ok at the request of TWO people i am posting a screenshot of my document planning for discacc chapter 41, under a readmore in case ppl dont wanna b spoiled i guess lol. ur welcome

some of these r pretty expected. the sojiro convo is the one that i was like ‘hmm what if i DID insert something there actually’. furthering my futago siblings agenda. beginning my yusuke & goro friendship agenda. got The Talk which i will leave as vague as it is here. i know what this refers to lol. 

and friend-iversary! which according to my plans is gonna b a doozey. ive had this scene in the works since uhhh well chapter 35 at Least in terms of the actual content of it but ive been planning it vaguely since the beginning bc like. come on. if i set a date in the fic it’s gonna be honored. yes i have plans for mamakechi’s death too lmfao

Yeah

i love cain and des and tua and marilyn... do they have any art 👉👈 or any more character description than what is given in the books... theyre so excellent i love cursed weapons and their weary wielders (bowman and esk are also very cool)

i KNOW i have art of young cain and michel hanging around somewhere but i can't find it i'm so sorry... i will say that the 'true' hanged man card for my inver tarot series is actually cain (the scene from the end of tvm u know the one) but i haven't drawn it because it's spoilery. the other hanged man i did was just a placeholder and doesn't even make sense for the meaning of the card.

as for marilyn and tua i have not drawn them (except, of course, the poleaxe on the book cover).

anyway here's some more description for u as an apology for losing my art (tvm spoilers??)

Cain is about 5'8". He has short grey hair and sideburns but is otherwise clean-shaven. He's in his fifties but appears older because stress will age ya. He has an aquiline nose and his build is bearish, he's very strong after an entire lifetime of dragging Des around but he's slowing down with age a little, and his back hurts all the time. His family was formerly noble but they lost their peerage and became lower class. Cain was born after this happened and his family had chosen to stay on inside the citadel as wall guards instead, as they had always been a pretty martial type of family. In his youth he'd hang out with Michel a lot but found Michel to be subtly aggravating, since Michel could just get Esk and LEAVE and it wouldn't even be that big a deal, the longbow is so easy to carry, but Michel just waffled about it forever until Cain had to stop hanging out with him, and eventually his frustration turned to jealousy, and then outright anger. They fought, and Michel died shortly after, making reconciliation impossible and a constant 'what if' floating at the back of Cain's mind that torments him every single day of his life. It's why he jumps at the chance to try to reconnect with other weapon wielders.

Cain has never married and has no kids but he feels fondly about the younger wall guards and thinks of them as his sons in a way. Cain's name has been a placeholder for long enough that I forgot to pick a real name when I publicly released stbh (oops), because 'Cain' is heavy-handed even for me.

Des is a common kingfisher or a big harpoon gun, depending on who you ask. The cradle with wheels is not actually part of the weapon and can be removed without damaging it, they're just there to make transport easier. It can be further apart from Cain than the other weapons can be from their wielders without causing them harm, because the gun is just so inconvenient. You can't even take it up stairs. Imagine. Des is the only weapon name that isn't a shortened form of a more significant word, because I thought it was kinda fun to give it the name of some old fella you'd meet at the back of a pub. Des is the second eldest of the weapons and has a kind of lackadaisical way of looking at the world, mostly born of its own confidence in its power. Very little is capable of breaking Des, so why worry? The last time it bothered to care about the overall destiny/conflict/etc of the weapons was when Cain's family lost their titles, and that was when Des accepted that it was never gonna change anything about the system around itself, so it was best to focus its efforts on keeping its wielders safe instead.

Marilyn is younger than she seems. She has a deep well of knowledge in a very narrow band of subjects (dancing, some bartending, performance arts, and her own family history), but is profoundly ignorant about pretty much everything else. And she knows it. It's why she goes along with things and accepts them at face value, as best she can, because she knows that she's at a disadvantage and doesn't want to seem childish or stupid. She was not aware that Tua was exerting far more influence on her than it should have been doing (Tua, for example, was the one VERY POINTEDLY asking Bowman how much he trusted and relied on Félix, how much he might miss his friend's absence, even...). She was, ultimately, a little abandoned by the people around her who should have looked out for her - Bowman did his best but he was distracted by all that other shit, and Carmen, despite becoming her best friend, struggled to make herself understood at the Pangur household and couldn't get them to show Marilyn more respect. Marilyn accepted, eventually, that she had to learn fast or simply remain unremarkable and unwanted.

Tua is the third eldest of the weapons and largely considered The Boss due to the Pangur family status, and has always been very proud, sure of its privileged position in the grand scheme of things. The Pangur family never truly surrendered to the Aquitanian werewolves, but kept their customs and language alive, and this contributed to Tua's sense of hope - it always hoped, even right up until the death of Síofra Pangur, that they would win. It hoped far more fiercely than Des ever could, more than Esk for sure, and this made the loss of Síofra more devastating than it could handle. It hates everything and everyone, it even hates Marilyn (at the start. it warms up to her), and sees every other living thing as a tool to be manipulated to its own ends. It has a deep sense of disgrace, it's a temporarily embarrassed millionaire, a noble, not a part of the common rabble, and it'll make em pay. With Cormac deal with, it could perhaps find a way to heal, but only if Marilyn is treated with some semblance of respect.

i've been having an itch to write an if game, do you have any tips? i feel like its a very bad idea to jump straight in head first yk?

Ooh 👀 Well, I don't think I'm the most qualified but I can share my experience! I discovered choicescript a few years ago and that's the only coding format I know (Twine makes me cry), but I've only started writing with it like ~2 years ago, and I did jump straight in.

It was, in fact, a bad idea lol 😭 This will be quite rambly so I'll put in under a cut!

I'd say first thing to do is not start out with the project you have in mind if you're not familiar with the format, because it might burn you out or you won't necessarilly find it easy to put it together. Play around with things, write even only a few random scenes, just to taste the waters. I lost interest in my first WIP because i sucked at writing and coding it and it made me lose motivation!

Also, if you're using choicescript, there's the COG forum to help with some specifics code lines! I personnally don't like the forum but you don't need an account to read it and there's a search option. That's a nice resort if you struggle. Reading the wiki and their introduction first is what I did so I had a (very fragile and wonky) base, and then I added to it depending on what I needed.

Also I started writing by following the kinda old instructions of choicescript, aka in a note logiciel on my computer, where lines went on forever 😭It was a pain, so I use CS-IDE now, it makes coding and testing much easier. Basically play around and find what works the best for you. If something doesn't work even after you use it for a bit, it may be worth to find another app/editor/organisation. Personally I write scenes in another app, when's there's a choice to make I outline the possible options and then I copy and paste it in CS-IDE to code.

If you want to use Twine, there are a lot of very talented authors that put up lists of ressources and help! I think you can find them easily on Tumblr. And the IF community is pretty nice, and most people are okay to give out help if you ask for it. Lots of supports around here.

And also, there's the basic advice for all kind of writers. Don't give into pressure, it's okay if things aren't perfect. If a choice branching gives you trouble, you can always leave a placeholder and come back after. Bugs are really common, and most readers understand it.

Honestly it's easier when you have fun with it. I like putting choices that don't do much but give a little insight about characters. I like writing prompts on Tumblr because I can write characters that don't appear for a while. When I get unmotivated I go on Pinterest or Spotify to make boards or playlists. I have lists of fun facts. I think that's why it's best to have a sort of "test" project, so that the struggle can be contained at least a bit and then you can have fun with the story you like most and whose characters you know best.

It'll flow easier. And if doesn't work out, you can give it a rest, revive it later or start anew with another story.

Well, that was a lot of words for not much! i'm half-dead right now, but maybe I'll reblog it later with some links if someone wants to?

In any case, have a lovely day 🌼

okay i LOVED learning those most recent tidbits about your writing process, especially approx how long it can take you to write/edit! makes me feel so much better about my own wips lmao. especially with something as complex as iylo. i think it’s the easy-going kinda flow or vibe of your writing (though dgmw, you know how to make every line pack a serious punch) that made me assume you tend to bang this shit out hella quick… when in reality it sounds like it takes a pretty reasonable (“reasonable”) amt of time.

on this note i am so curious about your drafting process. like, how do you not get caught up fleshing out all the details in the moment? am i just terrible at writing outlines? feels like i’m always setting a hard goal to write short standalones but they always get out of hand

hahahah oh good, i'm glad it was interesting!!! i'd say my writing style on here is very casual, so. i like that that's the vibe i give off 😌

!! the drafting process! it's messy but it usually goes something like this (long post ahead!)

i start by writing dialogue or a specific moment from the scene i'm most excited to get to. i don't force myself to start at the beginning because who even knows where the beginning is.

dialogue can be a good place to start because it can lay out a whole dynamic in just a few exchanges (the best example i can think of this is when i wrote thirty days, because the first part i wrote was the "you should probably leave" - "why?" - "'cause i'm going to jerk off" - "i don't want to go" - "fine. stay." exchange which set up the whooole fic)

....and then i keep writing until i run out of steam lol. if i'm writing a scene and need to jump ahead because of an idea or whatnot, i just type // so i know i need to come back there (easy to search the doc for a symbol of some kind when it comes to editing). can't think of a specific word? i just pop a // in there as a placeholder.

once i've written out the meatier bit (ugh), i go back to the scene i started with, and then write backwards from there until i find a spot that feels like it could be the beginning (i mean i say that, but this is usually a lot of jumping around).

and that's the first draft!

i don't outline ahead of time, or write out plot points or anything. mostly because a) i have no idea what's gonna happen and b) i like character-driven stories and i find those motivations by writing them

that's the big reason i write dialogue without an end goal in mind - sometimes writing the lines or hearing them in my head takes the conversation in a different direction than i would've originally planned, and that can lead to some Good Moments

i’m always setting a hard goal to write short standalones but they always get out of hand

this happens to me too, for sure. i've found it's helpful to move away from the setup portions of a fic. and also being okay with things not being 100% clear (in terms of motivation, characters feelings, all that) and leaving some gaps for the reader to fill. and also being okay with your writing being misinterpreted.

idk if this is helpful at all!! my main thing is don't stop yourself from fleshing out the details. if there's a big scene you want to get to, don't force yourself to slog through the parts you don't want to write just to get there. i find it's almost easier to do it that way, because then you get to write the earlier parts with the question of: "what choices do they make to become the people in that scene?"

don't deprive yourself!! if you want to delve right into the details, do it.

3, 13, 27

3: Describe the creative process of writing a chapter/fic

I tend to challenge myself with different concepts and styles with each project so it's hard to sum it up universally. I will say that I do loose outlines, so I always have an idea of where the characters are gonna go in the story. I'll split my stories into scenes or scene concepts, and have those as placeholder chapters for the time being. Once I actually write those scenes, the ongoing word count pretty much dictates whether or not I cut it off and start a new chapter. "Lena's Groundhog Day", for example, averages about 4500 words per chapter, and "Quack to the Future" hangs out in the 3-5k range. Basically, if a scene filled up a decent amount of space, then I call it a chapter and move right along. I won't, however, chop a scene up or bloat it to fit a certain runtime, hence the range.

Usually the story will start as a basic idea ("what if X but ducks"; "let's do a sequel to that one fic"; "I want to write Gosalyn"). I'll usually come up with a first chapter just to set the stage and see where we're at, and then bounce the idea around in my head for a while. I'll think it over on walks, I'll listen to music and imagine the characters, stuff like that. By the time I'm ready to write, I've usually settled on an ending scene, and come up with a couple other beats I want to hit in between. For example, for "Lena's Groundhog Day", I knew I wanted the diner scene with Webby and the ending scene(s) at the amphitheater. The rest came up as I wrote it, for better or for worse but mostly for better in my opinion.

13: What's a common writing tip that you almost always follow?

You know I actually had an odd time coming up with an answer here because I don't really seek out writing advice as much as I probably ought to. I've found that generalized advice isn't helpful for me, and also anything that suggests a change in routine is difficult to implement. Anyway, I'll think of something give me a second…. … … Hey I'm back. I didn't think of anything. The best I can do for you is always save your work because you never know when a bolt of lightning will strike your device specifically and uh oh there goes your progress.

27: What is your most and least favorite part of writing?

My least favorite part of writing is when I'm not writing. I mean when I'm stuck staring at a blinking cursor, can't think of where to go from here. Or I know where to go but not how to get there. Or I've just not written in a while and go "dang I miss doing that". Oh, and I also hate the part right before I publish where I go through like 50 times for spelling or grammar or typos because I have a fear of commitment (only to find mistakes months later when I'm just reading casually).

There are scenes and scene concepts that live rent free in my head before I write them. I'm talking imagining the characters having a back and forth, envisioning the action descriptions I'm gonna use, the works. If I had a thoughts-to-text ability, I'd have a whole collection written I'll tell you what. But I write my stories in order, so a lot of times (especially for endings) I can't just jump in and write those parts down. But when I do, man it's just really cool to see the thing I'd imagined for so long finally pop up in the document. It's crazy. Like I thinked all those words and then bam they're on the screen for anybody to look at. Indescribable. What a world.

Thanks for the ask!

Ain't no mercy sounds interesting!!!!<33 tell me tell me

i have to say, i am incredibly delighted that even now, u managed to pick the western au out of all the wip listed. <333.

ain't no mercy is the placeholder title that might or might not stick, which already hints at the overall themes i wanna touch upon with this piece. u already know a lot about it, and u contributed a lot to it as well, but i can tell u that it's not gonna be a happy ending, and as with all my jk fics one of the main themes is going to be the inherent inability to be what the other need despite being able to understand parts of each other few ppl can

ask me about my wip

and here's something for u <3

Kyle raised his fist and knocked twice against the flimsy wooden door, didn’t wait for an answer before pushing it open. He'd grown weary of Jason and his absolute lack of gall and manners, suffering under his lack of care every time they put up camp. He was, in fact, feeling quite good at the opportunity to give him a taste of his own medicine.

“Jason, you wouldn’t know where-” his voice trailed off when he laid eyes on the scene unfolding in the middle of the room.

Jason stood by the basin, dressed down to his pants and nothing else, soaped water dripping down from his hands. He had seen him wash up before, and while the naked skin wold be reason enough to be taken aback --more than he ever saw from him and enough to stall him-- what troubled Kyle so was the state of his body.

Corded muscles covered by ugly mangling, scared skin stretched taut over his shoulder, down his side and disappearing beneath the waistband of his pants. Thick, deep scarring that could have only come from grave burns or a ravaging disease covered both of his forearms, most of his torso and back weren't spared either. What Kyle took for roughened hands from the sun and heavy work was now a glaring part of this scarred canvas kept secret, wrinkled and discolored skin. He was left speechless, taking in the extent of the damage, the painful way it stretched when Jason pulled his shoulders down or curved his back, the deep groves and sinuous knots on the mangled pattern by his elbow.

Jason jumped around with a startle, dropping the soap and panic flashing by his features. Kyle watched as he went to bring his arms up, struggling with his clenched fist before dropping them by his hips, shoulders squared and fury painted over his face, gone the naked surprise or vulnerability Kyle glimpsed.

“Get the fuck out of here,” Jason snarled, chest heaving with it, but under the anger Kyle found more. Not fear, but something equally as ashamed, or scared. He’d never seen his eyes wide like this, jaw tight and fits trembling with how hard he was clenching them.

“Jason-” he wanted to ask so many things, to say a few others, but before he could find order with his words, Jason snapped.

“I said,” he stalked toward him with one hand gripping the knife he kept in his belt, a promise made without words. “Get the fuck out of my room before I gut you.”

Another Devlog (#4?)

Happy holidays all! this devlog I got something I'm pretty proud of, not gonna lie. I've been cooking up something nice in a new perspective I've never really delved into. Top-down was always something I saw as really cool, but never really thought of how to do. the perspective itself was always something I found interesting, especially because I was always a fan of the top-down zelda games, eg. minish cap, four swords, etc. So I got to work, using some placeholder assets (which I won't share, sadly because they are of a certain green-capped character), but after jumping over some hurdles, I did set up a basic player character which, you know what? I'm pretty proud of!

While story is still a W.I.P, because I want to get the setting right, the gameplay is going nicely. I avoided combat for this game because I felt like it's always an easy "want gameplay? just add combat" so, rather than adding combat I opted to have some traversal mechanics linked to items. So far I don't have much, but I'm slowly plotting out ideas for more items which you'll unlock as you progress through the game.

First one's a basic one, but I like the atmosphere it can add to areas. The lantern is a nice little item that lets you traverse dark areas. I took a lot of inspiration from the lighting system from the top-down zelda games with, what I call, their 'cut-out lighting' which I name due to how it's rendered, literally cutting holes through a dark canvas layer around light sources to achieve that look. I originally figured out how to do this effect in a previous prototype I made, however the main difference now is it's not limited to one singular light, and now it simply checks any "light_node"s within the scene and punches holes in the shadow for each light!

Next up is the "Warp Wand" as I'm calling it for now, though the sprites I drew up for it look more like a warp spell/ability you have, though the animation for teleporting is placeholder, using another item's animation instead. Either way, it's a neat item that lets you target it at special crystals you can find conveniently placed around large pits! (NOTE: the crystals are also temporary/placeholder sprites I 'borrowed' from another game.)

The final traversal item I have for the player (for now) is the peculiar mask you have on your character which lets you explore "no-oxygen" areas of the map, as I'm calling them for now. it comes with a nifty O2 bar which tells you how much oxygen you have left (right above the stamina bar).

Other than traversal items, there's also the "DataPad" as I'm calling it at the moment, a nifty pad which'll keep track of logs and collectables which'll be littered through the map. The eventual goal for this item is to let you read up on items and logs you find while exploring which might give you insight into what happened here.

Here's some misc gifs of things I've worked on or are currently working on. Stairs working properly was a small but very satisfying achievement, considering how many top-down games surprisingly don't have stairs work properly?

I've lovingly ported the Dialogue and Event system from my on-pause game 'Last Letter', allowing me to write dialogue scenes simply and effectively, though the UI for Dialogue is still W.I.P.

This one's very W.I.P, but I have the basic functionality working! This is a Terminal which you can access and type in commands, Once I have all of the functionality up and running, it'll allow you to access nearby electronics, imbedded logs, etc. and access them. Eg. opening a closed/locked door, cycling the airlock you're within, etc. etc. and maybe some hidden eastereggs/jokes if I think of any? we'll see.

Anyway, thanks for any reading and hope you all have a wonderful holidays! happy new year, etcetera. Oh! also, the desktop pet game I showed before isn't in the dumps, I'm just working on world lore and waiting on some sprites from a friend. It's just not fun to work on because it's mostly UI work.

For that writing thing 48 cause that's always an interesting one to me how people approach it (also 34 as a desperate cry for help...)

*waves* :D

do you reread your own stories?

Yes! When it comes to fics I have actually posted on Ao3 be glad no one can see the edit history because there are some embarrassingly belated lines I've added while re-reading when I MEANT to just soak up a vibe again, and instead realised I'd just plain jumped over CRUCIAL PLOT INFORMATION and continued writing as if that line was already in the story.

TBH fic writing is way more id and just splurge it out, tidy it up and post it sort of writing, while when I'm writing my own content especially for publication/submission I will re-read constantly for the sake of editing, and only consider it finished when I've read it to DEATH and don't want to look at it any more (and personal drafts I'm not planning to submit still get read over and over just not to the "to death" threshold). I don't wanna do that to fics because I still come back to them for fun because I did make the content I wanted to see :'D

how do you name characters and places?

First of all I bought (and re-covered so people wouldn't think I was expecting) one of these bad boys:

It's got sections with names sorted by era and popularity and it gives a basic name meaning and region where it's from. At the very least it means I can go look it up further (you know, to make sure no one notorious has a name or I'm using it wrong or the book was culturally appropriating etc :P)

I also call a looot of characters Bob as a placeholder so I can just write something and worry about that later XD

I think it's more important to think about WHY you are naming a character such and such a thing, like, who they are in the story and if they need to be memorable, or if they want them to kinda slide by either because they're not important or not important YET, so names that aren't particularly challenging or single names rather than giving them a surname too. In the novel I'm working on there's a squad of side characters hunting ghosts who've arrived from a studio in California, and I gave the presenter the name Katie Kobayashi, to give her something alliterative and fun to say and at least as far as I can tell no one important has the name. She gets a full name that characters repeat ("was that Katie Kobayashi?") so it sticks out like she's a celebrity and it's got a good saying out loud cadence (which you should do with all 2 or more part names). Her film crew with her are just Nate and Alejandro, neither of whom have surnames despite being in all the scenes with her and getting sometimes way more sympathetic or lengthy dialogue, because they're her background characters and I just needed Some Guy Names Like They're From California to follow her around, and their role is in their single names. Their producer who never appears and is mentioned two times, who manages their ghost hunting show and wants to produce horror films, is called Slice, no surname required not because he's unimportant but his "name" tells you everything about him XD I have heard of a couple of guys like this incidentally in my life who are 1 name genre weirdoes who aren't established enough to be A Surname Person on published content, but within circles have their name well enough known to just say their weird nickname and people know who it is. So I just looked up stuff on thesaurus.com until I saw one funny enough for this guy who's mentioned twice, to make him memorable and funny but more like, that's his whole personality and the joke is literally just in introducing him and moving on.

I hope that explains some of my process and helps you find some ways to come up with people :D

Writer Tag Game

Tagged by @fereldanwench, thank you bb 💙💙💙

Do you write in order?

Ehhh... the majority of my experience is yes, but my most recent longfic has been no, while still working from a fairly detailed outline. I was already trying something new -- shooting for an actual first draft to edit -- so I allowed myself the ability to jump around in the plot and write all the fun stuff. I think that helped me come up with more ideas for scenes, and also how to link them together. It wasn't until I hit around 40k that I started filling in all the gaps from the beginning.

Do you start with something in particular?

Usually a scene. I like to jump straight into the action. If I have a scene already in mind, I might rewind a few steps to get some momentum.

How fully formed does your writing come out on the first try?

Not at all, rather I should say very rarely. Most of the time, it's just dross, trash. Something to get out of my brain and onto the page so I can keep pushing forward. I use placeholders [like this] often if I know I want something more specific but can't quite get it out. But every once in a while, there's a phrase that sings, and it will make it through edits largely unscathed.

How many drafts do you go through?

I wouldn't say I use drafts so much as versions. Until the current longfic (the corpo au) I have always been a write-and-post-er (and a pantser lol) so that didn't really leave room for drafts. This one I imagine will take two plus a final polish.

Tell me about your process?

I don't know if I have a consistent process anymore, but I think the general steps are the same: write something; go back and write more details, fill in the gaps; go back and write more details; question everything; write a few more details; give it to my beta; final proofread on AO3; publish.

Tagging with zero pressure... @impishbiscuit, @morganlefaye79, @cinnamon-mey, @glitchinginthegarden, @tafferling, @newnamesamecharlotte, @gloryride, and any one else who wants to play!

Hey! I'm curious, what does your writing process normally look like? So for example how do you come up with ideas and build upon them? Everyone does this differently so I'm curious what this looks like for you! Thanks for entertaining this gay plebian's ask.

Hello, friend, thanks for the ask!!!! <3

I get ideas and inspiration from a ton of places! Main sources: other fanworks (art and fics and amvs and meta and shitposts...), discussions with friends, sitting down and closing my eyes and thinking "hmmmm what would be an extremely silly scenario I could make my faves have to deal with?", trying desperately to sleep and instead having intrusive fic thoughts, rewatching DS9 eps and trying to figure out the absolute minimum that would have to change/occur in order to get any given characters to kiss during or after the events of that episode...

As for the rest of the writing process, it varies a little bit but generally starts with me writing down bullet points about the key details/plot points of the fic (and I gotta do this quick, before I forget!). Then I start writing prose from whatever is the earliest point in the fic that is calling out to me, screaming to be written (and go back and fill in more setup later if it needs it), to get my momentum going. Or sometimes a part of the outline gets a little out of hand and turns into pseudo-prose bc I can't contain my excitement about that one bit, so I start by cleaning that part up and writing that part of the scene out while it's clear in my mind how I want it to go. Often my multichapter fics start with one chapter or moment clearly in my mind, and I have to, like, extrapolate the rest of the plot from there (which I sometimes do not figure out until a few chapters into the fic lmaooo! I cannot recommend highly enough starting a multichapter fic with a solid premise but no idea where the fic will go, and then coming up with the full outline only after you get your bearings by posting a few chapters hahahaha).

As I write, I skip over hard parts or stuff I haven't figured out yet and leave placeholder notes for myself. Then, after I've jumped around and written all the parts I'm excited about (which usually happens at about 75% of the eventual total word count of the fic), begins the less fun task of connecting/rearranging the disparate chunks and editing them for flow, internal consistency, and characterization lol. Well, I shouldn't say less fun, sometimes it's very fun and it can feel like solving a satisfying puzzle, but usually this part is much, much harder for me than the initial drafting stage (but it's usually a necessary step, for me anyway, bc I cannot ever seem to write fics from beginning to end without skipping over stuff, and usually my idea of how things should happen in the fic changes constantly).

Also, woven throughout all of this process is the CRUCIAL step of inundating my friends' DMs with my unhinged fic thoughts, and brainstorming solutions to plotholes/characterization issues with them, and testing out ideas/snippets on them, haha! I LOVE this part of writing tbh, the part where you tell people what you are writing (or simply what you want to write) and they say "bestie you are insane" and egg you on! ^_^ <3

Writing challenge: Remus/Tonks, 1 Behind the scenes: 3, 4, 19

that was the prompt I was most worried about, tbh! i wrote about it recently (but briefly) in All the Bricks in the Wall. but I'm still gonna try to write something and post it tomorrow! thanks for the request!

For the behind the scenes asks:

3. Do you write fics from start or finish, or jump around?

i often write scenes as they come to me, at least in rough draft form, and set them aside while i'm organizing my thoughts about the entire fic. a lot of the time it's a single vignette or exchange that gets the ball rolling and the rest of the story is developed around it. and sometimes what i've written gets chopped up and mixed around so it ultimately wasn't written start to finish, but when i set out to get a chapter or a fic done it's straight through before i lose momentum, other than an occasional placeholder.

4. Do you outline before you start writing? If so, how far do you stray from that outline?

extensively! i sometimes do multiple stages of outlining, starting with the general beats of the story and progressing to a hastily-written, typo-strewn, no-caps, low-punctuation story-lite which then gets rewritten for real.

i don't want to give anyone the impression that i'm like a super-organized writer - i'm not. the outlining is necessary to keep me from digressing too much or going down rabbit holes, which i have a tendency to do. and i also just like to have a balanced-feeling story with a structure that's satisfying and make sure the themes and thoughts i want in there get where they need to be.

often in the course of outlining and writing the substance or scope of the story will change abruptly and drastically. i have dozens of abandoned outlines in my notes app. i'm not great at sticking to my own plans.

19. Who is the easiest/hardest character for you to write about? Why?

i had an interesting conversation about this with @turanga4 a while ago, about how as someone who tends to overthink things, characters who tend to under-think things are harder to write. i feel like this can extend to a lot of different qualities, like characters who seem more tactile/kinesthetic than verbal or characters who are arrogant or impulsive.

the example we talked about was Ron Weasley, but i encounter it sometimes in writing Tonks. i see Tonks as impulsive and having somewhat black-and-white ideas about how the world works - she's young, she's basically a wizard cop, etc. the advantage with Tonks, at least, is that i've been a 20-something woman with a complicated romantic life, so at least i get that part?

Anatomy of a player character

So let's look at how the player character is constructed

wow it's nothing!! No but really, you might think the player character model might be the root of the scene, but consider that, especially with character customization, you're going to want to be able to swap out the model itself while keeping the code and other bits and pieces the same. So you want the model to be basically a leaf by itself, with nothing else relying on it.

You can further have children hanging off the "model" node if you want to break the model up into parts. Right now I have just one model attached to it as a placeholder.

Next, you want to set up collision. But also you want to set up an Area3D, also with collision. Because sometimes you want to be able to check what the player is colliding with. The main collision and the area's collision should be about the same, but I don't think they need to be precisely the same.

And of course you want to add a camera that'll follow your player character. I put it below a "camerapoint" node. This way I can have the camera pan to look at something else- like, showing you a map you've entered for the first time- and have it simply return to its base point afterwards.

So all told it looks like this:

Next is code. As of Godot 4 (I think) the engine has most of what you need built-in if you create a script for a Kinematic Body. The first modification I'll make is to remove the built-in jump and reuse some of that code for opening the menu and trying to interact.

Just need to remember to remove space from ui_accept so it's not activating both

There's a "and is_on_floor" there; this is a remnant from the jump code, but I think I'm going to leave it in, so the player can't end up opening the pause menu or NPC dialogue while falling off a cliff. If that ends up being something I want for whatever reason I'll change it later.

And there she is, able to move around the empty map while staring straight into your soul.

And that's it for now. Next I'll add code to turn the player model based on movement direction, as well as code to check if your in a grass patch or the like that has wild Pokemon encounters (which also depends on design and code for map scenes).

4/14/23

I keep wanting to get back on a decent sleep schedule, and the night keeps getting away from me. I need to like... get a visible clock by my computer or something.

I'm rendering the desire path project animation. I did a lot of work on it today. I started storyboarding the video itself, arranging the footage and putting in placeholders where I need other footage. I should be cool just going on a hike and filming with my phone or my old GoPro or something and using that for the bulk of the video. I got the Minecraft footage all settled in and recorded a screengrab of exploring in Google Streetview to find actual desire paths at a local college. So... the only stuff I have left to do is... the hiking footage... and a super rudimentary animation of the precursor ideas I had leading up to this idea. Just simple choreographed animations of really basic rudimentary AI creatures wandering around, then them "pathfinding" on a topographical map. Then an animation showing the same concept, but with the AI creature replaced by the ballpoint in a ballpoint pen... and the path behind it as ink. It shouldn't be too hard.

The rest of the labor has been... fucking with opacity automation on 100 fucking individual layers of paths. I needed to time out the build animations at more of a stagger, so it had longer builds for the first 10, then incrementally shorter ones as it got bigger. That meant... math. Yay. -_- Then... I needed to set it so the opacity flicker effect faded in at the end of the build animation, but since the flicker effect was completely independent for each layer, I had to do that for each individual one manually. Then... I need to set it so that the master opacity faded out, so each one looks like a streak that fades to about 75% opacity... and... again... I needed to do that for each layer... so I had to do that 100 times too. And now, it's goddamn done.

Hopefully.

I set up some camera animation, a material opacity fade for ambience and then... well... I'm rendering it now. The first render... the material got fucked up from all the overlapping, no idea what went wrong there. It looks fine in the render view... Fingers crossed on this pass.

So yeah. Big day full of work. Like... non-stop work all day. And now it's 3AM.

Oh, I caught a stream again, the guy who played the Native American character that was... in poor taste. He spent a good chunk of the night complaining about getting reported. But the weird part? The reports he was complaining about? They weren't even for that character!!! It was because he escaped from being captured by mercenaries while handcuffed, by jumping on a horse. Which is a no-no, I guess... And apparently he was reported by someone who was watching his stream? Not even someone involved in the incident? Which is really fucking weird.

I don't know, that whole last stream really left a bad taste in my mouth. And today? Violence for the sake of violence. Beating the shit out of some chick, torturing her, dragging her through town behind a horse. Because... she knew someone they were at war with... and the people they were at war with were all in jail so... this chick paid for it. It can be tough watching villains sometimes. You know, being someone who actually feels their emotions...

It's funny, the streamer actually mentioned that. He said his wife had trouble with those kinds of scenes or those kinds of actions... "you know, she gets all... 'emotional'... <chuckle>" And... it turned my stomach a bit, honestly. Like... okay. I get that females have their struggles growing up around other females. Girls can be psychologically vicious and super manipulative, I get it. It's not something I grew up with, so I can't really compare... but I rarely hear people talking about how much this kind of social pressure can fuck people up, as males. The constant peer pressure to annihilate your own emotions. As a sign of "toughness", of "strength". "I'm so strong, I don't feel anything."

Hey, I guess it makes good soldiers...

I'm someone who grew up... as my mom would say... "crying projectile tears" as a kid... Yet, in a male dominated family where the default setting is "do not talk about your feelings period"... my inevitable fate was to become numb. One way or another. It was just a matter of time. Whether it was dissociation or meds, it found its way there. But... my emotions always found a way through those walls. They are way too big of a part of me for me to even be able to suppress. In fact, when I did suppress them, I would get all these mysterious ailments, like GI problems and shit. For ages. Had doctors stumped. So... big emotions are really core to my identity. And as an artist/musician/poet/etc... ... duh? I guess? XD

Once I started to actually get to know my emotions and engage with them fully, my life started to come together and I started to get to know myself. And it was glorious. But... I also got to know Fear and Dread, and all those... So... Yeah. You don't get to pick and choose when it comes to feeling life fully, you take the bad with the good.

So... it's kinda weird to me that having emotions, and being emotionally in-touch is viewed as... a feminine trait? Like joy and love and passion are things reserved for women? Makes no fucking sense to me. Never did. The whole idea of genders playing specific roles in society just feels really outdated, from times when we had to like... worry about preserving population and shit. Like... "don't send the women into battle, we don't want to go extinct". Just a little outdated in 2023...

But I'll tell ya, a great way to get an emotionally unbalanced and morally questionable population is to raise them to believe that anesthetizing their feelings is an accomplishment, a goal. Ffs my dad subscribes to this shit, and I remember so clearly saying to him several times... "true strength is being able to feel your feelings, and still be able to act through them." Not fucking suppressing them and avoiding them and numbing yourself to the world. That's a great way to become a soldier. Or a butcher. Or an executioner. Or a surgeon or something. But good lord, it does not make a good friend. Or parent. Or romantic partner. But hell, maybe some people want to date a Great White Shark, who am I to judge...

It just upset me that he scoffed at emotions so... condescendingly... when doing extremely violent shit to an innocent person... for... literally no reason but that they were bored and the people they wanted to find were already in prison. The fact that this doesn't bother him... that this is really just a normal, everyday thing to do... completely ruins the effect. Like... it's supposed to be a dramatic gesture. It's supposed to be a message. But if you treat it like a grocery run, it's just... "welp, time to drag another person through the streets, as we do..." And it just takes all the meaning out of it. Which cheats the story, it cheats the interaction, it cheats the victim, it cheats his character, and, in the end, most of all, it cheats the viewer.

It's dumb and it's lame storywriting, in my opinion. A sociopathic villain is boring as fuck to watch from their perspective. They're just... walking around and doing shit. There's no tension, there's no conflict. It's just Anton Chigurh walking around emotionlessly shooting people for no reason until he gets gunned down, then roll credits. It's boring. What's the point? What, for money? He wants money. Cool... wow... so enthralling...

Emotion adds tension. Apathy makes shit boring. Tell me you'd want to watch this. A wild west setting. Protagonist is an outlaw. He robs a bank. He's robbed banks every week for the past 2 years, he's literally going through the motions with his friends. They grab a hostage, barely talk to them. They go through the same script with the cops as always, same demands, same plan. No fear, no tension, just... "ugh, are we gonna get caught this time, this plan better work." Like... annoyance instead of tension. Hostage gets released, they run. They get cornered. They have a shootout, they go down. The only emotion expressed is the player upset that their friend didn't cover them (out of character). They get patched up in custody, they go to jail. They don't care. They just bicker and quarrel amongst each other about who is to blame.

I miss good storytelling. This whole tough-guy "I don't care" crap is so fucking boring and overdone. XD

So yeah, that was an awkward moment, because he was mocking his wife for having difficulty in those moments of... morally questionable action... and... I had trouble just watching that part... where he forced his wife (playing a teenage boy) to make the call of whether he beats the shit out of a defenseless woman for just living in the same town as the person who killed his father. And then making the teenage boy repeatedly stab this woman. And he starts chuckling and rolling his eyes, like "women, amirite?!"

Yikes.

Welp, I guess you gotta expect it out of someone who basically only plays villains...

Alright, I'm off to bed. Hopefully I'll get out and get some fresh air tomorrow, I'd like to go skate a bit. It's been really nice out, but my sleep has just been so fucked up, I haven't had the energy to go out.

4. How do you choose which fics to write?

11. Do you write scenes in order, or do you jump around?

12. Do you outline your fics?  If yes, how detailed are your outlines?  How far do you stray from them?

17. Do you have a writing routine?

18. Do you enjoy research?  Which fic of yours required the most research?

21. Do you prefer writing chaptered fics or one-shots?

80. I have some story ideas but I don't know how to write them. How do I write those stories?

4 and 12 were already answered here!

11. Do you write scenes in order, or do you jump around?

Bruh, I can't even write a sentence in order. That said, lately I've been trying not to get TOO into the details of later scenes or later parts of scenes. I find that when I do, I end up having to scrap most of it because details I add in earlier make the later details not work.

So I guess my process is… I just write down any and all ideas I have as I think of them, no matter when in the scene or story they're supposed to go. But when I sit down to really hash out a full scene, I start from the beginning and use my random later ideas as a rough outline, knowing that I'll probably have to tweak or outright remove most of them once I get there.

It's also really, really common for me to leave placeholders in my scenes to come back to later. Extremely common. You have no idea. My early drafts are more placeholder than fic. The placeholders can range from standing in for "X action(s) need to happen here" to "I need another line or two of dialog here for this to flow right but I can't think of what" to "literally just cannot think of the word I'm looking for and don't want to break my flow right now to scour a thesaurus". Then later I gradually go back and fill in the placeholders, usually in several passes. Honestly, writing for me is more like putting together a puzzle than anything.

17. Do you have a writing routine?

The biggest "routine" thing for me is just that I try to make sure to write SOMETHING every day. On bad days, maybe that's as little as half a sentence, but at least that's half a sentence more than I had the day before. Most days, once I get started, I can keep going for at least an hour.

More specifically, I usually write in the mid-afternoon and/or late evening, laying on my living room floor for some goddamn reason. (Ok, I know the reason: it helps me to sit somewhere other than my usual chair so my brain has a cue that I'm in writing mode and not fucking-around-online mode.)

18. Do you enjoy research? Which fic of yours required the most research?

I love research and probably do way more of it than is really necessary. I tend to get real deep into ridiculous topics like snake reproduction or the chemical composition of semen, learning all sorts of details that don't end up reflected in the final fic at all.

I've done the most research for the lil buddy series, since it's set in the real world and I want to try to make sure my depiction of, for example, the Texas foster care system circa the mid-1980s is at the very least not so inaccurate as to be offensive. I still feel like it's probably not all that realistic, but I'm trying. (I also now know a hell of a lot about the timeline of VHS releases of The Muppet Show, which is obviously a very important detail that would have thrown people right out of the fic if I'd gotten it wrong.)

21. Do you prefer writing chaptered fics or one-shots?

I prefer one-shots. Pretty much all of my chaptered fics started out as one-shots that got out of hand. tear at me was supposed to be a one-shot. Playing House was supposed to be a one-shot. Hell, the entire lil buddy series (including several WIPs that I haven't posted yet) was supposed to be a single one-shot.

As mentioned before, I'm not good at, like… outlining. So working out how to structure and organize chaptered fics can be a challenge for me. This has been a major problem for my longest WIP, which I just have not been able to get to come together at all.

80. I have some story ideas but I don't know how to write them. How do I write those stories?

It's hard for me to answer this since I'm not sure what exactly you're struggling with. But I will say that sometimes I have an idea that feels Too Big or Too Important and I can't get a handle on how to write it in a way that I feel satisfied with.

In those cases, it helps me to just… set aside the big idea for the moment and focus in on one small aspect of it. One scene or one conversation that I feel like I can write. Or maybe a moment from the backstory to help explore the characters' motivations or the setting. Or even shift my focus for a while to some other small idea entirely, if I'm getting too frustrated metaphorically banging my head against this one.

(A few of my fics are actually a result of exactly the above process. Sugar-High Shenanigans is actually a scene from the aforementioned long fic that I've never finished. the perfect prayer was me exploring Bro's character when I felt stuck on tear at me. The lil buddy series is just the result of me breaking a longer fic idea into smaller, more manageable chunks.)

Basically, start out with something smaller in scope. Give yourself space to just try things out and not be perfect.

Along those lines, writing drabbles can be a fun exercise. Like, if you only have 100 words to convey an idea or a dynamic, what do you focus in on? It really forces you to distill the idea down to its essence. And they're pretty low-pressure, too, because even if you don't feel like you get it quite right, oh well, it's only 100 words; you can always try some other approach to the same idea another time.

I don't know if any of that helps, but yeah!

How can I write quickly?

I (hi, I’m @unforth) have been asked frequently over the years how I write a lot quickly. I’m a pretty fast writer - for example, I wrote the 5600 words of my May Trope Mayhem fill from yesterday in under 2.5 hours. 

First, a little of my personal history for context. I’ve always written, starting from when I was able to string letters into (very poorly spelled) words and (horrible un-grammatical) sentences. When I started trying my hand at serious, professional-level fiction writing, I joined a community called novel_in_90, which was founded by the author Elizabeth Bear. The purpose of novel_in_90 was “to be NaNoWriMo but more realistic.” Instead of 50,000 words in 31 days, it was 67,500 words in 90 days, or 750 words a day. I participated in multiple rounds of novel_in_90 starting in mid-2005, and in 2007 I completed my first (godawful) novel. When I started, even writing a couple hundred words of day took me forever, but it got easier with time. 

During those same years, I also got a job that required I do professional writing on a deadline: I was a grant writer, and I only got paid when the grants won. That often meant working fast under high pressure, culminating in the weekend I wrote and edited an entire 40 pages grant that was due on Monday. I think, if I hadn’t had a solid foundation of “regular daily plodding writing,” I’d not have been able to marathon when the moment came...and it came because I had to, not because I wanted to. However, I learned a valuable lesson: I could. Subsequently, I found that, when I had the time and space and was rested enough to use my brain, I could bust out a huge amount. Like, I wrote an entire 150,000 word novel in 17 days.

My personal record is about 200,000 words in one month (it was the month I wrote that novel; I wasn’t tracking when I did that so I don’t know exactly), 25,000 words in a day, and I’ve topped out around 3,000 words an hour. I do know people who can do more...but not many.

Not everyone will be able to do this. Flat out, I MUST preface the rest of this post by saying that. Some people will find that writing fast fits their brain, and for others, it just won’t, and that’s okay. Fast doesn’t equal better, and it isn’t inherently “good” to write fast. Furthermore, even for those who can write fast, not everyone will find the same strategies helpful. I can share what works for me. Try out one item, some items, or all of these - if writing faster is something you want to be able to do, which it certainly never has to be. Use what works for you, and discard the rest.

Sit in your chair, put your fingers on your keyboard or touch screen, and write. You can’t write 1,000 words in half an hour until you write one word, however long that one word takes. I know saying this is obvious, but I’ve been asked “how can I write fast” by people who struggle to write at all...fast can’t be your priority until you’ve got a foundation of just writing. (Honestly...fast should never be your priority, but it might be helpful to you regardless, which can make it worth learning.)

Start small. Set an achievable goal, and make yourself meet that goal (daily, weekly, whatever) come hell or high water, no matter how long it takes you. Keep the goal small at first; you’re not trying to torture yourself, you’re trying to build a skill. If you set the goal high enough that you consistently fail, you’re not teaching yourself anything. And, if you find the goal IS too high...lower it. There’s no shame in working within your limits. Think of it like starting a new work out regimen: you wouldn’t try to run a 10k at a record time if you can’t run a mile slow. Treat your fingers and your brain the same way you’d treat your legs and joints. Give them time to grow, learn, and improve before you try to push yourself.

Trying to write daily is worthwhile if you want to work on your writing speed, because you’ll be forced to try to fit it in as you’re able - that might be ten minutes in your morning, or an hour in your evening, and it might vary from day to day, but making it daily means you have to fit it in somewhere.

Building skills takes time and isn’t easy. For some people, it will come easier than for others, and even when you’re fast, going from “I can write words fast” to “I can write damn good words fast” takes practice and dedication and accepting constructive criticism - speed alone will never be worth more than writing well.

Having a community can help. Ya’ll will check in on each other, cheer each other on, remind each other that missing a day or a goal isn’t the end of the world, and keep each other’s spirits up. If you don’t know other writerly folks online, I recommend Weekend Writing Marathon ( @weekendwritingmarathon ) as a good place to start (I used to be a mod there). Once you’re trying to work up to larger word counts in a day, remember that even writing fast will take minutes or hours. You can’t write 2,500 words in an hour if you don’t set an hour aside. Make sure you’re giving yourself the room and time you need to succeed.

You will probably never be able to do high, rapid word counts every day, every week, every month. The best runners in the world don’t run marathons every day. Set realistic long term goals.

Work on projects where you have a clear idea of where you’re going. I’m not saying “pantsers” can’t write fast, because of course they can, but if you want to write fast, and well, and coherently, to create a first draft that’s in pretty good shape, you’ll do better if you have a good sense of what you’re trying to accomplish with your story. That doesn’t mean you need to do all your world building up front, or have a complete outline (I never have either). All you really need is what happens next. I tend to plan projects - and write them - one full scene at a time, with only a vague idea what’s going to come after. (I’m personally a “plantser,” and the strategies in this post will likely be most effective to other plantsers.)

Visualize ahead of time what you’d like to write...but don’t get too attached to what you visualize. When I go to bed, I plan the next scene I’m going to compose, often to the least detail. I then forget all of it overnight, at least all the specifics, and I’m left with a general sense and shape of what’s to come. You’ll never be able to replicate the “perfect” dialog you pre-conceive, so give up on trying to. Instead, play through the scene and think about the emotional beats you want to hit and plot points you want to forward. If you keep that in mind, you’ll be able to get the words out faster than if you’re agonizing over every word or regretting the “oh-so-great” idea that you’ve since forgotten. 

Practice different work styles. If writing every day doesn’t work for you, try instead saying, “this is my writing day each week,” and aim for a lot that specific day, and write little or nothing other days. Try writing at different times of day and on different days, fitting it into your schedule. If you’re beating yourself up for not writing when you “should,” it’ll be that much harder to succeed, so instead, as I said for point 2 - set a reasonable goal that fits your life and working style, fitting it around your other responsibilities, and push yourself within that framework, instead of trying to shoehorn into a style that you “think you should” use to succeed. 

Track your word counts, and take notes on how much you did and what project you were working on. If you’re also experimenting with different times of day and different days, make sure you note that too. I personally use a simple Excel sheet (well, Google Sheets, now) - column one is the date, column 2 is “starting word count,” column 3 is “ending word count,” column 4 is “=column 3 - column 2”, column 5 is notes. Pay attention to when you succeed at writing faster, and when you don’t, and consider what factors might have played into your success...and then try to replicate those factors next time you’re doing a sprint. Control as many variables as you can while you’re “training.”

If you find social media distracting, trying getting a web browser extension that prevents you from connecting to websites for a set period of time.

If you find you tend to dither before starting, I find it helpful to run through everything that I might do to procrastinate (check my social media! grab a snack! make some tea! set up my playlist! check my social media again! finish making the tea! check my social media for what I swear will be the last time!), and when I’m done, it’s like, well, I’ve done all those things, I’ve got no choice left, time to write, no excuses left.

If you find you struggle with picking up a WIP, try leaving off in the middle of a sentence at the end of a session, one where you know exactly how it ends - or, leave off mid-paragraph, or when you are positive you know what happens next (and I mean literally next, as in the very next sentence.) It’s much easier to “pick back up” when your first words are super clear. (Do not do this if you think there’s any chance you’ll forget or end up in a situation where you won’t return to your WIP for months!) 

If you find you struggle to maintain continuity across multiple writing sessions, try rereading what you wrote the previous day before you proceed. Resist the urge to edit it!

Avoid stopping when you get stuck, even to do research. Don’t know a fact? Add a comment to your manuscript flagging the relevant text, “LOOK THIS UP LATER.” Can’t think of a word? Put in something you can use the “find” function on easily (I personally use “XX” since there are no words that have a double x in them) and so you can come back later, search for your chosen placeholder, and fill in the blanks. Not sure how a scene ends but know the next scene? Jump ahead.

That said, if you really don’t know what happens next, you don’t do yourself any favors by pressing on. As I’ve said previously, speed alone should never be your writing object. It’s better to slow down, consider your plot, figure out where you’re going, and then write, than to just plow ahead - or at least, that’s better if you want a manuscript you’ll actually be able to use for something at a later point. If you’re truly just practicing, you can also say “screw it, who needs coherence?” and keep going. I’d personally never have finished my first novel if I’d spent a lot of time worrying about making the pieces fit together and yeah, it’s a mess, but it’s a mess I wrote instead of a mess I got stuck on and never completed.

Don’t move the finish line. If you’ve set the goal of 500 words a day, don’t beat yourself up if you get 550 because you think you think you could have done more. If you say you’ll write five days a week, don’t get mad because you DID have time the sixth day but chose to use it on something else. If you make yourself feel like shit when you succeed, what’ll happen when you fail? And when you’re comfortable and really think you’re ready, change the goal - reassess every month, say, and up your goals. While working for speed, trying upping your word count goal without changing the amount of time you allot for working.

Your need to adhere to the above suggestions will change over time. Once, I always had an outline; now I often don’t need one. Once, I wouldn’t let myself stop even to use a thesaurus; now, I find I can look up words without breaking my flow or significantly slowing myself down. This is not an “all or nothing” prospect, nor is it a “do things the same way forever once you’ve found one (1) thing that works” prospect - you’ll experiment, and find strategies that work for you, and then at some point, your needs will change, and you’ll experiment more, and find new strategies that work for you, on and on, as your skills grow. 

To reiterate: writing fast should never be your objective in and of itself! Greater writing speed will come with practice and as a general side effect of improving your craft. Simply being able to write fast is useless; being able to write fast and well will enable you to get more of your ideas out there, so if that’s something you’d like to accomplish, focus on building your general skills and training yourself to be able to use those skills rapidly and in tandem with each other to produce decent writing, in a first draft, at a decent speed.

Once you try, you may find none of this works for you! That’s okay. That’s good! You tried, which means you learned something about yourself and your own writing style, and that too will help you to improve. Keep experimenting, keep learning, and find what does work for you - and accept that no two writers will ever be the same, and one of those differences will be writing speed. Some writers will never write fast, and that’s doesn’t make them any less awesome or valid. And some writers will always write fast, and that doesn’t make them inherently awesome or valid. Only with a suite of skills that suit your individual life, personality, work style, writing capabilities, goals, etc., will you succeed as a writer (for various, personalized definitions of the word “success”); speed is only one of those potential skills, and not one that’s particularly important in my opinion...yet I still get asked about it fairly often, so here we are, these are my suggestions

Go forth, and write some words! <3

A Relatively Spoiler Free Project E Run Down for @bean-with-a-knife

You asked for this Bean. Now you have to deal with the consequences.

Also, the name is a placeholder until I can find a better name, so if you have any suggestions for what the project as a whole should be called feel free to tell me.

Please note: This is a highly abridged version of events because I cant include everything without A. Massive Spoilers and B. killing my hands.

Project E is an original project I have been working on for around 2 years now. It started as a simple story about a character in an unfamiliar world and morphed into... whatever this is.

The project is divided into three parts: "Times End", "The Second Realm" and "Self-Contained Universe". A fourth part is also being considered thats just full of cut scenes and bonus stuff, but we'll cross that when we come to it.

TIMES END: Times End is the first part in the project. It follows the story of Aviator; an amnesiac creature called a "Luft". Lufts traditionally have magic surrounding air and wind, which is uncommon in the world this takes place in (No name yet). This world is divided into seven continents, and each of them kind of do their own thing.

Aviator remembers jack shit about her life or where she came from, as she had been travelling her whole life. One day, she stumbles upon a place called "Edolan", a conglomeration of different tribes and settlements that ignore each other and pretend the others don't exist.

Aviator is entranced by this new place and immediately gets to exploring. A lot of things happen, from Aviator discovering her new favorite food to pissing off the mafia to solving murder. Oh and a dead human ish character named Puppet follows her around creepily because thats Puppet for ya.

Then a bunch of bad things happen, the world nearly ends, and Aviator gets sealed in a crystal in another plane of existence to stop the end of the world. Because that makes sense. *cough* and Lufts as a collective species are blamed for the whole thing. Because thats logic ig.

THE SECOND REALM: The second realm takes place 100 years later and follows Shedo, Arsene, and Dori-Mei, three rebellious (and very bored) teenagers with absolutely nothing in common other than going to the same school. Shedo is Puppets adopted daughter, Dori is a refugee from another continent, and Arsene is an orphan taken from his home because his parents were deemed unfit to keep him. (Fair enough though, they were bad parents).

They all have very different problems and lives, but they get along well enough. One day, Shedo finds a strange glass crystal ball sort of thing and Arsene breaks it like an idiot, landing them in another dimension. They learn how to traverse the new realm and go back and forth.

Sadly, they arent the only ones exploring this new realm, as a group known as "The Investigators" are hot on their heels trying to track not only the trio down but whatever seems to be at the center of the world.

Anyway, drama ensues and a lot of enemies to lovers tension between Shedo and Rift, the leader of the Investigators, who is a Luft herself. No I promise that not all Lufts are girls, I just wanted her to be an angry lesbian okay.

They make their way to the center of the world thanks to the help of a pair of weirdos who offered their assistance up to them named Tamy and Teaso. Speaking of them... SELF-CONTAINED UNIVERSE: Teaso was a normal... uh, humanoid ant. Sounds weird but its really not. Worked at a library, had a solid life in the underground secret city of Lamplight, and everything was fine. Until his childhood best friend he WATCHED jump to her death shows up as his door drunk at two in the morning.

When he asks what happen, she just drunkenly tells him that she found the answers to Times End, the event that nearly ended the world 100 years ago in a diary written by a Luft. Huh, weird. That sounds a little familiar.

And thus, once Tamy (the aforentioned friend) sobered up, they embark on an epic quest of which Teaso was not a willing participant in.

Everything else is too spoilery sorry but I hope the synopsis of each makes at least a LITTLE sense. Its kind of a mess but oh well. If you made it this far you deserve a cookie. I would love to hear your thoughts on this VERY VERY FUCKING ABRIDGED VERSION OF THIS PROJECT LMAO.