@HeliaXyana@mastodon.nl
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HeliaXyana

@HeliaXyana@mastodon.nl

I am an eclectic witchy wordsmith crafting enchantments through fantasy novels. Beyond quills and keyboards, I unleash my creativity on illustrations and visual art and dabble in the mystiques of Linux-y things.

I am Dutch and dyslexic. While I do my best to minimize errors, please forgive me for the occasional slip-up.

Profile picture: Me, a woman with long black hair a straw hat, dark green dress and glasses, smiling.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

HeliaXyana, to writing
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27 How does it feel knowing that strangers will read your work?

My instinct is to horde my writing and guard it like Smaug protecting his gold, to hiss loudly when anyone tries to peek at any of it.

I’d love to find my niche audience, but having to go through a horde of potentially mean strangers in this world where spouting hate has been so normalized to reach them seems incredibly daunting. I may never be brave enough to face it.

HeliaXyana, to writing
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I wonder what tense you've all chosen to write in and why.

I know past tense is likely the most common, but I have experimented with both and decided that present tense offers more direct immersion for my purposes.
This also ties into who the narrator is. In my WIP, it is a person in the room invisibly tagging along with the MC.

How did you decide, and is it reflected in the identity of the narrator?

HeliaXyana,
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@Firlefanz

Is it old-fashioned? I suppose it's the original "Once Upon a Time..."

What irks me is when the tense and POV do not match the story. When 3rd person and past tense is taken as the default.

I like present tense for stories in which you are not really supposed to know what is going on or have to figure it out but don't get it served up.

Past tense seems to make more sense for structured story arcs and closed-ended stories.

HeliaXyana,
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@Firlefanz

I've seen others describe present tense as a bit pretentious. I thought it was looked down on.

Perhaps it has a history and context that I'm missing.

HeliaXyana,
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@Firlefanz

Oh, that is a good insight. I suppose it does inch a bit closer to screenplay writing than past tense.

I didn't know romance was so present-tense heavy. Perhaps that makes sense. It might be an easy way to emphasize some emersion.

Ah, a personal preference doesn't make you a grumpy old woman. That would be more the case if you started telling everyone they have to write in past tense.

HeliaXyana,
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@SJHoodlet @Firlefanz

Oh, that is a fun way to put it. It creates a fear of missing out if you put the book down. I can see that. That's a fun aspect to play with.

HeliaXyana,
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@Firlefanz

Absolutely. Not here to judge but honestly curious about how it is perceived and why.

Isn't past tense a little odd in romance sometimes? Unless it is narrated as a recount from one of the characters it always makes me a little confused about the narrator in case of intimate details and such.

HeliaXyana,
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@pretensesoup @Firlefanz

Ah, yes. I think everyone suspends their disbelief a bit differently.

I had not considered fan fiction yet. I'm not too familiar with it, honestly. Is that predominantly present tense?

HeliaXyana,
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@SJHoodlet @Firlefanz

The pace of the story, that is interesting.

I can't read very fast, which may explain why I get the sense that the progression is sluggish in some past-tense/third-person narrated novels.

Would you say you read with ease?

HeliaXyana,
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@pretensesoup @Firlefanz

That is precisely what got me pondering on this. I remembered an old professor telling me that past tense was the only valid tense to write in.

Of course, this is nonsense, but when I considered it, I wondered how many authors may have been imprinted with that idea and would have written more interesting work if they had considered present tense an option.

HeliaXyana,
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@Firlefanz @SJHoodlet

I'm dyslexic and read at a different pace than most. Perhaps that's partially why the pace of present tense appeals to me.

HeliaXyana,
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@Firlefanz @pretensesoup

Oh, that is interesting. What made it feel like such a rookie mistake? Was it not a conscious choice?

It would be interesting to rewrite a random chapter from one tense to the other. It seems like a good way to make sure it's what fits the story the most.

HeliaXyana,
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@Firlefanz @SJHoodlet

If you can't read at the 'normal' speed, for example, because of dyslexia, do you prefer past or present tense when reading a novel?

HeliaXyana,
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@Firlefanz @pretensesoup

I've been there. I had an obsession with utterly obscure words in my narration, which made the writing incredibly hard to read. It was a mix of a genuine fondness for obscure words and trying to seem clever.

I was urged to sprinkle in complicated words because of how susceptible academia is to such tricks.

So now I simply have a character who is fond of odd words. This makes it much more manageable, and I can have some SC ask what in the world she's talking about.

HeliaXyana,
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@Firlefanz @SJHoodlet

As requested: here is a list of present-tense books(from the interwebs) as an example:

"War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy

"Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens

"Ulysses" by James Joyce

"1984" by George Orwell

"To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee

"Tale of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens

"Crime and Punishment" by Fyodor Dostoevsky

"One Hundred Years of Solitude" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

"Moby Dick" by Herman Melville

"Pride and Prejudice" by Jane Austen

HeliaXyana,
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@Firlefanz @SJHoodlet

Yeah, I doubted it as well. Perhaps it's mixed tense.

HeliaXyana, to writing
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22 Whatever

Could a character in your story kill their own grandparents?

In my story, the characters become detached from the time stream during such events, meaning they exist but have never been born.

HeliaXyana, to writing
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259 — Sum up your MC in three adjectives.

Let's do the whole family:

Freya: Melancholic, philosophic, primal.

Sabre: Stoic, vulnerable, fierce.

Cedric: Alluring, tumultuous, imaginative.

Dionysus: Strategic, extroverted, insecure.

Valentine: Phantasmal, contemplative, introverted.

Zonasius: Inventive, calculated, protective.

Pelliniana: mischievous, chaotic, spirited.

HeliaXyana, to fantasy
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8 What food does your MC associate with home?

For Freya, it's pumpkin soup. Home is where a giant bubbling cauldron of soup is available throughout the day.

She loves the pumpkin soup because they grow all ingredients in the garden themselves. After a summer of tending the plants together, cooking them up feels meaningful and unifying. To Freya, a good soup feels akin to a warm embrace from the inside out.

Firlefanz, to random
@Firlefanz@writing.exchange avatar

- How would your characters attempt to catch a leprechaun?

South would try to befriend it.

West would race after it and catch it because he's fast.

East would pummel it into submission.

North would run even faster than West.

Earth would build a trap.

Sky would smash one with lightning.

Sun would... probably let it go.

Sun Burns, Pillars of the Empire 3
(WiP)


HeliaXyana,
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@Firlefanz

I wonder if a leprechaun is lightning-proof...

HeliaXyana,
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@Firlefanz

As a sky can be.

Is there such a connection between the name, abilities and personalities? For example, Could you describe Sky as being thunderous at times and serene at other moments?

HeliaXyana, to writing
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- How would your characters attempt to catch a leprechaun?

Pelliniana stands the best chance. She's the most mischievous. She would go undercover and spend weeks gaining the trust of forest animals to recruit them for this elaborate scheme. Only to end up honestly befriending the leprechaun and teaching him to bake pies.

Instead of capture, she would lead a rebellion, and the world would fear their leprechaun overlords.

HeliaXyana, to writing
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Welcome to St Patrick’s Day at the ! It’s like the , but tipsy and, on this occasion, a bit more green than usual.
So, grab a ‘whatever’ consume until giggles ensue and attempt to answer the following:

How would your characters attempt to catch a leprechaun?

Cheers!

HeliaXyana, to writing
@HeliaXyana@mastodon.nl avatar

You are all invited to St Patrick’s Day at the
this evening. It’s like but tipsy and, on this occasion, a bit more green than usual.

Specifically, it will be at 9 pm CET Amsterdam/8 pm GMT London/4 pm EDT New York. The timing is not crucial, but it might be fun to align our inebriation.

So, get ready to grab a ‘whatever’ consume until giggles ensue and attempt to answer the question.

Cheers!

HeliaXyana, to writing
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Wondering if I'm alone on this:

When I casually read my work while, for example, being on holiday, I take notes on my e-reader, but I can sometimes find an error I can not tolerate and have to fix it as soon as possible.
I can't think of anything else until I do.

Now, is that just me, or have you ever had to drop everything to fix an error in your writing as soon as possible?

HeliaXyana,
@HeliaXyana@mastodon.nl avatar

@CA_Hawthorne @Ink_Soul

Ah, that does sound so much less frantic. But I do thoroughly pants my stories. I have a rough outline, but big mistakes happen, even in the second draft.

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