Hello! Very recently I found out about the existence of writeblr, and since I am currently working on a book series and trying to get the word out about it I thought I'd make a sideblog for it!
My name is Loren, and my full pen name is Loren Finch. I'm 24 at the time of writing this (though my birthday is less than a month away), I like to primarily use he/they, though I still go by she/her in some places due to not entirely being out and still experimenting with my pronouns. I am a mixed, queer, autistic/adhd, transmasc, aroace author who enjoys all things fantasy, gothic, and supernatural.
I am also an artist and you may find some of my character art here! My main blog is @circuslollipop and my art sideblog is @circuslollipopart! You can also find me on twitter @/circuslollipop and on insta @/circuslollipopart!!
I would love to meet and befriend fellow writers and seek out some beta readers in the future once I'm ready for it!
My current writing project was actually inspired by another writing idea I had! That project was moreso about faeries in a steampunk-inspired city, until I had a few worldbuilding ideas on how to integrate vampires into the setting. Then I came up with a couple characters and an entirely new setting, and found that I wanted to write about them instead!
For the time being. Perhaps when this monster of a project is all done, I can go back to that other idea! Or, idk, something about sapphic werecoyotes in an Old West-inspired town.
MY WIP
Currently, I am working on a new adult dark fantasy book series, with an aim for 5 books total. I would comp this as GRISHAVERSE x HELL FOLLOWED WITH US x THE WITCHER.
The Everdark. A vast expanse of forest and mountains where the sun cannot touch, where monsters roam wild and where magic permeates the very soil. To most mortals, the Everdark is a death sentence, but one young man hopes to make it a sanctuary.
Renwick had always held a fascination for vampires, and now that he’s been turned into one, he revels at the chance to finally leave behind who he once was—scared and meek with no friends, shunned by his fellows who insisted he was a wretched little girl. Yet instead of the grand castles, billowing capes, and candlelit ballroom dances of his dreams, Renwick finds himself thrust in the middle of a conflict between vampires and monster hunters that threatens to turn deadly. With his new home and fellow vampires on the line, Renwick must uncover the secrets lurking in the fog, all while searching for his enigmatic uncle and grappling with the mysterious circumstances of his own transformation.
This series will feature vampires, undead creatures, elves, magic, a trans autistic MC, many queer characters, and an eventual MLM romance. The setting is inspired by mainly 19th century Europe with some medieval/renaissance era elements, and North American natural landscapes. Currently, I have just started drafting the first book! I am a plotter by nature, and have completed outlining book 1, and have mapped out where the rest of the series will go.
🍖 How to Build a Culture Without Just Inventing Spices and Necklaces
(a worldbuilding roast. with love.)
So. You’re building a fantasy world, and you’ve just invented:
→ Three types of ceremonial jewelry
→ A spice that tastes like cinnamon if it were bitter and cursed
→ A holiday where everyone wears gold and screams at dawn
Cute. But that’s not culture. That’s aesthetics.
And if your worldbuilding is all outfits, dances, and spice blends with vaguely mystical names, your story’s probably going to feel like a cosplay convention held inside a Pinterest board.
Here’s how to fix that—aka: how to build a real, functioning culture that shapes your story, not just its vibes.
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🔗 Culture Is Built on Power, Not Just Style
Ask yourself:
→ Who’s in charge, and why?
→ Who has land? Who doesn’t?
→ What’s considered taboo, sacred, or punishable by death?
Culture is shaped by who gets to make the rules and who gets crushed by them. That’s where things like religion, family structure, class divisions, gender roles, and social expectations actually come from.
Start there. Not at the embroidery.
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2.🪓 Culture Comes From Conflict
Did this society evolve peacefully? Was it colonized? Did it colonize? Was it rebuilt after a war? Is it still in one?
→ What was destroyed and mythologized?
→ What do the survivors still whisper about?
→ What do children get taught in school that’s… suspiciously sanitized?
No culture is neutral. Every tradition has a history, and that history should taste like blood, loss, or propaganda.
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3.🧠 Belief Systems > Customs Lists
Sure, rituals and holidays are cool. But what do people believe about:
→ Death?
→ Love?
→ Time?
→ The natural world?
→ Justice?
Example: A society that believes time is cyclical vs. one that sees time as linear will approach everything—from prison sentences to grief—completely differently.
You don’t need to invent 80 gods. You need to know what those gods mean to the people who pray to them.
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4.🫀 Culture Controls Behavior (Quietly)
Culture shows up in:
→ What people apologize for
→ What insults cut deepest
→ What people are embarrassed about
→ What’s praised publicly vs. what’s hidden privately
For instance:
→ A culture obsessed with stoicism won’t say “I love you.” They’ll say “Have you eaten?”
→ A culture built on legacy might prioritize ancestor veneration, archival writing, name inheritance.
This stuff? Way more immersive than giving everyone matching earrings.
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5. 🏠 Culture = Daily Life, Not Just Festivals
Sure, your MC might attend a funeral where people paint their faces blue. But what about:
→ Breakfast routines?
→ How people greet each other on the street?
→ Who cooks, and who eats first?
→ What’s considered “clean” or “proper”?
→ How is parenting handled? Divorce?
Culture is what happens between plot points. It should shape your character’s assumptions, language, fears, and habits—whether or not a festival is going on.
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6. 💬 Let Your Characters Disagree With Their Own Culture
A culture isn’t a monolith.
Even in deeply traditional societies, people:
→ Rebel
→ Question
→ Break rules
→ Misinterpret laws
→ Mock sacred things
→ Act hypocritically
→ Weaponize or resist what’s expected
Let your characters wrestle with the culture around them. That’s where realism (and tension) lives.
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7.🧼 Beware the “Pretty = Good” Trap
Worldbuilding gets boring fast when:
→ The protagonist’s homeland is beautiful and pure
→ The enemy’s culture is dark and “barbaric”
→ Every detail just reinforces who the reader should like
You can—and should—challenge the aesthetic hierarchy.
→ Let ugly things be beloved.
→ Let beautiful things be corrupt.
→ Let your MC romanticize their culture and then get disillusioned by it later.
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📍 TL;DR (but like, spicy):
→ Culture is not food and jewelry.
→ Culture is power, fear, memory, contradiction.
→ Stop inventing spices until you know who starved last winter.
→ Let your world feel lived in, not curated.
The best cultural worldbuilding doesn’t look like a list.
It feels like a system. A pressure. A presence your characters can’t escape—even if they try.
Now go. Build something real. (You can add spices later.)
—rin t.
// writing advice for worldbuilders with rage and range
// thewriteadviceforwriters
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got the green light to post my piece from the original classics zine by @losthavenguild! my characters erevan and renwick posed as the happy lovers painting by fragonard. the kickstarter is still running; go check it out!
sorry i never post on here (i just never know what to post on here), but i thought i'd update everyone!
my gothic fantasy wip is now on its fourth draft! after a round of beta readers i've been writing down some revision ideas that i'm excited to get to! it just so happens that this month is a very busy month for me between artfight, cosplay building, and now i'm probably going to need to take some art commissions so i can't go as fast as i want to unfortunately
too many stories about turning yourself into a monster as a metaphor for pretending to be something you aren't and losing yourself in the process. not enough stories about turning yourself into a monster as a metaphor for choosing to openly embrace yourself even if it's strange to other people
Today’s thought: the vampire as liberation. Films as early as Dracula portray vampirism as something terrifying to the human and beloved to the vampire. Once turned, nobody wants to go back– but if their master is killed and they are returned to human form, they’re endlessly thankful to their ‘saviors’. Women, once vampirized, often turn up in beautiful clothing and a more sultry attitude. Men tend to completely remove themselves from society after the turn.
I’m not surprised that the vampire is such a romantic figure nowadays. There’s something freeing in forever leaving the realm of normal human ways: you can never go back, sure, but it also means you have to stop striving for it. You no longer feel the need to fit into polite society. Now that there’s no chance of being respected, the idea of earning respect no longer matters. You are free to be who you are.
No wonder fictional women look for that ‘excuse’ to be freely sexual. No wonder LGBT people feel so drawn to the idea of the permanent and happy monster. No wonder people of color enjoy the idea of a ‘high society’ totally removed from the existing, accepted world.
I don’t assume that every early vampire film was some kind of deep feminist text. The point is that these poor women are (gasp) sluts! and must be saved from their tight-fitting gowns. Nonetheless I find this ‘liberated vampire’ fascinating. To be unabashedly ‘evil’, to be strange, to be an outcast– what a story.
ren WOULD say "i have crossed oceans of time to find you" however he is 20 years old and has been a vampire for all of two weeks. this does not stop him from saying it
Style Sheet - helps you keep track of what’s going on in your novel.
Who’s who, what’s where, and when X, Y and Z happens.
Record your preferences for the micro elements of your book ... things like spelling, punctuation, the rules about the way your fictional world works, and how you treat the various elements of the text (from paragraphs and headings to narrative, speech and thoughts).
Parts of a Style Sheet
You can include anything you want but a solid, usable style sheet that'll really help you keep an eye on what's going on will include at least the following:
character names, histories and traits
how you’re going to handle point of view
hyphenation and capitalization
key geographical locations
building names and layouts
language choice
punctuation style
spelling preference
tense choice
timeline information
treatment of dialogue and thoughts
world-building rules
Different Style Sheets
Some writers like to have everything in one place; others prefer to have several documents, each of which records different types of decisions, and toggle from one to another.
It’s your choice – whatever helps you work most productively.
So, for example, you might create different sheets for the following:
the main character names and features, and the organizational, family or time-frame groupings they belong to
a record of key events in the timeline (particularly useful if your novel covers multiple discrete time frames)
geography: environments and buildings (especially important measurements, such as distances, heights, number of storeys, that if nonsensical could impair clarity)
4. what is your favourite line you wrote this year?
That was a tough one for me 'cause I'm not entirely sure which passages I wrote in 2024 (I mostly revised the past year), but I do remember this one from my revision!
As the bards struck their chorus, Sorcha the ladies’ maid pulled one of the Edelian soldiers into a waltz, and oh, how they glided across the dance floor, laughing and prancing. With her light hair and his black, I imagined them as Prince Renwick and Eleanor themselves, twirling hand in hand under the light of a thousand candles. Surrounding the prince and princess were their friends and courtiers, all wearing their grandest of finery. The music swelled and the leaders lifted their partners with the grace of swans. I closed my eyes and instead of Sorcha and her soldier it was me waltzing, myself and my vampiric savior. The soft blue velvet of his frock coat was near tangible, and I swayed to the melody of the ballad as I imagined a dance with Vince Lockwood.
The Vince of my dreams dipped me and smiled as our faces near touched, those periwinkle eyes of his sparkling beneath golden lashes. “You’re more of a scoundrel than I realized,” he purred in a voice that was very much not his own.
5. what is your favourite book/story/poem you read this year?
Again, another tough one cause I'm not sure which books I read in 2024. I said a Tempest of Tea somewhere else but apparently I read that book in 2023 according to Goodreads? Anyway I enjoyed Most Ardently a lot, and the Phoenix Keeper. Also shoutout to my Song of Ice and Fire reread
10. which character(s) turned out differently from what you had planned? how so?
Oh, my villain for sure. He was originally supposed to be a kooky funnyguy villain, but as the series grew darker in tone, so did he. Now his relationship to Ren is a lot more personal and I find their interactions SO gut-wrenching
anyone else in the mood to become chatty? feel free to send a number (or two) from the list below to the person who reblogged this! and then reblog yourself if you want to get some asks ^^
what was your writing-highlight this year? what made it special and how will you reflect on it next year?
what did not go so well this year? how do you feel about it and what is a positive thing you learnt from it?
did you achieve everything you wanted to this year? if not, how will you go about it?
what is your favourite line you wrote this year?
what is your favourite book/story/poem you read this year?
did you make any new writeblr friends? give a shout-out! if not, it's time to praise one of your old besties <3
what are three songs you put on your WIP-playlist this year?
what are three things you're looking forward to next year?
create a meme or moodboard that captures your past writing-year!
which character(s) turned out differently from what you had planned? how so?
which scene was harder/easier to write than anticipated? why?
if your character(s) had their own new years resolutions, what would those be?
how did you change as a writer? did you learn anything new? started to plan instead of pants? share your wisdom!
time for writing wrapped! what would be your top three used sentences?
time for shameless self-promotion! answer with a piece of writing you want others to see/read! (if you have nothing posted/published this year, any other year is fine too ^^)
wishing you all all the best and may your writing-wishes for next year all come true <3 ✨
