Writeblr ~ Les Contes de Rhéio

Writeblr for my original projects. Though I'm French, this blog is written in English. High Fantasy follow from julie-oc Name is Julie, feel free to send asks and messages. Current WIP (mobile friendly)

[contes-de-rheio]

Masterpost

Hi y’all!! I’m Julie (French, mid-thirties, bi). I’m not new to writeblr, but I like only post sparingly my own content now. Life’s been too busy.

I write high fantasy, but when it comes to reading I also enjoy SF and history (essays, not novels). I’ll follow from @julie-oc, and I have a secondary blog @fukusigma where I reblog a bit of everything. Feel free to tag me in games (except for “Search the Word”, this is too difficult because I write in French).

Click to learn more about my wips. Some titles and summary may have changed since I first posted about them.

These stories take place in the same universe, but in different times and places. They're in chronological order of events.

Here, walked Marka | wip intro post | Status: unstrung scenes

Niensheria has been turned into a desert by the reckless acts of Marka and her friends. The gods, angered, force their gift her eternal yout upon her. Until she finds a way to repair the harm she caused, she will witness the fall of her people. Years pass, new generations are born, and the people of Niensheria, stuck between the desert and their unwelcoming neighbours, reduced to extreme poverty, decide to rise one last time to rebuild their lost home.

The Coriant Trilogy | wip intro post | Status: Plotting

The rise, the summit and the fall of the Coriant Empire through the stories of Hermione the warrior queen who founded the empire, then Erinye queen and protector of the arts, and finally Andromeda the last general who was defeated by the powerful queen Iseult of Aqualos.

The Living Library | wip intro post | Status: unstrung scenes

Zhou has faithfully served the Emperor in his quest for the Living Library, but after one too many massacre, he decides to retire from the political affair. For a few years, he lives peacefully as the only healer in a remote village, until people come ask for payback.

The Dragons of Jamaedo | wip intro post | Status: 1st Draft

The Choo royal family reigns over the archipelago of Jamaedo with an iron hand using magic, it reserves for itself, to snuff out all revolts.

Goo Mihee, eldest daughter of her clan, must marry a man she has no love for: Choo’s Dog, Kwon Taeyeon. But, as she tries to keep the appearance of a dutiful wife, the events around her only fuels her anger, until she seizes the chance to maybe end Choo's hegemony once and for all.

The pirates of Hokusho | wip intro post | Status: Researching

Takeru has risen to the top of his pirate band. But profits are drying up as the warriors from the main islands fight for power, and other pirates try to safegard their place before they're forced to disappear. Against his will, Takeru must serve a cunning samurai or see his band die. Meanwhile, Oharu is sent to kill Take's new master.

The Fall of Baschenka | wip intro post | Status: Plotting

Rinka Zima has spent most of his youth in the mines. No longer hoping for another life, he obtains the king's pardon of his father's crime and is reestablished in his titles, but not in his fortune. Struggling to maintain his family afloat and looking for his sister, he rises at Court while his city, under political turmoil, is conquered by the neighboring Valiski.

The Union of Dahran Cities | wip intro post | Status: Plotting

Forty years passed since the fall of Baschenka. The northern city-states have stallen their infights as Southern-Darah army threatens to conquer them all. In Tara, Gleb Polzin and Fenna are the two newest representants of their respective cities and must find the words to unite them all, under the eyes of a disillusioned Rinka.

The Last War | wip intro post | Status: 1st Draft - Paused

Trélyse, queen of Aqualos, is fighting what she hopes to be the last war against Niensheria. The siege on Alhamra is set and she expects a swift reddition, but, on the northern frontier of Aqualos, alarm fires lit up. Suddenly Trélyse is stuck in a foreign country, cut from her own. Little does she knows, the attack against Aqualos is just a diversion. The Memory Tower, library of sorcerers’ knowledge from the past millennium has been burned to the ground. But one book was retrieved from its shelves. With the secrets revealed within, Ketal could rise again and rebuild his empire of terror.

Shadows and Woods | wip intro post | Status: Plotting

In the capital, Niau, young police inspector who can't meet the approbation of his superiors, must solve the disappearance of a judge's son. But as he digs deeper, he only find unidentified dead corpses, until he must questions his loyalties.

Phā is sent to the capital by the prophet of his mountain village. His best friend has mysteriously disappeared, no magic can find her anymore. Only him can track her back, but her last steps only lead to Niau.

A Train in Roue-Champêtre | wip intro post | Status: Plotting

Ludélien has fallen in disgrace with the queen. No longer welcome at court, he joins some friends in Roue-Champêtre. They're working to extend the train line into the town center, but between the unexplainable crumbling of the tunnel and the angry protests of the porters on foot, their task may never come to an end.

Le Randonneur | wip intro post | Status: On hold

Ensemble of stories in various format about a world where an ice age result in the rarefaction of water and the soon impossibility to trade long distance. Two siblings, a brother and a sister, create the first flying ships which will give rise to all powerful Guild Post.

Contes à l’envers | wip intro post | Status: On hold

As a kid, Manon cross to a magical world. There, she learns magic and helps the people of that world reclaim their independance from a powerful witch who destroyed all other witches and wizards. Once this is achieved, Manon is sent back to her world, as a kid again. But she kept all her memories and, while her parents are convinced she suffers of some mental illnesses, she starts a quest to find a way back convinced she cannot be happy anywhere else.

[maybe-flora]

this is a silly question but

people who write things other than fanfics (as in OCs)

how do you like...get started

i have concepts i have my barebones characters but aside from that i'm like howwww do i start where do i pull the first thread from

i know there's no right or wrong way to do it but call me shane hollander the way i need some RULES give me the PLAYBOOK

[hyba]

Hello 👋 So, generally speaking, when I've got characters but no story, I try to flesh out the characters a bit more. What do they want? What are their problems? Who do they know, and what are their relationships to others like? What are they scared of? Why? What has their life been like up to this point? What do they do on the daily?

Sometimes I have a certain scene in mind when I get started, so I'll build around that scene. I'll start by writing it, then consider how the story got to that point in time, and what happens after it. Sometimes that helps me a lot, too.

If you have a general vibe for the story, maybe consider the different themes or topics you think would best fit the idea you have in your head, and build stories from there.

And, of course, if you have characters but no idea what to do with them, one of the more fun ways to get some ideas is to listen to songs that remind you of your characters and see if you can't glean some inspiration from them whether in regards to further developing your characters or their stories.

I'm sure there are a lot of other ways to get started, but off the top of my head, this is what I've got! Hope it helps, and I hope you have fun writing your own original fiction.

[contes-de-rheio]

All the above.

My starting point is always a scene, and generally I try to develop what happened before and/or after. As characters add up, I develop them by having them talk to each other, to themselves and little by little I get an understanding of who they are.

While I’ve never fully analysed the beginning of my process, it’s pretty obvious I’m systematically answering certain questions. How did we get to that point? Where do we go now? How their past impacts my characters current lives and helps to connect or on the contrary hinders their relationships? I also seek points of tension and conflicts between the various characters/factions. Why do they agree? Why can’t they agree? Where does their inability to understand each other come from?

I generally won’t start writing until I have a clear image of what I want the ending to be, but that’s a me thing.

[adhdwannabewriter]

Writers, which software do you use?

Google docs

Microsoft word

Ellipsus

Libre office - writer

Notepad (the fuck is wrong with you lol)

Pages

Other (comment, please, esp if you recommend it)

Checking results

Voting ended on5h

I used to use Google docs, but the white mode only was really annoying me (tires my eyes), so I swapped to Ellipsus (which I genuinely love and recommend), but it was bothering me a bit that I need wifi in order to use it, so now I switched to LibreOffice Writer, which I do like.

It very much has a Microsoft Word feel, but is open source and you need no accounts to use it. It's local on your device, so no AI can scan it, and no wifi is needed.

I still wish it had the Google Docs cards, because, bitch, that thing is so good for easy organizing.

[notpotable]

I primarily use google docs, where I find that with a serif font and forest green font color, eye strain is much reduced for me.

But I also DO use Notepad too hahaha - Notepad is beautiful and I will hear no slander! sometimes you just gotta have the simple expedient of not wanting your fic to end up being network traffic away from home, and a little perfectly un-cloud-linked, simple monospace font is exactly what you need.

In gdocs do all my initial edits in a serif font, then switch to a sans-serif font for another several edit passes, then reach out to my beta. Lastly I add all my formatting html myself, and then put the draft into AO3's plaintext editor and I read it through again on both my phone and on a desktop to see if I like the way everything is situated.

Unfortunately, wishful thinking aside, google docs simply does not yet have a competitor that can match it in portability (or USABILITY) across devices, and I write on my phone, my home laptop, my tablet outdoors, and workstations at my university.

And no, ellipsus is not gonna match any of that. I tried ellipsus. I bought into the hype. Ugh. I found it not portable at all across devices because of the limits of their flawed design choices in mobile web view (owing to misuse of small screen real estate and layout shifts), and I found it poorly useablefor my needs overall on ANY device because of the limits of their flawed design choices for text editor and user interface both (using markdown for the editor (fukkin markdown, I shit you not. /spit), yet hiding real, utilitarian text formatting options under five nested layers of menu clicks), with a team too small to offer support for their beta product, yet already rolling out paid sub options. for their beta product. ellipsus is a complete mess, and I got bamboozled into wasting weeks there trying to get it to function for my personal use cases. but they have 37 different color options... so you can change theme every four and a half hours I guess? wowza.

[terriyakiblack]

Ha, Google Docs’ foothold is pretty annoying, innit? But unfortunately, their service does just sort of work as you’ve put it.

Ellipsus is a project that started out very promising and has quickly turned into something concerning, unfortunately.

The choice to use markdown is... odd. I’m not really sure why they’ve gone that route for something that is geared towards creative writing, but... yeah. The interest in markdown that the internet currently has cannot go away fast enough for me.

And it definitely still feels like a project in beta. The UI is so fucking awkward. There’s the floating top header that shows the word count and has the focus mode and timer buttons, but it comes and goes with how you scroll and it’s so fucking annoying. And you can’t change its behavior! >:\

On desktop, you end up with this weird amount of space being used that doesn’t need to be. The bottom of the page has a floating widget for formatting that hovers way too high above the very bottom of the page, leading to your writing getting covered up by it and eventually going down past it — just, what in the fuckity? And why do I need this if I have the sidebar buttons to format via and vice versa? Why can I collapse the sidebar, which has things other than the formatting stuff, and not do anything about that stupid floating footer???

I hate this! The desktop UI genuinely has kept me from using Ellipsus more than I had wanted to in the past. The rolling out of monetization when they’re clearly too small to properly support it has left a bad taste in my mouth, too.

And now there’s hush hush speak about how some of their investors are AI companies. This is really curious given Ellipsus’ stance on AI and scraping.

I dunno. I think a lot of Ellipsus’ success so far is it playing into the AO3/fanfic writers area of the Internet and taking advantage of NaNo’s crazy suicide.

[thewritinggrindstone]

crazy that scrivener isn't on the poll considering that fifteen years ago it was all the writing community was talking about. but I digress.

in the past I've used ywriter, ms word, scrivener, and focuswriter as my primary programs. I still use ms word to proofread everything. for actual drafting, I currently use writemonkey 3, which is lightweight and has the ability to sync across devices by way of some kind of file-synching software (I use syncthing). it also has the opportunity to be super super pretty, which is a key part of my process. some details found here!

[contes-de-rheio]

I still use Scrivener. I’m afraid it’s lack of popularity is at least for part due to the end of Nanowrimo, as it was one of the most recurring partners, and you could buy the software for 50% of its price if you won.

[screnarchive-deactivated2022042]

If you guys are like me, and you struggle a little with describing locations, can I suggest…

as a lifesaver.

[whats-amata-you]

There is a WHOLE SERIES of these!! Amazon has like half the series under Ackerman, Angela and the other half under Puglisi, Becca, but both authors worked on all of them. The Emotion Thesaurus has done SO MUCH to help me improve my writing of body language and such too. And they’re each like $5-6 for the Kindle version with quick links in the table of contents and everything. I cannot recommend these enough, they’re super special awesome.

An example of how this has helped me was in this section here; the first photo is the first draft and the second is the final version of this scene. I mostly used The Emotion Thesaurus for this; the emotion being conveyed here is relief and relaxing after suppressing stress for a long time, but S himself isn’t really aware of his own emotional state here and I could not use those words to describe what he was feeling inwardly. So instead I used what he feels in his body and his surface rationalization, and it just reads so nicely this way imo.

[seven-oomen]

These are also on Zlibrary for people who do not want to support amazon.

Link

[gloriafrimpong]

halp! does anyone know anything about 70s photo development technology? how were photos developed? what chemicals? what tools? what equipment? what was the step by step processes? how long did it take? what did it smell like? how did the photographs physically feel?

this is for a story! please reblog!

[expressions-of-nature]

900 Year Old Mirror Mosque in Iran from “Baraka” directed by Ron Fricke 

[quonunc]

Could really use more media where wives viciously protect their husbands

[quonunc]

Also violently. I want very violently. I want her to go scorched earth. I want five scenes earlier to see her husband being diplomatic and calming down a situation so no one gets hurt because his wife is in danger. And then something happens and now he’s unconscious and being threatened and his wife just absolutely levels a seven block radius with the force of her refusal to let anyone hurt him.

[whetstonefires]

I do have a piece of writing advice, actually.

See, the first time I grew parsnips, I fucked it up good. I hadn't seen parsnips sprouting before, right, and in my eagerness I was keeping a close eye on the row. And every time I saw some intruding grass coming up, I twitched it right out, and went back to anticipating the germination of my parsnips.

But it turns out parsnips take a bit longer than anything else I'd ever grown to distinguish themselves visually. It's just the two little split leaves, almost identical to a newly seeded bit of kentucky bluegrass when they first come up, and they take a good bit to establish themselves and spread out flat before the main stem with its first distinctive scallopy leaf gets going.

I didn't get any parsnips, not that year, because I'd weeded them all out as soon as they showed their faces, with my 'ugh no that's grass' twitchy horticulture finger.

The next year, having in retrospect come to suspect what had happened, I left the row alone and didn't weed anything until all the sprouts coming up had all had a bit to set in and show their colors, and I've grown lots of parsnips since. They're kind of a slow crop, not a huge return, but I like them and watching them grow and digging them up, and their papery little seeds in the second year, if you don't harvest one either on purpose or because you misjudged the frost, so it's worth it.

Anyway, whenever I see someone stuck and struggling with their writing who's gotten into that frustration loop of typing a few words, rejecting them, backspacing, and starting again, I find myself thinking, you gotta stop weeding your parsnips, man.

[fairyysoup]

reading this post be like

[sillysiluriforme]

Improving your art skills isn’t easy; it takes a lot of patience and dedication but it is extremely straightforward. It’s all grinding until you understand 3d shapes, light, color harmonies, and composition ratios. I got good at the process. If I wanted to focus on improvement instead of making comics I could go back to that at any moment.

My issue is that I can’t figure out a good equivalent to that kind of practice with writing ? Like idk. Do I do a bunch of object descriptions ? Do I do a scene with a restricted vocab ?? I don’t knowwwww

It’s hard finding useful advice because online creative spaces are full of self taught “just have fun and be yourself” type people and it’s like. I will have fun later. Right now what I need is to figure out the writing equivalent of filling a page with cubes at different angles.

[wisteriasymphony]

I think the people responding to this with some equivalent of "read more!" are missing the point a little. That would be closer to going to an art museum and looking at Old Masters paintings and trying to think of what you like about their styles—Which can be valuable, yes! But it isn't grinding.

Grinding would be word sprints. NaNoWriMo was killer for this before their whole operation went to shit, but the good thing about that is that they never had copyright over the concept of writing fast. The numbers you go for can be a little arbitrary at first as you figure out what specifically works for you, but 15 minutes is usually the average from what I've seen? Maybe you can get 500 words in 15 minutes. Maybe you can only get 200. Either way, you're exercising the muscles that get ideas from your brain out onto paper.

Here's some other ideas I came up with for more specific exercises:

Wordsketching for Settings

Go outside (or stay inside?), practically anywhere. Sit down and angle yourself in a way that lets you get a good view of where you're at, and then pick the first things that jump out to you about the place you're in and describe them in 2-3 sentences. Then, figure out what you're drawn to next and write sentences about that. Make sure you add what you feel in that moment (Is the atmosphere uncomfortable? Is the place hot or cold? Humid?), what the place sounds like (People talking, or cars, or animal noises...), so on and so forth. This is very similar to the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding technique, so you can even work off of that structure if you'd like, but this is specifically to help you get better at describing settings.

As far as fanfic is concerned, I think the genre as a whole skimps on atmosphere and setting a SHIT TON. If you want to elevate yourself, let the pacing of your work slow down for a second and dedicate some time to really orienting your blorbos in a specific space. It does a lot for the tone of the work, and... if you want to play ball with the big boys you need to start thinking about things like tone and atmosphere when writing.

Transcription for Dialogue

This can entail you writing down what your family says at the dinner table like a creepy weirdo, or transcribing movie dialogue or anything of that nature. The purpose would be to get used to how conversation naturally flows between two or more people (turn-taking, interruption etc.), and furthermore getting a sense of how human beings naturally talk to each other. I've written down things I've heard people say in public before for no better reason than thinking "Oh! I could totally see [X Character] saying that!". Whatever hangups you may have over this sick linguivouyeristic perversion are much less important than the tragedy of filling your work with Incorrect Quotes -style unreadable garbage. It's like eating your vegetables.

Wiktionary Challenges for Word Choice

Just spamming the "random word" button on Wiktionary will give you instances in every language Wiktionary has in its database, so this one requires a little more work to be helpful, but in lieu of that you can look through stuff like Categories or Thesaurus Entries!

Let's gather a few fun words to demonstrate.

Okay, this should be more than enough for some sentences describing a setting out in nature! Blunket is making me think this takes place at twilight... And I like alliterating, so let's mash it to make the semi-redundant phrase "blunket-blue" just for some flair.

The copse laid still. On the bank of the meandering creek, the rabbit flattened herself out against the soft grass, her luculent eyes darting back and forth over her surroundings. What she could see of the copse looked mostly the same: Twisting shrubs the color of ash, blunket-blue grasses, an invisible wind brushing over all that stillness and pressing flat everything it could. Her nose twitched. Until the last blushes of rose drained from the evening sky, the rabbit would keep herself fixed in that spot on the riverbank and wait.

Boom! Those words are suddenly in your arsenal to use whenever you want, and you additionally have a reference point to remember what they mean if you forget. I think the only thing I could add from here is that reading your work aloud can help you monitor the way you chunk out your sentences and clauses, but that's more closely related to editing help and, again, not grinding exercises.

[uwouldthink]

I think part of OP's problem is that they aren't yet aware of all the sub-skills that go into writing. It's understandably hard to figure out practice excercises when you aren't sure what you should be practicing towards.

Unlike with art, there isn't an organized consensus about them and accepted practice excercises. I've consumed a lot of writing theory and advice content in my life, so I'll do my best to try and make a list of possible excercises based on stuff I learned as well as my own judgement for useful skills.

The most important thing to remember is that writing is the art of communicating your intent. A lot of writing is just figuring out ways to get across the experience you want to create, and so a lot of the excercises are about learning to do that in different ways.

Descriptions

Start out with picking random things and describing them in writing. This is mostly to get used to translating sensory experiences into verbal descriptions. Try describing experiences or things that aren't visual too.

Pick an object. Describe it three different times. Each time you're not allowed to use any of the previous descriptions.

Pick an object. Describe it three different times. Each time create a different connotation for it (an easy trio to start with is good/bad/neutral).

Go people watching. Pick something that's happening in front of you and describe it three different ways. Each time in a different genre.

Play taboo. Describe an object, action or an emotion without naming it or using closely associated words.

Exposition

Play storytelling Mao. Write a scene where the world and characters act according to a weird and arbitrary rule but never explain it directly or indirectly. Try to communicate the rule with only the character's actions, dialogue and environmental storytelling.

Write a scene with conflict and a twist, then analyze it to figure out what information the audience must know in order to to understand what's going on. Rewrite the scene as a mystery, each time omitting one of those pieces of information and framing it as the answer to the scene. This is mostly to practice awareness of what information you're giving the audience and how its presence or lack of it changes things.

Write a scene with an unreliable narrator. The narrator's perception of what's happening is completely mistaken, but the audience must still be able to understand the truth of what's actually going on.

Atmosphere

Write a story with a beginning, middle and end without any dialogue or actions. Use only descriptions to create environmental storytelling.

Pick an object. Describe it three different times. Each time try to evoke a different emotion.

Dialogue

Write a scene with only dialogue.

Write a conversation where the characters never state what they actually mean.

Pick an emotion. Write as many one line dialogues as you can that convey the character is feeling that emotion.

Character voice

Write a scene with multiple people using only dialogue. You can't state any of the characters' names, yet each speaker should be distinct.

Write a piece of exposition for a character to deliver and have a few different characters say it. Analyze how the character's backstory, culture, status, worldview and personality would change the delivery. What parts would they emphasize and what would get downplayed? How would they frame the information? What's their opinion on it? Would they deliver it factually or insert their opinion? How would their mood change the way they deliver the exposition?

Prose

Write poetry (and look up excercises for those as unfortunately I'm not familiar enough to give any).

Write a 1k story. Then rewrite it to be less than 500 words while still telling the same story.

Write a two sentence story. Write a three sentence story. Write a five sentence story. Compare them and analyze the things the extra length allowed you to do.

Pacing

Look up story structures. Pick a story and try to map it to said story structures. (A good place to start is Snyder's save the cat structure and hollywood movies. Most of them use that structure as template).

Write a story using only sentences with 3-4 words. Then do it with 6-7 words, and then with 10-11 words. Read those stories aloud and analyze the differences between how they sound and feel.

Plotting

Go people watching. Pick something that's happening in front of you and describe it in three different ways. Each time add a different twist in the end. What different setup did each twist need?

Write the same story in five sentences, then in three, then in two. What had to remain in order for the story to be the same? What was lost? In what ways did it change the resulting story?

Pick a story and read/watch it all the way through. Then go back and analyze each scene seperately. In what way did the scene contribute to the story?

Use a random word generator. Pick one word for theme, two words for plot and three words for characters. Figure out a way to write a coherent story that includes all of them. This one can be changed with any number of words for any category. The important thing is that there would be enough words you need to use that it acts as a constraint rather than a freeform prompt

Write a scene. Then rewrite it so that it starts as late as you can make it and ends as early as it can.

Character

Look up character arc structures. Pick a story and try to map it to a fitting character arc.

Practice debate. Pick a topic and write as many different viewpoints on it as you can. Try to give each viewpoint strong arguments to support it.

Pick a character. Figure out what plot would challenge them the most and what antagonist would cause them the most trouble.

Pick a character and decide on one trait of theirs. Write a foil character to highlight said trait.

Metaphor and subtext

Pick a couple of characters and have them argue. The argument can't be stated directly in any way and instead must be communicated through metaphor.

Write a story where the surface story is completely different than the story told when reading between the lines.

[rosieandthemoon]

Parque Nacional da Tijuca

[insertusernameici]

Je teste cet exercice d'écriture qui consiste à copier à la main un texte pour mieux voir comment les phrases sont tournées, les descriptions, et le reste de la tambouille. J'ai choisi Pratchett, un des Discworld. Ou Disque-Monde, du coup.

Leçon n°1: C'est plus dur que prévu d'écrire les mots au complet et résister aux raccourcis que j'utilise depuis le lycée.

Leçon n°2: La vache, je dois rajouter plus de lectures en Français dans mes habitudes.

Leçon n°3: Y'a pas de virgule d'Oxford, et ça fait bizarre.

(Oui, j'ai pas fait le dialogue de la Mort en majuscule. Mea Culpa.)

[strangelittlestories]

The Witch of Stolen Tomorrows had begun to notice an odd trend amongst her petitioners.

The latest was a farmer. He had braved the journey through the Testing Woods and arrived with his convictions mostly intact. He now sat on a tree stump by the Witch’s thornbush cottage, drinking a cup of bitter tea, and asking for a fairly standard boon.

"Oh yes," said the Witch, "I can make you a spell for a bountiful harvest, but what will you give me in return?"

The farmer gulped. "My firstborn child?"

"By the dick-shattered sky.” The Witch exclaimed. “What?"

"Oh. You don't take firstborn children?"

"I am a witch of ancient promises, timeless dreams, and fresh blood.” The Witch announced. “Of course I take firstborn children. It's just a bit weird that it was your first offer."

"I'm sorry, mistress. I don't know how this works. Was I supposed to start smaller and work my way up to the firstborn? I’ve always been hopeless at haggling." The man seemed on the verge of tears. "My wife passed a few years ago. She used to do all the business at market."

"If your wife passed a few years ago, how exactly do you plan to offer me your firstborn?" The witch swirled her tea and the steam made foul omens in the air. "I mean, sure, you don't have to be married to have kids, but it does usually help if you're not obviously still in mourning."

"Oh, my little Jackie is already born. They're five. My firstborn and, well, my only-born."

"Okay. If the kid has already been born, you don't have to say firstborn. You can just say 'my child, whose name is...' What's the kid's name again?"

“Jackie.”

“Well, you’ve gone and put Jackie in a bit of a precarious spot. You see, now that you’ve offered the child, the fatespring will hate it if I accept a lesser deal. So either I have to talk you into a bargain that’s technically worse for you, or little Jackie comes to live with me. Now, I could-”

“That’s fine mistress. I accept the bargain.” The man sniffled and wiped his tears. He looked weirdly relieved. “So, do I bring Jackie here to you, or will you come to the farm to collect? Or is it one of those ‘leave them in a clearing at the full moon’ kind of-”

“My guy. What is up? What is your deal, exactly? I’ve had, like, five different firstborn deals this week. That’s weird, right? You get that? That’s normally the worst case scenario for y’all. But at least they hadn’t had the kids yet, so they could still fool themselves that they could wriggle out of the compact somehow. And they didn’t lead with ‘oh yeah, take my first child, that’s a strong opening bargaining position!” The canopy around them began to darken and the trees began to grow thorns. “And if there’s one thing that really gets on my flat-ass witch tits, it’s when there’s something going on I don’t understand. So what in the ever-boiling piss is up?”

The trembling farmer forced out the words, “It’s, uh, it’s the levy, mistress.”

“The levy? What levy?”

“The king, mistress. He’s put a levy out. He needs troops.”

“Why would he want a child to be pressed into military service?”

“It’s the prophecy, mistress. A great foretelling came down from the Speaker of the Fates, or so the criers say. In 18 years, a great darkness will come. It will bring war and ruin to the kingdom. It will shatter the crown. So the king is demanding we send every child who’ll be over 16 when the omens come due. They’ll get raised as warriors and heroes, so they say.” The farmer looked up at the Witch, a hint of hope shining through the desperation that had cracked him. “Only, none of us want to pay the king’s fateprice with our kids. And Mrs Goodwhistle, she said that you’d probably give them a good life. 

“Or, at least… you’d give them some kind of life.”

The Witch said nothing for a long while.

Then she stood up.

“I guess I’d better get a shift on then.” The briar-bound cottage behind them pricked up its leaves like they were ears. 

“You’re… you’re leaving?”

“Oh, don’t fret. I’ll take little Jackie with me. I’ll take all of them.” The witch’s home unravelled, all its branches and brambles writhing down to follow its roots into the ground. “If my hearth is going to become a daycare for all the poor little prophecy-pocked bairns of this land, I’m going to need more space. And I’ll need to take them somewhere harder to find…”

“Oh, thank you, mistress!”

The Witch flicked something to the farmer, who caught it instinctively. In his sweaty palm was a seed - though it was older, darker and heavier than normal.

“There’s your harvest spell. Appropriate payment, as the scalekeepers demand. Each morning, when you go to bring in the harvest - look to the sky. When the sun is just tickling the horizon, reap a single ear of corn and put it aside. Whisper into it as if you’re talking to your child. Jackie will hear you. In the deepest part of winter, roast and eat that corn - then you’ll get your reply.”

“I… I have no words…” The farmer’s eyes and throat burned.

“No need for them. The deal must be made and the price must be paid.” The Witch held out a hand and a nearby tree bent its limbs down to meet her, offering a branch. “Now, I have much to prepare, so I will take my leave. The woods will see you home.”

And the witch took the living branch from the tree and sat upon it like a broom, then rose into the sky like a sunrise.

---

18 years later, the Witch of Stolen Tomorrows returned to the kingdom. The earth trembled as her thorned fortress - a living wilderness - bore her onwards on a thousand root-wrought feet.

Standing atop the briar parapets was the Witch’s cadre of apprentices. They were all teens and twenty-somethings, clad in the colours of autumn skies and wielding the instruments of fate.

The king, far away in his keep, felt a strange shiver through the gold of his crown. An echo of its coming shattering.

The Witch hung from a giant thorn like a sailor from a bowsprit. In her free hand, she cradled a cup of tea.

“Here is a lesson about prophecies.” She said it softly, but the rushing winds carried the words to her students. “If you fight them, they’ll put you on like a jacket and wear you as a costume as they dance ruin through your life. But if you grab them by the scruff, then you can be the one wearing destiny as your cloak.

“And then you get to be the one writing the story.” 

[jojo-the-dogg0]

Equiping an armor tutorial

i'll prob make more bc i love talking ab armors

[ultradia]

Gaudi’s Bellesgaurde Tower

[lizardlicks]

Hey, quick PSA for young or otherwise inexperienced fic writers:

"*****smut marked with asterisks so you can skip!*****""

Don't. Don't do this.

You let readers know what your fic contains through proper tagging and rating. Content warning notes at the top of the chatter are also great. You can even summarize key "this is the plot relevant stuff you missed of you're skipping this chapter" notes at the bottom too! This is a much smoother reading experience.

This is HELL on screen readers which is a disability access issue. Screen readers will read out every single asterisk you put, which I have seen done as entire page breaks. It's an awful reading experience. Please just don't.

Readers do not need their hands held through the reading experience. If they're enjoying the fic but don't care for smut, they can just skim until it gets interesting again. If they REALLY don't like smut, you warned them. There's a back button. You don't have to do a special song and dance isolating out the specific parts you think might be "icky". (If you think those bits are icky and don't like writing them, consider just don't! Fanfic is a hobby we do for fun and you don't have to write anything you don't find enjoyable. There's plenty of readers for gen fic and smut free ship fic).

If someone reads something they don't like then gets mad at you, block em. They need to be responsible for their own choices. It's not your job to please everyone. Your job as a fic writer of his to tell an entertaining and engaging story. (The reverse is true for a reader that demands smut or says it would "improve" the fic but that's not the story you're trying to tell. Block button is your friend!)

[muffinlance]

This is also super common in scene breaks.

Please, please don't try to span the entire page with whatever symbol you're using for your scene breaks. It takes an eternity for screen years to get through, and typically has me noping out of even the most interesting stores.

Instead, use just three (or fewer) make. Three is standard, and does the job without making your story unreadable.

In general: please, think of the screen readers.

[vivaciouscynner]

as a person whose only good trait is their eyes, this has eluded me until i was tasked to test websites with a screen reader.

It is hell

It is absolute hell

From navigation to listening to the voices

It's just awful

Since then I've tried to write with screen readers in mind because the number of websites that think about accessibility is SO SO SMALL

If you don't believe me, use NVDA which is a free accessibility tool. Otherwise you have to spend thousands of dollars for a slightly better one. Then try to navigate a website.

So yeah, listen to the above posts

[the-wip-project]

Summer Writing 2026!

Here we go! Your new, exciting, three months challenge to keep up your writing over the summer. Keep building that habit, keep up the energy to get your shit done.

This challenge takes place over June, July, and August. As MareeB wrote today in the SloMoWrino post, if you want to join this challenge, you have to find out what you want from this challenge. Do you want to have a set deadline, do you want camaraderie with other writers, or do you want to join this challenge for the accountability?

We can give you the options here, but it is up to you how effective you can make the challenge for yourself.

You want a deadline? You have to set it yourself.

You want camaraderie? You have to post about it, here or on the discord, start and join conversations.

You want accountability? Again, you have to post/talk about it.

What we can offer to help you along: We'll post about the challenge, of course, just give you little reminders. We'll also have a snazzy spreadsheet for you and a weekly graphic and prompt you can use how ever you like.

Will you join the Summer Writing challenge? Let us know!

First week:

Post by @the-wip-project · 2 images

💬 0  🔁 0  ❤️ 0 · Summer Writing! 💕 · We're starting today with the first week in June. Yay! 🏖️ In this challenge you set your own goal and

[calleido]

devil’s bridge, worm’s head island, rhossili, wales by deborah smith