Byoldervine

**NO SOLICITING PLEASE** ——— Writing blog full of writing tips I’m not qualified to give out and ramblings about my own WIP, Byoldervine

[byoldervine]

~•~ Blog Intro ~•~

This blog is where I share daily posts about the superhero fantasy novel I’m writing, Byoldervine, as well as writing tips, discussion and analysis. For more specific/in-depth posts about my story, check out my masterpost, and here’s the basic gist of the story:

What Is Byoldervine About?

Persephone Foster was a human brought into the angelic realm of Tyrion after discovering her immortality, and since then has studied magic and monsters while trying to maintain connections to her mortal family. But when the god of the fantasy realm of Paracosm falls deathly ill, and his fragmented power sends mythical creatures into the human realm, Persephone must become the masked hero Enigma to protect her old home, with the help of a credit-stealing new hero determined to make this difficult. When an opportunity presents itself to stop this at the source — curing the dying god — can they set aside their differences and work together with new allies to find the cure before it’s too late? Or have they been more involved in this ever-expanding story than they’ve all been allowed to realise?

What Are The Four Realms And Who Are Their Gods?

Aegis Cantor is the God of Order, and rules over the angelic realm of Tyrion

Corrus Acaron is the God of Souls and Fate, and rules the underworld known as Nexus

Nordsvark Attolus is the God of Creation, and watches over the fantasy realm of Paracosm

Byoldervine is the deceased Goddess of Free Will, and once watched over the human realm of Terran

[byoldervine]

Wow rewriting a whole significant chunk of your story is nuts. I haven’t even started the rewrite yet the planning is enough

[byoldervine]

There’s only one person in the world aside from myself who has ever read even a small part of my book. There are endless lovely things I could say about him, but I’ll keep it mostly on-topic here to avoid things getting too long or too emotional

He asked if he could read it, and when I told him it won’t be ready for a very long time, his reply was “But I won’t be alive for a very long time. So I want to see it before I’m not alive anymore”

He got to read the book. Just a chapter or two. He had me read them to him, and he listened with full attention the whole time. Afterwards, he said it was fantastic, and asked why it wasn’t ready yet. I don’t think he fully understood why it would need editing, nor that writing a first draft can take years on its own

But yesterday, I woke up to a very sad message; he was right that he wouldn’t be alive to see the finished book. He passed away over the weekend, after a long struggle and decline. He was a wonderful, kind, thoughtful, cheerful man, and exactly the kind of person I wish we could all be more like. Things won’t be the same without him

Rest in peace, my friend

[byoldervine]

You can’t really complain about a writing choice, even when it’s generally almost always a bad writing choice, if said writing choice is very specifically the whole point

I have a whole load of critisism for Miraculous Ladybug, but one piece of criticism I can never understand is “Lucky Charm is just Deus ex Machina, it’s bad writing!”

Deus ex Machina means ‘god in the machine’. Tikki is a god. The Ladybug earrings are a machine. Lucky Charm as a superpower is literally a god granting help from inside a machine

It is very literally a Deus ex Machina. Hell, every single Miraculous is a literal Deus ex Machina

And that’s okay! You’re allowed to use Deus ex Machina or other ‘bad’ tropes so long as you do so with intention and purpose. You have to know what you’re doing and execute it in a way that works with the story you’re telling. And if one of the biggest parts of the lore and worldbuilding is that you put tiny gods in tiny machines, then hey, you’ve got an entire story based around Deus ex Machinas — and that works!

[byoldervine]

‘There’ as in “There are many places we could go. I want to go over there.” Here and there

‘Their’ as in “Their toys look very fun. I want to go play at their house.” It has an ‘I’ in it because it talks about a person and their wants or needs or belongings

‘They’re’ as in “They’re very nice people. They’re fun to be around.” The apostrophe means two words are connected, and those two words are ‘they’ and ‘are’, to make ‘They’re’

[byoldervine]

No matter how good your writing is, there will always be someone who doesn’t like it

Do NOT change the story to make it palatable to them. They will never like it. There is nothing you can do to make them like it

But there are so many people out there who will like it. And if you tone down the things that make other people not like it, you’re also toning down the things that make these people really like it

Would you rather have a story that’s loved and hated, or a story that nobody finds notable, and thus is easily forgotten?

Don’t tone yourself down to make people like it — tone yourself up. Make it so unapologetically you that instead of merely disliking it, they absolutely hate it

Because at least then you’ve left an impression on them, and how your story made them feel will stick with them, whether they like it or not

[byoldervine]

I should be editing my draft but instead I’m writing shitty blog posts about all the writing that I’m not doing

[byoldervine]

Whenever I feel like I haven’t done anything with my life, or that I’m unaccomplished and would have nothing to show for my existence if I died today, I’m glad that nowadays I can think of my book. Even if it’s far from done, that’s still a major accomplishment that proves I can put time, effort and passion into something

I’m a firm believer that everyone needs some kind of creative hobby in which they make something, and thus can tangibly see the fruits of their labours in real time. Writing, drawing, painting, sculpting, designing, sewing, knitting, making music

When nothing else feels real, what you’ve done is real, and you can’t deny that

[byoldervine]

What baffles me with media literacy issues is that media literacy is genuinely so much fun

I love writing out my thoughts and getting to explain my perspective on things. I love considering what works and what doesn’t, and coming to a conclusion on why that is. I love appreciating the minor details of a story or a character and getting excited about them. I love talking about the things I love

And okay, sure, people absolutely don’t have to like all the things that I like, and it’s perfectly normal to come across people that have different tastes than I do. But you’re telling me you don’t even like to talk about the things you like? There’s no book, no play, no TV show, no movie, no video game, no manga, no webcomic, no nothing? You don’t have a single one that you enjoy discussing?

It’s so important that we practice media literacy, and there are some genuinely fun ways to do it, and you can bring in things you already like. You don’t have to write giant rambling essays of analysis like I sometimes do, but just… talk about it once in a while

[byoldervine]

Writing a description is like a game of Chinese whispers; you have to translate from your imagination to actual written language, and then your reader has to translate actual written language into their own imagination, and it doesn’t help that both imaginations are entirely different languages to begin with

Not only is a perfect translation impossible, but the fun of the game is waiting to hear what the final translation is and seeing how similar or how diverged it became

[byoldervine]

June’s back again. This time last year I was ending my break from writing a month early because I was so excited to finish my first draft, and I pulled it off before the end of the year

Now, all I’ve done since is reread half of what I wrote and made a few notes on changes I want to make. And due to a big work project taking up all my free time for the next two months or so, I won’t be able to get back to a consistent writing routine until at least August, which sucks

Going without a writing routine again after two years is… different. Especially with the fact that I’m now editing and making notes, not actually writing. I thought that this would be the ridiculously easy part; if I can write an entire book, how can I struggle now to just read it back and make the occasional note?

I can’t wait to get back to consistent writing. I feel like everything will just click back into place once I have my routine back, and that everything will go a lot easier. I would’ve gone back way sooner had it not been for the work project needing to be settled

[byoldervine]

It’s startlingly easy to lose motivation for the thing you’ve been so excited about the moment you sit down to do it

I’ve been looking forward to making progress on my book all day, what do you mean I’m already fed up without writing a single word?

[byoldervine]

I’d rather my foreshadowing be completely obvious to absolutely every reader I have, to the point where my big reveal is actually no surprise to anyone, than to not foreshadow anything in order to guarantee that my big reveals have maximum shock value

Because the thing is, you ultimately want your readers to notice your foreshadowing in some capacity. Ideally not knowing the plot twist from the first page, of course. But the average reader should be at least subtly influenced in their understanding of the story by the foreshadowing, so that it feels like a logical progression by the time they reach the plot twist

But no foreshadowing for a big twist? All that shock will quickly be replaced with confusion, and immersion is broken. It’s better to make it too obvious than to have it come entirely out of left field

[byoldervine]

Recently got asked by someone if I’m able to write porn as an asexual. I won’t share my personal relationship with these kinds of things here, but in general, I don’t really understand why there’s an assumption that asexuals have the capacity to write about magic and murder and such, but sex is too far out of the realm of belief

Ignoring that some asexuals have had sex in the past, or may still have sex by choice, you don’t need to have personal experience in something in order to write about it. And this goes for relationships, too; if it didn’t, none of my characters would have friends

Writing about sex is not inherently different to writing about anything else; write what you know, and if there are gaps in your knowledge, do your research. Anyone can write any sexual interaction irregardless of their personal experience with it, and whether or not it turns out good is dependent on their research skills and writing abilities, not their skills in the bedroom

[byoldervine]

I’ve made my main characters plus Layni in Tomodachi Life and Kennedy keeps falling in love with every woman she sees I don’t know what the fuck is up with her

[byoldervine]

The one time of year that Persephone absolutely refuses to visit the human realm is during heatwave season. Stay in Tyrion girl save yourself it’s fucking SHIT here. In fact take me with you I’m begging you

[byoldervine]

Here’s a June writing challenge designed for anyone who doesn’t already have a writing routine. Hobbyists, casuals doing it for fun, this one is for you guys

For the month of June, I want you to write 1000 words every week. Thats four weeks, so you’ll be writing 4000 words total — or 5000 if you’re ambitious and want to scramble to add more in the two days at the end of the month, but that’s definitely not expected

The rules as follows:

You must write a minimum of 1000 words every week, starting from Monday and ending on Sunday

You can write more than 1000 words, and there’s no upper limit to how much you’re allowed to write, but it will not count towards the next week’s word count

You must put all of your 4000+ words into the same one project, but you have full freedom to add it to any existing project, or to create a new one