. When he has need of us, we will be summoned.”

Morvran was quiet, taking in that simple counsel. It was a command he’s familiar with. It came straight from the emperors’ mouth. It revitalized his resolve and dedication. Sarah added.

“He does nothing out on a whim. Decisions are his to dispense, and if it meant excluding us from his confidence, he is doing so to protect the empire and the people.”

“The emperor excluded you as well.”

What is it with Nilfgaardian royalty stating facts instead of asking questions for confirmation? Am I that transparent?

What Morvran said, was the truth. Emhyr still hasn’t summoned her in dealing with the guild, and it was her idea. Or could it be because of their soured relationship that he isn’t seeking her help? She was willing to aid him on a professional level, nothing more.

She gave Morvran a sad smile. “Yes, but he can count on my help when he seeks it.”

Morvran nodded. “Then I shall give him no reason to mistrust me. Thank you for your counsel, Lady Sarah.”

The chamberlain appeared to take Morvran to the emperor’s office. Morvran gave Sarah back her lute and bid her farewell. The chamberlain gave her a nod of acknowledgement which Sarah returned. Both men left the inner courtyard.

Sarah removed the handkerchief and inspected her injury. The bleeding has stopped.

She picks up her lute and mask, puts it on gingerly to avoid aggravating her wound. She looks to the direction of Emhyrs’ office.

Despite our past, you can count on my help, Majesty.

Sarah decided starting that day, she will not avoid him, but she won’t try to attract his attention as well.

If only she could train her heart to be indifferent when he parades his lovers in within her sight.

___________

Moments ago, in Emhyrs’ office

“These are the reports our informants in Oxenfurt gathered about Lady Sarah’s origins, Your Imperial Majesty.”

“My thanks, General Voorhis. I trust you’ve read these and made your conclusion.”

“Yes sire. The information is still inconclusive. We’ve not enough proof to make a conclusion about Lady Sarah’s origins.”

“Damn that Viscount. I swear by Ard Feainn he is getting more and more incompetent with each task. Did you garner anything in these papers?”

“Yes sire. Base on the available intel, there are seventy -eight Sarahs enrolled at the Oxenfurt Academy. The spies are combing through each one of them and so far, none match Lady Sarah’s description. We’ve even included the years she may have studied there.”

“None?”

“Affirmative, sire. But, as I’ve mentioned, the information is still inconclusive.”

“Hmm.”

“If I may ask, Your Imperial Majesty, did Lady Sarah mention anything during her supposed stay in Oxenfurt? A date perhaps, an instructor or a collegue?”

“Sarah mentioned in passing of a Cidarian noble. Remus, I believe his name was. Pass that to Vattier along with my demand that he better show me results before I decide I have enough of him pussyfooting around and hand his job to someone else.”

“A noble for a colleague. If this Remus is a nobility of high station… Oxenfurt separates the high nobility from the general student body. I’ll have the men look into this Cidarian.”

“Very well. Give the orders, general.”

“As you wish! At once!”

________________________________________________________

I taggeth @bittersweetbark, @jawanaka, @traumschwinge, @smehur, @alphagravy and @gauntermetaverse

[primordialruin]

munday writing detail meme!

Name: Kotys

Age range: under 18 | between 18 and 25 | 25 and older

Pronouns: She/Her

Random fact about me: I have sectoral heterochromia. My irises are half blue and half green.

When it comes to planning threads: I like to wing it completely | I like to plan the start of the thread | I like to plan several key points in the thread | I like to plan every reply | It depends (elaborate)

Pre-established relationships between muses: I enjoy them | I like them occasionally but mostly prefer to play the relationship out | I don't do pre-established relationships

When it comes to replies, I like to: Keep mine short (1-2 paragraphs) | Keep mine to medium length | Keep my replies long (10+ paragraphs) | It depends (elaborate) The mood dictates the length of the reply, and it also depends on the driving point of my reply. It's important to me that I can express my muse in an appropriate way that gives your muse & the overall thread the necessary hooks for us to grab and continue the story.

I generally try to reply in: 1 day | 3 days | A week | Within a month | More than a month

I like getting asks for memes I reblogged a long time ago: Yes | No | Depends

I like getting random IC asks from my mutuals: Yes | No | Depends

I like getting tagged in unplanned starters from my mutuals: Yes | No | Depends

I like getting getting OOC asks from my mutuals to plan our threads: Yes | No | Depends

I like getting getting OOC asks from my mutuals just to chat about things not related to RP: Yes | No | Depends (K here - I'm not good at keeping conversations cuz I get tired fast in social situations. You can talk to me about regular degular stuff if you wanna but it's not what I seek here. I'm here to focus on rp first and foremost 🫶 hence ooc friendships might be hard to create with me but I prommy I love all the friends who have patiently grown a friendship with me over months of friendly slowburn lmao)

I enjoy writing: Drama! I love having an external conflict that drives our muses in a certain direction where they can grow their relationship. :) I'm not great at banter for the sake of banter. I need a story.

I don't enjoy writing: Fast banter. I don't have the time to spend on quick back and forths. I wish I did tho. It looks super fun! Also smut. I'm so awkward with it, I just can't do it without being beet red in the face. I can try, but it's got to be part of a bigger story so I don't feel like there's a spotlight on the act.

My favourite tropes are: Rivals to friends/lovers and friends/lovers to rivals. Found family. Secret identities. Funny slice of life situations.

Opinion on shipping (for a specific character or in general): It's good 👍 I'm a huge sucker for slowburn. I don't like jumping into ships because I love building up to them. Sometimes baking the cake is more fun than eating it if you catch my drift.

I get inspired to write by doing this: Listen to music that feels appropriate to the storyline's current mood, hallucinate the scene with my mind's eye, write down the main idea I want to convey in my reply, note a couple of bullet points then take a break and come back when I'm able to revise my ideas and actually write the reply. This is mostly for big threads with big plot points, or threads I've lost the initial creative inertia for. I don't always take breaks to revise, but this is mostly the gist of my process.

One of my favourite threads/drabbles/etc: On my SpyxFam blog, my Yor and I wrote an AMAZING thread in which our fake spouses found each other after my muse had to fake his death. I think it was the best thread I've ever written with someone. My incredible RP partner helped me push against my writing limits & I feel like I am a much better writer thanks to them. I think our thread went for 6 months lol it was such a good experience!!! I've also written Lilith a couple years ago with an incredible Lucifer that I hold fondly to my heart. It was just as good!

A writing partner (or partners!) I've enjoyed writing with: My incredible Yor on my SXF blogs and a couple of writers I've sadly lost contact with. I hope they're fine.

A mutual I want to write with but haven't yet: Oh man, all of you!

Tagged by: none, found this on the for you page

Tagging: you!

[missmaywemeetagain]

Dear Miss Madisyn May,

I don't know if I totally understand how Gala's work, and when I don't understand something I usually hesitate and lurk around, but I've been following your's and worked up the nerve to send you a message. I first found Pink Scarf on A03, and it is something I go back and reread when I want cheering up or inspiration. Like so many I was immediately captivated by your writing and I love your newest fic Broken Glass and also the epilogues/one-shots/shorts you've written. I'm relatively new to active fandom, I have been a lurker for the last few years reading here and there, I feel like I came to fic late in life (32-33ish) and only just started writing it last fall. It has become one of my favorite pastimes and I wish I had found it sooner, but oh well.

I was wondering if you would be willing to share your own process for how you map out where your stories will go and how you work out plots, or find inspiration and work through writer's block, and/or honestly any advice you'd give someone starting out writing fic.

cheers,

norah

A little black-tie a little black-tie E and Frank ready for your Gala...

Dear Lil’ Miss Darlin’ Norah,

Firstly, I’m sorry this took me a million trillion years to respond to!! This is the sweetest and loveliest, and thank you for coming by to share and ask such a great question!! 💜 I, too, came to fic late(ish) and was also most definitely a lurker, so I can very much relate.

Oooh, boy, my writing process is a bit of a mess, honestly. I wish I could say that I was a super outliner/organized writer, but that’s just not who I am, and I think trying to be that writer got in my way for a very long time. I find that I get stifled if I’m outlining really specifically because my brain tries to lock everything in even if the story needs to go in another direction. So for me, I take more of an organic approach.

I tend to think in scenes or beats that I want to hit instead. Often, my ideas start from daydreams, so it’ll begin with a “scene” that I then want to build a story around. Sometimes that scene is really clear but may not happen for many chapters into a fic, so I have to figure out how I actually get my characters there. But giving myself time to daydream is one of the most important things to me as a writer. Usually when I’m having trouble figuring out a scene or arc or pushing through the writing, it’s often because I literally haven’t closed my eyes and laid down and let it play out in my head.

And inspiration can come from almost anywhere! Writing Elvis in particular, I’m heavily inspired by historical events and personal anecdotes. I love weaving real moments into my E fics!! There are honestly too many to count for PS.

For Broken Glass, Dolores came to me first as a character and I was like, “hmmm, that’s interesting,” and I am super fascinated by E’s health journey, so I was like, how do I put those together?

Songs are also often big sources of inspiration, like with Power of My Love and Without Love for PS. I try to consume a lot of media too, which gets my brain going—what I mean by that is the more I’m reading books and fics and watching shows/movies and listening to music, the more goes in my brain bank, so to speak.

I am by no means an expert, or even a professional writer (yet!), so this is just part of my process which (usually) works for me. Take of that what you will, but of course every writer is different and there is no one “right” way. I definitely struggle with perfectionism, and that tends to be my biggest source of “blocks” or frustration. So I’ve found that I just need to write. Practice. Get something on the page, even if it sucks lol! Cuz I’m always gonna go back and revise and tweak it anyway.

Anyway, I hope that’s helpful! Thank you so much for supporting my little stories and wishing you all the best in your writing adventures! 💜 Feel free to drop in my DMs if you have other questions or tag me in your works!

And I looooove me some black tie E and Frank!! To have been in that room…phew! 🥰😏🤩

💗 Madi

[keysandopenmind]

Writeblr question tag... thing

I had no idea what to call this but I told @girlfromthecrypt I would do it and here I am! Here's some questions I answered.

1) What motivates you to write?

I always ideas knocking around in my head and I figure it's better to do something with them. Plus people seem to generally like what I read when they read it, and say nice things to me, and then I get warm fuzzies.

2) A line/short snippet of your writing that you are most proud/happy of. If not maybe share a line of someone else's work you love (just please credit them)

Okay, so I'm probably not going to pursue this WIP anymore, but I really loved this scene.

Context #1: if Ria holds a personal object belonging to someone while she plays music, she can see a bit of their future.

Context #2: there has been an "accident" during a performance of the circus, and Lucy has fallen a great distance to the ring floor. RIa, her best friend, tells May, her girlfriend, to go with her when they take her to the hospital. Ria foresaw this but couldn't convince anyone to do anything any differently that night.

“You should go with them,” I whispered. She looked down at me. “Do you think so?” “She’ll need you when she wakes up.” “She’ll wake up then? Can you promise me that?” “I…” I wanted to lie to her, to tell her that I had seen another vision where Lucy woke up the following morning, right as rain. But I couldn’t do that to her. May pulled one of her rings off her middle finger. “Take this,” she said, holding it out to me. “If I go with her, I’ll be there when she wakes up. So you’ll be able to see it. You come to the hospital tomorrow and you tell me.” I pressed the ring back into her hand. “May, what if… what if she doesn’t? Do you want to know that in advance? I don’t. There are some things I don’t use my power for.”

I don't know if it necessarily came across here but May loves Lucy so so much. Sometimes I think I was more invested in Lucy and May than I was in Ria and Alex (y'know, the main characters).

3) Which OC makes you smile every time you think/talk about them and what are they like?

Going for a twofer here, Max and Clara from my Drosselmeier Industries series. They're just really natural and easy with each other, and their banter is excellent (if I do say so myself).

4) What process of writing do you enjoy the most?

Revisions and edits! I actually really struggle to get the first draft out a lot of the time. #PantserProblems. But once I have a rough idea and I'm shining it up, I thrive.

5) What part of writing do you think you are the best at? (Yes stroke your own ego it's okay)

Characters by a mile. I always get feedback that I need to flesh out my descriptions and worlds more. It's something that's led me to concentrating my stories mainly in the real world, though it's always the real world with some sort of twist.

6) What is something in the writeblr community is most enjoyable?

I'm loving the vast creativity and also the raw talent! I read a WIP excerpt and I'm like "Wow, I must follow that person" and then I read their bio and they're 14? No way was I writing that well when I was 14! (I just turned 34; I feel like I am an old lady of writeblr xD)

7) A writing tool/device you use that helps you with writing? (It could be speech to text, a writing program etc)

Scrivener is always good for longer works. I also recommend a text-to-speech program (I use a free one called Balabolka) for helping pick up typos or clunky passages.

8) A piece of worldbuilding that you like in your own story? (It could be the magic system, a particular place in the story, a law etc)

I love the virtual reality system Max and Clara play. The Veritas is so realistic that if your character trips over something, you feel the pull in your stomach like you're falling.

I have no idea if it's realistic or not, as I have played surprisingly little VR for someone who writes about it. I did do a VR escape room once. That was fun!

9) What piece of advice would you say to encourage others to write if they are having a rough patch?

Having been through many a rough patch myself, I promise you will come out the other side!

At one point a couple of years ago, I was planning on entirely throwing in the towel. I couldn't see a way forward with the WIP I was working on, and I thought maybe it was better to ditch the whole thing.

You have to ride the wave. After that rough patch, I went on to recraft that story into one of my best pieces.

10) Tag some people whose works you love/have been your biggest supporters

@hellisheavenwithyou @careful-fear @ryns-ramblings

.

[writtenonreceipts]

hi there! Trick or treat! 🍂🍁🎃

wishing you a wonderful november :))

today was stupid, ahaha! hopefully november is the plot twist we all (mostly me) need <3

imma go off about wwb wwg.

I made an outline so we are projecting about 25 chapters. Though, the last 4 chapters are single words ie "climax" "climax pt2" "after math" soooo some things could go mixy mixy there. I still know how I want things to go and know what the main rising action is and how we're ending...it's just very vague on paper.

But, it was a lot of fun to get a lot of these ideas on the page that I've been thinking about since the start of the fic. Especially these next few chapters have been fun to make notes about an everything. I have a scene in the "all is lost" beat that is going to be so good. I think...it was after I wrote part 2 or three that I skipped ahead to this confrontation scene of sorts between a Rowan and [SPOILER] and it just brought everything together so well and helped me see how I wanted to write this story. It's been a little easier writing with the ending in mind, slow of course, but I can see a bit clearer how this story will continue to play out.

This next chapter especially, I am really excited about. It's...it's been one I've wanted to write and see on page for a while and it's going to HURT. It's big for character and emotion. I've got it written, it just needs revisions and the flashback needs some more expansion on the grounding details.

anyway.

snippet?

Which was probably why he was currently distracting himself at Sartaq’s garage.

It was a late Friday afternoon with the usual summer heat and bright sunlight banking through the open doors.  Rowan was staring down into a nearly obliterated radiator and hose tear wondering just how poorly this car had been treated in the past when Sartaq finally broached a topic he’d much rather had avoided.

They’d both served in Kovac, but Sartaq for such a short time and Rowan busy in sniper training that they’d never met or heard of the other.  Sartaq also hadn’t been in a position that could also lead him to potential harm.  Family strings and all.  Rowan didn’t begrudge the man for that--as far as he could tell, Sartaq would have been in the front lines even now if his family would allow it.  To keep him from getting himself killed his wealthy parents let him land in Terrasen fixing up old cars.

[rubyjcat]

[Behind-the-Scenes] HELIOS Rising Heroes: Sing in the darkness - Animation Showcase

How I made the sequel to the HELIOS Rising Heroes: Animation Showcase English fandub project - titled "Sing in the darkness", and my final thoughts. It took longer than I had hoped as there were some struggles behind the scenes.

YouTube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0UbdFyWSx0n_ewcd-t0iAB0adGe5lghH

Behind-the-Scenes for the previous fandub: https://rubyjcat.tumblr.com/post/647565364052574208/helios-rising-heroes-animation-showcase-behind-the-scene

Disclaimer: HELIOS Rising Heroes is the intellectual property of Happy Elements K.K and Cacalia Studio. This project is fanmade and does not represent Happy Elements K.K.

OVERVIEW

Timeline Scripts, Casting & Voice acting What I needed for this fandub Improvements from previous fandub Issues Miscellaneous Social Media & Reception Questions no one asked Final thoughts

TIMELINE

Early February: New Heroes were announced. I instantly knew I wanted to make a fandub sequel and scout voice actors! I started grinding four alt accounts (some from the previous fandub) to prepare to pull the new 4* Heroes from the gacha.

Late February: Sage and Nico became playable. I grabbed sample footage of their battle animations from the tutorial, translated their available battle lines and started re-writing the script and voice descriptions.

Late March to early April: Jude and Bianchi became playable. With the 12th Robins’ Quest Result line, I was able to finish Sage and Nico’s scripts and contact the VAs I had in mind for them. Grabbed & translated Jude and Bianchi’s battle lines and started re-writing their scripts and voice descriptions. Also grabbed sample in-game footage for the VAs’ reference.

Mid April to mid May: Held the casting call, reviewed auditions and the scripts during the time period. Grabbed footage from the “Rage Or Silence” stamp event for Jude’s individual clip. Started video editing. Made some last-minute script changes before casting Jude and Bianchi.

Late May to mid June: Sing in the darkness story chapter 3 (last part) was released. Grinded my alt accounts even more to be able to grab footage from the “Robber of Dawn” boss fight (the footage used was from the Sing in the darkness -link- Stamp event, although the boss was permanently added afterwards). Grabbed footage from a permanent stage for Sage’s individual clip. Lots of video editing.

Early to mid July: Started editing and adding VA lines I received. Grabbed footage from “Other Side Heroes -Good Morning-” event for Bianchi’s clip.

Took a break for about two months. During that time, HeliosR no longer worked on the emulator I used.

Late September: Despite no longer being able to emulate the game, I picked up the project again, started putting together parts I didn’t make yet such as the credits, and contacted the VAs who still owed me lines.

October: Was delighted to find out that HeliosR could be played on a a different version of Bluestacks. Recorded the “Castle of scary family!” event for Nico’s clip. I became more motivated as I received lines from the VAs. Made tons of revisions, additions, and finishing touches. I also did multiple quality checks for proportions of elements, volume of lines, subtitle text & timings.

November to early December: While waiting on retakes from one VA, I finished up the video editing, finalized social media descriptions, fixed last-minute mistakes, did further audio balancing checks, and learned how to make portrait-style videos for TikTok & YouTube shorts. I shared the videos to every social media platform I could think of. The plan was to release the individual Hero clips right after the boss battle video, but since it took longer than expected to upload the full video to YouTube (7 hours!) on top of having to make multiple shorts (had to manually edit the subtitles and the zoomed in parts to fit), I delayed the clips until the week after. It was much less stressful for me since I was able to prepare everything in advance!

SCRIPTS, CASTING & VOICE ACTING

English fan translation of battle lines: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ImWrAfvS_hgp6qr5qt30vCP63uHEk2o79uqY0h-3wL4/edit

Making the scripts was straightforward since I already had a fan translation spreadsheet made for the previous fandub and was familiar with the battle lines in-game. I recorded each battle line I found from the game, transcribed the Japanese lines by ear and translated them into English. Then I would rewrite some of them to fit the animations/mouth flaps better and/or for creativity points. I studied the characters' voices & personalities in-depth to provide accurate vocal direction as well. It was important to be faithful to the original Japanese version!

Me trying to figure out how to rewrite a line from Sage's regular burst. Also fun fact: Sage's "I'll show you!" and "Now's my chance!" during his counterattacks were extra lines I made up.

Sin, who I know from another project, and FPontaneles (a.k.a. TomatoVA), who auditioned for my previous casting call, were the ones I had in mind to voice Sage and Nico respectively, while I didn’t have anyone in mind for Jude and Bianchi prior to the casting call.

Tomato auditioned for the first HeliosR casting call! Looking through old auditions can be interesting.

I posted the casting call to both Casting Call Club and the Voice Acting Club discord with the deadline set a month away. In hopes of getting more visibility, I made sure to constantly update the deadline on CCC to keep the project closer to the top of search results.

Nico was up for auditions because Tomato didn’t respond. With the help of a fellow VA (Yan), he later responded to me in the middle of the casting call. I felt bad for those who auditioned already and closed the role early since I didn't want to waste anyone else's time.

Casting went smoothly since I was writing notes & shortlisting auditions in a document as I received them. I was worried about not being able to find suitable voices, so I was fortunate to have received a lot of good auditions! Rarely you'll find a standout who performs as if they were the character themselves, and that was the case with Brandon as Jude. Yan also surprised me with an audition for Bianchi since I didn’t think to invite him. I knew Yan since I voiced for his projects in the past, but he was chosen solely because of his fitting voice and potential.

The project was delayed significantly due to having to wait a long time for the VA lines (and retakes) that also affected my motivation. But I was determined to have this particular cast since not only did they sound great individually, they also sounded great together! These four voices put together sound like a harmony of sorts?! With some persistence, my patience paid off! It took so long, two of the VAs even had a handle/credit change during the time. For comparison, during the previous fandub, the longest I was in contact with a VA was 3 months, while in this one it took as long as 8 months!

WHAT I NEEDED FOR THIS FANDUB

A computer

Android Emulator: Bluestacks

Multiple accounts with the 4* OG 12th Robins Heroes

Recording software: OBS Studio

Video editing software: Davinci Resolve

Audio editing software: iZotope RX, Cakewalk by BandLab

Image editing software: MediBang Paint, Krita

Scripts in English

Voice actors who fit the characters

An outline of all the tasks to be done

A LOT of patience

And an audience - viewers like you!

IMPROVEMENTS FROM PREVIOUS FANDUB

(Some exceptions apply)

60 FPS cap > 30 FPS cap. Due to in-game lag and my shabby computer, footage would vary between ~30-60 FPS, but it was still better than the 30 FPS cap of the old videos. The anime part of bursts are limited to 30 FPS in-game. A few parts also capped at 30 FPS by mistake when I logged into a different account and forgot to adjust in-game settings from their defaults.

NVENC encoding > Software x264/AVC. Better and more consistent video quality during high-motion parts, at the cost of additional load on my GPU. Grabbing sample footage for the VAs' reference first proved useful as I reviewed it later and realised just how blurry it got at certain parts.

Don't use AVC quality (superfast). This is not even a JPEG.

2160p resolution > 1080p resolution in Bluestacks. Results in smoother line art quality when character sprites are far away, with an exception: I used 1080p for the bursts since 2160p made the backgrounds look strange - the colours were separated into chunks like MS Paint quality. However, since my computer resolution is limited to 1080p it probably wasn’t a big difference anyway.

Improved video edits. I learned how to use Fusion more effectively plus additional techniques such as the follower modifier for text, particles, static effects, and light leaks using a noise texture.

All of this just to make the first five seconds of the preview!

ISSUES

The process of grabbing in-game footage was another struggle. Lots of time was wasted from re-recording footage over and over due to:

Lots of lag. As stated in the previous section, footage varied between ~30-60 FPS. I re-recorded footage many times and then put together the parts that didn’t lag/glitch in certain spots. I wasn’t able to grab the Union Attack with 4* Jude without lag, so I had to edit Jude’s image into some of the missing frames manually. Also did lots of frame-by-frame editing and removing same frames that lagged for 3+ frames.

Lots of one-frame graphical glitches/artifacts. They occurred 50%-95% of the time depending on what I was trying to record. They did not go away even after adjusting NVIDIA settings and Bluestacks settings multiple times. I assumed it was due to the older Bluestacks version having issues and/or my computer’s graphics card being outdated and burnt out (it’s the same one used for the previous fandub). I left a few miscellaneous graphical glitches in the videos because why not?

One of the many one-frame glitches I would often encounter while playing. How… beautiful.

The background partially disappearing/turning white during the Union Attack. This happened during the Expert stage of the Robber of Dawn boss fight. The Normal stage still looked like something was missing but at least it wasn’t white, so I resorted to stitching parts of footage together.

The Union Attacks were one of the most laggy things in-game for my emulator and required a lot of re-records and stitching together to look right.

MISCELLANEOUS

Backgrounds/BGMs…

I planned to make this fandub before I knew if there would be any new backgrounds/BGMs to use. I didn’t want to reuse the same background/music for all videos. Good thing the release of the Sing in the darkness story chapters came with three new BGMs and a unique background - I was in awe when the final boss was revealed! I ended up not using the “normal boss” BGM because I didn’t like it much (and it didn’t come with a unique background anyway). I also anticipated upcoming events and used the ones I thought were fitting for the battle clips even if the 12th Robins were not involved in them.

Nico’s battle clip…

HeliosR no longer worked on the Bluestacks version I was using after the August 17th update. I did not think to grab all the proper footage in advance, thus I was missing footage for Nico’s clip. I thought I had to resort to using whatever test footage I had recorded previously. There was another option I tried, that is to record the game on my Android tablet, but my tablet wasn’t cut out to record (laggy, low quality, resolution was also different). I was definitely happy when I was able to play on a different version of Bluestacks again in October, and especially happy because one of my regrets was not recording the “Lock on the Lost Night” event’s background during May. The background got reused for “Castle of scary family!” in October so I definitely made use of that.

Getting the 4* Heroes…

I used my main account for the majority of footage (using 2* forms) and grinded four alt accounts - two of which I made use of in the previous fandub. I grinded each alt starting from February to get enough rubies to pull/pity for the characters in gacha, and then enough resources to make the characters strong enough for the Expert difficulty stages. I ended up with Sage 4* on the 1st account, Nico & Bianchi 4* on the 2nd, and Jude 4* on the 3rd (didn't need the 4th).

My four alt accounts before pulling on the gacha.

Lots of planning involved…

I used the nighttime version (Expert difficulty) of the backgrounds and also picked stages with a good variety of enemies. I ordered my team as Sage/Nico/Jude/Bianchi at all times for consistency. Sage and Bianchi were the leaders in the group so I always initiated an attacking turn with one of the two. During the skills phase, I planned which VA lines would play where, made sure each line would play at least once throughout the project and made sure I never used the same combination of lines twice.

SOCIAL MEDIA & RECEPTION

First of all, it should be noted that the sequel is a niche of an already niche project - this only had 4 Heroes compared to 16 in the previous fandub, the 12th Robins aren’t the most popular, and HeliosR is still a Japanese-only game. With that in mind, I was overall satisfied with the engagement it received on various social media.

YouTube - The main videos did well, although the views were a little low. It was a good idea to make shorts too - they got a handful of likes and comments scattered throughout them. Jude's 4* burst was the most popular! The good thing about YouTube is that the videos will be there long-term, so perhaps they'll get more views over time.

Look at those pretty thumbnails~

Twitter - The 1st post got only ~460 views even with the VAs supporting it. The 2nd post did better as the views shot up by ~1000%! However, I messed up by not posting the link to YouTube as the first direct comment under it which hurt the exposure to the YouTube version. I've also learned that quote retweets work, while replies to old threads don't. Good to know for future posts.

H.E. Fan Discord - We got some nice comments and likes from fans for sure!

TikTok - The clips did well. Each of them managed 200+ views but then became stale rather quickly. A few users liked multiple clips which was always nice to see. Bianchi's 4* burst was the most liked!

Instagram - A flop.

Nico Nico Douga - A flop. The preview did get 1 like though.

Tumblr - I was happy to see someone like five of the posts! Besides that, well, it’s a good place to post a bunch of text like this. xD

Some of the lovely comments and likes received! Thank you so much!! ❤

QUESTIONS NO ONE ASKED

Q: Why did you make this project?

A: It's been 3 years and HeliosR still remains a Japanese-only game. Although HappyEle's most popular work, Enstars, has seen an EN release last year, the chances of the less popular HeliosR getting one is closer to zero. This is my way of showing my love for HeliosR as an overseas fan. I also enjoy working with voice actors! They are some of the most friendliest, talented and hard-working people I've met. I'm able to learn from them to become a better person myself. Lastly, I wanted to show that English voice acting can be done well with proper direction!

Q: Will you be making more HeliosR videos?

A: Most likely no. 1. Do I wanna do it, or can I even do it? Making these videos is very time-consuming. Also, I can only make content for the 4* Hero cards I have in-game. 2. Do the VAs wanna do it? Some of them are too busy and/or no longer do fandubs, and I don't want to go through casting calls for this again. 3. As stated in the previous section, it's a niche project. To be honest, I don't think it's worthwhile to make any more of these.

Q: Will you be making any more content in general?

A: Not sure. HeliosR was the only thing I worked on for the last three years. I don’t have the same passion for anything else at the moment.

Q: What was your favourite part to edit?

A: There were lots of parts that turned out well! I love the follower modifier a lot since it made all the text flow smoothly. Light leaks are simple yet effective. I also liked the static effects for the preview video’s CGs and the Sing in the darkness logo (although it was a pain to edit, haha).

Q: What was your favourite line in the script?

A: “Who’s the weakling of the week?” in Jude’s regular Burst. The Japanese was a play on words (”yowai yatsu ni you wa nai”) which means “There’s no use for weaklings” (literal) and I wanted to retain some of that wordplay.

Q: Who are your favourite Hero(es)?

A: Gray and Sage! I for one am an extremely satisfied fan >///<

FINAL THOUGHTS

Years ago, I fulfilled my dream of a hypothetical English cast for the 13th Hero team from a beloved Japanese-only game. I’m happy to have finally made a sequel for the 12th Robins Heroes! Now it’s time to close this chapter.

I hope fans of HeliosR enjoy the Animation Showcase!

[faintprojection]

Darth KOTOR Post Mortem

While they're still being posted, I finished drawing @darthkotorcomic a little over a week ago. While it might not look like it, this was a deceptively challenging project for me and I find myself wanting to talk about it. So... here we go.

The comic was a challenge I set myself because I was finding the experience of a dark side play through of KOTOR 1... unpleasant. But mixed with these odd moments where the game didn't feel like it was reacting appropriately to the things it let your character do. I wanted to see how it worked out, but I needed a reason to push through. Making short comics riffing on the experience ended up being that reason. But there were a few non-obvious obstacles here.

First, color blindness. I've got some moderate red/green color blindness. At the very start I'd planned to stick to black and white to dodge this, but very quickly decided that wasn't going to work. I tried to compensate by using a color picker to get colors from screenshots, but that had its own challenges. I assume there's probably some color weirdness in the result. Not much for it.

The second is I'm one of those people who can't really picture things in their head. Which means I struggle to picture what it is I'm trying to draw. Even trying to draw a character or scene from reference the moment my eyes leave the reference it just tumbles out.

Third, I am both untrained and unpracticed. I've fiddled with programs like GIMP and Inkscape off and on over the years, but I basically haven't tried to draw since I was a teenager, and even back then I wasn't drawing much.

And finally, I have a habit of getting caught in revision loops with anything creative.

With those in mind, here are the strategies I used to get this done.

First, breaking big problems into smaller and smaller problems until a big, unmanageable task became a lot of small manageable tasks. In this case, that meant making drawing characters, drawing scenes, and posing characters in scenes separate problems. There are probably better tools out there, but I knew I could do this with some very basic vector graphics tools so that's what I did. Hence, the character template.

Inkscape doesn't do character skeletons so no arms or legs to fiddle with. Also no mouths or eyebrows. I figured I could do a decent range of expressions by manipulating the hidden rectangle you can see in the color block version, which ended up being mostly true. I never did find a good way to convey an eye roll.

The second thing I had to do was time boxing every task. I didn't use a rigid timer or anything, but if I spent more than a few hours working on any individual character or scene I'd stop, look at what I had so far, and if it at least vaguely looked like the thing I was trying to make I'd stop and move on. I just accepted that this was going to be a bit of a sloppy project. The goal was for a thing to exist, not for that thing to be perfect, or even good.

With that in mind, I also didn't spend much time writing any individual comic. I'd play the game until I had 3ish events pop out at me and spend a little time riffing on those moments before making whatever I'd come up with. Then repeat the cycle.

The last thing was actually sharing the comics here. Making them public forced them to be done. Which helped maintain forward momentum.

The result of all this is... fine. I ended up making 45 comics in 35ish days, heavily weighted towards the end. I don't know that I got much better at drawing in that time, but I did get a lot faster. Some are more amusing than others. Some characters never looked quite right. I need to work on posing (especially eye lines since Player is slightly shorter than everyone else). If I could go back I'd probably find a different way to do the dialog bubbles. And I have mixed feelings on the early choice to have Player and Bastila speak in different fonts than everyone else.

But at the end of the day, goal achieved! A thing exists. I hope it amuses you.

[merionettes]

Oh man just got caught up with rubicon and I’m on the edge of my seat! I know nothing about figure skating but the way you write it, the routines, the press, the bureaucracy, it just feels like this really rich and tangible world. Also, I saw in your notes from the last chapter that you’re taking time to do rough draft work, and I wanted to ask! What does writing a fic usually look like for you? How do you outline, draft, revise, post? I love hearing about my fave authors’ writing processes. :)

thank you SO much, anon, for this invitation to open mouth dump brain about How Writing. i love to talk about how writing.

this is gonna get very long, so here's the cut. [eta: jesus CHRIST it's long. you've been warned.]

so here is how it normally goes. for shorter fic, i start out with some kind of image or dialogue – for kindling it was the anecdote about sylvain and his childhood horse, for aubade it was claude (ha) in the windowsill – and first write until i get there and then write until the end. polish and it's done. it sounds quick and easy and in some cases it is, but that's just because like—if it's not, if it doesn't work itself out, then it doesn't get written, i don't make it to the end. sometimes i'll have turned over an idea for months or even years (recapitulation) before the actual fic gets written. my subconscious doing all the heavy lifting for me!

and sometimes i will THINK it's going to be a short fic ~shaped as i go~ and it turns out to be. long. (notably: green is the color.) for long fic, i don't exactly outline but i do make a list of things i know that happen in the fic. this might be detailed and it might not be. for gone to ground there was a lot of detail about the dramatic tent betrayal-murder and a lot of detail about sylvain's injury/delirium/big go-on-without-me scene and then a generic line item like, wilderness adventures! for when the earth stands still it was almost all worldbuilding, like what are the activities and feasts and would sylvain and felix play along or not. then i start at the beginning and write toward the first thing on the list. i may or may not get there before i jump ahead and start writing scenes in the middle or at the end. (meanwhile, the list is expanding as i figure out how the story goes and what needs to happen!) from there on it's a very haphazard process of writing whatever speaks to me at the time and structuring the story as i write bits of scenes here and there, until i have pretty much all the scenes in place and then until they're filled in. which is incidentally how the editing and revising happens, just a constant process of reread-tweak-tweak-tweak-polish as i write. rocks constantly tumbling in a stream etc.

as you can see i am big on the process of discovery lol. there are pros and cons to this. obviously if you get stuck you can get REALLY stuck. you can end up with pacing or relationship build or character arc totally out of whack. (i can name several instances where i feel that's happened to me!) but for me personally i've found i write better if i don't force myself to figure out everything in advance. to return to wtess and the worldbuilding – like, i did come up with a list of days (gifts/good works/hunt and horses/etc), but i didn't list what sylvain and felix would DO on every single one. so i knew they would ride instead of hunt, i knew felix would give sylvain a cloak and i knew why, but i did not know a lot of other things! i did not know about the play! this allows for not only the Joy of Discovery but also the freedom to mold and rework on the fly which i find much easier than trying to get my brain to understand "yeah that detailed plan you absorbed? you have to completely forget about it now because big revision."

anyway at this point when a full draft is done... i should go back and give it a thorough reading as a coherent whole and revise and edit accordingly but historically uh. i have not done that. historically i cannot stand to spend one more minute working on it and just. post. it's a weakness! sometimes this is fine, sometimes this is riddled with typos but otherwise fine, and sometimes i will spend MONTHS kicking myself afterward. lol.  

ok having said all 650 words of that lmao: rubicon is different. it had to be different because of the scale. and i knew the scale was going to be big from the beginning, three weeks into my fire emblem experience, although i didn't know… how big. [cut meandering origin story which is a different story for a different post lol.] i did know that if i tried my usual "idk write a bunch of scenes out of order until it's done" method i would simply die. so i tried something new. 

which was: made myself write the whole thing straight through in order, something between and outline and a rough draft. more than an outline because i had to try and actually make ideas work rather than just leave them as a bullet point and assume they would. less than a rough draft because uh otherwise i would drown. so like, some fully drafted scenes, some scene skeletons with just basic beats and dialogue excerpts, some [insert X here i guess??] placeholders. the goal was not good prose, the goal was to get to the end, ideally as fast as possibly so i couldn't perceive what i was doing and get freaked out about it. it worked! i generated a whole skeleton draft!

(li shang voice) Then The Real Work Begins. 

what i've had to do since is take that skeleton (storyboard?) section by section (usually 10-15k, but purely dependent on vibes) and flesh it out into an actual workable draft. that's what i mean when i say rough draft work—i don't have a better way to put it. the fleshing out process is similar to how i generally write, a little here a little there, not necessarily in order, until it's done. then i put it aside and go on to the next section. i may make some intermediary edits based on how the story is developing up ahead, but for the most part i don't return to a section until i'm ready to get it line edited (a new thing!! big step for me!!!), at which point i polish it up til i'm more or less happy, send it off, and then make any final feedback-based edits while preparing to post each chapter.

so far, SO FAR, the fleshing out stage is where i've caught all the really big revisions, like, oh wait actually NOTHING about this idea works, you need to completely rewrite this scene. you need to add a scene. you need to replace this conversation with a different one. you need to totally reconsider your plan for the resolution of this arc 30k down the road.

for the first act, i barely had to do anything structural. like, there was plenty to fill in, but nothing to really rip up and change. for everything after that……. hahaha. when i say this fic is kicking my ass, when i say i'm taking a break to focus on rough draft, that's what i mean. the deeper in i get, the more changes i have to make. which is, like, obvious! it's hard tho. atm i have the next 30k all fleshed out and ready to be edited/proofread. there is unfortunately probably another 50k to go before the end. that's what i'm deep in right now. i hope it's not that much! i hope i'm wrong! 

as for whens/whys of posting, i had dreams about finishing a whole complete full draft and then doing a real deep dive edit/revision and THEN posting, because i wanted it to be good and i didn't want to have regrets, and eventually i faced reality which is that i would never get out of the swamp if i didn't have some sort of externally imposed form of accountability. so when i'd gotten the whole first act drafted AND edited AND proofread—that was when i started posting. in retrospect, should have waited until rl circumstances were more accommodating, could have avoided that initial three month gap. but it's worked since then!

the biggest consequence is that of course it is going to be longer than it needs to be, and i'm sure i will look back and see significant cuts that could have been made. however. there is a point at which you have to accept this is fanfiction you are writing for your own personal satisfaction and if it's not as good as it could be—it's not as good as it could be. it's not the end of the world.

anyone who read this whole thing gets a bye to the grand prix of reading self-involved process posts final. +3 GOE every element. sorry/thank you/i love you.

[bluedalahorse]

Full disclosure, I’m speaking as an ace who reads and writes sex scenes here. I do have thoughts of my own, which are:

Choose one of your characters to be the POV character, rather than trying for a mysteriously omniscient POV. A lot of the advice above plays on the idea of staying grounded in a character and their experience, and that’s automatically harder to do when you’re trying to manage more than one POV in a scene. It’s also something to look for as you revise—are you ever slipping into another character’s head or distancing yourself from your POV character? Try to make those sentences more immediate. Also, if you want to write a longer, multi-POV fic with more than one sex scene—well, you’ve automatically bought another sex scene, as readers will be curious to see sex from the POV of the other character(s).

Consider the emotional notes you want your scene to start and end on. These should be different notes. I once had a friend explain to me that songs in musical theatre were supposed to move a character from one emotional note to the next (pun intended I guess) and I feel like engaging sex scenes function the same way. Use them to peel back emotional layers and reveal desires or insecurities that characters have been holding back! Like, for instance, in something I wrote, I had a character start in a scene in a place where he feels angry, confused, and betrayed by the world, and end the scene in a place where he finds comfort and certainty in his partner (while at the same time throwing in a little bit of foreshadowing about how this certainty plays a role in his fatal flaw.) Or I had a character start in a place where she’s sad and scared and frustrated that all the “morally approved” behaviors she’s adopted haven’t secured her physical safety, so she lets herself “misbehave” and have fun, and chooses something based on her own desires for once. Long story short, if the idea of a “character arc” in a sex scene is too intimidating, just think about your start and end points and figure out how to get your character from one place to the next. Your reader will be caught up in the sense of momentum!

Use all the senses. I’m still working on this one. But a lot of times we tend to rely on one sense (usually visual) over others and it’s worth thinking about all the others, too.

Don’t feel pressure for everything to be beautiful and idealized. Sometimes the worries people have about repeating words come from a place of wanting the sex in their story to be ideal or superlative in its hotness, but sex doesn’t have to be superlative to be engaging or hot. It can be desperate, heartbreaking, fumbling, honest, messy, silly, confusing, or even weird. Oh, please, let it be weird when the story calls for it! As an ace person sex has always struck me as a little weird inherently (you’re doing what with what now?) so authors acknowledging that weirdness can go a long way. Also this is strictly personal preference but lengthy, idealized descriptions of a partner’s beauty often throw me out of a story.

Use humor where and when appropriate. Above I said that as an ace, I’ve always found sex to be inherently a little weird and that also means I’ve found it to be inherently a little funny. Like, it isn’t just me, right? Sex is funny? Anyway, humor is a really easy way to bond your audience to your character, and partners that can joke with one another are often able to do so because of their strong bond. So if humor finds its way into your sex scenes, that isn’t going to disrupt the hotness.

Finally, I will note that sex scenes are scenes like any other scene in a story, and that any advice for making a scene good generally can also apply to sex scenes. Like, be purposeful with your scenes and make them matter to the story! Know where to start and end! That matters no matter what kind of scene you are writing.

Anyway, those are my tips, but like all pieces of writing advice they can be ignored when they don’t suit your needs as an author. Just… be intentional about what you’re doing, I guess.

There have been a couple of posts going around about how smut writers have the challenge of keeping a sex scene interesting when there's only a few different actions and a few different body parts to talk about

And yes, funny jokes about writing, but when I see posts like these I want to scream

If you feel like the sex scene you're writing is repetitive, no number of synonyms for "thrust" will help you. Synonyms for "cock" or "cunt" will REALLY not help you.

Sex scenes are character studies as much as they are action scenes. What are the characters' frameworks for what they're doing? Emotions, thoughts, specific physical sensations. If there are metaphors, do the metaphors make sense with the characters' experiences/the story's theme's/the setting? Is the sex scene completing a character arc, even a small one? Is there a character arc within the sex scene itself, even a small one?

A really good sex scene is specific and grounded to the physicality, emotions, and thoughts of the characters involved. Even if it's a PWP!

It's been said that the largest sex organ is the brain, and this is not a joke, especially when we're talking about the medium of the written word!

[thelibraryofthacey]

Review: Draw Steel Backer Packet 1

I recently ran a playtest game of Draw Steel, a TTRPG being developed by MCDM. I’ve been a diehard Matt Colville fan since before he started MCDM, so suffice to say I’ve been very eager to get my hands on Draw Steel. Now that I have, I feel obligated to write out my thoughts on the game that I ran.

A few disclaimers before I get into it, though. First, the game I ran was accurately billed as a first draft. It was essentially the bare minimum needed to run a game - half the classes, only level one, a few cohorts of low-level monsters, bare-bones character sheets, etc. What I saw was not necessarily representative of the final product.

Second, the adventure I ran was also one provided in the packet and written by MCDM. That module colored my experience of the game at least as much as the rules themselves, but I’ll get into that later. 

Third, as mentioned, longtime diehard Colville fan. I am biased.

Let’s also clear up which version of the game I’m talking about. The game I ran was from the first “backer packet,” sent out to folks who had backed the game at the end of August. The game has certainly undergone revisions and expansions since then, but I don’t have access to those since I’m not on MCDM’s Patreon.

Alright, let’s dive in!

Presentation

Given that this was, as advertised, the bare minimum needed to play a game, the rules suffered from an almost total lack of formatting. It was a tiny step above raw text, just a pdf with chapters and headings. The pdf did have bookmarks, but the toolbar is fully exploded when you open it. Given the sheer number of headings, this made it no more useful for navigation than scrolling the pages themselves. Finding the rule we needed in a given moment was difficult.

The ordering of the document was good for character creation, but bad for rules referencing. You have the absolute core mechanics, then step-by-step character creation, then detailed rules. Having the rules split by all the character options was less than ideal. If I needed to hunt for a rule, I didn’t know whether that rule was going to be towards the front of the document or towards the back, and guessing wrong meant a lot more scrolling.

I wasn’t playing a character, as I was the GM, but several of my players complained about the character sheets being messy, making it hard to find their own abilities and get a sense of what their options were. On my end, I thought the monster statblocks were very well done, with everything I needed to know presented in a nice, compact entry.

On the one hand, I was forewarned of the lack of formatting, and the backers were told that we may prefer to wait for a better formatted document, so there is a bit of caveat emptor here. Still, I don’t think you should ever let a customer’s first impression of your product be that much of a mess, even if they opt into it. It’s only going to do you a disservice, potentially killing their hype with frustration. If I absolutely had to see every rule and revision as early as possible, I’d be on the Patreon.

One part about the formatting I did like, though, was the conversational writing style and the use of prose to sell the game’s fiction. For example, each of the playable ancestries is preceded by a short scene that shows their place in the game’s pre-packaged setting. I found it very effective, though not all my players would agree with me. One said that the Devil ancestry’s entry made them seem very silly, and described the writing style as “too quippy for [their] taste.” That is to say, your mileage may vary.

Mechanics

I’m going to assess the game mechanics in terms of Draw Steel’s tagline: Tactical Cinematic Heroic Fantasy. After discussing the core dice mechanic, that is

The core mechanic is a bit unusual for a game of this type in that you roll against static targets that are not affected by the enemy and/or difficulty of the task at hand. In fact, they don’t ever change, it’s always 12-16 for a moderate result and 17+ for a good result. I don’t hate it, but I’m not sure how that’s going to play out as you level up. It sounds like your bonuses will increase, but not the targets?

In theory, a low roll still does something small, but that didn’t exactly pan out in practice. Humans in Draw Steel are magic resistant, expressed as a small subtraction from magic damage taken. This is nevertheless enough to blank some weaker magic attacks. Also, skill checks still just fail on a bad roll. 

Tactical

I’d say the game’s pretty tactical. Positioning is very important, not so much for flanking bonuses and such but because forced movement is very common. It’s also got popcorn initiative, which forces the players to coordinate their tactics so they can decide who goes next. It does make the GM create maps with interesting terrain on them. More work, but worthwhile.

Cinematic

When I first heard the tagline, I was very curious to find out how game mechanics could be “cinematic,” and after playing the game, I still am! In my assessment, “cinematic” is more a question of presentation, narration, and adventure design than mechanics. I have serious doubts that game mechanics can be cinematic. I think the closest I’ve seen is… maybe Feng Shui? No, not even then, it’s really just the mechanics referencing action movie tropes. Presentation. 

Heroic

I’m… not sold on the mechanics being “heroic,” and the main reason is how the game handles failure. As @sunbeargames noted, there isn’t really a failure state for combat other than “everyone dies.” Combined with a low time to kill, this makes the game a lot more lethal than I was expecting, which isn’t particularly heroic if you ask me.

Skill checks being able to just fail also contributes to a lack of heroic flavor. My players rolled very badly on a skill cha - sorry, Montage Test, and they got slapped with some pretty gnarly consequences without actually making any decisions that led to them. That felt very arbitrary and disempowering.

On the plus side, the process of character creation necessarily introduces narrative elements into your character - you have to choose an inciting incident from your background, for example, and you get benefits based on the one you choose. It makes it easy to make a fleshed-out heroic character, rather than a guy with a penchant for violence.

Fantasy

There’s elves and wizards and demons and stuff. Check. The setting is pretty rad, honestly, which makes sense given that Colville has been developing it for decades.

The Module

I don’t have a lot to say in favor of the module. It is a very cool scenario and a great inciting incident - the city the heroes are in is suddenly attacked by a demonic army, and they must escape while saving as many civilians as they can - but it does not fit the game. It’s not heroic fantasy action - it’s dark and violent. The heroes didn’t feel like saviors, it felt like they were just surviving themselves, and only just. This would have been a great scenario for a gritty, dark fantasy kind of system, but that’s not what Draw Steel is supposed to be.

There were some odd plot holes as well. For example, the final battle involves securing a ship to sail the civilians out of the city. But the narration before that battle includes a giant sea monster out in the bay, which the module does not have the heroes deal with. Also, for some reason it assumes that the heroes do not themselves get on the ship and have to find some other means of escape for themselves.

Finally, there is a lot going on in all of these fights. There’s secondary objectives, there’s changing terrain, there’s encounter-specific mechanics… and that’s cool and all, but I feel the need to point out that this is most likely a player’s first encounter with the system. They’ve got enough to worry about just learning the game! Draw Steel is not a lightweight system!

Conclusions

Overall, Draw Steel is a mechanically interesting game, but I don’t think they quite hit their target this go around. That can be fixed in later revisions, of course, but I think MCDM needs to assess whether their design is serving their goals. My enthusiasm for the game is not totally dispelled, but it is certainly diminished.