#WordWeavers 2405.31 — Do your MCs enjoy games that are more physical or intellectual?
Wintereyes has never heard of... What did you call that? Games? She'd be interested in learning more about Township people if you would be willing to teach her.
The devil-girl is familiar with the concept of games, and she's done role playing games—as in trying to act the part of various people she might deal with in social situations (estate parties) or in real life (tenant farmers, officials, miners, petty rulers, etc.) Doing well meant she'd face less anxiety when hosting or negotiating with real people. Social anxiety was one of the many reasons she would later run away.
Things like board games or sports games? She wouldn't see the point. She was a prizefighter. Though people considered it a sport, that was never a game for her. It was how she would earn tuition and hone her fighting skills, and get sucked into the mob.
So physical or intellectual? She'd definitely enjoy physical games better.
#PennedPossibilities 331 — Has your MC ever desired the feeling of a fresh start, or a better understanding of themselves and / or the world around them?
Yes. Disappearing and starting fresh is a recurring theme with her. She's done it a few times.
My devil-girl values her freedom to pursue her interests (thaumaturgy) over practically anything. But for a single book, she has no attachments to anything material. She lives as an ascetic. Threaten her people and it won't end well. She will do most anything, if she feels she is learning or stretching herself. And, when she's pressured to do what annoys or bores her, or you have the temerity to threaten her, she will state clearly that she will disappear on your ass if you don't stop. No idle threat, that. She ended up running the syndicate when the Doña died (and no comment about who was responsible for the Doña's death), then ghosted the organization two weeks later taking nothing with her. She'd gotten rid of the undesirables first and was just sooo done with it all the flapping headaches.
#PennedPossibilities 330 — How does your MC go about expressing or not expressing their sexuality? CW: Sexuality?
Intellectually? Tactically?
She was reputed to have the kiss of death, but that gets ahead of that she used it to control the Doña's underlings in the mob. She even arranged for her own teacher, a mob lieutenant, after she'd throughly studied for the test and felt she was ready. She didn't kill him, don't worry! She found she enjoyed kissing, and used it aggressively on men (and women) as a tool until she discovered the whole thing could be fun—then incidentally found herself "expressive" with two boyfriends in two days.
#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 9 Nbr 30 — How do you achieve a sense of wonder in your stories? CW: Intimacy
I don't have a formula, and it isn't something I try to create arbitrarily. It's usually written by accident (or incidentally), and almost always requires tuning of the found passage to make it truly wondrous. It's the right words in the right order. [Not helpful, R.S.!] If anything, wonder is usually tied up with emotion, a sense of achievement, or something well deserved, maybe even something so perfectly crafted by people or nature that it would make a person stare or feel goosebumps. However, I find simply being human can evoke the best sense of wonder—for example:
I woke to dawn rays filtering through lace draperies. A cool jasmine-scented breeze tussled the soft fuzz on my arms and brought the sounds of twittering robins and sparrows. My bombastic bedmate had not molested me. Perhaps she had heard me when I said I preferred men. That, however, did not prevent her from snugging up to me in her sleep.
I grew aware of warmth against my back. I commended myself for not flinging myself from the bed like a crazy person this time, but instead lifted my head and looked back. She lay there, sheets kicked off by one of us, her golden back against my paler one, making us a pair of Cs. Her usually poofy hair matted against her face and spread out in night-sweat glued-together curly tresses across her pillow. She snored imperceptibly, and somewhat daintily for such a large-boned woman.
When I shimmied to break contact, she began to shiver. Even after I gently replaced the sheets over us, she continued. She twitched. After a few moments, I heard the faintest whimper.
I lay my head on the pillow and felt bad. I shimmied back, until our skin made contact. In a minute she quieted and fell deeply asleep. I didn't move. Didn't want to. Because, I knew. She had felt terribly alone—worse, I realized, so had I.
#WordWeavers 2405.30 — Are you comfortable writing from the POV of a child? Written any?
I'll answer it this way: I recently wrote a novelette in the POV of a headstrong 7-year old girl. The story was neither medieval nor urban, simply modern, with the child convincing herself she's been both tricked into being where she doesn't want to be, and lied to. In a make-a-wish scenario, circumstances grants her the djinn's powers. I found it easy to write since I had a good feel for her mentality and her understanding of "pretend" aka "the magic." I kept having to rein in my vocabulary, however. It wasn't a matter of dumbing it down so much getting her clever sophistication right.
Oh, yeah... And she was the first person narrator. Rather than making it harder, it helped narrow everything down to a singular often exasperated voice that made the twist that much more heart-rending.
#PennedPossibilities 329 — How is your SC typically seen by others? Does it ring true to who they really are?
The roommate SC in a previous story is seen by others as an imperious arrogant bully who is always correcting people and not at all friendly. To say her adoptive mother runs things is an understatement of epic dimensions. The SC, as a controlling person by nature, accepts and amplifies the sense of power her mother lends her. Since she is rarely, if ever, seen around her adoptive mother and then seems both cowed and agitated in her presence, many consider her a bossy blow hard. She's proven herself the smartest student in school and holds a TA position in practical magical arts.
Is this who she is inside?
Hardly.
She has the expected problems with self-esteem. Her mother is her mentor, but she's unable to demand attention despite needing it, and instead drinks (and will take drugs). She feels horribly lonely. Boys run away at their first opportunity, despite the status they could acquire befriending her. She even considers letting herself be used—not that anyone would have the temerity to try, which turns it into a fools quest.
The MC ends up in a situation where the SC offers her a bed when the MC loses her job (okay, quit the mob) along with her apartment (which becomes unsafe). A bed. Literally. The SC's.
The MC discovers her roommate only sleeps well when held.
#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.
this drawing reminds me: read Translation as Transhumance (2017) by Mireille Gansel, trans. Ros Schwartz
Gansel recalls her life as a translator as one of smuggling words, ideas, lives, across walls erected by anti-human forces. Rescuing language from history, rescuing poetry from barbed wire & bombs that target not only humans but the very idea of their humanity
This picture was commissioned by the Translators’ Section of the Swedish Writers’ Union. The creator has received fair remuneration and has chosen to remain anonymous. They have given their permission to the Union for unlimited dissemination and downloading of the picture.
So please, post it on Social Media, send to writers, journalists, teachers, publishers, etc.!
#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.
#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.
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 327:How much does your MC value other ppl?Do they wish to have many friends, lovers, and/or associates?Are they an easy person to love?
She's very social;when her community is taken away,she immediately forms a new one.She can do it bc she's not a leader but is a sass-mouth with a moral compass.When she talks,it's to chew out someone for being an asshole.