#WordWeavers 2405.29 — How would your MC handle finding a spider in their home?
Technically, Wintereyes lives and runs with wolves in the Fell Woods so she doesn't have a home. However, in the worst couple of months of winter, she puts up a lodgepole tent and invites the wolves to stay with her around her cook fire. That means fire wood. That means spiders. If I know her, that probably means blowing them from the wood and safely away.
@sfwrtr I haven't. I think you might be able to get a very rough version down, but not much more than the outline of a plot (a literal "vomit draft" as they say), so maybe a worthwhile exercise, but no real time to research characters' names, clothes, backgrounds, scenes, locations, themes etc. So that's anything historical out. And at say 90,000 words, that's 3,750 words per hour, 62.5 words a minute, so it'd be a pretty gruelling 24 hours!
@freequaybuoy
I once wrote 15K in 15 hours for the Clarion workshop, then critiqued the thing in all its draftiness the next day. You would be surprised how much story and character you can generate on the fly without research with a good idea and characters. A 50 K novel in 24 hours? I can't see how that's possible, but I certainly love to see some people try!
#WordWeavers 2405.28 — Did your MCs have comfort objects they carried as a child? Now?
I guess if you could run away from home and fear being dragged back again, you must be a child? Right? The day she ran away, she took only one thing that wasn't essential. It wasn't a doll. She was tutored on how to govern and had people (not dolls) to practice with everyday. It wasn't a remembrance of her parents. Their celebrity had made them shy away from photography, and then they died. Taking a vinyl record was a nonstarter; listening to it, if she could, would have made her cry. Not comforting. No, what she took was a very obscure book! I'll let her talk about it for you:
My books lay thrown on the counter, on top of the messenger bag, on top of my clothes. I felt a spike of anger. I looked from them to him.
He said, "Stop with the playacting. This—" He tapped a hand on my Marlin's Tertiary Primer for the New Age Thaumaturge."—is a month's basic for most!"
I shook my head. Over the last nine months, I'd learned the first edition was worth magnitudes more.
He pushed aside the book revealing the stained blue paper-backed journal. "And this: Thaumaturgical Review Letters. That's nobody's idea of light reading."
I snorted at how wrong he was. "I dumpster-dived that one. I hiked up to the university a few weeks ago. You'd be surprised what moneyed folk throw away!"
"I was saying—"
"My Marlin's is kind of like a plush bear for silly girls. And yes, I do sleep with it. Give it a sniff. It smells like silly me—"
#PennedPossibilities 328 — If you could meet your characters, what would you say to them?
I'm way too #shy to meet them, even the kind and beautiful one... a white wolf with a gold collar that reads HUMAN follows her around. These people live a life on a different level from someone like me. I'd need someone to introduce me, and then I'd probably lock up.
WWWOOOOWWW! Wohoo! Just discovered that control+Option right or left arrow will scroll my Mastodon advanced UI right or left on the iPad I am airplaying to a monitor and keyboard. Game changer!
#PennedPossibilities 327 — How much does your MC value other people? Do they wish to have many friends, lovers, and / or associates? Are they an easy person to love?
Both my MC's have difficulties with how they value people.
Wintereyes views people and beasts through the same nonjudgemental prism. She understands beasts' natures' intuitively. Where her gift allows her to live amongst the beasts she's befriended, she is prohibited from using her gift on humans. A decade of living with wolves, thriving, has rewired her social understanding of her species with no magical map to ease her way. It's unfortunate how people are attracted to her—and that she doesn't understand them or her body's reactions to them. She has met a boyfriend who she thinks will make her experiences in the human world better.
The devil-girl is autistic, but was raised with this being one of her best features. She isn't wired for dealing with people; it's a learned skill that her tutors drilled into her until using it became natural. Well, natural with a few glitches, if you were looking from the outside. She can be stiff. She can be undiplomatic. She really will only give you one chance. She finds too much glee in fighting (though her target needs to give permission to fight them, but implicit is good enough). The reader knows her struggle. Dealing with people is exhausting but a challenge; it's often a self-dare. Were she given her druthers, she'd say she'd rather be reading a book. Deep in a university library stacks. Alone. Helping people is a culmination of her skill, and part of her very much adores seeing people safe and happy. In part, this may be an achieved reduction of drama, but it may be her human heart. Now that she's discovered the concept of lovers—and that her brain is delightfully wired for it—and is learning the give and take that requires to make that work fabulously, her world is shifting toward really understanding those around her on their terms.
Algorithmic not artificially intelligent, but even the automation might make you feel inadequate. In any case, take a moment to ponder a future with this idea is applied to any labor you might do...
This is a very good comic, and it describes every author (or #artist) who is unsure of themself. Don't let this be you!
Complete stories (your vision) regardless of the merit you see in them.
Start a next one. Full stop. Then another.
Complete and send out more stories even if some editor (or commenter) doesn't buy or like them.
It's all practice, every single failure or not-good-enough. Practice makes you better, whatever they think, or you think. Keep practicing.
Take from criticism only whatever helps you identify or fix problems; reject being put in your place or ridiculed. It's practice. Your art is unique to you. Be truthful with yourself, though.
Keep starting and completing stories. Statistically, some will be good—and you will start to recognize the wheat in the chaff.
Their first stories weren't fabulous. Neither may be yours. The difference? They kept on starting, completing, sending (or posting), until they found success. Let that be you.
Please remember: #boostingIsSharing and boost to give others a moral boost.
#PennedPossibilities 326 — Do any of your characters have a favorite place that they've ever visited?
I'm sure they all have somewhere, but I've never asked.
For the devil-girl, it's doubtlessly any library she's visited. She'd sleep in the stacks were she allowed. It could also be Silver's Gym where she trained for and became a champion mixed magical martial arts prizefighter—and achieved her first K.O. Brings back fond memories. Despite the athletic funk and the muscle nerds overflowing with testosterone and attitude.
Wintereyes loves her Fell Woods and running with the wolves, However, this happened in the last chapter and it feels like her recalling a favorite place?
Recessed radiance light lit [a ceiling with] a painted dusk sky full of fluffy clouds lit by a recently set sun. The cloud shadows and the orange, pink, and purples felt as if the painter had somehow captured an instant of time and transported it above me.
I'd stopped so abruptly, Caramello had to dodge, nudging my left shoulder. I caught him reflexively, grabbing his shirt to keep my balance, saying, "I've lain in the meadows at Streams End, staring up at skies like this. I like."
#WordWeavers 2405.25 — How often do your characters think of death?
The reader and author are privy only to the MC's thoughts. "Often" is a vague word. Generally the MC doesn't think of death as you and I would experience time. However, in story time, she thinks of it rather often. She experiences PTSD episodes from when she saw someone die horrifically during a gang war, then realized her actions (or rather her inactions) resulted in dozens of others dying. Being responsible but powerless to stop it rattles her to the core. Her death? Not so much. Having been a bodyguard for a mob boss, and to an extent being a prizefighter where an errant strike could be lethal before that, she's never expected herself to live to old age. Twice someone has tried to murder her; only quick thinking and skill saved her. Twice she actually died, only extraordinary attempts at resuscitation bringing her back from the brink. She's not yet 20 years old. Each time she learned something or achieved something, the very last time saving not only the life of her lover but the life of his assassin because actually murdering the assassin was worse to her than dying herself. Not becoming a murderer is a possible tipping point in her life story because she is was conceived as a evil character, and if something doesn't get in the way she will be responsible for the destroying the world...
#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 9 Nbr 25 — Do you use a cover artist or design your own covers? Share your cover art.
I design my own covers, but I often pay a cover artist to draw them. I provide detailed stage directions (text) and supply excerpts, approve thumbnails then sketches, then negotiate color corrections to get them on one pass. I've also created abstract covers myself, or bought stock art. I've never used my photography in a cover. Yet. Once I colorized a sketch (digital watercolors) when a sketch was all the artist could provide when a family issue caused the artist to bow out.
I do the titles myself (and plan with the artist in the composition phase where I plan to put my titles). I've offered to do titles for others, but no takers, yet.
Um. Not sharing artwork. It's all for my other alias, which I feel uncomfortable revealing.