#WordWeavers 2405.06 — Who is your most fun character?
Wintereyes.
She's a free spirit unlike any of my previous characters, but she's always kind. Despite being shy, she's incredibly courageous but doesn't understand how impressive that is. Having lived amongst wolves (she's human), she doesn't understand what it means to live amongst people, but is learning. She's sticking to her "friendly" principles when challenged with unerring innocence, integrity, and passion. It does make her more-than-occasionally NSFW, however...
The MC is employed by her main antagonist, who is an absolute ruler. Theoretically, the MC is second in command, but reality begs to differ. One of the reasons the MC accepted the troubleshooter job is that the MA informed her that her supposedly dead father is actually a political prisoner in a nearby country. In the back of her mind, the MC wonders whether she can use some of the MA's power to pay certain miscreant warlords a nasty visit...
This is a possible sequel I've set up in the current story by having the MC befriend a very talented up and coming military officer.
The main antagonist. This is the person she once considered as the person who ruined her life. She once worked for someone whose stated goal was assassinating her, and didn't care if they succeeded. For the last few months, the MC lived in a roommate situation that made them neighbors. Her roommate was being trained by the main antagonist, but also had a bad relationship with her. Their proximity was always a background tension in the story. In the current story, the MC is now working for the main antagonist and understands the MA's "evil" reasons better, but still dislikes her. The MC could ask for her own suite, free of charge, in the same building but is planning on taking her new salary to live elsewhere.
#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 9 Nbr 08 — When writing technical or scientific detail, how much is plausible versus imagined?
Everything in a story must come across as plausible, full stop. It doesn't matter whether it is imagined or factual. This is as true for writing technical or scientific detail as it is for writing about social interactions. Here's my secret sauce recipe:
If I don't or can't understand the details necessary for the story, I don't write it. I won't write a story about a convenience store clerk because I don't know what that is like, nor am I willing to commit the brain cells to learn. This is one of the reasons I write fantasy and not mainstream or historical stories.
If I understand in layman's terms, I rely on subject matter expert characters to relate what's necessary. For example, I wouldn't explain in a story how the combustion engine works any more than I would explain how the star drive works. I rely on my mechanic, who at the most technical says I replaced a part and here's the bill.
If I am making up the details—which can be how the magic works or the social details for a society that exists only in my head—I rely on consistency and limits to build plausibility.
If something minor occurs that I can't explain, I lampshade it—I hide the bare electric bulb with pretty fabric enough so that the characters in the story believe what happened is plausible. Generally, readers will accept this. See item 6.
If I end up researching something for the story, as I did to write a story about prizefighter, I present only the technical details I know and use items 2 and 4 otherwise. Yes, I learned how to punch a speed bag and train as a fighter, but I'm not one. Since the story involved "mixed magical martial arts," I made s**t up, also, which is item 3.
Most importantly, I work to not stretch the reader's credulity and base everything I can in the common reality the reader shares with me. This promotes plausibility.
So, #Scrivener on the Mac is telling me that the project I'm working on the iPad and iPhone isn't a valid project. This is not how I wanted to spend my day...
#BOTD Angela Carter, award-winning author, poet & journalist. Women are front and centre in her gothic horror and magical-realist tales, which broke taboos with their depictions of sexuality and graphic violence. Well-known works include The Bloody Chamber and The Magic Toyshop. #horror#author#books#bookstodon
#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 9 Nbr 07 — Do you add a copyright statement to your work? How comprehensive is it?
When I submit to a publisher in the US, I do not include a copyright notice. Publishers understand that copyright law automatically protects authors whether or not they include the notice. Typing one on your manuscript shows you don't understand the basics. It's simply not professional.
When I publish online, for example on Mastodon, and I own the copyright AND care to have others understand that, I include the copyright notice below. The copyright is still automatic by law.
What I use is the word "copyright" followed by "(c)" or the symbol, no space, the year, and my name or pen name. This is what I understand as all that's necessary, but I am unqualified to give legal advice.
I include the copyright online to ensure:
non-US entities understand my ownership
if the content is scraped (e.g. by someone training an AI), the text will include an unambiguous copyright notice that this text is NOT public domain.
#Writer#story fuel: Think about these two paragraphs, read the article, then write a story. Or read Jean M Auel's The Mammoth Hunters.
Neanderthals disappeared roughly 40,000 years ago. But before they died out, some of them mated with early humans—which is why modern humans of non-African ancestry have between 1 and 4 percent Neanderthal DNA. The reconstruction of Shanidar Z makes it “perhaps easier to see how interbreeding occurred between our species,” says Emma Pomeroy, a palaeoanthropologist at the University of Cambridge who helped discover Shanidar Z, in a statement.
“The skulls of Neanderthals and humans look very different,” she says. “Neanderthal skulls have huge brow ridges and lack chins, with a projecting midface that results in more prominent noses. But the recreated face suggests those differences were not so stark in life.”
#WordWeavers 2405.04 — How does your SC deal with failure?
Try different ways to get what she wants until frustration sets in, followed by anger, followed by doing something stupid.
When all the hauling companies in her home prefecture blacklisted her not simply for being female, but for being female while being persistent, she may or may not have thrown a brick through some windows and turned over some vehicles. She ran from the constables. She got tricked in another city into thinking she could earn quick money hauling questionable things to start her own company. She got blackmailed into the mob. She's still saving, for that day she might escape.
#PennedPossibilities 305 — Are there any characters of yours that you wound up HATING once you were finished with a story or WIP?
Taking a cue from @floofpaldi on how to answer this one, I have characters that are HATEFUL but none that I hate. I'm not to a Conan Doyle level that I can hate a character so much that I want to kill off my Sherlock Holmes.
Occasional hateful characters are great fun to write and pit against my MC. She ticks off one misogynist prizefighter during a press interview where her trainer presents her as a contender. An off-handed remark. He becomes her boogeyman, but he's stupidly angry, obviously uses steroids, blurts racist epithets, and gets used by others as muscle. The time he attacks her on a crowded public street, she manages to get him to trip into traffic where he breaks his legs. She walks off with her "Starbucks" she'd put down on a newspaper rack to deal with him.
Another time he ambushes her in a quiet neighborhood midday when nobody is around. His first punch to the head renders her unable to use magic part of her martial art and leaves her stumbling. He fights only with brawn. He wants to kill her. How could you hate a character on character setup like that?
She defeats him with a child's wooden pull toy. Anymore would be spoilers.
#PennedPossibilities 304 — How did your MC feel about friendships growing up? How do they feel about them now?
This one is easy. She was betrayed by a boy she thought was her soulmate at age eight. She distrusts friendship full stop.
She's learning how wrong she was now, and seems to be taking the advanced course in the subject with multiple boyfriends and people who intensely value and support her. Hearing someone loves her more than life itself, she of course commits herself to a deadly confrontation to save him, herself, and his attempted murderer.
The male lead is feeding chicken soup he made to the female MC who seems faint. He is trying to get her to rest. She likes his concern. He blows on the Asian-style spoon and she lets him feed her twice like a toddler, before taking his wrist.
I thought I wrote that she guides the spoon to her mouth.
What I actually unconsciously wrote was that she guided the spoon to his mouth
This is from a romance novel. Suddenly the electricity between the perspective couple is doubled, especially when it manages to get him to blush slightly.
So, I decided to listen to the chapter I keep on stalling on, while doing my morning stretches, setting my iPhone to read from #scrivener. I fixed a sentence, then finished the half-written sentence where I last stopped, then kept on writing the romantic soup and dragon magic scene. Sitting crosslegged on my exercise mat, legs falling asleep. 950 words latter I'm #writing about it on Mastodon.
#autocorrect auto-incorrected "lips" into "libs" and now I'm offended that my iPhone took the right word and changed it to a trending pejorative that people might apply to me, a pejorative I'd never type out myself.
A human would know better, but an #AI? Ugh! Keep this in mind if you are ever beguiled into using "tools" like #chatGpt. (I'd never stoop so low.)
Do you know what happens when you lift an improperly situated cup by the very edge of its saucer? Right. Coffee all over the counter and airlifted over the curved edge of the cup and saucer to form a lake on the floor!
No worries. No coffee drinker or porcelain was hurt in performing this comedy act.
Happiness is a bike ride on a gorgeous Friday afternoon. There are many challenges to being self employed, but the flexibility and time freedom of taking advantage of opportunities like this are worth the trade off.
@bookstodon@bookwyrm
If you read large print or dyslexic font paperback books do you prefer this to be indicated on the cover (say on a banner at the top) to help you identify the accommodation?
I compiled a quick poll based on different perspectives I've read.
➡️ Please consider sharing to help me reach more readers.
@bookstodon many months ago I received feedback that some readers disliked how I labeled my large-font edition of Late Identified #AuDHD workbook. So I could do better, I asked.
The majority that participated reported they wanted the accommodation labeled on their paperback in a visible way.
@kagan@writerobscura
Sorry I'm late to respond to "@sfwrtr's answer mention[ed] it's unprofessional to put on submissions to publishers." Hehehe... Hope I caused nobody distress when I let too much realism creep into my posts.
"...baby writer..."
I like that term! It implies you have to work to walk, and that you understand it won't be easy. But, with time we will run.
Being new to something, aspiring, we always want to look experienced because those who will judge us and our works are reassured by competency. Competency implies experience. Experience in turn implies that we won't waste your valuable time if you look closer at us or our work. Learning to appear professional is essential, especially when you don't have a brand name. Any little thing that gets you past the gatekeepers is worth working upon. You at least want someone to read the first few paragraphs of your story (the best you can hope for).
f my response seemed like a quick backpedal, it's partly because I'd also seen @sfwrtr's answer...
I specifically want to praise you. Admitting that you are learning has impressed me a lot. Humility is a skill, and it will serve you as well as persistence will. It certainly makes me want to write further posts because I feel I'm actually helping folks. Writing is always about communicating.