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@darling-ocs
Some general info 😗
Main WIPS:
As It Crumbles
Space Ghost Hunters
Ocs:
As It Crumbles:
Joshua, Xenia, Avery, Isamara, Jayla, Nathalia, Ashka
Space Ghost Hunters:
Argenta, Geoffroi, William, Jane (will add more as I create them lol)
Feel free to ask anything or just take a look around. Or neither!
sometimes you need dialogue tags and don't want to use the same four
waiter! waiter! more characters grieving something they can't even remember please!
I had the pleasure of helping @eventually--darling design outfits for her characters Xenia and Joshua, and the honor of bringing them to the page in color! I looked at a lot of historical Persian fashion for this project.
I guess, logically, joshua would be a duke. But that title invokes imagery of a bald middle aged man. Perhaps this is his fate 🤷♀️
My ocssss
Oh hey btw: If you're starting your second draft of something and you're having a hard time editing out the useless fluff that doesn't lead the story anywhere, consider changing tactics: Condense, don't cut.
"Kill your darlings" is bullshit, you shouldn't throw out things that spark joy, just put them into good use or somewhere they're not in the way. Combine scenes, characters and locations. You've got two beloved but unimportant background characters with only a vague scraping role in the story? Combine them. Have just one, who now has the traits, speaking lines and the role of both of them.
You've got a Super Important But Boring scene, and a scene that doesn't progress the story but was basically just you indulging in describing a wonderful location? Combine them. Have the characters have that Super Important Conversation in the pretty rose garden or the lovely bookshop you wanted to include.
You've got two really cool locations that are in the same city but both only show up once, and it feels like a waste to indulge in describing them in detail? Combine them. The smoky tavern and the smoky witch's brew shop are now working out of the same building - the witch and the tavern keeper are now married.
If you feel like you have too much description or too many characters, don't throw anything out before you've checked if you have an empty shelf to put them in. Give the Cool Character Description to a previously nondescript character who only shows up to tell the protagonist the One Important Thing. Make the Cool Location You Described For Three Pages But Which Only Shows Up Once show up again later.
Oh hey btw: If you're starting your second draft of something and you're having a hard time editing out the useless fluff that doesn't lead the story anywhere, consider changing tactics: Condense, don't cut.
"Kill your darlings" is bullshit, you shouldn't throw out things that spark joy, just put them into good use or somewhere they're not in the way. Combine scenes, characters and locations. You've got two beloved but unimportant background characters with only a vague scraping role in the story? Combine them. Have just one, who now has the traits, speaking lines and the role of both of them.
You've got a Super Important But Boring scene, and a scene that doesn't progress the story but was basically just you indulging in describing a wonderful location? Combine them. Have the characters have that Super Important Conversation in the pretty rose garden or the lovely bookshop you wanted to include.
You've got two really cool locations that are in the same city but both only show up once, and it feels like a waste to indulge in describing them in detail? Combine them. The smoky tavern and the smoky witch's brew shop are now working out of the same building - the witch and the tavern keeper are now married.
If you feel like you have too much description or too many characters, don't throw anything out before you've checked if you have an empty shelf to put them in. Give the Cool Character Description to a previously nondescript character who only shows up to tell the protagonist the One Important Thing. Make the Cool Location You Described For Three Pages But Which Only Shows Up Once show up again later.
One trap that All the Time Daydreamers, Sometimes Writers, fall into is this idea that writing is transcribing the daydream.
It's not. The daydream is a fuzzy thing. There are gaps that you don't need to fill in a daydream, because you already get the emotional point. A lot of it is emotion. And because it makes you feel like a complete story would, your brain is tricked into thinking that's what you have.
Then you sit down to actually write the thing and you realize you're trying to write a Space Opera without actually inventing any planets or space ships. You don't even know if the characters start out on the same planet. If they're on a planet at all. You didn't bother to check.
Now you will vaguely reference this in first-second person in any writing guide you make up for the rest of time.
When you write, you're building something. It's not a pale imitation of what you have in your head- what you have in your head can't exist on the outside. This is a whole new beast. It's going to ultimately look different and this is a good thing.
Also the internal critic is dumb.
I'm not even trying to be nice to your writing specifically here. The internal critic is looking for a completed story and you don't have one yet. So anything it has to say flat out does not apply.
This is so relatable that I've considered making this post many times.
The idea in your head is wonderful because it gives you all the emotions and ideas without pesky things like concrete details and logic getting in the way. Trying to write it down forces you to decide those things, which makes it a different story from the one that exists as a pure cloud of imagination. Story ideas can have multiple conflicting ideas happen at once--you just know the general gist and it doesn't matter what order things happen in or which exact words are said. When you write it down, that cloud of possibilities collapses into a single reality--if Character says this line first, that means they can't say it later; if they say Funny Line A, they can't also say Funny Line B at that same spot in the conversation; if they go left that means they can't also go right at that moment. Infinite possibility becomes reality, and those choice can be hard. And that's not even getting into the fact that the moment you try to nail down a concrete timeline, issues like, "No one would react this way" or "That actually makes no sense" or "What is the mystery they're trying to solve?" pop up and wreck the beautiful little thing in your imagination.
Any act of writing is an act of translation. You're adapting it into a new medium. Which makes it not the thing in your head, but which does make it something you can share with your sadly non-telepathic audience. If you can figure out how to write it.
thinking about strong (brittle) vs strong (resilient) characters
the first type seem unbreakable because of the sheer amount of shit they withstand without flinching. they stand tall, still smiling, shrugging off every setback in a way their peers can’t help but admire. they’re the last person anyone expects to fold, and it will take a storm of epic proportions to break them, but once they hit that point, there’s no going back. they snap, and that vulnerable emotional core now lays exposed to the elements, stripped of the thick armor that previously protected it
the second type seem weaker on the surface. every storm that rolls in pushes them down, bows them almost to the ground. they’re not stoic. they’re not unflinching. they’ll sacrifice dignity and appearances to get by, and compromise is accepted as a facet of survival. in some ways it may even seem like life has specifically set them up to be knocked down at every turn. but each time the storm passes, they rise back up again with a resilience and flexibility that allows them to bend so much farther without completely breaking
[writing an emotional scene] oh fuck does this sound like my characters are trying to get a good grade in therapy
The fear is real. To help counteract it by making the scene or conversation feel believable, here are some questions I like to ask myself:
Why are the characters having the conversation? What does each one want to get out of the conversation? Do their goals align?
How much do the characters trust one another? Is one of them trying to hide something? How good are they at it? How likely are they to lie? How likely are they to catch the other lying?
How emotionally competent are the characters? Are they in touch with the reasons they feel the way they're feeling? Do they want to describe it? Do they have the vocabulary to do so?
Combining the goal and the vocabulary questions: what does each character think the other wants or needs to hear? Based on their existing relationship, how do they try to communicate that thing? Do they get it right on either front?
This isn't an exhaustive list by any means, nor is it any sort of a structured process. It's just some things you could consider to help flavour a conversation in a way that fits well with the characters you've established.
One advice I've once heard is that in most cases (like probably 95% at least), you should try to write the dialogue as if the characters cannot directly say what exactly they feel and why. They can circle around it, they can hint at it, but usually they should not say exactly and directly what they mean. Because most of the time people really don't do that.
And you can certainly write an emotional scene with the characters never directly saying it! Especially if the characters know each other well, they're likely to guess the meaning behind each other's words, and on the other hand you can use it for drama if they don't quite get each other
Of course there are situations where it's appropriate to have the characters say what they mean directly, but those sort of dialogues should be relatively few and far between for maximum impact
One thing I’ve learned about writing is ”give everything a face”. It’s no good to write passively that the nobility fled the city or that the toxic marshes were poisoning the animals beyond any ability to function. Make a protagonist see how a desperate woman in torn silks climbs onto a carriage and speeds off, or a two-headed deer wanders right into the camp and into the fire. Don’t just have an ambiguous flock of all-controlling oligarchy, name one or two representatives of it, and illustrate just how vile and greedy they are as people.
it’s bad to have characters who serve no purpose in the story, but giving something a face is a perfectly valid purpose.
This is the real heart of “show don’t tell”
You know, when I see fictional characters who repress all their emotions, they're usually aloof and very blunt about keeping people at a distance, sometimes to an edgy degree—but what I don't see nearly enough are the emotionally repressed characters who are just…mellow.
Think about it. In real life, the person that's bottling up all their emotions is not the one that's brooding in the corner and snaps at you for trying to befriend them. More often than not, it's that friendly person in your circle who makes easy conversation with you, laughs with you, and listens and gives advice whenever you're upset. But you never see them upset, in fact they seem to have endless patience for you and everything around them—and so you call them their friend, you trust them. And only after months of telling them all your secrets do you realize…
…they've never actually told you anything about themselves.
Adding onto this: characters who are so deeply repressed that they don't even realize they're not fine, or at the very least not supposed to be fine. Characters who do tell you about a situation they're in that should be bad, but instantly laugh it off saying they can handle it (spoiler: they can, in fact, not handle it). Characters who laugh with you and listen to all your woes and much later you learn that they were actually going through something at least equally bad at the time, but they wave it off and don't want to speak of it. Characters whose main coping mechanism seems to be "don't think about it" on endless loop.
Basically, the fictional embodiment of the "this is fine" dog.
Basic rules for analysing fiction, an incomprehensive list jotted down in a hurry:
The protagonist isn’t always right
The protagonist isn’t always good
The protagonist isn’t always written to be relatable or likeable
The narrator isn’t always right
The narrator isn’t always good
The narrator isn’t always telling the truth
The narrator isn’t always the author
The protagonist’s moral compass, the narrator’s moral compass and the author’s moral compass are three entirely different things that only occasionally overlap
Pay attention to what characters do and not just what they say
Pay special attention when what the characters do is at odds with what they say
A lot of the time the curtains are blue for a reason. If they aren’t, you should read better books
writing advice: every chapter should have something that makes you, a sicko, say yeesss… hahaha… yeeesss!!! and it doesn’t quite matter what you are a sicko about but it’ll be hard to get through the chapter if nothing makes you press your face into the window
Ok but before you go throwing random stuff into your story to spice it up or get it un-stuck, consider doing the following:
Grab a few events (minor or major doesn’t matter) from earlier or later in the story and trace out the causal chains. What caused it and what did it cause? Can the domino effect lead to a new event?
Trace out the “story” of the main cast’s motivation. How does the motivation interact with the story and how does the motivation change over time?
Go hunt for story elements you put in earlier that could be escalated into subplots.
Take a few characters who have different levels of information (or are more or less close to antagonists) and go through the story from their perspective. Perhaps you don’t know what should come next for your main character, but it might be obvious what comes next for a different character.
When you throw in new characters, first try to repurpose old characters. This makes them feel less cheap and gives them a better chance at developing depth. And when you do want to use a totally new one, consider someone who’s related to an existing character or a causal chain. The reader might already be wondering where X character’s parents are, after all.
Point is, the deeper the connections between your story elements, the more satisfying the read. You don’t have to view those connections as a constraint. They can tell you what needs to happen next.
give me two characters who are each other’s home. two characters who feel completely safe, warm and protected in each other’s presence, and who are completely respected by the other. two people who, on some level or another, were missing that little extra spark they needed to feel fully confident and accepted as their whole selves until the other came along. they don’t “fix each other” or “make each other better”–they give the other the support they need to build on what was already inside them. sure they might kiss, or make goo-goo eyes, but they can also just…talk, and make each other laugh and smile, because for once they feel comfortable enough in themselves and with each other to be vulnerable in that way. two complete people who finally find someone to share all of themselves with. and no matter what they do or how far they go, they’ll always have each other to come back home to.
