#where the inciting incident really happens right before the story starts

[daydreamerdrew]

The Swamp Thing (2021) #7

[hauntedraggedyanne]

Where to start your story

I mean, if waking up from the alarm right before work/school in the MC’s bed is really the ONLY way, then do that

1️⃣: in the middle of the inciting incident

I’m not talking about the ‘yep, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I got in this situation’.. I’m talking about the MC being still just a normal person who doesn’t know about aliens/ dragons/princesses/princess alien dragons/ect. They’re just on their normal route to wherever and it just so happens to be in the middle of an invasion. Trying to drink their morning coffee only to narrowly dodge the fire breath of a dragon.

2️⃣: In their favorite/least favorite place

This is a good way to show how the MC reacts to their environment, as well as showing where they go to when their feeling sad, worried, excited, accomplished or what they avoid at all costs. It’s a simple way of characterization, but it can lead up to the plot and character development in multiple ways. Example: the MC’s dragged to a loud and obnoxious arcade can show how they’re studious and prefer the quiet of a library. This tells the reader that the MC isn’t just an academic, but they’re still willing to go out of their comfort zone for their friends/family.

3️⃣: Breaking a rule

This one can depend on the story. In a dystopia, this rule could be something like reading a book or watching a piece of media banned by the government. Do they know they’re breaking the law? If not, why don’t they know? If they do, why do they feel the need to break it? If you’re writing a setting that isn’t a dystopia, then you can still use those questions above, but you can also make your MC out to be a bad boy (doesn’t have to be a boy) who’s too cool for the rules. That might get them into trouble which’ll start the story.

[physalian]

So you’ve got an idea for a story….

Once again and as always, writing is highly subjective and any writing advice that says you *must* do X or all books *must* include Y or doing Z during your writing process is *wrong* kind of misses the point of the freedom of storytelling and I’m not a fan. This is how I approach writing and one way you could consider doing the same if you’ve got all these ideas and nowhere to put them, not the way you must approach writing.

Cool? Cool.

—

We’ll start with how I write fanfic because that’s a far less intimidating market. I don’t write drabble fics and coffee shop AUs. I grew up writing fix-it fics and in-universe canon divergences. Essentially: Stop the real story right here, now what if this happened instead?

Personally, I just don’t get fulfillment from writing fanfic fluff (though I do love reading it). Even if I’m committing time and effort into something that will never make me money and that people might not even read for fun due to dead fandoms or whatever, I’m still going to use it as writing exercise and give it some substance.

That’s just me, though. I used to write stuff like character studies and deep dives, and the last fic I wrote to date was a “hey what if this villain went to the good side way sooner and it wasn’t just played as a joke on his cowardice?” and its sequel.

So I started that first fic with an idea: What if K joined the good guys earlier? How would that impact the story?

Immediately after that, I was thinking about the ending and what tentpole ideas in the canon I wanted to keep, but the meat of the story I knew I wanted to focus on K’s emotional and existential struggle of switching sides, risking becoming an enemy to both factions, after the inciting incident of his (absolutely canonical) partner’s murder, that, in canon, did not get the justice he deserved. When I wrote my post about beginnings and endings, I said that endings for me are way easier than beginnings—this is why. Before I even start writing, my ending is decided.

Basically: Yes, I’m writing a story using someone else’s fictional characters, as one does when writing fanfic. The story uses cartoon characters, but it’s about one person’s struggle with their identity in the wake of tragedy, and how they take life by the horns to make it out of the story the hero they deserve to be recognized as.

And with that core idea in mind, then I write the story around it. The story, which, outside the canon that I had to keep, I had no plan for. The settings and minutiae of the set pieces weren’t as important as what each scene did for the themes and K’s emotional reaction to them happening. I needed to give him enough alone time with the characters of the hero team to learn something from them, enough time on his own to test his new loyalties, and enough time with his old team so he can juxtapose the two and make sure he’s doing the right thing by deserting.

The last thing on my mind was what tropes I wanted to fulfill. Romantic subplots and the like just kind of happened organically and weren’t planned.

—

For Eternal Night of the Northern Sky the idea I had was this: Most vampire stories are about the drama surrounding vampires that depend on humans to survive. So what if I wrote a story where humans depended on vampires to survive, in the exact same way?

Yes, the story is about vampires and everyone can say what they will about people who write vampire fiction. But it’s really about what it means to be a monster when survival demands some brutal decisions. What does it mean to be a monster if everyone is a monster?

ENNS wasn’t planned, I just started writing and had the first draft done in 31 days and through the entire editing process, the plot didn’t change from draft 1 to draft final, save for a few scenes where I had to fix the surface level problem some characters were facing, but not the reason why they were facing it.

The plot never needed massive rewrites because every scene reflected back on the core themes of the story, and every single scene was necessary to tell it. So even when I had to change the intensity of an argument or flesh out a conversation or change the tone of something here or there, the purpose of whatever was underneath remained.

With that throughline in mind, the rest of the book fell into place around it. My core characters each have a role to answer that thematic question, and side characters around then were created to fill in the world, provide friends, relatives, romances, and the like, each with their own perspectives still on that one big question. My villains, too, all exist to answer that question. Outside of the romances, every single scene is doing at least one thing either for the plot, the protagonist, or the deuteragonist to answer that question. ENNS’ secondary themes were also written into as many scenes as I could (of which I won’t spoil here).

When you write with a theme like this in mind, it gives you these sort of bowling bumper rails to help keep you from straying off into superfluous storylines that bog down the pacing and start to feel messy.

Yes, you’re writing fanfic. But what is it really about? Now maybe it is just a coffee shop AU or 50k words of smut—you do you. Not everything has to be deep and meaningful beyond being entertaining. Themes just provide direction.

For example, I like the idea of slowburn fanfics. The idea. I will happily sit down for a fic that’s half a million words long if the characters and the slowburn are compelling enough. There might not be themes, but the story never forgets its throughline—these two characters eventually coming together.

In practice, though, I see way too many “slowburn” fics out there that are just 90% fluff. The chapters stagnate, trading development for taunting the audience with the will they/won’t they. The plot toddles off to to play around in irrelevant scenes with irrelevant characters. Things that probably wouldn’t bother me if I wasn’t already expecting the romance that was promised, the romance I have to keep waiting for when I could just go read something else that delivers it faster and clearer.

—

Even if your writing process begins with a few scattered sticky notes and a notion of what you kind of want it to be about, you don’t have to hammer out pages of prose to be productive.

If you get stuck halfway through, having your throughline helps you sit back and ask yourself this very important question: What does Character want, how do they get it, and what’s in their way?

[writingquestionsanswered]

Anonymous asked: I struggle with motivation to write and figuring out what I want to happen in my story. I'm really good at picking out tropes, understanding character motivation, seeing where the story is going, recognising good writing, etc. I often have dreams that are full-fledged, complex stories, so I know the creativity is there. It's just, for some reason, when it's my intent to create, nothing happens. I get stuck thinking 'they'll see this coming' or 'this wouldn't work', and I can't figure out how I want it to go. So, I feel like I'm pretty good at stories... when I'm not trying? And i dont know how to do it without trying. I hope this makes sense lol

Struggling with Motivation and Direction

Being able to recognize good stories and dream up good story ideas is a great place to start, but there's more to writing a good story than ideas, tropes, and character motivation. Stories revolve around conflict (internal, external, or both) and the protagonist's pursuit of a goal that will resolve that conflict. Stories have structure... they go through specific phases (setup, rising action, falling action, denouement) and hit specific plot points (hook, inciting incident, midpoint, climax)... and sometimes more specific phases and plot points (there are all different theories on what those are). And through all of these phases and plot points, your character is growing and/or changing (and or changing the people/world around them) while in pursuit of their goal/resolution to the conflict.

There are some writers who can come up with an idea that instantly includes all of those important phases and plot points, and they can sit down over whatever period of time and almost effortlessly hammer out a first draft. However, that is not the case for most writers or most stories. Most stories require some level of plotting or planning ahead of time to work out what happens in all of those specific phases and plot points, and what the character has to do in order to resolve the conflict, and figure out how the resulting events cause your character to change and/or grow/and/or change the people/world around them. Some writers do the bare minimum amount of pre-planning, but then they push through that work as they write, figuring everything out as they go. It's anything but effortless. It's really hard work.

And the thing is, you will probably figure out that you're a planner--meaning that you generally need to put whatever amount of plotting/planning into a story before you write--or you're a pantser--meaning that you do a minimal amount of planning ahead of time but take the time as you're writing to figure things out. Or you may find it depends on the story you're writing. Either way, don't give up just because a story isn't naturally falling out of your fingertips onto the page. Stories are like lumps of clay that you want to turn into a beautiful sculpture. You're not going to pinch here, pull there, and voila. It takes a lot of time and effort to shape them into the thing you want them to be. And sure... there are sculptors who can sit down and create a gorgeous sculpture out of a lump of clay in mere moments, but for most it's not that easy. Same with writing.

So, don't give up. You're right where you need to be. Spend some more time learning about how stories work. (You can look through the posts on my Plot & Story Structure master list to start with.) Read a lot, and when you read, see if you can pick out the different story phases and plot points. Analyze stories you love to see how you work. Author K.M. Weiland has a story structure database that pulls apart popular stories and breaks them down into all those different pieces. There are also a lot of great videos on YouTube about story structure and plotting.

Ultimately, keep at it. You'll get there!!!

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

I’ve been writing seriously for over 30 years and love to share what I’ve learned. Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!

LEARN MORE about WQA

SEE MY ask policies

VISIT MY Master List of Top Posts

COFFEE & FEEDBACK COMMISSIONS ko-fi.com/wqa

[performativezippers]

Could you share your thoughts about beats in writing, please?

OKAY HERE WE GOOOOO this is going to be long but honestly it could have been so much longer so oops!

tl;dr: Beats are when things in the story happen.

So in a mystery novel, for example, when does the crime occur? when do they think they've solved it, but they're wrong? when do they realize they were wrong? when is their life in danger? when do they know who did it? when does the reader know who did it? when is the b-plot introduced and when it is resolved?

These typically happen in a similar place in each mystery novel, because of course it wouldn't make sense if it went: (1) you think you know who did it, and then (2) the crime is committed. Right? or if the very first person they suspected did it and they catch them immediately! that's never what happens because then what's the other 200 pages of the book?

so there is relative order, and you know it even as a passive reader, so then the question is how spaced out are those things throughout the fic or manuscript?

in a romance, it's the same. typically we see:

meet cute/first meeting/first canon meeting (the pilot) e.g. alex meets maggie at the airport and they fight over jurisdiction, or jane and maura work a case together as usual but it's the first one where jane is scared, aka a new start to their existing relationship

why aren't they together off the bat? (aka why is this a romance novel and not a romance sentence?) e.g. alex thinks she's straight and they're good friends, or maura dates elon musk types and jane is, you know, not that

complication e.g. alex comes out and then asks maggie to be her gf but maggie says no because alex is fresh off the boat, or maura starts dating jane's dumbass brother

false high (if there is a third act breakup, this is the happy time before that) e.g. alex and maggie get together and are very happy kissing the girls they want to kiss, or maura dumps tommy because her life with jane is more important to her

low point (this is often the 3rd act breakup, but doesn't have to be) e.g. alex freaks out when family conflicts with romance and dumps maggie, or jane kills maura's dad

KISS KISS KISS (aka the happily ever after) e.g. alex apologizes and sanvers stays together forever because the show was cancelled, or jane performs surgery on maura in the woods and then they kiss forever because the show was cancelled

SO, all of those things have to happen, and beats are when. you can of course put your plot points whenever you want them. it's your life and your art and your hobby!! have fun! but if you want to learn "craft" or whatever, or get traditionally published, you need to know when the conventional beats for your genre are, so that you can show you know what you're doing.

You've noticed beats even if you haven't thought about them. Sometimes a fanfic feels like it's going on too long or ending too abruptly, which is because they didn't place their beats carefully. Maybe it's taking forever to get past the set-up, and then the ending feels rushed. Maybe they got to the end of the plot but kept writing little one-shots or vignettes that don't have any tension in them. Almost all pacing problems can be solved by beats!

There are two main beat sheets I use for writing romcoms, Save the Cat and Romancing the Beat. There are book and workshops for both. My spreadsheet I use for every book uses Save the Cat beats, which was originally developed for screenplays. Here's a screenshot of that from the spreadsheet i use religiously:

I try to focus on

inciting incident at 0 or 10% (catalyst)

fun and games 25-50%

mid point high right around 50%

Things get bad from 50-75 until dark night of the soul from 75-80%

Redemption 80-90%, climax around 90%, final snippet less than 1,000 after end of climax

I do the math on my word count and ideal final word count to reverse outline where i am. in my book that's going to be published, i was really struggling with how to fill the 50-75% chunk; it was perfectly paced up until the shattering of the false high at 50%, and I knew what would happen after the dark night of the soul at 75%, but my project was to figure out how i could keep the plot driving forward and interesting while the MC's mood and situation tanked for a full 25% of the book. It turns out in the most recent draft, that stuff is 52-86%, and is stuff i really love. i was able to work in other plot points earlier that had time to breathe and got the space they needed in that portion, as well as find the balance between 20k of boring moping and maintaining tension while the romance was tanked.

it's very very hard to use beats in a fic you're posting as you're writing it (which is most of the fics i post), but even having it in the back of my mind helps. For the Ultimatum fic i'm writing and posting now, i knew before i started posting what the midpoint false high would be, plus the dark night of the soul, plus the endgame. it's important to make sure any b-plots, or in the case other couples, get their shit resolved around the same times as Kacy does, so that we don't need too much wrap up/exposition after the kacy climax.

what other questions or thoughts do you have about beats and plot pacing? send them to me!

[that-ari-blogger]

Inciting Incident (Thank Goodness)

One of the most popular songs in Wicked is sung by Galinda, and centres around the idea that the society she lives in is corrupt and that she is the only one who knows how it really works. But is she right about that? Does she actually know as much as she thinks?

I think the answer is complicated, and that's the fun of it. I think that Glinda has intellectually grasped that the system is flawed, but I don't think she's emotionally wrapped her head around it. Case and point, the complete and utter cognitive dissonance that is Thank Goodness.

Let me explain.

SPOILERS AHEAD: (Wicked, The Trekkie's Tale)

Thank Goodness is actually two songs. Thank Goodness itself, and a reprise of No-one Mourns The Wicked. So, it's a rehashing of the first act, opening with Glinda conversing with the crowd, the difference is whether or not she is appearing to agree with it.

In the first Glinda tries to argue for Elphaba's morality, and it frames the entire story. But now, Glinda stands idly by and goes along with all that the chorus says while they get more and more worked up by lies that she knows to be untrue.

You would think that the two segments of the song being in agreement would mean that they go well together, but they really don't. Thank Goodness and No-one Mourns The Wicked do not fit with each other at all, in my opinion.

So, what does this mean?

I think that this song shows Glinda lying to herself, and finally starting to crack and realise what is happening.

Glinda spends this song deflecting from the problem, instead of confronting it head on. She relies on popularity and giving the people what they want to distract them.

My ex-girlfriend is being hunted by the masses for something she didn't do, but look over here, I'm getting married!

"Like some terrible green blizzard

Throughout the land she flies

Defaming our poor Wizard

With her calumnies and lies!"

The obvious thing here is the tense. This is happening now, as opposed to something the characters have lived through and made it out the other side of. It is more immediate.

But the other thing that I want to point out is the wall that the Ozians are putting up. The reason Elphaba can't get through to anyone is because they think she is lying, because who are you more likely to believe, someone who you trust implicitly, or someone who everyone around you says is dangerous?

The song is broken into four sections. The introduction, Glinda's two reflections, and Madame Morrible's story, which prompts her to change her mind a bit.

"When you bowed before his throne

He decreed you'd hence be known

As Glinda the Good, officially!"

The following is an excerpt from The Trekkie's Tale, a Star Trek fanfic first published in 1974.

"Gee, golly, gosh, gloriosky," thought Mary Sue as she stepped on the bridge of the Enterprise. "Here I am, the youngest lieutenant in the fleet - only fifteen and a half years old." Captain Kirk came up to her...

"Here, take over the ship for a minute while I go get some coffee for us."

This is the archetypal Mary Sue story, a format where the protagonist gets all that they want and more. The world revolves around Mary Sue, and as a result, it isn't particularly compelling. She wins everything, then she saves the day and dies, and everyone mourns her.

Nobody online seems to be able to agree on whether this story was a satire of general fanfiction trends or not, a fact that I find rather funny.

But compare that to the story Madame Morrible is telling about Glinda. Allegedly, the wizard gave her the title for... not much actually. In Morrible's version of events, good people get things just because, and nobody is asking any questions.

Essentially, Glinda is getting all that she wants on a silver platter, with no questions asked, no strings attached. Well, one string attached.

"Then with a jealous squeal

The Wicked Witch burst from concealment

Where she had been lurking, surrpetitially!"

I mentioned in my post on Defying Gravity (maybe go check that one out) that the central conflict that ended Elphaba and Glinda's relationship was that Elphaba was prepared to sacrifice everything, and Glinda wasn't. But Glinda did have to give up something to achieve her dream, and I don't think she quite understood that until now. To get the power she craved, Glinda had to lose Elphaba.

This song is essentially bludgeoning Glinda over the head with the fact that this tradeoff was not worth it.

That is the dissonance inherent to Glinda's entire character. She recognises the flaws in the world around her but has convinced herself that it will be worth it when she gets to power.

I don't think that Galinda would have realised this, and I am making a point of differentiating Glinda and Galinda. In my mind, Glinda is the version of this character who fell in love with and was changed by Elphaba. The two characters are incredibly similar, and one is an evolution of the other, but it is the influence of Elphaba that makes the difference.

Galinda was seeking power for the sake of it, a person who got her way because she couldn't understand anything else. But Elphaba changed that and gave her a purpose for seeking to climb the ladder. I think Glinda believed she could make a difference from within the structure of Oz, probably to help Elphaba.

Glinda has got everything she theoretically wanted, but at the behest of the reason she was doing it, and now that she is here, she can't even initiate the change she wanted to change. Glinda made the wrong choice, and is only now realising it.

"We couldn't be happier

Right, dear?

Couldn't be happier

Right here

Look what we've got

A fairy-tale plot

Our very own happy ending."

If you are wondering why I've been leaving Glinda's monologues until the end, it is because they make my case for me, and make analysis rather difficult as a result. I have been saying over and over that this musical is about dreams and reality colliding, and that is explicitly stated in these verses.

The fact that there are two of these mirrors the two sides of Glinda's character. The first is the side that craves the attention and has got everything that she wants, then the song reminds her of Elphaba, and she tries again with a more nuanced perspective.

"Though it is, I admit

The tiniest bit

Unlike I anticipated

But I couldn't be happier

Simply couldn't be happier

Well - not simply

'Cause getting your dreams

It's strange, but it seems

A little, well, complicated"

This is literally what I've been saying. She's got what she wanted, but not in the way she wants. It's complicated, and that facade of hers is finally cracking.

That duality is mirrored by the time signature, which is maddening. The song oscillates between a ton of different signatures, and if someone with more musical knowledge understands anything more about this than me, please give me a hand.

From my, admittedly limited, understanding, this feels like a lack of surety. Glinda doesn't know what she wants or thinks anymore, so she can't decide what she is singing.

It also gives an incredibly informal tone, as the lack of structure matches how a person speaks, almost. There have been two characters who have distinct speech patterns in this musical, Madam Morrible, and Glinda. The script of both of whom is written in recurring patterns and rhythms, making up words to match the metre of their sentence. It's pompous and pseudointellectual.

This is most obvious in how smooth the start of Defying Gravity is. There, Glinda doesn't have to change how she talks to match the song, because she is already speaking in the right rhythm.

Cynthia Erivo's rendition of this song in PBS's Wicked In Concert is phenomenal and I highly recommend you check it out, not least of all because removing the crowd gives the song a completely different vibe.

But here, halfway through a song, she gives up with artfulness and just speaks her mind. It's still a song, so you still get the rhythms and melodies, but that is breaking down, and is gone in the script from this point forwards. That's partially why I say Glinda and Galinda are different people, they sound different to each other.

There are a few almost exceptions to this rule, and I say almost exceptions because they come really close to breaking the mould, but don't.

In this exception, Glinda is trying to convince herself that she is happy. The song is limited to one thought, the idea that Glinda should be happy, and there can't be anything wrong. She has got everything she wanted, and that would make her happy, right? Happy is what happens when all of your dreams... That's the word that throws her off, dreams.

This is no longer Glinda's dream.

This song is a microcosm of Glinda's entire arc in the musical. She follows the story laid out for her, but is changed by the journey until it no longer fits. She has changed, and now she can't do anything about it.

Ironically, Glinda has gained all the authority she could dream of, but she is more powerless and has less agency than she started with, and all of that happened without her notice.

"There's a kind of a sort of, cost

There's a couple of things get, lost

There are bridges you cross

You didn't know you crossed

Until you've crossed."

Final Thoughts

Genuinely, my favourite trope in a story is a character undergoing character development and not realising. For example, the "nobody's that heartless" line in The Emperor's New Groove.

But Glinda is my favourite example of this because of the way in which she reaches her conclusions. She is smart, possibly the most intelligent character in the entire musical, but her biases cause her to make some serious leaps of logic and ignore several things that would change her worldview until she runs headfirst into them.

Also, the stagecraft of this song is simple in order to not distract from Glinda's thoughts, but that means a lot of these photos are remarkably similar. I apologise for that.

Next week, I will be looking at Wonderful, and how it forms a neat little mirror of Sentimental Man, so stick around if that interests you.

Previous - Next

[scifrey]

NINE-TENTHS

Twenty-four is one year too young for a quarter-life crisis, but hey, Colin's always been an overachiever. He's got a degree in Sustainable Tourism, which his family says he's wasting as a barista, an annoying anxiety disorder, and no freaking idea what to do with his life.

The only thing going his way is the cute coffee shop regular, a homo draconis named Dav (who, in his humanshape, is a total hottie.) Still, it'd be easier if Dav didn't have a habit of accidentally setting things on fire when he's startled. Like the café kitchen.

When Dav breaks draconic taboo and volunteers as a replacement bean-roaster to apologize for the inferno meet-ugly, sparks really fly. Everything's finally happening for Colin, until he learns that hooking up with Dav means that under dragon law, Colin is absorbed into Dav's hoard.

Possession may be nine-tenths of the law, but becoming his boyfriend's property does not make this whole identity crisis thing easier. Especially now that Colin must navigate politics, paparazzi, and legal questions about his personhood. Colin's still angling for his Happily Ever After, but the growing scrutiny on his relationship with Dav threatens their budding romance.

And if he's not careful, Colin's fight for agency may just destroy symbiotic human/dragon relationships worldwide.

🐉☕❤️

A sassy, queer, alternate universe romance from Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 2011 author J.M. Frey. Wrapped in discussions of autonomy and colonialism, Nine-Tenths meets in the middle between Red, White & Royal Blue and the Temeraire series.

🐉☕❤️

Part One

There's this thing in stories called the "inciting incident". 

And mine? It's a goddamn doozy.

It’s the part of the book, right at the start, where the lovers have their meet-cute, the farm boy leaves for the wider world, the Chosen One is attacked by her first evil monster, blah, blah, blah. You know what I mean. It's the place where everything opens up and you have no idea what you're in for—only that it'll be exciting.

I know all about Inciting Incidents because I was going to be a writer.

No, I thought I was going to be a writer. Historical romance, that’s my jam. Dukes, rakes, windblown-gowns, dropped handkerchiefs, cliffside confessions—I am a slut for that stuff. Forget real history (totally flunked ‘We’re-Feeding-You-Colonialist-Narratives-Disguised-As-Education’ 101). Give me made-up kingdoms and far-flung pirates. Give me the fantasy of a happily ever after that lasts beyond ‘the end’. Give coffee and stories, and I am a content boy.

But right before he got sick, in the summer between my first and second year of university, my Dad and I had a serious talk about writing. How much work it is. How long it takes to start paying off. Backup plans.

And then… after, I thought, well, he wasn’t wrong. If life was going to be pointlessly, stupidly, cruelly short, then I should spend my time trying to do something good, right? I switched majors. Science makes sense. Science is logical. Science creates vaccines and saves lives. Science can bring species back from the brink of extinction. Science doesn’t break your heart.

All of this is to say that I can—with complete and utter certainty—point to the exact moment when my life became a trash fire. It was my twenty-fourth birthday, and my big sister Gemma gave me the dumbest, but totally plot-inciting gift: a sunrise alarm clock.

The Incident starts like this, in Mum’s pokey poppies-and-roosters kitchen, with Gemma leaning on the back of my chair: 

"I have a perfectly good alarm clock." I hold up my phone, then let it slap back down onto the plastic tablecloth. "Goes ding when there's stuff."

My sister heaves the kind of sigh only eldest-born siblings make, indulgent and frustrated at the same time. I love making her make that noise. It's hilarious.

"It wakes you up gently," Gem says. "So you’re not cranky."

"I’m not cranky in the mornings."

Everyone laughs. I may have snapped at Stuart this morning when he shook my foot through my childhood bed sheets like an aggressive chihuahua. Okay. So I'm cranky in the mornings.

"I don't see how it's supposed to work." Stu grabs the clock. "How can you see the light if your eyes are closed?"

As the younger brother of twin siblings, I am used to having the toys I’m playing with pulled out of my hands. Instead of trying to snatch it back, I fiddle with the iridescent green bow that was on my present, then stick it to my ear. Mum smirks at my accessory, but otherwise her prim little 'all my babies are home to roost' face stays in place.

I'm the only one of us who went away to school, and stayed away. Gem came back to live with Mum straight after she finished her undergrad, so Mum wouldn't be alone in the house. Stuart never left the city, though he's got his own place now. But that's why I stayed away after I graduated last year. Mum and Gem don't need me, and if I came back, Stu would try to get me to join his crew.

I go weak in the knees for the kind of person jacked enough to pick me up and consensually throw me around. Standing on a roof next to a whole crew of pretty roughs trying to help them replace shingles? That's gonna lead to me swooning and dying of a broken neck. Stu doesn’t want that on his conscience.

Because she's a bossy know-it-all, Gem takes my present from Stu and opens it to show me how it works. She huffs. "You can see sunlight through your eyelids. It just works, okay?"

Stu helps himself to another piece of my birthday cake, licking the icing off his fingers and the serving knife. Mum slaps the hand holding the knife, and Stu flushes up and sets it down. He descends on his third piece like a wolf, but at least now he's watching his manners.

"There's an instruction manual," I point out as Gem tosses the booklet on the table.

"The day you read the instructions," Mum says, "is the day I'll know for sure the fairies really swapped you."

It's an old joke, being the Changeling child. I'm the only one of them with dark hair. The rest of my family are blond as heck.

Mum’s grinning into that little curl in the side of her mouth that holds secrets. Dad always called it Mum's 'Peter Pan Kiss’. He'd wrap his arms around her waist and kiss that corner, and Mum would swat at him for ruining her lipstick.

Thinking about Dad reminds me he's dead.

I hate the swoop-and-stab sensation in my chest that comes with remembering. Especially when there's a moment you want to share, and you turn your head to his chair and start composing the sentence in your head: "Hey, Mum's doing that—" and then you stop.

You stop composing. Stop turning. Stop thinking about sharing. Stop breathing.

Because that chair is empty.

Dad's dead.

And you'll never get the chance to point out the Peter Pan kiss again. Or watch Mum swat him. Or listen to him tease us for falling for Mum's Old World fairy stories. Or hear his stupid har-har-har donkey laugh, thick with his French accent.

It's my birthday. 

He's not here. 

I'll have another birthday, next year, and he won't be there for that one either.

I try to control my breathing, but Mum hears it hitching. I'm already staring at Dad's terrible empty chair, so it's not like I can hide what I'm thinking about. Mum curls her fingers over my knuckles.

"I wish he was here too, mo leanbh," she says softly. 

Stu and Gem go quiet.

"Sucks," I cough out, deciding to give no one the pleasure of watching me actually cry. I'll save it for later, when I'm back in my own apartment. Not because of any kind of 'real men don't' toxic masculinity bullshit, but because I hate the fuss. They take the shit my therapist tells them about being my support network too much to heart.

"More tea, Mummers?" I ask instead.

"Time for something stronger, don't you think?"

Next Part | Read on Wattpad

Trailer Music: "A Thousand Years" by The Piano Guys Cover Art: @seancefemme

[moongothic]

Quick point to re: is Croc openly trans or not

So Ivankov's ability to change someone's biological sex is kind of a "myth" in the OP world, right? The way Bon-chan talked about Ivankov was with an aura of legend, how they had heard all these incredible things about Ivankov but couldn't even be entirely sure the person truly even existed until they got to meet face-to-face, because the stories told about Ivankov were just so incredible

Of course, between Iva-chan's imprisonment 6-5 years ago and the actual difficulty people would have genuinely finding them to begin with (being a Rev and travelling around the world sometimes and othertimes just hanging around in the Calm Belt on Momoiro Island), the word about their deeds would turn into Stuff of Legend as few would be able to actually verify it, see it for themselves and tell others all about it, but those stories had to start somewhere, right?

And we do have an interesting note here, as this prince mentioned his mother visiting Kamabakka Queendom 15 years ago (pre-timeskip)

Now one could think that hey, maybe this is where The Legends about Ivankov's miraculous abilities began, but think really about it for a moment; Why would some ruler of a kingdom go out of their way to travel to Kamabakka Queendom, ruled by a member for the Revolutionary Army (=potentially dangerous for a monarch), if they hadn't heard about Ivankov's ability from somewhere else first?

And that's where the timeline mention gets interesting. Because guess who was born just two years before this prince's mother made her brave journey to see Iva-chan?

I'm just saying, if Crocodile went missing for like 4-9 months and then came back fully transitioned out of nowhere, and Morgans made a huge god damn deal about it on the news, letting the whole world know about the Warlord magically having become a man, yeah, that would start some rumors about who what where and how this even happened. And needless to say, this could easily send a lot of people out to the seas to try to find the Miracle Worker who transed Crocodile's gender, including some monarchs who have the resources to both verify the legends but also actually make the journey to find Ivankov (Also, if the inciting incident that started the legends about Ivankov happened due to Crocodile like 17-19 years ago, that would add to that aura of myth Ivankov has around them, as it would've been a long ass time ago when the first rumors about Emporio Ivankov would've gotten out there)

[pygmi-cygni]

idk if this counts as a request, but I loved your post on starting, and I was wondering if you had any advice for one step before a writing session (i.e., going from the staring-at-the-wall phase to sitting down in front of some sort of screen and opening the right document). It sounds silly, but that's where I'm at right now; I've figured out how to handle a blank page most of the time, once I'm there, but I'm having trouble getting to that point. Is this something you deal with, and if so, do you have any tips for handling it?

i'm gonna assume you mean the like outlining/drafting stage? like not 'writing' the story but just like making scene outlines and stuff? that's what I'll answer but if it's wrong pls send me a follow up and i'll fix it lmao

outlining is a very person-to-person thing because it fits the story and the style and the blah de blah de blah.

but...here are some basic templates you could build off of and make your own.

the 3 act outline. divide your story into 3 'acts'.

Act 1: set-up and exposition - in the Hobbit, for example, this act would be like the arrival of the dwarves, the setup of the journey, and the beginning of the journey.

This act looks different for every story. you can pick where this act ends, but it usually transitions into the second act right before a point of major conflict or the beginning of rising tension. this act includes the inciting incident and the first 'turning point'.

Act 2: confrontation - the beginning of the intense stuff. In the Hunger Games, this would look like the beginning of the Games, where Katniss is first realizing how dangerous it is, maybe the first time she gets seriously injured. it ends with the 'darkest moment', when the characters feel all is lost and they need a win.

Act 3: resolution - The final act contains the climax, the plot twist, and the fallout. it's the final battle, then any last obstructions to peace, and then the clean-up of everybody going home, wounds being bandaged, the end yayyy.

Personally, I think 3 acts is too vague, so I do 7 acts, which is basically 3 acts divided into two (plus one) to narrow down the different phases. You can absolutely mix it up depending on the story; really big intense stories might benefit from more detailed outlining just to keep the facts straight, whereas smaller stories might not need it.

play around, find what works. if you hate an outlining process, don't use it. don't butcher your story to fit it, just find something that works.

Here are some other misc tips for setting up a writing space:

keep a fact sheet handy. just basic things to remember, if you have a hard time with remembering setting locations (me cough cough) draw up a lil map to keep it straight.

a goal checklist for the part/chapter. write out generally where you want the story to go in that place, and some need-to-happen things. this can help for writer's block, if you don't know what to write next.

remember it's okay to write out of order. make a separate document for things that you liked but don't necessarily have a 'place' in the story yet. keep it on a back tab and if you realize 'oh that piece of dialogue would be great here' do an ol' copy paste and ta daaa

I hope this answered your question and helped out anyone else who needed this! if it didn't please message me again (no hard feelings my skull is thicker than Oscar's ass) and I will write a follow up!

xox love ya

[pinkeoni]

Would Will's Importance Really Be Out of Nowhere?

This is a counter to some of the arguments I've received from anons and seen on reddit re: Will's importance to the supernatural plot and his connection to the Upside Down.

"If Will was suddenly important to the supernatural plot, it would be out of the blue."

I'll admit that not everyone is as hyper focused on Will as I am. Yes, I do think about him an abnormal amount of the time, so I'm probably going to be noticing far more details than the average person. And if the majority of audience members don't see Will's importance, then it can't be for nothing, right?

But I think there's a fine line between what the writer's leave out and what... certain audience members choose to willfully ignore.

Of course I wish that Will received more screen time in the show, but that isn't to say that there isn't any evidence to suggest that he holds a connection to the supernatural. Here's a list of Will's connection over all four seasons:

Will is taken into the Upside Down and stays there for a week. This event is the inciting incident of the entire show

Will maintains a connection with the entity that targeted him (which we later learn to be Vecna) and he is possessed by him

Will's connection to Vecna persists, even though his screen time is squandered in this season

Will is mostly removed from the supernatural plot, and yet Nancy brings him up by name while in the Upside Down regarding both time and the lights. At the end of the season it's revealed that Vecna and Will are still connected.

If it were just one, two, or even three seasons where Will had a correlation to the supernatural plot, then I might be able to brush it off as not being important or coming out of nowhere. If Will was only taken in season one, he was used as a MacGuffin for plot purposes. If it was just season one and two, Will was in the wrong place at the wrong time when he was taken and Vecna possessed him as a means to an end. If none of the events from the past three seasons happened, and at the end of season four Will suddenly felt Vecna on the back of his neck, that would be out of nowhere. But it's the fact that this association started at the very beginning and persisted for all four seasons is what makes me raise an eyebrow. The hints are subtle, but they are still there.

"Why doesn't Vecna seem to care about Will in season's three and four?"

I'm going to answer this question with another question, why would Vecna reveal his plans to his opponents? And from a writers perspective, why would you want to reveal your endgame so soon in the narrative?

My personal belief is that Will possesses something vital to Vecna's endgame plans, and thus is integral to this last stretch of the show. If Vecna signaled to the gang that Will was important to him, then the others would make sure that Will is protected and try to formulate a plan surrounding that. Vecna would want to throw them off and want Will as vulnerable as possible. Furthermore, if the writers wanted to create a twist, then they wouldn't put all of their eggs in one basket and leave nothing to be revealed in the final season.

But still, I'm not making these claims based off of nothing, as per the evidence that I listed above. Simply saying in itself that "Vecna is holding off on Will because he's important to his plans" is a pretty flimsy claim that you could then apply to any character. "Well, Murray is important to Vecna's plans and is the big twist because he hasn't been targeted!" Luckily for me, my claim about Will is supported with evidence and isn't a claim that has to stand by itself.

"The show is all about El and her relationship between Vecna and the Upside Down."

This claim isn't wrong, per se. It's been proven before that El has the most screen time out of any character, and to say that she isn't important to the supernatural, Vecna, and the Upside Down would just be false.

But I don't think that pointing out Will's importance in the story takes away from any of El's relevance. I'm trying to show how they share the space, although there are some El fans (redditors) who would rather completely write off any indication of Will's influence on the supernatural plot and place it all on her. Here is how they both connect to this storyline:

El has a connection to the Upside Down since she is the one that opened a gate there, although I would argue that Will's connection is more personal on the basis that he spent a week there. What "created" the Upside Down and made it look the way it did is still up in the air, although Nancy's dialogue in 4x07 imply influence from both El and Will. The only "confirmation" we have that El created the Upside Down was an outside comment made by a production designer, and even then his wording is very vague and "created" is used in quotes.

Will is actually the only one implicated in how the lights function in the Upside Down, once again per Nancy's dialogue. El carries the gate opening ability and Will seems to carry... something else.

El obviously has a history with Vecna, although to say that Will doesn't is obtuse. We know that he possessed him and that their connection persists through seasons three and four.

My Question: If Will is really unimportant, why would the cast and creators tease that he is?

I know I just stated that outside comments from cast and crew shouldn't be taken as fact, although this point, which they have been pushing in interviews since season four ended, would be a really weird thing to lie about. If anything, it would be mean spirited. Teasing the importance of a gay character, only to reveal that he isn't, would feel pretty mean if anything. There's also a difference between "confirming" huge details in the show (as was the case with the production designer) and hinting at what is to come next as a marketing tactic.

"This is an ensemble show, Will isn't the main character/there is no main character."

This I agree with, partially. Not unlike what I said regarding El, I don’t think that me pointing out Will’s importance is taking away from anyone else’s storyline. Saying that the show is an ensemble show is true, although to say that the show balances it’s cast equally is also a false statement, which to be honest is a fault of the writing. As I said earlier that it’s provable that El has more screentime than any other character. And still, it’s not unusual for even pieces of ensemble media to have a central character as it’s focus. As much as I am excited for Will to have his spotlight, I do still wish that each character be given ample time and care (even if this is naïve and wishful thinking on my part).

In conclusion: Yes Will is important to the supernatural plot, yes he will be a focus, no it won’t come out of nowhere.

[exilepurify]

The first OVA for MP100 has really interesting connotations in terms of what Reigen actually knows about Mob’s experiences. Reigen’s the one who’s narrating the recap, so we can assume the perspective and the things he mentions are solely based on his own understanding of the situation.

Obviously the nature of a recap episode is that not every detail can be included, and I recognize that I might be applying meaning to what may just be limitations of the form, but it’s fun to speculate about the meeting of meaning and execution, so why not, right?

When Reigen is describing the events of season 1, he completely skips over Teruki strangling Mob. If it’s meant to be a recap for the audience, the strangling was maybe the most important thing to happen in the whole fight other than the ???% explosion. It’s where Teruki’s worldview starts to break down, it’s a moment where Teruki’s desperation causes him to betray his own moral boundaries (“What am I doing???”), and it’s where we first learn about Mob hurting Ritsu—the inciting incident for quite literally every single thing that happens in the entire plot of Mob Psycho 100. But not only does Reigen not mention those at all, they also don’t show any footage of it happening. It skips directly from the knives to Mob’s ???% explosion.

In the scene that happens in S1E6, where Mob asks Reigen about what qualifies as self defense, Mob mentions balding Teruki, shredding his clothes, destroying his school, and throwing him up in the air, but he doesn’t mention Teruki strangling him to Reigen. Ever.

Mob also never tells Reigen about the incident where he hurt his brother with his ???% explosion as kids. He mentions to Reigen that his powers are dangerous and that he’s scared of hurting people, but his guilt compels him to never mention the specifics of the event to anyone but Ritsu. And directly because of Reigen never knowing the severity of Mob’s concerns, he underestimates Mob’s internal struggles and even trivializes them sometimes, which is why he has the whole “I didn’t know!!!!” moment in the finale. If he knew that guilt was eating Mob alive like that, he would’ve handled it better than he did, obviously.

Instead, Mob writes in that part himself, sitting alone in his bedroom, rather than transcribing what Reigen is narrating. And even when he does write about it, he chooses to say very little in detail. The audience sees the whole scene play out to fulfill the purpose of the recap, but Mob’s internal dialogue—which is reading out in his head what he’s currently writing—says (in the dub bc it’s the one I currently have downloaded for amvs lol), “When my brother, Ritsu, was little, he would get really happy whenever I showed him my powers. But, because I hadn’t learned how to control them, I ended up hurting the brother I loved so much. Because of me, Ritsu…” And from here it transitions immediately to the alley scene. He really doesn’t even say much. When a kid says they hurt their brother, the first things that come to your mind usually aren’t all that serious. It’s pretty common for siblings to hit and bite (sorry to my older sister—I was a biter 😬) and stuff sometimes, especially when young. No one would assume he was talking about pretty serious head trauma from just that.

He does, apparently, know about Mob and Teru torturing Terada via waterboarding. I’m assuming Teru told him that part. It certainly wasn’t Terada. He seems to think the torture is hilarious, though. “*in a laughing, smug voice* This poor soul was tortured and embarrassed. He was in way over his head—literally.” It kinda was, tbf.

Obviously the integrity of the story starts going straight off the rails at this point, with Reigen poorly photoshopping himself into every scene to fulfill his chuunibyou complex. I’m just going to blanket assume that everything Reigen knows about Mob’s actions in the claw division before he arrived there himself comes from a mixture of Mob’s bare-bones reporting and Teruki bragging about the details of power level and technique and stuff.

When it comes to Mob’s 100% rejection and defeating Muto, Reigen openly admits to only knowing of his existence through hearsay and that Mob doesn’t remember how he defeated him. However, for the sake of recap, the audience is shown the full scene of Mob hitting the ceiling on his counter and freaking out, so that’s another interesting dichotomy between Reigen’s understanding of the story vs. what we are shown as the audience in the recap.

And then everything after this point was witnessed by Reigen firsthand, so it’s not so much about his understanding of the situation than it is about the way he’s framing it (which is poorly).

Anyway, it’s super clear that even back in season 1, Reigen had no idea what was actually going on with Mob. And if he did, he didn’t know the ways it was affecting him, or the most heartbreaking details had been fully excluded.

[runningwolf62]

Oh hey, hey Wolf. Remember how the other day you suggested an AU where Ena is the Inquisitor/has the Anchor, and Esti and Brennan are just there along for the ride? One must consider the inciting incident of this, that Esti and Ena split up to better nose around and get information, Esti meets Brennan, and then the two of them go down to Haven to be nosy there.

And then the Conclave explodes. There is talk of one single survivor. All Esti knows is that Ena was up there in the Temple when it blew up. She's dealing with the most profound grief of her life and the only shoulder she has to cry on is that of a human she met four hours ago. And all Ena knows is that she doesn't know where Esti was, maybe she could have gone down to Haven, but more likely she's just - gone. "What do you mean," she asks Cassandra, "that everyone is dead?"

Ena stops the Breach from expanding further, everyone's talking about the Herald of Andraste, but the stories are probably so jumbled that it would take days for Esti to realize that the Conclave's sole survivor is her sister.

This AU concept simply speedruns the angst. Starting right off with it.

Brennan would actually be looking to join the Inquisition, I've realized, because this is the furthest he's ever been from his family, and this will give him something far away from them, money, etc. Like it's a mess rn but if they're taking recruits, he's got experience with horses, he'll be a messenger or stablehand or anything. Like, I think that's something in the back of his mind.

So he's sneaking around to see if they're hiring and also because he's the Trevelyan shame and he wants to be left alone and runs into Esti, who is also sneaking around, and once initial shock wears off, he'd probably offer that she could stick with him because people will assume she's supposed to be there if she's with a human, like, why else would she be walking around openly talking to one? And exploring is more fun with friends, right? And really, he doesn't believe in the Maker anyway, so it might be a bit fun to make fun of everyone.

Brennan is in the middle of a dumb joke, he's been telling them for the past hour to his new friend, (Esti, she'd said, and she likes that he enjoys taking the piss out of everything) and he's making the kinda jokes that are only funny when you're mocking the church that runs everything but you both think is kinda a load of crap.

When the sky explodes. Brennan, when he was in the templars, read a lot to escape. He ended up loving the stars and everything they knew about the night sky because he could always see it and there was so much that was incredible about it.

No book had every described the event happening above them now. The sky is split open, and Brennan has seen wounds. Reminds him of a gash, of split open knuckles, of fights he'd had in training and shallow wounds, of how something supposed to be whole pulls apart.

"What the fuck." He breathes, as he and Esti pick themselves off the ground, immediately having to grab her, "where the fuck are you going, stay here!"

"My- my sister, she was here too, she was up there-"

"Stay here." Brennan drags her back, away from everything, "are you out of you- okay. Fair enough. You're scared, I get it. Esti!" She looks at him, rather than past him like she's gonna bolt for it, "listen to me. I know how things... not like this, but they're gonna look for someone to blame. The last thing you wanna do is be the Dalish they find up there."

Esti blinks and nods jerkily, and Brennan sighs heavily. He didn't want to go back before this anyway. Esti's been the nicest person he's spoken to in the past month.

"And I'll stay with you until we find her, okay?" He offers a hand, "we stick together, deal?"

"Deal, shem."

"Please, Shem is my father's name, call me Brennan." He thinks Esti snorts at that because it's one of the stupidest things anyone's ever said, but as everyone is scrambling about around them in a panic, he's succeeded in one small thing. Keeping either of them from panicking.

He takes a deep breath, "now, what's your sister look like? You came down here, maybe she did too. We'll start where all the Chantry people aren't."

[goodluckclove]

I'm writing a new thing!! I don't really need advice I'm just excited about starting it. They're gay and one of them's a shapeshifter the other has a culturally engrained fear of shapeshifters given that as defenders of the wilderness/ basically very local gods they tend to fuck up anyone who's in their space. I also dong know how to start books which is an issue my beginnings are always weak. How do I start a book. Do I describe the sheep? He's a shepherd btw which I think is fun because the shapeshifter often takes the form of a wolf or coyote. It's also set in a relatively high fantasy setting (no elves and shit just weird magic and a different landscape) that vaguely corresponds to the late 17 or 1800s (they've got some guns i think, they ride horses and trains might exist). How do I start a book. What do I start with. Where do I start. There's no real solid beginning I've got in mind, just a dude trying to take his sheep over a large area on his own. Help please I do actually need advice

Well you see, Ghostie, everyone knows that the first sentence of a novel is the most important part of the entire story. It has to contain the main character's name - in fact, it has to contain the names of every character in your cast - and it has to provoke intrigue and resolve it in a satisfying way without being a too long and jesus christ i can no longer keep up this bit.

I'm annoyed by people who say you need to have a super profound first line. I mean, they're good when they happen. If you can think of one that's great. But if you can't you aren't fucked right off the gate. If your first line isn't something people will get calligraphed onto canvases to hang on the walls of their boring houses (Is this a thing? Did I just make up a type of person to hate?), it doesn't mean your beginning won't be good.

You want to hook the reader. That's what all the guides say, right? They describe a person picking your book off the proverbial shelf and leafing through the first page to see if it's something they'd be interested in. That's solid, but then some go on to make it seem like you have maybe ten words before they either buy the book or toss it across the room in disgust. I'm not saying this is never true. I'm just saying that, personally, that type of person is probably not someone who'd be interested in me or my stories to begin with.

Usually when I'm considering a new book I'll skim the first few pages and then a bit throughout the middle, just to see if I like the prose. I do not put that much weight in the beginning, but it's always a good sign when the general scene feels purposeful. It doesn't have to be a car chase/diamond heist/sex scene/murder. I read someone somewhere saying that you have to start with something exciting and it took like an hour off my life I was so angry.

Here's one out of a billion angles to tackle this puzzle from - where does the story start for you? What is the inciting incident to the inciting incident? This feels like something easy to answer, but oftentimes what you come up with might feel a little inconsequential.

A beginning scene - like, for instance, a prologue centered around only sheep and coyotes - does not necessarily sound interesting on its own. But in a world where shapeshifters usually take on those forms it both sets up the world and establishes a mood. You can play with how much information you give people in the world.

Using my book as an example because I've been watching my editor @hoard-sweet-hoard react to it in real time, at one point he commented that he didn't know if the Eddie in my initial prologue is the same guy as the Edgar in Chapter One. And I was like yeah man that's the whole goddamned point of the book you tiny little king of fools. I wasn't at all that mean. I made a really good sandwich for dinner so I'm feeling extra rowdy. But the point is that I focused less on the action and more on the feeling it would create in the reader.

With that mindset the action doesn't really matter. If it's mundane it can be comforting, or tiring, or numbing, or eerie, or unnerving. If it's far removed from the world we know it can be fantastical and whimsical and sexy, maybe? I don't know. God that sandwich was good. I'm getting really into bagels lately.

Also, from purely the perspective of a writer, you might think of a better beginning midway into the draft. So you can also go back and make a weak start much stronger. You can skip the beginning entirely if it's really fucking with your life. Come back to it later. Who will stop you? Me? I don't even know how to find you. And if I did, you could easily kill me. You have that vibe and I am very clumsy.

Also also start posting excerpts when you get going because that shit sounds rad as fuck.

My bagel had egg and bacon and a hash brown patty and caramelized onion. Man has done a lot of sin, but it is almost neutralized by the insight we once had to caramelize onions. They have a unique flavor that I can only describe as eating the house of a beloved grandmother? Or maybe just the way that house makes you feel?

Yum.

[ceruleanwhore]

WARNINGS: TW for talk of addiction/alcoholism and then also just a heads up that there will be lots of spoilers for Jin and Luke’s routes.

So I’ve talked before about how I don’t like Jin and why but I was recently thinking about him as I started reading Luke’s route again and it occurred to me that maybe part of the issue is just bad writing, like we also see with Leon, Silvio, Chevalier, and others. The most common source of bad writing in this series is mental health and I think that’s a big part of the issue with Jin. They do this thing with him and other characters like Silvio, or Kenshin from ikesen, where they make him The Guy Who Drinks A Lot and then refuse to acknowledge or write addiction because addiction is messy and unattractive. However, I think being messier, more mentally ill, and more pathetic is exactly what Jin needs (and also Silvio but this post isn’t about him) and I wanted to make a post exploring what alcoholic!Jin could look like and how it could change his character in what I see as a positive way.

First is the question of when this addiction would have started and what inciting incident may have pushed Jin into it, and then that also will affect how long he’s been struggling with it by the start of the story. Personally, I like the idea that it started with Bloodstained Rose Day because of all those messy, complicated emotions he probably would want to drown out. I like that idea mainly because it clearly shows not just actual remorse but also how his own life was destroyed by taking Layla’s, and that’s something we just never get in canon which has led to my issue of not being able to believe that his primary motivations around all that are actually good. With something like this, I feel like it would be easier to believe that he did what he thought was right, as best he could at the time but, after all that, is stuck questioning night and day if it was the right thing to do, which then sends him spiraling into mental illness.

The next thing is just what this would look like after ten years, or whatever other time frame if it were a different inciting incident. Keeping in mind that he would have the security of wealth and not having to worry about anything like homelessness, I think some of the main changes that would happen would be isolation from the others and then a gradual decrease in how well and how much he does his work. By the time Belle gets there, he could be lurking around in the shadows and having this sort of cryptid status within the palace as even servants never see him anymore. Also, if he gradually stops doing his work, I like the idea that Luke could be brought in not just for the Belle thing but also to start training to pick up that slack.

Now, one of the main things with mental illness is some level of insecurity about it, and I really want that dialed up with Jin. What I mean is that yeah, of course there would be stuff around worrying about what the people around him think of him as he struggles with this addiction and starts to change because of it, but also, specifically with him, it would soothe my soul for eternity if he had to deal with chronic whiskey dick too. I have this beautiful vision of him trying to drown his sorrows after BSRD and figuring out the hard way that, after a few days of hard drinking, he can’t get it up and then he’d probably try a few more times before being sufficiently embarrassed that he would just stop going out at all. Depending on how bad you want his insecurities to be, it would also be reasonable to include something about how, over time, as his schedule starts to fall apart as his responsibilities are dropped in favor of alcohol, he’d end up developing a gut and then could also be really insecure about that.

The reason I’m going off about all this stuff around insecurities is because all of that would significantly change his dynamic with Belle when she arrives and how he talks to her and everything. If he’s a reclusive alcoholic with crippling insecurities and pretty significant anxiety around the Belle process especially, he is going to be nothing like the cocky casanova we get in canon. Personally, I like this a lot better because I find it a whole lot easier to empathize with than canon Jin’s fuckery, but that’s just me. His arc would have to be hella deep with a ton of character work and it would be all about Belle digging into all his shit and then helping him process the BSRD stuff, bringing Luke in for closure on all of that, helping him heal his childhood trauma from his parents’ relationship. It could end with him deciding to get clean and not wanting her there for that whole messy process, so he’d send her home and ask her to wait for a year and that he would then come get her, which I think is a much less annoying way to do the endings we got with Jin’s route.

Overall, something like this would fix a lot of issues with his character — forced celibacy turning right into a monogamous relationship would mean I don’t have to watch him hit on women or drag Belle into town just to ditch her to go hit on women, having this all start with Bloodstained Rose Day would make his motives and feelings around that more believable, and it would provide better reasoning for some of the things that happen in canon. What I mean by that last point is that, in his route, it makes no sense for him to go to such lengths to force her to spend a lot of her time with him, given his anxieties around Belle, but, if he’s all isolated and mentally ill, that internal push-pull of craving human contact but being so afraid because of who she is makes that work. Also, I feel like his condition would mean that Clause 99 wouldn’t exist because, depending on when he added it in canon, he might have been out of commission by then in this version, which also would fix one of my biggest issues with Jin, so that’s cool.

Anyway, lmk what y’all think!

(Oh and I might make another post later about how ikepri fetishizes mental illness and how they won't tackle addiction because of that but idk.)

[writingquestionsanswered]

Hello! This is my first time asking but I could I have some advice on how to write a story that starts in the climax of the plot already? The context is my MC woke up and they are not able to remember anything, but suddenly, he just woke up in the wards of his family (a very strong political figure in their world might I add) whom he told what his life was but the narratives they are telling does not match even in the slightest of the flashback that's plaguing him as the time stretches. And they were in the middle of the war, too. I'm having a hard time to achieve that mind-blowing... thrill I suppose? They also got a love interest that is unmistakably not the one his family claimed ‘their-spouse’ to be.

Starting with Inciting Incident

Remember: your story's climax is the moment your character faces off against the antagonist once and for all. While some stories do start at the climax, and then flashback to the beginning of the story to build back up to it, it doesn't mean you start at the climax and move forward from there.

I think there can be a lot of confusion with the concept of "In Media Res" which a lot of people confuse as meaning starting in the literal middle of the story, or at the inciting incident or climax. Instead, "in media res" simply means starting in the middle of the action. That action can be the inciting incident, the climax, or the literal middle, but again, it doesn't mean the story moves forward from there.

If you're starting your story at the point where your character wakes up without their memories, this isn't the climax but rather the inciting incident. This is the moment when their life and world are turned upside down. Starting at this moment in a story about memory loss is a great way to go, because your reader knows as little about the character and their world as the character does. It puts the reader in your character's shoes right from the start, and they'll be learning everything right alongside your character.

So, that's really the key is to make sure you're filling in the gaps left by not having an exposition. You'll need to make sure to fairly quickly illustrate this character's natural personality, the world they've woken up into, and what their life was apparently like before they lost their memories. If they're being lied to, you may want to build in some clues that hint at what their actual life was like--such as feeling a place is familiar to them even if they're told "no, you would never have been to such a place."

As far as creating that thrill in that opening moment, it's really going to come down to emotional and sensory description. In lieu of recognizing who they are, where they are, and what happened to them, they're going to focus on their immediate surroundings. What can they see, hear, smell, taste, feel? What does that sensory input tell them about who they are and where they are? How does that sensory input--and what they can learn from it--make them feel? What emotions are they feeling as they process this unfamiliar environment and realize they have no idea who they are, where they are, or what happened to them?

I hope that helps!

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

I’ve been writing seriously for over 30 years and love to share what I’ve learned. Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!

LEARN MORE about WQA

SEE MY ask policies

VISIT MY Master List of Top Posts

COFFEE & COMMISSIONS ko-fi.com/wqa

[wanderingcas]

Hi Sam! I've always loved your writing and your ability to craft such amazing stories which is something I've always struggled with. Could you maybe share your process on how you plot things out? Thank you so much!!!!!

oh wow!! i'm really honored and don't even know what to say!! i have to warn you i don't really have a set process it's just me making things up and then scrambling later down the pike but i do have some things i sometimes follow:

get the idea

write down a wishlist of what sounds fun to write within this idea (this list will quickly be whittled down to like one or two things as the story progresses but it's nice to write it all out)

tell the story to myself in free hand, as in just write it out as if you're telling the story to a friend and don't worry about structure or if you can't think of a certain plot point, this is where you can put gaps of "i don't know what happens here but it'll lead to this", that sort of thing

(big thing to mention that at this point, anything you write down for ideas will be dramatically changed later as the characters come forth, and that's ok, that means your story is telling itself to you rather than the other way around and that's a good thing imo. when you've reached that sweet spot you're good to go)

start thinking of characters, how they'd interact with this world you've created. and if you made the character first, think of how they'd effect plot going forward

once you have a starting point, even if it's just an inciting incident, THEN you can start to form a very bare bones outline, if that's your thing. if outlines break you out in hives DONT do it, just go back to your stream of consciousness writing and clean that up, so that it resembles more of a novel treatment (more info on what this is here, it's used in scriptwriting mostly but i think it works amazingly for writing a novel too)

and then just write the first opening scenes, or any scene, and see where it goes!

like i mentioned before your story is gonna drastically change, and that's ok. in the current story i'm writing, my ending COMPLETELY changed in the last 2 weeks, after writing this story and being sure of it for literally months, and while that's scary that's also okay. it means that your story is developing and telling itself

i hope that helps and lemme know if you want to go into any of it! i think it's important to note that the process of story writing can be so different for each person, depending on if you're a plotter or pantser or a combination of both and you just gotta see what works for you by trial and error and go from there. if someone else's advice doesn't feel right to you then don't put it on; go find another outfit that feels right for you!