#i have the characters down and a vague story outline but i need to worldbuild further

[elfsyellowflowerzart]

a pair of ocs i will not shut up about

[anotheroceanid]

any tips on how to plot a story? Becuase I always come up with a vague idea but then i draw a blank because i have no idea how to put it in motion T~T

Opened my laptop to answer this, so it’ll be long. Still, I can make another post about it later if anyone else is interested. Important to say there isn’t a correct answer for that, each person does it their own way. That's how I do.

First, tell yourself the story: I know this probably sound silly, because technically we already know our stories, right? We know what we want to write. But then, I think that most of the times we have concepts, not stories. We have scenes we want to write, side characters that will show up in three chapters then die, so much dispersed information that we can’t properly link to write a cohesive story.

So, I literally tell myself my stories before I write any real paragraph. You can do it in multiple ways, you can write it down, record it, draw a mind map (I do it later in the process, but could work too at this point), explain it as if you were studying history (not a joke, I do that).

Think about, you won’t start teaching yourself French Revolution and go right into the Storming of the Bastille, even though is an important moment. You’ll first introduce yourself to the background, where it takes place, then you’ll name the main participants from each side, the time it lasted and its outcome. And all this in a very surface level. Only when it’s finished, you’d go into specifics.

Whatever way you feel works better for you, explain yourself your history.

Now that you know your history…

Second, pick a story structure: There are plenty of those, I particularly use the Freytag’s Pyramid. That’s what works for me. But there are many ways you can structure your story, and this you must personally try yourself each.

Here are some other examples for you to try:

Save the Cat

3-Act Story Structure

Fichtean Curve

Hero’s Journey (I personally prefer this to write characters arcs, but we’ll see it later)

Snowflake Method (I used this for some time, worked for me and I still use some elements of it)

Seven Point Structure

There are many other story structures you can try, the thing here is: the structure is meant to help you, not get you stuck. You can make changes in the story structure if you need to, the only thing that you must stick with it: Beginning (introduction of major characters and conflict), Middle (conflicts, development of the world and characters), End (conclusion of major characters arcs, be it good or bad).

Third, write the characters arcs: Even if you work has a lot of worldbuilding, what really drives your story are your characters. So, take your time to know your characters as they are in the beginning of the story, because these are the characters that will drive the plot. Who they are? Why they are like this? How do they look? How the way they look reflects how the world impacted them? Because the world also must affect your characters. How old are they? Do they behave accordingly to their age or not?

You must know where your characters are at the first chapter to know where they’re going from there. Do whatever it takes to get acquainted with them, create playlists, boards, draw them, make personality tests, etc.

Once you know who they are in the first chapter, you can start outlining their character arc.

But here is the thing, not character arc needs to be good. Sometimes, our characters get bad, sometimes they get good, and sometimes they don’t finish their character arcs (if you know you know). Treat your characters fairly, do not give them too much or too little unless it’ll impact them in the story.

You can have overpowered characters, but you’ll have to balance it with something else that’ll will drive their change throughout the story. You can have characters that are very delicate, but you’ll have to give them something to drive them to action, be it externally or internally.

Also, is important to know about your characters morals. Even if they’re in a grey area, what he’s more leaning to? What circumstances would drive them the other way? What are their priorities? What are their ambitions? What are the lengths they’re capable of going to reach it. Trust me, it’s important that your characters have ambitions. It doesn’t need to be something “in the real world” like a throne, or a job, or whatever. It can be living in safety; it can be learning something. But a character without ambition falls flat.

You can have morally good characters and morally bad characters, but even them must have something that readers can engage and identify with. Not necessarily something that turn them into a villain, not necessarily something that comes out as “they were never bad.”

For example, you can have an exceptionally nice character that makes choice that beneficiates themselves or a determined group that they personally support, it doesn’t turn them bad, because people will make choices all the time and it impacts other. At the same time, a mean character can be relatable through characteristcs that aren’t meant to be redemptive, they can be hardworking, they can have interests that not necessarily relate to their “mean” goal, they can even be on the “right” side but in a “reasons justify the means” way.

You need characters to take actions. Otherwise they'll become simply plot devices. And plot devices need to exist, don’t get me wrong, they can be useful. But the thing is: people don’t relate to plot devices. I could list a lot of characters with sob stories that were obviously meant to shock the audience, but I couldn’t care less about the sad things happened to them, because the author needed a bad thing to happen to go from point A to point B. Okay, I understand that. But it happened to a character we're constantly told we have to pity, and there is nothing else about them. People don’t care about plot devices, so if you want people to care and like your characters, give them agency.

Yeah, this is getting long. Sorry. But let’s talk about agency.

Allow your characters to make choices. Bad choices, good choices. Whatever choices they make, it needs to have consequences. A story without consequence is a weightless story. I  t’s also important to make the character make choices, even if they’re being highly manipulated by someone, they must—eventually—walk on their feet. The plot is consequence of the characters choices, so don’t let the character become the plot punchbag.

Trust me, it’s easier for a reader to enjoy an unlikable character with agency than a likable character that does nothing and never stands out for anything. Your character can be anything—annoying, ugly, spoiled, cruel, anything but agency-less.

Important to say: The characters are stupid. People are stupid in general, and we react terribly bad under stressful conditions. We’re like enzymes. We stop working if we’re not in the proper conditions of pH and temperature, some enzymes will work in the intestine, but others will only work if they’re in the stomach. Different enzymes work in different environments, and so do people. What drives a story is conflict, so your character is usually stressed. It’s not a 100% of the cases rule, but if you’re character is in a super tricky situation they never been in, don’t make it easy for them to get out of that. If everything turns out easily, why should I care if the character is in a live-or-die situation?

Of course, if they have fought two dragons and survived, I expect them to live when they fight the third dragon. But if they never fought any, I want a good explanation why they’re alive and cracking jokes. As I said, characters are like enzymes. Some will do well fighting dragons but will cry their eyes out if they’re exposed to a sea monsters. Each situation is different, so analyse it.

Now, the character arc.

Your character needs to go through change, they need to find out something at least. It doesn’t need to be a good change; they can become a worse person (negative arc). They can become a better person (positive arc). But they need to go through change. Even if you have an impressive worldbuilding, well-built universe rules, a functional magical system… Everything is meaningless if the character is conflict-less (internally or externally).

There are flat arcs, but they usually serve other purposes. You can read into it if you're interested, but I never focused much on it so... Let's keep going.

Your character arc takes character from point A to point C. Because between A and C there is B, that’s usually the moment the character thinks they have it all, or they give up their journey, then something happens, and they start moving toward C again.

Again, there are many ways to structure a character arc. I usually follow The Heroine’s Journey (Maureen Murdock) or The Virgin’s Promise (Kim Hudson). These were inspired by the Hero’s Journey (Joseph Campbell), which is great too, I just feel like these helped me more. They don’t have to necessarily be applied to female characters only, in the same way that the Hero’s Journey doesn’t have to be used for male characters only. This is just a structure to help you see how your character changes throughout the story and can be used to write any gender.

I recommend you reading the books, this will help you a thousand times more than I ever could.

These are archetypical structures. The “hero” and the “heroin” are archetypes, so is the “virgin.” I also recommend you reading about archetypes, because our characters usually fit one or other, and if you don’t know what’s your character archetype is, you should find out. It helps to identify problems, because sometimes you’ll fall into stereotypes that you not necessarily want.

Fourth, about side characters: In a way, all that I said applies to side characters. But at the same time, it doesn’t.

You don’t need your side characters to be as flashed out as your protagonist(s), but they need to have some depth. The way your side characters interact with your protagonists and vice-verse says a lot of your protagonist. If you create this real nice person, who is supposed to care about everyone and be a selfless person who would take a bullet for their best friend, don’t turn the best friend into the protagonist’s sidekick.

You know those 2000s movies with the usually POC, or queer coded or often regarded as less attractive friend is always there for the protagonist, but then they ask to ONE THING and the protagonist will be like “Actually, I have plans”. Yeah, that. Your very nice character can become a dumbass because they’re never showing empathy toward others, as your very mean character can become a fan’s favourite because they’re treating people with more respect than anyone else in the story. It can’t be intentional, it can’t be part of their character arcs, but if it’s not, beware.

The way the side characters interact with the main characters is as important as the character interacts with the world. The don’t need to have super detailed backstories, but they need to have something. A goal that’s not necessarily is related to the protagonist.

For example, Grover is Percy’s best friend and protector. But he’s main goal ain’t protecting or be Percy, his main goal is to find Pan. Which makes sense (and it makes me so sad, because I love Grover) why his story basically “ended” with PJO original series. He accomplished his goal, and though I’d love to see him amongst the Argo II crew, putting him in that situation would turn him into Percy’s sidekick and nothing else. He’d be throwing all his responsibilities away (he’s literally Lord of the Wild at that point) to help Percy, and though we can argue he could help… Gaea was rising, this probably affects the nature spirits he’s supposed to care.

And most importantly: Percy cares about Grover. We’re shown this multiple times throughout the story, and if he didn’t care as much about Grover (his first friend introduced into the story), we wouldn’t believe that his fatal flaw is personal loyalty.

We don’t know everything about Grover, but we know enough to not break the entire narrative when we think about his relationship with Percy.

Keep this energy with side characters. Not everyone needs their entire story to be told, but you need them to feel as their own person.

Same goes for characters that don’t like your main characters. Some characters can be annoying and mean, but why? Is there a reason this character pesters the protagonist? Are they prejudiced somehow? Does it have something to do with class? Is there a hierarchy that ends up facilitating that sort of behaviour? Why no one does anything? Is it jealousy? Are they getting something by acting like that? Was it caused by something the main character did in the past? Do you protagonist fights back or they don’t? In whatever case, why?

Not every character who dislikes the protagonist needs to be a villain. It’s normal that people might dislike others, nobody pleases everyone, is nice having characters who don’t think the protagonist is the most awesome person in the world.

Just like the main character, it’s important to allow side characters to make decisions and have agency. Even if the reader ain’t inside their mind, these characters need to have ambition. Sometimes, you can use them to drive the plot somewhere, or to teach the protagonist something. Again, look into archetypes it might help.

However, if you keep showing a side character and never gives them a moment to shine, it might disappoint your readers. At the same time, using a character mentioned twice without any foreshadowing might come out as a dumb solution for some conflict.

So beware how you use side characters.

Fifth, write as much as you can… but not chapters yet: If you, like me, is dealing with worldbuilding, timelines and different POVs, you should plan how will this work before you get into the actual story.

Now, you can draft the whole story down as it is in your head.

Again, you don’t need to necessarily write. You can record yourself, or you can draw (I do it a lot), make mind maps (which is my case, I make mind maps to see were different things meet), or you can write multiple paragraphs about it. Just make sure you have a general idea before you start writing, make slideshows, spreadsheets, etc.

Write think pieces about characters relationships, make memes, make incorrect quotes, anything that helps you set things up inside your head.

This is a part that never ends, because sometimes you’ll have to look back and see what is lacking, what needs to be done or redone. Don’t be afraid of coming back here, rearrange the plot points, redraw characters. Your first draft will hardly be the one you’ll stick with.

I use obsidian for worldbuilding. I cannot really explain how obsidian works; it’d be like trying to write down how to draw on Photoshop. But I use the canvas plugin to draw the plot as a mind map, and I also use canvas to make a linear timeline.

This is the outline for a part of my fic, I didn't screenshot it all because it'd be too big. But you get the idea.

This is my linear timeline, is very useful to check info quickly.

To outline chapters, I use spreadsheets. I make enough room for general info, then a little resume of the chapter, and the white blocks beside the chapter I can write what scenes I want for those chapters.

Again, very simple.

I check the spreadsheet occasionally, because I sometimes change order of chapters, or add something. Your outline is an asset not a rule, you can change it if you feel is not working.

Sixth, write: After you went through it all, writing will become much easier, I can assure. But even then, you’ll face moments in which you feel that you’re stuck. But if you can write one hundred words every day, is already better than no word at all.

If you feel it might help, try different writing tools, try editing your document to make it aesthetic and to fit your story vibe. I personally use scrivener (it’s great for organisation) for some stories, and for others I use Microsoft Office, but there are cheaper or free options. Obsidian does basically everything Scrivener does, but it’s a bit trick to use if you’re new. So, it might take some patience, and it’s not as editable as other software (unless you are now a bit of code, which is not hard but is also not for everyone), there is Google Doc, and some open-source options like Libre Office, you can even write on Notion (I used to, I have templates for it even).

When you’re writing, treat yourself. I make myself coffee or matcha, I put some music, or I buy myself cheesecake. Try not to make your writing session a “I have to do it” moment, enjoy it, even if you aren’t writing your intended 10k words (trust me, setting such ambitious goals won’t help you in anything).

Sometimes, nothing good will come out. Sometimes, you’ll feel like you should win a Pulitzer. Just enjoy writing and do be afraid of committing mistakes.

I think this is it. I wanted to go deeper into some things, I wanted to speak of antagonists and conflict more deeply, but it got big enough. I hope I made sense and I helped, be free to ask if my non-native english speaker ass wrote something senseless.

[moonshine-nightlight]

Any advice for writting longform stories like NWWD?

@honoikazuchis

thanks for this ask!

thats a pretty open ended question and my answer will inherently be relatively specific to me and the way i write, but i'm happy to share my advice!

I will link a few other posts where i answered some other writing asks:

worldbuilding [x] editing/exposition [x] writer's block/POV [x] plotting vs pantsing [x] how long does it take me to write stuff [x] my writing process [x] writing spicy scenes [x]

otherwise, see below for me rambling way too long about writing.

disclaimer: this is just my opinion and how i do things, obviously there's a lot of variety and nuance for everyone's writing process.

firstly, is that personally, i'm inclined to writing longform stories so thats a bit of a built in strength of mine. generally speaking my story ideas come with lots of lore (see above for my love of worldbuilding) and i like relationships that are deeper/longer, with slow burn being a favorite of mine (why basically all my short stories have the two people involved having met prior to the story starting). that being said, technically the main character in 'Nothing's Wrong with Dale' doesnt meet demon!Dale until the flashback of chapter 2 and why is part of why that story is so long/has a built in arranged marriage premise. Of my two potential long form stories i'm going to do next: one they already know each other (and are basically already in love just being pining idiots about it) or two the story takes place over several months/high stress situations and does not end with marriage etc. But thats more of a concern if you're writing romance.

in general, my advice for longform stories is to already have a relatively complete, high level view of the story when you start. some people can just improvise the entire story as they go--I cannot. i think its very helpful to know where ur story is going to end, more crucially when it is long and you'll be taking a while to get there. by this i primarily mean the setup for the story, then general ending, and vaguely what sort of metaphorical journey they take to get there. you do not need to know every scene and detail in the middle--and plot points/characters can and will evolve as you write and think more on everything--but having the broad brushstrokes figured out asap is critical, in my opinion.

I also, as a side note, don't set out with a story length in mind. i can generally get a good handle on how long a story will be by the idea and outline, but i dont try to make it long. if anything, i did try to challenge myself to write shorter stories, like my novellas, when i started this blog/posting original writing here. that was not only because i do tend to get very complicated/long original ideas, but also because i think it was important to me to actually finish some original work, which i had never done before.

shorter stories tend to have more straightforward plots. not that you can't boil down longer stories to simpler summaries, but generally longer story ideas have more stops along the way so to speak that come to me when i'm developing the idea because i want to cover more with the story. the main character in dale having had childhood illness, dale raised by his grandparents, there being tournament stuff and assassins stuff and uncomfortable parties and most importantly MC figuring out dale was a demon immediately and dale not knowing the MC knew that were all things i came up with (loosely) very soon after i started working on it.

which leads into my next piece of advice: write everything you brainstorm down - you will forget and you will remember there's something u've forgotten and it will annoy the hell out of you. write your notes, write your what ifs, write down possible character names, write down cool ideas for scenes--heck write some of the scenes up then, evn if its for chapter 24 of 35. dont save what ur most excited for as like a carrot on a stick, i find that it doesnt help and that having part of my story that i love existing already is a much better motivator to write the rest

i'm also a big outliner and planner. i think some people think what that means is that u should b able to write a plan once for a story and then never change or deviate from it--but no! change the plan as you go; scrap things that dont work out and add new ideas when they come to you. however, i do think having something down that covers the whole story, lets you get a good idea of the shape of the story, and reminds you of your end goal, are all incredibly helpful. i also keep multiple worldbuilding notes docs; character and location lists; picture inspiration; etc to support the longform idea

i think u also hav to hav confidence/delusion that you will in fact finished. i hav started multiple longform original writing ideas in the past. none of them are done except dale. and part of it was not taking some of my own advice up top, but i think i also just wasnt as committed? lik it'd get lost in worldbuilding, or writing other projects, or life happening (which is all absolutely fine) but dale was the first longform idea where i like, really believed i could write it all and where i was dedicated to putting in the time i'd need to finish it. i knew i would need to take breaks and it would take more than a year (which i did and it did) but i still believed i'd get to where i am now, with a finished draft which i think was really key.

also, practice, i've been writing for years and year; i've been reading for even longer; and i've been writing and posting fanfic for years as well. some of my longer fanfics were such good practice for how to plot a long story without having to generate all the lore myself and having guardrails on for the story/characters in general. aside from dale, my next five pieces of longest writing are all fanfic.

lastly, find at least one person you can talk to about your story. i really think that helped me stay excited and motivated about my longform story in particular. i of course like talking about shorter stories too, but i dont think i felt as compelled to keep talking about them during the process of writing them as i did for my longform stories (even my longer fanfics i talked with other ppl in the big bang about or other writers on discord). and i dont just mean posting the rough drafts as u go like i did, but friends, irl or online, that either are also writers or are just interested in what story you want to make. i think it helps make it more real to you, it gives you ways to talk through issues that come up, its a way to get excited because they're excited, and it makes someone besides you ask how everythings going. the longer stories ideas i had but never got finished are also ones i primarily kept to myself, because i dont think i'd realized how helpful it could be to share them and also because i was still sure that in order to justify telling someone or evn for someone to care, it would hav to already be written, but it doesnt! and in retrospect, i wish i had because maybe those stories would exist--or maybe i'll dig up those notes and talk to someone about them and then find myself back to writing about them (rip to Aftermath, that corrupted external hard drive did u dirty and killed my motivation).

i think getting to understand and figure out your own process, to really look at yourself and see what works and what doesnt (as honestly as you can) is extremely helpful. u'll also figure stuff out along the way--dont hesitate to try to new strategies or drop one that are really not working for you. its all a learning process. be nice to yourself! give yourself the grace to make mistakes (or tell a friend so they can bully you into to cutting urself some damn slack when u can't stick to a weekly upload schedule u made up for urself).

whatever longform story you've got in ur head is one worth sharing and seeing through to completion--and then inflicting on everyone else lol OUR problem now ;)

[noveldragon]

That's a BOLD strategy

For a long time I struggled with how to actually write. Like most new writers, I bought books and sought out the knowledge on how to write from others. There are numerous blogs about what types of writers are out there, usually boiling down to planners or pantsers, architects or gardeners. But that doesn't even get into the how to write.

Before we go further, just a brief overview of the two types of writers. These are not binary terms either, and a writer can fall anywhere on a spectrum of full planning to full pantsing.

Planner or Architect: The plot, character, worldbuilding, and everything else, is thought of beforehand and written down somewhere.

Pantser or Gardener: Only what is necessary to start has been identified. Main character, maybe the villain, and a general sense of purpose.

As you can see there is a big difference between the two. But that is why it is a spectrum. Some people may have all of their characters but no real plot. Some may have the plot and only the MC. Some may have a detailed world, but no characters, only a vague idea of an MC that gets filled in as they write.

When learning about yourself, it is important to understand where you are on this spectrum. What will you need to be successful in writing? See what happens if you have a character and just write. What happens? Did they make a step or face-plant and the nothingness of the world you found you need to write in?

Now, on to what I learned and developed. I had been writing for many years, quite unsuccessfully. More like attempting to write a story and failing to finish. So, like anyone should do, I tried to get better and find out what others were doing. After reading many books, blogs, articles, and watching videos, I coalesced a method of writing I call BOLD.

Now this may seem silly to say I came up with a writing platform or way to write, but when talking with people, it was easier to explain how I write in this way.

What is BOLD?

Brainstorm

Outline

Lengthen

Draft

Brainstorm This is the easiest step to understand but can also be the longest one. This is literally just putting down notes, wherever you keep notes, and thinking about your story. Plot, characters, world building, magic, weapons, magic, etc. All of that, just put down somewhere so you don't forget it. This happens all the time. And should happen all the time. This is the over-arching stage that only stops when the story has been published.

Outline This stage is the most important stage. This is where you write out the story. It can be as simple or complex as you need it to be. A few words to multiple paragraphs. Even including dialogue if you think of some great lines.

What is important to note here, this stage exists to frame the story. It is not being written out fully right now. You will walk the path later and fill in the details, but this is the essential part of the BOLD method.

In outlining, the ideas can be added/removed/changed as needed. If you get to the end, and then realize you didn't account for something important, add a note in the outline earlier where it needs to be, or even change whole sections to fit the rest.

The outlining stage should be the equivalent to a full round of revisions. The story may still change when it is written as you find issues you didn't think of or think of better things. The important part is that you have the path of the story laid out.

Lengthen This took a while to think of a term to make a good method name. But, essentially, lengthen is about expanding and elaborating on the outline. This is done one chapter at a time. This is still not writing the book.

When lengthening, you will take whatever chapter you are on and re-write the outline section to add in details and specifics about what is happening. You don't need to add the descriptions or dialogue yet, unless of course you have a great line of dialogue you want to remember.

In my experience, I've gone from a few sentences or paragraphs in the outline, to at least a written full legal pad page expansion of the chapter. For some there may be a second page. Rarely, there may be a full conversation as I envision a scene. Once you have lengthened the outline of the chapter, you are ready to move to the last stage.

Draft This is the moment when you are actually writing your story. You have the outline of the story and the guidelines for the chapter at hand. Now you need to write sentences with descriptions and prose to build the story.

This is when you have dialogue, or add the dialogue from your chapter lengthening. Rarely has any one piece of dialogue gone from the legal pad to the manuscript unaltered, but always has the idea been transferred to the story.

When you have the idea of the chapter laid out, it is easier to look back and know where to go next. What to write next. You have all of the scenes you want to show already there, you just need to color in the picture. That's not to say that while writing you may not think of a better way to write it or even revise everything in the chapter as you figure out a better way to show what you wanted to show.

Repeat Once you have drafted the chapter, you then go and lengthen the next chapter and draft. You keep doing this until you have no more chapters. And, if at any point, you find something doesn't fit anymore, you can brainstorm better ways to handle the situation, change the outline, lengthen a new outlined chapter, and draft away.

The important thing to know about writing is that it is an iterative process. NO ONE will put pen to paper (or fingers to keys) and bang out a best seller in the first go. If anyone says they have done that, they are lying. This is very important for people to understand, especially new writers. You will fail. You will write something that is bad, or doesn't make sense, or just boring. But, the best part about writing is you can always change it.

After a story has been drafted, it isn't done. There are re-reads and revisions to make. This can happen as many times as you deem necessary to write the story you want to write.

Until you have published a book, the story is not done. Even after a book has been published, you can make changes... though, it does make it harder to do, but it is possible.

I have included a link to a wordpress blog I created years ago about my method. There are some behind the scenes looks at some chapters from my book, Mage Out of Time.

As always, if you have any questions, please ask away.

[zebee-nyx]

CalmWriMo Day 18

[11/18/2023]

Update!

Cozy day at home. Feels like it's been forever since I've had a light day like this to just chill out. Honestly spent more time than I prob should've just listening to youtube and playing minecraft for the first time in awhile. ('0.0) But also worked on writing stuff! So the day wasn't entirely lost to my gaming addiction lol. Did some more character interview things, cause at this point it's fun and helps me figure out the characters! Also did some work on the prologue, but agh, def not getting it done this weekend. It is mostly drafted aside from one weird gap in the middle that I need to plug with a paragraph. (-.-) Going to do that tmr then take a break from that for a week to freshen the mind a touch before going back and doing editing and what not. In the mean time gonna start the drafting for the first part of the story! Which is a mix of exciting and harrowing. [got no idea what I'm doing aside from a vaguely outlined plan lol, way more adjusted to worldbuilding and characters than I am on plot stuff…. Something I need to work on but know the most common way of learning is to completely flub it and I really don’t want to flub it lol… rambling, sorry!]

Progress:

2 Hour Writing Goal: ✅

Blurb: [see below]

Self Care:

Food: ✅

Hydration: ✅

Sleep: ❌[somehow managed to fall asleep while reading a webtoon... half woke up about an hour later to finish reading before actually getting to sleep lol]

Reading: ✅

Blurb: The Undercity

The "Undercity" is the term used to describe the more densely populated and neglected sectors of Neocago City. These regions are mostly located around the southern and outer western parts of the city. Aside from a few scattered and walled off corporate run neighborhoods surrounding factories and other corporate properties the undercity is a lawless place. Buildings are fused as they were haphazardly built atop one another in a completely unplanned way to accommodate rapid unfettered urbanization over the last few decades. Many of these buildings have prefabricated rooms at their core that have been buried by whatever construction materials were available.

Roofed alleyways are covered in trash that will never be collected. The pathways between buildings are almost always wet from a mix of rainwater and water from leaky pipes draining through the various layers of buildings above. Random cables feeding down from rooftop solar panels hang above the streets, following along the paths in thick bundles. People often simply splice into the cables to syphon off power for their businesses or homes as they need forming webs of wires chaotically stretching around over streets and alleys. Many narrow ground level streets are lined with neon signs advertising small local businesses. Some streets have become de facto "retrofitted" into public markets that have street vendor carts. While not necessarily on every surface possible, graffiti isn't uncommon.

Most places around the undercity fall with in the territories of one gang or another who for their credit often try to maintain some level of order and basic essential public services. Services such as shifting garbage away from the local area, "protection", and extinguishing the occasional fire. For the most part security firms [basically privately owned cops for hire, more on this some other time] are absent so nearly everyone in the undercity is armed in some way in the likely event they need to defend themselves. Although typically if one just keeps there head down and doesn't start anything they are relatively safe.

As one travels nearer toward the edge of Neocago the undercity becomes less developed, less populated, and less livable overall with some sections being more or less abandoned. In these places the borders between what is the undercity and the junkyards surrounding the city begin to blur. Sparsely hidden away in the more abandoned areas are indoor gardens that grow food kept away from prying eyes that may attempt to steal meals as well as valuable plants. Some places in these border areas have become mysterious dead zones where few who enter are ever seen nor heard from again.

The population of the undercity is mostly laborers, service industry workers, "service" workers, or unemployed with some small local shop owners sprinkled around. Near universally however, everyone has their vice. This part of the city has also become somewhat attractive to lower level runners, who often thrive in the absence of security firms and high need for people to do odd jobs.

In more developed regions of the undercity buildings are even built over roads which causes an intresting little phenomenon. These areas don't get sunlight and as a result have become immune to the fact that the sun is indeed a deadly laser. Following this little quirk these portions of the undercity usually never sleep and are always a bustling place of foot traffic and commerce.

In essence the undercity is nearly around sixteen million minds all working in their own interests, often intersecting and conflicting with others as there is little overall organized coordination. The aesthetics of this region are heavily governed by that as millions of little self serving adjustments are made to the environment each day.

[WOOOO!!! Love me some worldbuilding! lol (>v<) For the next week the blurbs will be about different areas in and around Neocago and honestly I'm going to have an absolute blast writing about it all! (^.^) Anyways and always, hope you are having a lovely day, peace (^V^)v]

[bookwyrminspiration]

Do you have advice for plot specifically in stories? I am usually able to figure out characters, setting, and worldbuilding, but I struggle a lot when it comes to plot. - Amethyst

I do! I can share what helps me figure out plot and approach the story, but keep in mind every writer is different; if what works for me doesn't work for you, that's okay!

There are two big things I do when thinking about plot: asking why, and the skeleton. I hope they are of some use, and happy writing!

Asking Why

Plot is a messy conglomeration of worldbuilding, situations, and character reactions (among other things), so what's key for me is understanding why things are the way they are, and following that trail of questions. If you have a certain situation, prompt, feeling, etc, you want to convey, ask why it's there. Asking why and trying to answer those questions give your story more reason to them, which makes it feel more solid and believable. A healthy scattering of whats will also help.

I'll use a recent shorter work of mine, our corner of the world, a keefitz sick fic, as an example. I'd been given a prompt that someone was sick, and the other person didn't know how that had happened. So then that leads me down this trail: Well, why doesn't Keefe know Fitz's sick? They're not together when he falls ill. Well if they're not together, why does Keefe ask him about getting sick in the prompt? He must've had a reason to see him then, that way he can ask. Well, why does Keefe need to see Fitz? Maybe they had something planned. Okay, well the prompt is that he's sick, why is that important here? Oo, what if he's sick and that means he misses a date/hang-out spot. Okay, well what's Keefe's reaction to that? Thinking Fitz has had enough with him and self-doubt, so he goes to check on Fitz and after a little bit, they talk things out.

That process of asking questions of the very baseline situation I'd been given and the characters I was working with allowed me to think and explore in-depth various ideas. This was just one possibility, it could've led me a different direction.

Asking those questions to help create the plot instead of creating the plot and trying to fit it into the story I find allows it to feel more natural. I don't have to force things together because the two work in tandem. The baseline creates the plot, and then through the plot it enriches the characters and situation. It's more fluid this way, for me

The Skeleton

The other thing I like to do is write down the most bare bones outline of that plot I questioned into existence. It can be as simple as a single sentence explanation, but I make sure to know where I'm going. If I leave it open, I find my story wanders and loses sight of itself, and I never touch on what I want to. You may be different, but knowing (at least vaguely) my end goal is crucial.

For that keefitz fic, I wrote something like "Fitz sick. Keefe worried. Visits. Talk it out." Right there I've hit the most basic elements. There's the situation (sick, worried), what Keefe does about it (visits), and how it ends (talk). I know where I'm starting and I know where I'm ending, so I can get a better grasp of the space and story I have to work with.

For longer stories, like the wings au, the same thing applied. I was a little more sophisticated and decided an exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution, but each of those was just as simple. My notes legit say "big fight" for the climax.

From there, if you want to be more detailed, you can fill in the gaps between that and add muscle and fat and nerves to that skeleton, some organs to flesh it out (pun not intended but acknowledged). There's no rule about it, just however much you want to. I was fairly thorough for the beginning of the wings au, but way less so for the ending. For the keefitz fic I didn't go any further than what I said above and kept everything else in my head. Do what you like!

A final thing to keep in mind: plot can change! just because you've written things down doesn't mean you have to stick with them. Follow your story and don't be afraid to deviate. The original falling action and resolution I planned out in the wings au ended up not fitting with how the story developed as I wrote, so rather than force it into old plans I allowed it to grow outside of them.

Sometimes asking yourself more questions (why or otherwise) as you write will illuminate new opportunities you can incorporate, so if you're not certain of something now, it's possible you'll figure it out as you go. There were a few very important plot things in the wings ai I didn't know until after I'd started writing--like the little girl's role. She wasn't in my original plans at all, but ended up being very important!

So those are my main two things for plot. I find them very useful, so hopefully that helps answer your question :)

[nicestpamkale]

~Welcome to my page!~

Hooo boy is there a lot to catch you up on, hm? Well, don’t you worry!

I’m Pam. I go by he/they for the most part, but you’ll notice that my tag for things that I talk on or make comments about is #bigsispam. This is tumblr. That shouldn’t be all that surprising. Don’t worry if you slip and call me she/her. It’ll mostly just be uncomfortable for the Moment. (Not worrying =/= being okay with it. Please use he/they.) 

I’m on desktop and mobile. I mostly scroll while eating dinner, and I am the resident Tumblr User in the group, meaning that a lot of Tumblr posts on my dash are probably in the friend-group discord. It’s impossible for me to stay on-point. You’ll see that quickly upon reading one of my essays.

I very frequently have episodes of an unknown type- I cannot afford medicine or therapy at this time. 

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Present Hyperfixation; Scum Villian’s Self-Saving System / SVSSS 

What you’ll likely see me reblog the most.

Present Worldbuilding Work; The Demon Lords / The Seven Hells - Legends of Runia / Clove’s Curse

This is what I’ve been working on most in the background. I dunno how to synopsize it tho so. **Shrug**

Main Project; Storyteller Volume 1; Kuroshitsuji/Reader

Female Reader-Centric - It’s technically going to be Sebastian/Reader / Undertaker/Reader but that element is very light and it’s not at all the main point of the fic. The main point of the fic is to watch what happens when a bunch of people get transmigrated into Black Butler of all things and each of their individual perceptions of the content cripples the world dramatically. 

Antagonists from every season- and some of whom created themselves- crawl out of the woodworks at unexpected times. Plot points are significantly altered or shoved in places they weren’t before. It’s practically a whole new story. So take that how you will. There’s also a lot of magic lore and demon/angel/reaper expansion which may not be your jive. In which, sorry.

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Main AO3

One-shots / Sillies (Pseud: Laurel Wreaths)

Qoutev

Commission Info

More niche things below. ^u^

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Key Tags;

#nicestart - my art

#nicestwriting - my writing

#ocs - posts about my original characters

#worldbuilding - Failing the above, I probably have some good writing in here! 

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Favourites - Subject to Change / Addition;

Favourite Colors; Midnight Blue, Sky Blue, Pastel Yellow, Pastel Pink

Favourite Flowers; Daffodils, Chrysanthemums, Carnations, Heather

Favourite Flavours; Cinnamon, Wintergreen, Mac & Cheese

Favourite Games; Sky COTL, Skyrim, Dorfromantik, Lob Corp

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Soft Projects (Qoutev Links, Mostly);

(Qoutev) Ereyesterday - A story about a grown woman going through the school years with a little girl named Lily. There’s various monsters that will stalk and hunt the two throughout this story. It will be primarily psychological horror, obviously. #ereyesterday

(Qoutev) That Blank Space - A Lonnie x Hadley Office AU Fic I wrote for the fun of it. I thought making the two bisexual disasters kiss would be silly. Not updated that frequently but there is a vague outline for how it goes down. Non-canon compliant. #lonley

(Qoutev) Consequences of Time Loops in Skyrim - A Skyrim crackfic that’s just a bunch of idiots fucking about in Skyrim Time Loop Scenario. I need to update it, I just haven’t gotten around to it yet. #skyloops

(Ao3) Shen Qiao's Very Strange Life - A Yanshen Flower shop AU I just started. Will probably be updated when I feel very sad. #shenflower

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LEGENDS OF RUNIA / THORNIA; 

#world: legends of runia

Villain Masterpost

Gods Masterpost

Demon Lord Masterpost [Not Yet Made]

Country Masterpost [Not Yet Made]

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VAMPIRICA;

[Not yet revealed! :o]

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CINNABARI;

[Not yet revealed! D:]

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ORIGINAL CHARACTERS;

Hadley Milner - Incarnate of Ariadne, a gardener and incredibly resilient. Has the magical abilities to control plants, though she could potentially do more down the road and I have some Funny Ideas about that. #oc: Hadley

Arlo Winchester - Ex-cultist and angry about it. Has killed a lot of people to be free with his sister. Has the magical ability to read someone’s emotion through physical contact and mess with their memories. #oc: Arlo 

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Please please ask me things about any of these topics! I’d love to start up tags for them / talk about them but I simply have not had the time or energy to do so on my own volition with lorge posts.

Vampirica and Cinnabari don’t yet have too much on them but I can always give you the run-down on what’s happening (generally speaking) if need be.

I’ve also got a private Skyrim Fic in the works that’s more serious than Skyloops.

CW // All of my worldbuilding and writing is liable to feature topics all over the spectrum of fucked up. I would recommend sending an ask personally about certain things and what topics may come up in projects I am working on, if you’re concerned for your health. 

[branmuffins22]

Moots said they wanna hear about WIPs and I feel like I gotta get this brainrot out anyways so HERE I GO

I've only got three projects I'm actively working on right now, all of which are Owl House fanfics, although I've got ideas here and there for other things (video games I might've made if I weren't so burnt out, ttrpg characters that might need their own goddamn settings and stories to themselves, a Code Lyoko fanfic, music (mostly loads of disconnected song lyrics), 3D avatars, etc).

The Owl House fanfics in question are three(-ish?) fold:

Theseus Who?, a mostly-canon-compliant 5+1 post-titanification headcanon compilation that DOESN'T just let Luz keep her titan form (mostly it's just a bunch of changes along the lines of when Hunter's eyes changed color after Flapjack saved him). - It's actually sort of a tie-in to another, bigger fic I'm writing that's gonna be point 2, so you can assume anything mentioned in this one will happen throughout the timeline of the next one as well. - I've currently already got the 5 written, so now I just need to buckle down and finish the +1, unless I decide to do another sweep of edits (I think the excessive parentheticals might be too excessive). - - I only started it like a week ago, and I've been waiting for motivation to strike again to let me finish it for like half that time.

Masha and the Very Normal Nocedas, a mostly-canon-compliant sorta-multimedia veesha longfic based on the dramatic irony of Masha slowly driving themself nuts trying to piece together what the Deal is with Luz, Vee, and the rest of the Nocedas. - by "sorta-multimedia" i mean its got plaintext segments describing the story, journal segments of Masha recounting events as they remember them and trying to organize their thoughts, chat segments when the characters interact over text, and possibly more if I feel the Need. - I've only outlined the three prologue chapters and the following intermission, only have snippets and vague ideas for scenes for the main bulk of the fic itself, and have only actually written two of the prologue chapters and the intermission. - - won't start posting it until I at least get the third prologue chapter done, so I've got a usable buffer. Hopefully that'll be sooner rather than later.

The Overthinker AU (or "The Artificer AU"? name is also very much a work in progress), a canon rewrite that I think I'll actually split into a bunch of shorter "episodes", so I can appropriately tag each one, rather than tagging one monolithic fic with Everything Under The Sun. The basic premise is "what if The Owl House, but there's more time", both in the meta sense of "not bound by the 20-minute TV episode format" and the diegetic sense of "the broad-strokes plot of the show will happen over a longer in-universe period of time" (though I'm a bit stuck on just how much more time I want to give em). - for the most part, I wanted to put more emphasis on Luz's magical development, and extrapolate a somewhat wider magic system out of what we see in the show, but I also want to go into more detail on how her actions affect those around her, even outside of all the friends she makes (stuff along the lines of the little things the crowd mentioned while protesting Eda's petrification at the end of season 1). - I'm almost (reluctantly) thinking of pulling a Grapes of Wrath with it, structure-wise, by having main plot/character development chapters alternate with shorter intermissions focused on magical exploration, worldbuilding, and so on. - this project is currently just the scribblings of a madwoman in my private discord server and three wildly unfinished fics in my google docs folder - - one of these fics is Something Like a Bible, which is essentially a condensed version of the entire broader project, boiled down to bare plot and occasional commentary. Like a series outline and a plot synopsis rolled into one, though perhaps not quite the series bible it claims to be. - - - honestly I REALLY aughtta work on this one some more, just so I can get most of the Big Ideas out of my head and share them with people. - - the other two fics are currently untitled snippets of scenes from the project, one a sentimental/instructional note from Eda to Luz, and the other sort of a ragefic twist on the ending of Thanks to Them. - this project is gonna include tons of ideas from and allusions to other fics which inspired it/me, such as The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled by IdeaHunter, All that's at Stake by The_Lampman, and Decorative by TheTokenAro, to name a few. - I could make a whole post about this project on its own (and in fact, I have before), talking about all the little changes I'd make, the developments I'd include, the more sweeping changes, the additional themes I'd toss in, and so on, but there are some I REALLY don't think fit well into the "rambling tumblr post" format (and/or just don't want to spoil yet), so I shall Abstain (for now :P).

[sometimesraven]

Author Ask Tag Game

Thanks so much to @elean0rarose for the tag and questions!

What was your first ever story idea? What happened to it?

Oh man, let's get into this bb. My first story idea actually started off as Doctor Who fanfiction (the relic of which y'all can find reuploaded here if you really want to. I didn't get far bc I was a Child(tm) XD).

From there I decided to take the characters and make them into something more Original(tm) which turned into a disaster of a first attempt at a novel when I was a teenager

These days it's more of a passion project that lives on in my brain, after a long long time of developing my writing skills, but I still worldbuild for it and hope to make it an actual Thing one day.

What's your writing routine?

I actually made a tiktok about that a long time ago!

lmao no but I don't really have one? I'm a mood writer which is just writer for "I have unmedicated ADHD"

Are you a plotter, a pantser, or something in between?

Bit of a plantser. The writing process itself starts with pantsing-on-a-vague-outline, then I edit and structure an outline more firmly around the draft.

Leaning a lil more on planning rn though just because I've got such a complex web of plots and characters I have to get right in my head

Do you try to tell moral stories throughout your work, or any other life lessons? What are they?

"Fuck the system you were born into, do crimes and start a commune with your queer found family" is the long and short of it lmao.

Mostly I just want to spread a little hope through my queer superpowered idiots. Any lessons in my work are interpersonal, radical shit like "don't be a dick to people for stuff out of their control" and "hey, maybe the person who's angry all the time has a reason to be upset" and "traumatised people deserve support and love"

What do you prefer, character development or worldbuilding? Why?

Character development!! It's where basically everything I do begins, I love people and learning about people and different kinds of people and weaving them into their own little worlds ^w^

Do you have any tips for budding writers?

Research everything, write and rewrite, edit and re-edit. If you're struggling and you haven't before, try taking a break. If you've always struggled, try a different approach or three! Join writers' groups online to get support and advice! Don't be afraid to break rules but stay humble.

Who inspires you to write the most?

Two things:

"These answers that come into my mind unbidden // these stories delivered to me fully written" - I just,,,, Have Ideas. All the time and I have to write them down :D

I want to share those ideas! I get the most joy out of sharing joy. Part of it is of course my desperate and constant need for attention, but also I just,,, feel Big Feelings with my characters and I have the autistic need to share those Big Feelings all the time

--

Tagging: @smallvillecrows and anyone else who wants to! I'm not writing more questions bc I suck at that so here's the ones I got:

What was your first ever story idea? What happened to it?

What's your writing routine?

Are you a plotter, a pantser, or something in between?

Do you try to tell moral stories throughout your work, or any other life lessons? What are they?

What do you prefer, character development or worldbuilding? Why?

Do you have any tips for budding writers?

Who inspires you to write the most?

[yume-x-hanabi]

4, 6, 12, 19 please tell us about Minah, 27, 30, 37, 49, 61 and 65 for Concubinage, and 74

4. How do you choose which fics to write?

ig it depends on how obsessed my brain is with the random plot bunnies hopping around in my head? When I start thinking up narration sentences, that's when I know a particular idea wants to be written. Doesn't mean I always do it, though (in an ideal world with infinite free time, maybe...)

6. What’s the last line you wrote?

I haven't written in so long I don't even remember 😭

Looking at one of my latest wips, probably this one because it's incomplete lmao:

The room was as dingy as the rest of the inn and smelled vaguely of stale tobacco, but at least the bed was soft and the sheets were clean. He collapsed on the bed with a sigh of relief, head swimming from all the

(wtf was I trying to say? it's a mystery 🤷‍♀️)

12. Do you outline your fics?  If yes, how detailed are your outlines?  How far do you stray from them?

Usually not, and then it comes to bite me in the ass when it's ten months since I plotted the idea and I don't remember what I was planning to do 😅

There's one fic that's an exception cuz it's a fusion AU type of thing so I'm planning carefully how it follows (or not) the original's plot. Well, idk if I'll actually write the fic actually, maybe in this case the outline will be all there is, as a fun exercise for myself XD

19. Do you enjoy creating OCs or do you prefer to stick solely to canon characters?

I love creating OCs, but like, they need a purpose. An OC just for the sake of having an OC or self-insert isn't my kind of thing (no shade to those who do, I'm just not wired that way), but depending on the story I might need to flesh out a supporting cast. And I love it when they slowly take life and develop.

Minah was a really fun case because she was supposed to be a kind of "throwaway" role, only there for a scene or two. She wasn't even planned like she turned out to be (I originally imagined her younger, for example). But then she... just happened lol. Within a few lines of her dialogue I was in love with her and she was just so fun to write, in a way she wormed her way into a bigger role than intended and I'm really glad she did because it works out so well in so many ways. Funny how things go sometimes 😂

honestly my OCs often end up surprising me in one way or another haha. rare are those who stick to the plan

(rest under cut cuz it's getting long)

27. What area of writing do you feel strongest in?

Battle scenes, apparently 8)

30. How much do you edit your fics?  Do you edit as you write or wait until you finish the first draft?

I actually... don't edit that much 😅

ig in a way I edit in my head before I write? I've always been like that tbh, even at school--what I write down (whether fic, essay, translation...) is often very close to the final version. Of course I go over it a couple times once I'm done and tweak a few things here and there, but it's usually minor stuff. Sometimes I end up redoing entire scenes/chapters because I feel something's not working, but it's rather rare when it happens.

37. What fic has been the hardest for you to write?

Probably Fractured Lives? There's a reason it's only gotten five updates in nine years so far. I have to be in a very specific mood to write it, which doesn't happen often. A pity, cuz I liked the concept...

49. What fic of yours would you say is the best introduction to you as a writer?

I'd say The Best Laid Plans. It's got my particular brand of humor, and also some kickass battle scenes :p

Another one would be Strong Currents, cuz worldbuilding (plus getting Gaius and Wingul to have emotional talks lolol)

61. In Concubinage, what’s your favorite scene that you wrote?

Probably Lin and Arst's first kiss. It's such a significant moment<3

65. If you wrote a sequel to Concubinage, what would happen in it?

I am actually vaguely planning a sequel if I can finish it. Basically it'd be the events/plot of the game, but with all the changes in settings brought about by the events of Concubinage. I'll have to think carefully about what will change, what will stay the same, and what will be a slightly different spin on things that'll still happen. I think the main difficulty will be to juggle Milla's journey with Gaius&Wingul being the main characters without them overtaking the plot. And also how close or different it should be to canon...

74. Do you have a fic you wish got a bit more love?

Among my least kudosed ones, I'd say Chaos in the Ballroom (my Tales Big Bang fic). I know it's a bit different from my usual stuff, and relies heavily on knowledge about Agria's side story, but I put a lot of thought in that one.

[autumn-rose-dereks]

My Writing Stages Explained

I write my novels in stages. I discovered these stages when I was writing my third WIP, and I firmly believe they are one of the only reasons that WIP ever made it to completion (or semi-completion, now that I've decided to re-edit one last time before I publish). So here they are for you to use if you like them!

THE STAGES:

Inspiration Stage, Outlining Stage, Character Stage, Paper Stage, Edit Stage 1, Online Stage, Edit Stage 2, Friend Stage, Edit Stage 3, Publication.

THE EXPLANATION:

The Inspiration Stage is when I take my very initial idea and I expand on it, coming up with a basic plot and getting a vibe/aesthetic. Usually, I do this through Pinterest and Spotify playlists for my characters and my worldbuilding. Worldbuilding is a huge part of the Inspiration Stage, because I struggle to move onto the Outlining Stage without having already set up the world I'm going to place my story in. (Sometimes I do an early version of the Character Stage here, too.)

When I'm satisfied with the Inspiration Stage, I move to the Outlining Stage.

The Outlining Stage is usually two or three weeks long and is when I take the idea and I make it into a semblance of a novel, outlining by chapters and fitting my characters in. Here the Outlining and Character Stages blur, because I'll usually do them both at the same time. I take my vague outline and I detail it, finding my connectors. I often color code my outlines so I can easily see my cross-references and my Chekov's guns that I have to come back to.

Then the "official" Character Stage happens.

After I've determined what has to happen in the novel, I figure out how my characters are going to react to these happenings. Usually I start my Inspiration Stage with some idea of what my characters are going to be like, so in this stage I take that idea and then expand on it. I find out my character's appearance, their backstory, their habits, their tells, their aesthetic. I come up with a word bank for my characters, and usually the main character will have a "before" and "after" word bank for before and after a specific event in the novel. I spend a lot of time getting to know my characters by writing blurbs that may not have anything to do with the story itself but help me understand them as a person. One of my favorite things to do is to create a personal timeline of their lives—it also helps me fit them into the overall story timeline much easier. The Character Stage is also where I do the worldbuilding that didn't occur in the Inspiration Stage.

And here we have the Paper Stage. The Paper Stage is one of the longest stages, but also one of the most important to me. I dedicate a notebook from my horde solely to the writing of this particular novel and I write every chapter by hand before anything else. Following the outline I already made, I write each chapter exactly as I planned it, deviating from the outline only if I decide something will absolutely not work out well later in the writing process. Writing on paper helps me slow down and not rush through the first draft. I can take my time and really process what I'm doing, because my hand can't move nearly as fast as my brain does when I write by hand. The first draft is only ever written on paper. Even the first draft I write online (the second draft) changes from the written draft, usually in small ways. My second draft and all those that follow, however many there are, are all written online after that point, because the bones of the story are already all together—they just need to be strengthened, and I think, at that point, I no longer need to slow myself down and process quite as much.

And here we have the dreaded stage: the Editing Stage (split up into 3 parts).

Editing Stage 1 is fairly short and simple. It's taking my first draft (the paper one) and putting it online as the second draft. I have a separate notebook with me for this editing stage, and I write down the things I notice need in-depth editing: continuity errors, questions I don't know the answer to yet, major plot changes, character arcs, etc. Otherwise, the only "editing" I do during Edit Stage 1 is the transfer of draft one to a writing platform, at which point it becomes draft two through small changes I make that help make the story move a bit more cohesively.

The Online Stage consists of more notetaking. I come up with questions to ask the person I've elected to be my reader during the writing process—usually these questions involve questions about characters, plot, setting, and the vibe of the story. If the vibe the reader gets doesn't fit what I'm trying to convey, I know something went wrong that I will have to find and fix. One of the big questions I ask is "What is this scene missing?" I will go chapter by chapter and ask this question about the paragraphs or scenes that simply feel lackluster. While writing the detective fiction novel that helped me discover these stages, the thing I was usually missing was a description of lighting—particularly in relation to the emotional states of my characters.

I take those questions to my reader and get answers. What I do with those answers becomes Editing Stage 2. In this stage, I address everything my "inside reader" has brought up to me, be it lack of description (or too much description), two-dimensional characters, flat dialogue, anything. I spice it up and bring life to the story, allowing it to become far more real and far more personal. This is where a majority of the editing is going to happen, and is the longest stage in the whole process. I will spend months on this stage alone, just to be sure my story is cohesive and to address every possible issue my reader and I find.

After Editing Stage 2, I will sometimes take a break. Rarely will I take a break from the whole project, however. I'll take a step back from the writing, but, in the meantime, I'm working on getting my book cover and promoting my novel as best as I can. But I don't really count this as a stage, because I'm doing this throughout the process anyway. All of that begins immediately after Editing Stage 1, when I know the book is actually going to come to fruition and be a physical book someday.

When the mini-break is over, I jump into the Friend Stage. This stage makes me the most nervous, because this is where my plot has the potential to become public knowledge. Sure, this is not Marvel-level leaks because I'm not at that point as a writer, but spoilers still make me antsy. I hate having a book spoiled for me, and I know a lot of my potential readers are the same way—where's the fun in reading a novel when you know exactly how it ends? So I choose the friend who will read my finished and completely edited novel very careful, present them with it, ask them for feedback, and then nervously wait for them to finish reading it. There's not much for me to do in this stage except watch them like a hawk and pretend I'm not when they look up with a look of utter surprise/horror/shock/anger/any emotional really on their face because of what they've just read.

I will take the feedback my friend gives me and move into Editing Stage 3. This one varies in length and time, being utterly dependent on the feedback I receive. If I receive no feedback, my automatic response is to go back to Friend Stage and find someone else to read it because I won't believe there's nothing for me to fix until another friend corroborates that there is no feedback and nothing for me to change. But when there is feedback (there almost always is, so the above scenario is very rare), I take it and make the edits until we are satisfied it is finished. Usually, I will end up going through the Friend/Editing Stages two or three times before I'm satisfied the book is ready.

And finally, the moment we all wait for as writers: publication. I'll be honest, I'm still not quite there yet. I'm a few weeks away and I'm still in the Friend/Editing Stages right now, but I'll come back and edit this section as soon as the publication aspect is done. But below is the goal!

When it's done and I'm satisfied there is nothing more I can do for this novel, I go through the self-publication process (yeesh). And as soon as the book is up for sale, I notify everyone I know and post about it and celebrate for a little bit, but mostly I just relax and breathe a deep sigh of relief. The celebration continues with more vigor when I get my author copy to shed some happy tears over.

And then I go back to the beginning of this process. I'll start again with a new novel and a whole new idea...or I'll continue with a sequel, in which case the process changes only slightly, because I'll have less to do in the Inspiration Stage, and maybe less in the Character Stage. I'll just keep writing and keep learning to grow as an author. Who knows, maybe I'll find a better way of writing and editing to share in the future.

If this helps you write your own novel, let me know! I'm sure the English teacher who helped me would love to hear about how much her influence has spread.

[clementines-writing-corner]

NANOWRIMO: the conclusion + learning from failure

Hello friends!

Long time, no see! ᕱ__ᕱ These past two weeks I have been giving myself a little break from this blog. I have been swamped with final projects in all of my classes and have been trying to balance getting all of them done with middling success. I’m not thriving, but I am surviving. 

However, to make up for my absence, I will be giving y’all some extra content within the next two weeks. In those posts I won’t be boring you with my rambles as I usually do and instead will simply be giving you some content that I have created for my novel! In this post, though, I will be updating you on my novel’s progress and giving you my thoughts on NANOWRIMO.

For those of you who have been here for a bit, you will know that I attempted to participate in National Novel Writing Month for the first time this November. (As always, here is a link with more info about NANOWRIMO for your perusal.) My personal goal as a full time student with a part time job, was to write a 25,000 word manuscript instead of the full 50,000 words. November has ended and I am happy to report that I failed. I failed to reach even my cut down goal. However, I am surprisingly really happy with my progress this month. I learned a lot about myself as a writer and about my process and while I didn’t manage to write even a 10,000 word manuscript, I feel much more prepared to tackle writing this novel.

~*~*~

So, here are the things that I learned:

Character design and building is VERY important to me

This, I already knew. One of the main things that bother me about book to movie translations or “hot takes” about books on social media or even some fanfictions is that characters, their personalities and development and relationships, are often either misunderstood or sacrificed for the plot or the sake of another character's development. It’s so annoying. I personally belief that every character in a work of fiction should be able to stand on their own, especially if they are a main or secondary character. Characters should be their own individuals with their own motivations and backstories and for goodness sake they should be consistent! (Crappy character development is a thing that bothers me about published novels too. The wasted potential of Severus Snape, Albus Dumbledore, and Draco Malfoy, among countless other characters, in the Harry Potter novels bugs me so, so much!!)

 So, one of the things that happened everytime I sat down to write this NANOWRIMO was that I would find myself getting “stuck” on this character’s backstory or that character’s personality. I have 13 characters that exist for this story in my head. 2 are the main main characters. The 11 others are also going to have their own plot lines and spin offs. Before NANOWRIMO, I knew that this would make my novel complex. After NANOWRIMO, I realized that I was going to have to organize and map and structure and detail my characters (along with several other things) to the metaphorical gods before I even try to manuscript anything or else I am going to be stuck forever and I will never get this book out of my head.

Worldbuilding is also VERY important to me

This was a bit of a surprise. I am definitely no Tolkien and before I started this blog, and my creative writing journey, at the beginning of this fall, these original characters simply just floated around in my head in a vague fantasy realm with no discernible structure or detail. I expected to be able to just continue with this vague fantasy world and as I started writing let the structure fall into place. Yeah… that’s not what happened. 

As I began to outline character backstories and a basic plot to start writing, I would find myself drawing up short when I needed to insert a detail about the world in which my story is taking place. This month made me realize that I need to also worldbuild to the metaphorical gods before I try to manuscript anything, and in some cases before I try to go deeper into outlining my character’s backstories and such as well. I’m such a detail oriented person that I have no idea why this didn’t occur to me before, especially because I am including a magic system in my book. I hate fantasy books (that are meant to be serious and not just cozy reads) in which the magic systems rely on the “because it’s magic” excuse and the author doesn’t make any attempt at giving at least some sort of structure or rules. So yeah. I really need to worldbuild, which I am going to hate because it is going to take FOREVER (detail oriented person).

I work better on lists and schedules

This I did know, but I didn’t realize it applied to my writing. A lot of the reason why I failed to write anything of substance for the plot of my book is that I thought I could just throw myself in and make it up as I go. Incorrect. As November passed, and I kept getting stuck on details, I realized that I would need to incorporate my penchant for planning and list making if I was ever going to complete a task this large.

Also, side note, but I keep referring to this story that I’m writing as a novel. It will most certainly not be a novel. It will be a whole dang book series. (13 characters!! Who will each get their own POV at some point!! “A novel” my a**.) 

I can throw myself head first into school essays and short writing assignments no problem, but with a story this big, all coming straight from the mess I call my brain, I need to do a lot of planning beforehand. That, above all, is what this failed NANOWRIMO taught me. 

~*~*~

So! Now that I have torn my failure to shreds and dissected all the little pieces and given yall a short (yes that was short for me - I’m starting to think you guys don’t know me at all ᕱ__ᕱ) summary of who, what, when, where, and why my failure occurred, what’s next. Well, I plan. I outline to the metaphorical gods (as I seem to be fond of saying in this post), and next year, when November rolls around, hopefully I have done enough planning and outlining and detail work that writing a 50000 word manuscript should be a breeze!

That’s all for now folks! If any of y’all are curious as to some of what I did manage to get done on my novel/series over NANOWRIMO then stay tuned for the first of your special content posts which should be up within a few minutes of me posting this. Also, if any of y’all have suggestions about how to store/order worldbuilding content in an easily searchable way that would be fantastic!! Please do let me know. Thanks for bearing with me! ᕱ__ᕱ

And remember, dot your j’s and cross your t’s!

~Clementine J. Quincey ����

[author-a-holmes]

Finding out the creative processes for other writers is one of my favourite things to do. I find the fact that we all have almost entirely unique ways of approching the process really fascinating, and beautiful, and reassuring.

There is no wrong way to write.

As for myself, I usually get a concept or idea. Sometimes it can be a whole scene, sometimes it's a character dynamic I want to explore, sometimes it's a specific type of character, but once I have the vague idea I go and write down a really rough outline.

Sometimes that outline can be little more than a list of notes, or bullet points, of themes, things, scenes, or tropes, that I want to include. But sometimes, if I find I'm really connecting with the idea, I'll go and do a (brief!) full outline.

I predominantly utilise the 3 act story structure for my outlines. Sometimes I mix it up when it comes time to write the story, but for the initial outline, the 3-act works well for me. Once my (brief!) full outline has been written, I usually save it and set it aside.

That's because I can't work on multiple projects at once, but the outline has enough details so that when I have time and can come back to it, I've got everything I need to start work.

When I have time to begin a new project, I actually start with creating the characters. Part of this process also includes my worldbuilding, because it's the world the characters live in. It's how they grew up, and became the people they are in my head at the start of the story. So my character building, and my worldbuilding, tend to go hand in hand.

Once I've got the characters, and the main chunk of worldbuilding, settled in my head, and I can easily slip into their mindset, I take a look over the original (brief!) outline, and then rewrite it with the characters in mind.

Characters make decisions I may not have considered, or they may NOT make a decision that I wrote down in the initial outline, so this restructure of the outline is critical to making the story's plot work with the characters I've now developed.

Then I start writing. I write chronologically, and every scene is written in order. Every.... eh, I'd say ten or so chapters, I'll take a reread over the outline, and make any changes or tweaks to it that I need to, to accomodate any changes that have happened over the course of writing the story.

Once I reach the end of the manuscript, I'll reread the outline from beginning to end, and reread the ORIGINAL outline too. This is to make sure I haven't missed out anything I wanted to include.

Sometimes, if there are things I've missed, or whole sections that I feel need rewriting, it's now that I'll go back to the beginning and do a rewrite, but that's rare for me. Usually, I'm fairly happy with my draft at this stage, and I'll move onto the editing/developmental editing, and making sure the story flows exactly the way I want it too, and that character development has happened at a rate I'm happy with, and is clear to the reader.

After I've made those big picture edits, I'll take a few days break, and then do a copy/line edit. I know many people say to leave a manuscript to sit for a long time, but I find that works against me, I get sucked back into the story as a reader if I leave too long a gap.

Once MY copy/line edits are done, the manuscript gets sent off to my professional editor, and the process to begin publishing starts including cover design, arcs, preorders, etc etc etc.

I’ve never had the chance to talk to another writer before recently and it’s so interesting to see other people’s creative processes. I’ve come across so many different way to write. And I know that might sound cheesy but it has been really cool. And even more interesting to me that my style is so different from the most common ways to write.

Drop your creative process or whatever :)

[thedeadhandofseldon]

The Anti-Mercer Effect

On the Accessibility of D&D, Why Unprepared Casters is so Fun, and Why Haley Whipjack is possibly the greatest DM of our generation.

(Apologies to my mutuals who aren’t in this fandom for the length of this, but as you all know I have never in my life shut up about anything so… we’ll call it even for the number of posts about Destiel I see every day.

To fellow UC fans - I haven’t listened to arc 4 yet, I started drafting this in early August, and I promise I will write a nice post about how great Gus the Bard is once I get the chance to listen to more of his DMing).

Structure - Or, “This is not the finale, there will be more podding cast”

So, first of all, let’s just talk about how Unprepared Casters works. Because it’s kind of unusual! Most of the other big-name D&D podcasts favor this long, grand arcs; UC has about 10 hours of podcast per each arc. And that’s a major strength in a lot of ways: it makes it really accessible to new listeners, because you can just start with the current arc and understand what’s going on!

And by starting new arcs every six or seven episodes, they can explore lots of ways to play D&D! Classic dungeon delve arc! Heist arc! Epic heroes save the world arc! Sportsball arc! They can touch on all sorts of things!

And while I’m talking about that: Dragons in Dungeons, the first arc, makes it incredibly accessible as a show - because it lets the unfamiliar listener get a sense of what D&D actually is. (It’s about telling stories and making your friends feel heroic and laugh and cry, for the record). If I had to pick a way to introduce someone to the game without actually playing it with them, that arc would definitely be it.

And I’d be remise not to note one very important thing: Haley Whipjack and Gus the Bard are just very funny, very charismatic people. Look. Episode 0s tend to be about 50%(?) those two just talking to each other about their own podcast. It shouldn’t work. And yet it DOES, its one of my favorite parts, because Haley and Gus are just cool.

And a side note that doesn’t fit anywhere else: I throw my soul at him! I throw a scone at him - that’s it, that’s the vibe. The whole podcast alternates between laughing with your friends and brooding alone in a dark tavern corner - but the laughs never forced and the dark corner is never too dark for too long.

Whipjack the Great - Or, the DM is Also a Player!

I think Haley Whipjack is one of the greatest Dungeon Masters alive. The plots and characters! The mechanical shenanigans! The descriptions!

Actually, let’s start there: with the descriptions. (Both Haley and Gus do this really fucking well). As we know, Episode 0 of each arc sees the DM reading a description - of a small town, or the Up North, or the recent history of a great party. And Haley always strikes this tricky balance - one I think a lot of us who DM struggle with - between giving too much description and  worldbuilding, and not telling us anything at all. She describes people and events in just enough detail to imagine them, but never so much they seem static and unreal - just clear enough to envision, but with enough vagueness left to let your imagination begin to run wild.

While I’m thinking about arc 3’s party, let’s talk about a really bold move she made in that arc: letting the players have ongoing control of their history. Loser Lars! She didn’t try to spell out every detail of this high-level party’s history, or restrict their past to only what she decided to allow - she gave them the broad outlines, and let them embellish it. And that made for a much more alive story than any attempt to create it by herself would have - but I think it takes a lot of courage to let your players have that agency. Most Dungeon Masters (myself included) tend to struggle with being control freaks.

And the plots! Yeah, arc one is built of classic tropes - but she actually uses them, she doesn’t get caught up in subverting everything or laughing at the cliches. And it’s fun! In arc 3, there really isn’t a straight line for the players to follow, either - which makes the game much more interesting and much trickier to run. And her NPCs are fantastic and I will talk about them in the next section.

Above all, though, I think what is really impressive is how Haley balances mechanics, and rules as written, with the narrative and rule of cool - and puts both rules and story in the service of playing a fun game. And the secret to that? She’s the DM, but the DM is a player, and the DM is clearly having fun. Hope Lovejoy mechanically shouldn’t get that spellslot back, but she does, and it’s fun. The changeling merchant in Thymore doesn’t really make some Grand Artistic Narrative better, but wow is it fun. And she never tries to force it one way or the other - the story might be more dramatic if Annie didn’t manage to banish the demon from the vault, but it’s a lot cooler and a lot more fun for the players if Annie gets to be a badass instead - and the rules and the dice say that Annie managed it.

Settings feel like places, NPCs feel like people, and the narrative plot feels like a real villainous plot.

Anyway. I could go on about the various ways in which Whipjack is awesome for quite a while - she’s right, first place in D&D is when your friends laugh and super first place is when they cry - but I’m going to stop here and just. Make another post about it some other time. For now, for the record I hold her opinions about the game in higher esteem than I do several official sourcebooks; that is all.

Characters - Or, Bombyx Mori Is Not an Asshole, And That Matters

Okay, I said I would talk about characters! And I will!

Just a general place to start: the party! All of the first three parties are interesting to me, because they all care about each other. Not even necessarily in a Found Family Trope sort of way, though often that too. But they generally aren’t assholes to each other. The players create characters that actually work together, that are interesting; even when there’s internal divisions like SK-73 v. Sir Mr. Person, they aren’t just unpleasant and antagonistic all the time. Listening to the podcast, we’re “with” these people for a couple hours - and it isn’t unpleasant. That matters a lot. (To take a counter-example: I love Critical Role, but the episode when Vox Machina pranked Scanlan after he died and was resurrected wasn’t fun to listen to, it was just uncomfortable and angering and vaguely cruel).

All of the PCs are amazing, and the players in each arc did a great job. If you disagree with me about that, well, you have the right to be incorrect and I am sorry for your loss. Annie Wintersummer, for one example: tragic and sad and I want to give her a hug, but also Fuck Yeah Wintersummer, and also her familiar Charles the Owl is the cutest and funniest and I love him. And we understand what’s going on with Annie, she isn’t some infinite pool of hidden depths because this arc is 7 episodes and we don’t have time for that, but she also has enough complexity to be interesting. Same with Fey Moss: yeah, a lot of her is a silly pun about fame that carries into how she behaves, but a lot of how she behaves is also down to some good classic half-elven angst about parenthood and wanting to be known and seen and important. (Side note: if your half-elf character doesn’t have angst, well, that’s impressive and also I don’t think I believe you).

There are multiple lesbian cat-people in a 4-person party and they both have requited romantic interests who aren’t each other. This is the future liberals want and I am glad for it.

Sir Mister Person, the human fighter! Thavius, the edge lord! Even when a character is “simple,” they’re interesting, because of how they’re played as people and not action-figures. And that matters a lot.

In the same way: the NPCs. There really aren’t a lot of them! And some of them come from Patreon submissions, so uh good work gang, you’re part of the awesomeness and I’m proud of you! The point being, the NPCs work because enough of them are interesting to matter. It’s not just a servant who opens Count Michael’s door, it’s a character with a name (Oleandra!) and a personality and history. They’re interesting. Penny Lovejoy didn’t need to be interesting, the merchant outside the Laughing Mausoleum didn’t need to be interesting, but they ARE! And Haley and Gus EXCEL at making the NPCs matter, not just to the story but to us as viewers. I agree with Sir Mister Person, actually, I would die for the princesses of the kingdom. I actually care about Gem Lovejoy of all people - that wouldn’t happen in an ordinary campaign! That’s the thing that makes Unprepared Casters spectacular - and, frankly, it’s especially impressive because D&D does not tend to be good at making a lot of interesting compared to a lot of other sorts of stories.

And, just as an exemplar of all this: Bombyx Mori. Immortal, reincarnating(?), and described as the incarnation of the player’s ADHD. I expected to hate Bombyx, because as the mom friend both in and out of my friend-group’s campaigns, the chaos-causer is always exhausting to me. And yeah, Bombyx causes problems on purpose! But! She is not an asshole.

And that’s important. Bombyx goes and sits with the queen and comforts her. Bombyx gives Annie emotional support. Bombyx isn’t just a vehicle to jerk around the DM and other players; Bombyx really is a character we can care about. To compare with another case - in the first couple episodes of The Adventure Zone, the PCs are just dicks. Funny, but dicks. Bombyx holds out an arm “covered in larva” to shake with a count, and robs him of magical items, but she also cares about her friends and other people! She uses a powerful magical gem to save her fertilizer guy from death! Yeah, Bombyx is ridiculous, but she’s not just an asshole the party has to keep around for plot reasons; you can see why her party would keep her around. And one layer of meta up, she’s the perfect example of how to make a chaotic character like that while still being fun for everyone you’re playing with, which is often not the case. And I love her.

The Anti-Mercer Effect - Or, “I think we proved it can be fun, you can have a good time with your friends. And it doesn’t have to be scary, you can just work with what you know”

The Mercer Effect basically constitutes this: Matthew Mercer, Dungeon Master of Critical Role, is incredible (as are all of his players). They’re all professional story-tellers in a way, remember, and so Critical Role treats D&D like a narrative art-form, and it’s inspiring. Seeing that on Critical Role sets impossible standards - and people go into their own home games imagining that their campaigns will be like Critical Role, and the burden of that expectation tends to fall disproportionately on the DM. And the end result, I think, of the Mercer Effect is that we get discouraged or intimidated, because our game isn’t “as good as” theirs. (And I should note - Matt certainly doesn’t want that to be our reaction).

So the Anti-Mercer Effect is two things: it’s D&D treated like a game, and it’s inspiring but not intimidating. And Unprepared Casters manages both of those really freaking well. Because they play it like a game! A UC arc looks just like a good campaign in anyone’s home game. They have the vibes of 20-somethings and college students playing D&D for fun because that’s who they are (as a 20-something college student who plays a lot of D&D, watching it felt like watching my friends play an especially good campaign). They’re trying to tell a good story, sure, and they always do. But first and foremost, they’re trying to have fun, and it shows, and I love the UC cast for it.

And that’s the other half of it: it’s inspiring! It’s approachable; you can see that Haley and Gus put plenty of work into preparing the game but it also doesn’t make you feel like you need hundreds of pages of worldbuilding to run a game. Sometimes a cleric makes Haley cry and she gives them back a spell-slot from their deity! That’s fantastic! It’s just inspiring - listening to this over the summer, when my last campaign had fallen apart under the strain of graduation, is why I decided to plan and run my new one!

That quote from Haley Whipjack that I used as the title for this section? That’s the whole core of this idea, and really, I think, the core of the podcast.

The Mercer Effect is when you go “that’s really cool, I could never do that.” But Unprepared Casters makes you look at D&D and go “wow, that looks really fun. I bet I can do that!” And I love the show for it.

And I bet a lot of you do too.

[birlwrites]

The Spiral Method: For When You Really Just Want To Start Writing

Thus commences my formalized foray into offering writing advice!

This is the method I use for pretty much every story I write. If you tend to come up with a really specific character or scene or snippet of dialogue with literally no other context for the story it’s in, but you still want at least a little bit of a plan in place when you write, this is for you!

Step 1: Write out your idea

This might seem obvious, but take whatever seed of a story has popped into your head, no matter how small or intuitive it may seem, and write it down somewhere. This is your starting point and you don’t want to lose track of it. If you’re like me, and a fully-formed scene springs from your head like Athena from Zeus’s, you might want to just write it out now, before you get bogged down in planning and forget that really awesome sentence you just came up with.

If you start writing it down, and one thing leads to another, and suddenly you have an entire chapter in the middle of a story you haven’t written, with no idea what comes before or after, awesome! You know that much more about what you’re doing.

Step 2: Figure out WTF you’re talking about

If you’re starting with an idea for a character, what genre of story do they belong in? (Or not belong in?) What drives/motivates them? Are they a protagonist, antagonist, both, or neither? What’s working against them? Why do they want what they want?

If you’re starting with a piece of a scene, who’s there? How do they feel about the other people/things/etc that are there? What’s happening in the scene, and why is it happening?

If you’re starting with a world, what kind of world is it? What makes it function? What is a threat to it? Who and what inhabits the world? Why is it the way that it is?

Really, this can be boiled down to two questions: what’s happening, and why is it happening?

Write down your ideas in a new document. Give yourself permission to make this document messy. It should be more brainstorming than outlining. To keep track of important bits (for example, events you really want to foreshadow, or key pieces of backstory or worldbuilding), you can either put them in a dedicated Sparknotes-like section of the document, or you can put them in a separate doc entirely. (Personally, I use private Discord channels, both for the brainstorming and for the Sparknotes.)

Don’t stress about figuring out absolutely everything. A couple of ideas are enough, and they can be broad or vague, especially at the beginning!

Step 3: Explore!

If you haven’t started writing prose yet, now is the time. Write a scene! You don’t need to know exactly where it goes in the plot, or even if it’ll make it into the actual story - it might be backstory, or aftermath, or something that happens ‘off-screen.’

The goal of this step is to explore what you’ve come up with so far, and let the story develop in an organic way. Don’t edit as you write. Think of it as snapshots - you don’t need to know exactly what’s going on or have a clear mental image of how it fits into the plot. Just put it on the page.

In fact, it’s better if you don’t know 100% of what’s going on, because this brings us to...

Step 4: See Step 2

Now, look at what you just wrote and again figure out WTF you’re talking about. You should have a slightly better idea of what you’re writing now - maybe the plot hasn’t taken shape but you know a few of the characters, or maybe you have fragments of a plot and nothing else, or maybe you’ve got a better sense of the atmosphere of the story.

Put that in your messy brainstorming document. If it leads you to any new ideas, put those in there too. Add to the Sparknotes version as needed.

Step 5: See Step 3

Hopefully the reason that this is called the spiral method is becoming clear! The prose builds on the brainstorming, which builds on the prose, which builds on the brainstorming, which builds on the... you get it.

As you write, you’ll discover your story: characters, plot, context, the type of story you want to tell. Rather than creating a plot and then trying to get your characters to conform to it, let them take control. A story is really just one long chain of an action and subsequent reactions. If you have one link in the chain, you can work outwards from it until you have the whole picture.

Tips

Be prepared to scrap things. Scenes, characters, plot arcs, all sorts of things. You may discover that something you came up with really early on just isn’t going to fit. My best suggestion here is, instead of deleting it, copy it into another document. It’s much easier to remove a section from your WIP if you’re just moving it somewhere else. (And maybe you can post deleted scenes later!)

Don’t force it! If you’re bored with step 2, or feel lost on step 3, then just move on to the next step, even if you feel like you haven’t done enough with the one you’re on. This is a very flexible writing method, and the right proportion of step 2 to step 3 will be different for everyone.

Write what you want to write. Follow the bits of inspiration as you get them, and see what happens - if they don’t work out, you don’t have to keep them! That’s why step 3 is called exploring instead of drafting. Even if you don’t use something you wrote, it still gives your story a little more depth and detail that you can draw from later.

Do a continuity read. This approach lends itself really well to writing out of order, and since you won’t have an outline that you sat down to write start-to-finish, it’s super important to take a break from your completed draft (ranging from a few days to a couple of weeks, depending on how well you feel like you know the plot - the goal is to look at it with semi-fresh eyes so you catch mistakes) and read all of it in order to make sure it makes sense.

Enjoy the process! If you’re dragging your feet, figure out why. Don’t write things you aren’t even a little enthusiastic about, because that means you aren’t really connecting with them. Maybe you feel like they need to be in there, but you don’t want them to be in there. 99.9% of the time, they don’t need to be in there, and there’s another way! Don’t let yourself start to dislike what you’re writing, or the process of writing it.

I hope this is helpful! If you have questions or want me to elaborate on any of this/give more specific examples, by all means let me know.

[bluejayblueskies]

Hi, I hope I'm not too late to ask some Weird Writer Questions cause they sound fun! Number 24, 19, 13, and 17 (that last one for whisky would be cool but all your WIPS are lovely so pick whichever you want!) hope you have a nice day Jay!!

weird questions for writers!

(you're absolutely not too late--thank you for messaging! i hope you have a nice day as well 🥰)

24. How much prep work do you put into your stories? What does that look like for you? Do you enjoy this part or do you just want to get on with it?

for prep work, i used to (pre-tma and a little bit into the beginning of writing for tma) jump right into multichapter stories with a vague premise and no clue of the actual plot or ending, but i found it's easier to actually complete multichapter stuff if i have an outline and an idea of where i want the story to go, lol who knew? so my prep work now consists of, at minimum, a rough outline of the entire story arc from beginning to end, but usually a chapter-by-chapter outline of major story beats, approximate scenes, etc.. for whisky, i jumped in with a rough story arc and then made the chapter-by-chapter outline around chapter three when i started to get bogged down in 'what scene should i do next?' details. i usually don't do any prep at all for one-shots, since they're typically 1-2 scenes, but for longer ones i may throw together a quick bullet list of where i want the story to go

and i do not like outlining alkdsgjsag. it's probably my least favorite part of the writing process. (i'm currently for example avoiding fixing my whisky outline, which i need to change the last chapter for slightly due to a piece of lore i added contradicting my current ending.) i think it's because outlining requires the most decision-making about my story and the most critical thinking about, 'okay, what do i actually want to say and when do i want to say it.' i'm always much happier when i have the outline because it's so much better to write with one, but the process of making it? detestable lol.

(more below the cut because i got predictably long-winded with this)

19. Tell me a story about your writing journey. When did you start? Why did you start? Were there bumps along the way? Where are you now and where are you going?

this answer got very long, so buckle in and bear with me lol:

i started writing very young (perhaps second or first grade?) partly because my father is a copywriter and thus encouraged it and partly because i read so many books as a child. my elementary school had this anthology that you could submit to starting in third grade, and i remember writing short stories for it (that always ended up being too long--turns out i had chronic 'can't shut up' disease even at the tender age of 8).

getting into middle school, i started to write longer things. it's hard for me to remember exact dates, but i know i finished my first novel-length story around ... 7th grade? it is Extremely Bad by virtue of being written by somebody who had only experienced the world for ~12 years, but it's also probably one of the most out-there things i've ever written in terms of plot so i still give it a solid 5/10. (i can elaborate on it if people are interested! an in-depth discussion of it is just a bit beyond the scope of this particular question lol).

(i also wrote several stories that could best be described as uh. RPF between me & my best friends and their middle school crushes. including a whole entire trilogy with novella-length stories. but we're not going to talk about those XD)

i started and did not finish uhhh probably 20-30 other original stories between the years of 2011 - 2017, most of which are also not very good but that taught me a lot about creating characters, worldbuilding, writing styles and SPAG, and other things that helped me develop as a writer. there are a few that i do genuinely want to pick back up someday, but it's hard to get motivated to write original stuff and is much easier to simply write an AU and stick my blorbos in as characters. i think 2017 is the last time i can really truly say i actively worked on original stuff, since i fell into writing mostly fic after i graduated high school.

i wrote fic in high school too--mostly supernatural, sherlock, and doctor who stuff, because i was very much into superwholock--and most of it is still on my ao3. occasionally, people will jumpscare me by commenting on one of my old spn fics because i genuinely forget that people still might read them lol. i started my fic publishing journey on quotev though, and a little bit on wattpad and ff.net, before moving to ao3 in 2015 and never looking back. my stance on my old writing is that even though i've generally moved on with my life and cringe a bit when i look at it, i did write it once upon a time and liked it then, so i won't take it down and/or disown it. i'm sure in 10 years i'll look back on the stuff i wrote now and cringe too. so it goes.

i took a break from writing for ~ 3 years when i went to college, with the exception of the one (1) voltron fic i wrote that i am still quite proud of. (a multichapter fic i finished without making anything remotely close to an outline! wow!). tma will always be so incredibly dear to me because it reignited my desire to write (like. with a blowtorch. i have written over 610k words since summer 2020 when i started listening to tma, which 12-year-old me would have gone nuts over), and so far, i'm still going strong!

i think i have much better writing habits than i had when i was younger. i try to make an effort to do it every day, even when i'm tired or not really feeling it, even if the words are absolute garbage, even if it's nothing related to my current projects, rather than just riding the tide of motivation. i'm hoping that that means i won't be giving it up anytime soon (i certainly have many more plans for malevolent fics in the future including at least one more involved multichapter fic riffing off episode 20 👀) and i'm also hoping that i can jump back into original stuff with a fresh perspective and new ideas. who knows!

13. What is a subject matter that is incredibly difficult for you write about? What is easy?

the subject matter i have the most difficulty with is, funnily enough, romance arcs. i understand point A (characters meet and become friends) and i understand point B (characters are dating) but the stuff that comes in between??? it's a black box for me alskdjga. something happens there, but i (aro) could not tell you what it is. as such, i always feel like any romance arc i attempt in a multichapter fic has terrible pacing, where the characters are falling in love too quickly, deciding to declare their feelings too abruptly, etc.. i'm struggling with this a lot right now in ten thousand flowers in spring, and i'm glad people are leaving positive comments on the most recent chapter because i feel like the romantic pacing is all over the place but i genuinely do not know how to fix it. whisky doesn't suffer from the same issues for some reason. i think because both arthur and john are arospec, so i'm not technically writing a romance? john is very much in romantic love with arthur, but arthur is not--though as in canon, john is Arthur's Person Who He Cares About So Much. idk, i think their canon relationship is so intricate and complicated that i'm just going *shrug* about the whole thing and not worrying about it.

in terms of what's easy, i have a really easy time with fantasy--and, if that's too broad to be considered subject matter, then specifically the worldbuilding involved with fantasy. so i guess that would be fantastical environments? basically, i like a lot that there's no rules other than the ones that i create for myself, so i can do whatever the hell i want and it's correct because that's just how it is in this world! (see, again, ten thousand flowers in spring). of course, i still do research and think about what i want my world to look like, because going 'that's just how it is!' isn't a replacement for that and i don't want to be a lazy writer, but the flexibility is soooo nice. (i, for example, am not looking forward to researching how gangs actually work for whisky and will thus likely just. make some stuff up and hand-wave it away as being 'yeah that's just how the memphis gangs work, don't worry about it,' though i will also make an effort to learn the general structure of stuff.)

17. Talk to me about the minutiae of your current WIP. Tell me about the lore, the history, the detail, the things that won’t make it in the text.

hghhh the forbidden whisky lore 👀 there's a lot i can't say for fear of spoilers, but there is some stuff that probably won't make it into the story that isn't spoilery!

John was born on December 26, 1981 and is as of the most current whisky chapter 41 years old

Arthur was born on April 2, 1986 and is of the most current whisky chapter 37 years old

Arthur began touring around 2004 when he was 18 years old (he was recruited straight out of college/sixth form). However, he didn't begin composing professionally until 2005 and likely didn't get major movie gigs until closer to 2008. He was classically trained on the piano from a young age, though never on a university level, and his compositional and performance style has both popular and classical influences.

Arthur was born in the UK, recruited from the UK, and moved to LA as part of his contract. He met Bella in LA (so in this AU, Bella is American), and Faroe was born on November 13, 2006.

John started his pre-club career in 2002 at age 20, and quit that job and purchased the club around September 2016 at age 34.

Arthur wasn't lying in chapter one when he said that he comes to the club because he likes the wallpaper :) and John was not lying in chapter two when he said the club doesn't have wallpaper :) [this bit will make it into the fic, but i wanted to include it here anyway]

i also have a diagram of john's club that i keep forgetting to include in the end notes:

[ID: A sketched diagram of John's club. It is a square building with a front door on the bottom right side and a door to the basement on the upper right side. Along the left from bottom to top are John's office, the kitchen/food storage area, and the bathrooms. The backstage area lines the entire back wall, and in front of it is the stage, with doors on either side to access the backstage, a grand piano on the stage, and curtains separating the stage from the backstage. There are tables scattered across the main floor, and a wall with archway cutouts separates the main floor from the kitchen and John's office. Along the front wall is the bar, with seating in an L shape that leaves hallway space for John to access his office. The seat closest to John's office is labeled 'Arthur's seat.' A coat closet is in the bottom right corner. /End ID]

is this acoustically sound? don't ask me, i haven't finished that class yet alsdkjgsag. john has acoustic panels in the back to adjust the absorption of the room, i've made it canon XD

in terms of history, i genuinely don't remember where i got the idea for whisky from--i think i was just rotating piano player arthur in my mind one day, went 'hey what about famous arthur?', then went 'well what is john doing?', remembered how much i love small music clubs, and the rest is history. the entire second half of this fic (approx. ch. 8 onward) as well as john's backstory was not part of the initial concept at all, and i very much fleshed it out as i went while writing the first ~3 chapters. i think it's all fully fleshed out now though (excepting the little bit from the last chapter that i have to fix) and i am very excited for chapter 9 in particular :3

there is a scene that i really want to write that won't make it into the main story because it a) will only work from arthur's pov, and i want to keep whisky strictly john's pov, and b) because arthur is a smart dude and even though the scene would be very cool, it would 100% clue arthur in on some crucial things too early on. so alas, it will probably remain as an unrelated oneshot should i choose to write it in the future. (though it's also a scene that works better if the audience doesn't know what's going on either,,,,, but that could spoil them for things too soon as well because you all are also smart cookies, so,,,, much to consider)

aaaand for fun, here's an excerpt from the next chapter:

Buy him flowers, Lilly had said. Right, okay—which fucking ones? Does it matter? John feels like it matters, but he doesn’t have the first clue as to why or what the right choice would be. Is it weird to buy somebody flowers when they’re standing right next to you? That feels like something you get beforehand and then bring as a gift. Should he have planned ahead? Why is his heart beating so fucking loud in his ears?