Hi, my name is Sea, and I’m a female 18 year-old aspiring author currently working on a novel! I’m always looking for new writeblrs to follow, so feel free to interact with this post to let me know you exist!
Here are some basics & fun facts:
- I write primarily Fantasy, but also Sci-Fi and Steampunk on occasion
- I’m going to college soon!
- I’m chronically ill
- I’m not only a writer, but an artist as well! My art account is @wtar, and I participate in Artfight every year
- I love Fairytales and Fairytale retellings
- I have a sideblog dedicated to reblogging writing events, ask games, and tag games: @seaglasswritingevents
I have a lot of different potential projects floating around in my head/Notes App/Scrivener, but the project I’m currently working on is called The Language of Wolves. Blurb is a WIP!
For Moon June, I’m going to be writing excerpts from a current project of mine, The Language of Wolves. These are all out-of-order and -out-of-context; They’re mostly just to get my creative juices flowing. Keep in mind that they’re also unedited.
Niv fumbled around in her satchel. She hadn’t taken much money when she left; She hadn’t known how much her mother had left.
What she found was a handful of silver coins, each one engraved with the Olgravian seal. She held them up sheepishly.
The wagon driver raised an eyebrow, and Niv registered for the first time how strange she looked compared to the people of Kerest, auburn-haired and pale, with thin, angular features that made her gaze look all the more critical. She hadn’t realized quite how far she had traveled.
“That won’t get you far, here,” she said, her voice gruff. “You’ll need some of this,” she dug around in the pocket of her apron, “To get much out of anyone.” She held up a small rectangle of blue paper with a pattern Niv couldn’t make out.
Niv straightened, resisting the urge to smack her forehead. Of course she would need Thastan money.
The woman turned and made her way back to the wagon, and Niv sighed, preparing herself for the long trek ahead. But the wagon driver held up a hand and waved her over.
For Moon June, I’m going to be writing excerpts from a current project of mine, The Language of Wolves. These are all out-of-order and -out-of-context; They’re mostly just to get my creative juices flowing. Keep in mind that they’re also unedited.
Niv continued to duck her head long after she had slipped out of the tent, keeping her gaze fixed on the ground. She wasn’t trying to hide; Everybody in the village knew whose lodgings were whose. But it felt as if even the sky would judge her.
She made to lift the hood of her cloak, but her hands brushed against her hair. She hissed, then cursed herself for the noise. Ever since the incident, she had forgone the uniform. She didn’t deserve to wear it. She wasn’t her grandmother. And she was starting to realize that that wasn’t anything to be proud of.
Her feet tapped lightly on the cobblestones, beating a hesitant, deferential path. The village was starting to come back to itself. Vendors sat at their markets in the town square, waiting patiently, more cognizant than they might have been that there were worse things than spoiled goods. Children ran around in aimless circles. A man sat at the base of a tree with his lute, strumming out a soft, mournful nocturne. She slowed down. He paused in his music just long enough to spit at her.
I have got to stop writing these so late in the day 😅
For Moon June, I’m going to be writing excerpts from a current project of mine, The Language of Wolves. These are all out-of-order and -out-of-context; They’re mostly just to get my creative juices flowing. Keep in mind that they’re also unedited.
Niv had been working for hours, and she still had no idea what Wolf wanted her to find.
Evening had fallen on the Forest of Shapes. It hadn’t come slowly; It had been dropped on her like a bucket of cold water, bursting forth from the day on a whim. She supposed that her fervor had eclipsed all else. The pittance of light the leafy canopy above had afforded her had slowly trickled away, leaving her sitting alone in a dim blur of silhouette and color. If she hadn’t been attuned to their energy, she wouldn’t have registered the flowers in front of her. She ran her fingers over them, letting her hand sink into the soft, amorphous blob she had been puzzling over for what felt like a century.
The few pieces of sky she could see through the trees had become an exuberant purple with explosions of marigold and nectarine at the horizon. Niv knew that it wouldn’t be long before someone started looking for her.
She sighed. She knew that she couldn’t stay there any longer, that a Shape could be upon her before she even had the time to realize what was happening. But she needed to know why Wolf had sent her there. She needed to figure out what he couldn’t. What was it about this patch of flowers that had drawn him in? What had he meant when he described its buzz to her?
Sitting on the forest floor with hardly any light to guide her, Niv was starting to think that there was nothing to know. Perhaps she’d been wrong. Perhaps he wasn’t as intelligent as she’d thought he was.
With a heavy heart, she unfolded her legs and rose from the ground.
The walk back to the village wasn’t long, and its character soon began to interweave itself with that of the forest. Through the thick patches of leaf and lichen, she saw light. Interspersed with the low growls in the distance were exclamations, clangs, screams of excitement. Cooking fires wafted through the air to her, although she didn’t smell meat.
She brushed aside a bush, and stepped into the world, the sky returned to her.
For this challenge, I’m going to be focusing on a current project of mine, The Language of Wolves: My goals are:
- Develop a detailed outline with a clear understanding of the structure of the story and the most important events
- Organize all the important information about characters, the world, magic, and the plot in Scrivener
- Further develop my World Bible (TLOW is supposed to be part of a wider universe of standalones, so there’s a lot to keep track of!) This is mostly a looser goal
- Get at least a little writing done by using the Moon June Prompt List (As well as other prompt lists, if I ever get around to them)
Other than that, I don’t have anything more specific in mind! I’m just going to be prepping to actually write the novel
Scrivener became so much more enjoyable when I realized that I could just make a bunch of really short documents and put them in a bunch of hyperspecific folders instead of organizing things the “professional” way. Now I can see what something is at a glance
If your plot feels flat, STUDY it! Your story might be lacking...
Stakes - What would happen if the protagonist failed? Would it really be such a bad thing if it happened?
Thematic relevance - Do the events of the story speak to a greater emotional or moral message? Is the conflict resolved in a way that befits the theme?
Urgency - How much time does the protagonist have to complete their goal? Are there multiple factors complicating the situation?
Drive - What motivates the protagonist? Are they an active player in the story, or are they repeatedly getting pushed around by external forces? Could you swap them out for a different character with no impact on the plot? On the flip side, do the other characters have sensible motivations of their own?
Yield - Is there foreshadowing? Do the protagonist's choices have unforeseen consequences down the road? Do they use knowledge or clues from the beginning, to help them in the end? Do they learn things about the other characters that weren't immediately obvious?
Every story should have consequences, but even the most dramatic, plot-shifting consequence ever written is going to fall flat if we didn’t know it was going to happen beforehand. Always spoil your consequences.
By that, I mean that if the reader doesn’t understand what would be so bad about getting caught as the characters explore the sewers, we’re not going to feel any tension—and when they are caught and fed to the sewer creature, we’re going to feel more confused than surprised.
Using our example, this might look like some character at the beginning telling our MCs about the “legend of the sewer monster that eats wayward children”. Later, when they’re in the sewer, this warning would be at the backs of their minds and ours as the reader. When they’re caught and taken to said sewer monster, we would still find it surprising, but not confusing. There’s a very important difference between the two.
There are a lot of ways to bring up the risks or implications of an action. You can…
1. Demonstrate it on a background character
Person ahead in line makes a run for it and is shot. Guy fighting dragon in the news is roasted alive. My neighbour went out to sea three months ago and never returned.
2. Hint at it through the environment
This one is pretty common because it’s subtle but effective. For example, Jack Sparrow sails into port and passes by a hanging skeleton wearing a pirate hat. Before he’s even reached land, we know exactly what could happen to him there. Or entering the sewer and finding some sort of nest, even if the creature is no where in sight.
3. Hide it within dialogue
If the characters react to something as though it’s a joke, the readers will assume it is too, until the thing comes up and is proven real. This is a great way to outline a consequence without drawing too much attention to it.
Otherwise, sometimes the most obvious example that manages to slip by us is: “[Thing] would never happen. If it did, [consequence].” And you better believe not only will thing happen, but so will consequence. “The police will catch escaped serial killer, if they don’t, so many more people will die.” Etc.
This can also look like our example—there’s a myth/rumour/legend that… Or I heard of a friend of a friend who… Or, did you hear across the border there was…
This June prompt theme was my attempt at combining a few aspects of what was most voted on in the poll. Since “Summer Solstice” won out, I tried to make it mostly fit to that, but also incorporated the “June in Tune” and “Honeymoon in June” since they tied for second.
SO here is my monster.
The following is a list of songs. I’ve created a Spotify playlist (link or scan the code) to hopefully make this easier for everyone. My intention was to create a Summery-feeling collection, but also have some lovey vibes mixed in. So there are love songs, summer songs, summer love songs, etc. So hopefully that covers all of our bases for those of you who aren’t experiencing Summer this time of year.
Pick lyrics you like if you want to base your work on that, use the song title, use your interpretation of the song, even just use the general vibe or feeling it gives you. Overall, it’s your work and these prompts are purely here to try to spur some creativity or get the writer’s block to go away.
I tried to pick various genres (although pop-ish music won out) and various time periods-ish. There are also some extra songs at the end of the month.
All that being said: making this was…a time 😂 I am open to any feedback should you want to chime in. If you liked it, I can definitely do something similar again. If it wasn’t accessible, let me know. All the things. If nothing else, I hope you at least found some new music you like or hadn’t heard before (I did).
As usual, prompts can be done in any order and at any time. There is an AO3 subcollection linked here should you like to post it there (not required). Please feel free to post to Tumblr as well, or anywhere else that suits your fancy and tag #TropeVarietyHour. While I’m not gonna track you down on other sites, nor is it required, if you don’t mind, it would be great if you could link back here or credit somehow if you use the prompts! The AO3 collections stay open, so if you decide to do a past month’s prompt, feel free to submit it to that month still.
All fandoms and original works welcome! Any type of works as well, not just written.
Thanks to all those who continue to participate! (I feel out of breath just typing all that) There is a reader friendly view below the image if the cursive is hard to decipher.
For any questions, please check the FAQ section first, then don’t hesitate to submit an ask. For AO3 collection questions, there is a contact listed on the site and an FAQ.
There’s a certain folkloric idea that if you die at sea, your soul is sort of. Inextricably stuck in the sea. Because your body is irretrievable, your soul is also irretrievable, down out of the reach of the gods who look at the surface of the world. In Norse mythology, they said that the souls of sailors who died at sea are caught in the sea-goddess Rán’s net and dragged into her domain, a distinct and separate afterlife alongside Hel and Valhalla. Davy Jones Locker. The funayūrei. A lot of cultures agree that once sea has a hold on you, even when your body has rotted and dwindled and been made food for crabs, it still won’t let you go.
Do you think we’re going to wind up saying the same thing about astronauts.
in 2026, remember how GOOD writing feels. remember how satsfying it is to get your characters to the point you have been dying to get to, where they will experience the love, fear, relief or whatever the feeling you want to bring to life may be. let this year be the year of writing, prgress and of satisfactory endings.
Apparently a lot of people get dialogue punctuation wrong despite having an otherwise solid grasp of grammar, possibly because they’re used to writing essays rather than prose. I don’t wanna be the asshole who complains about writing errors and then doesn’t offer to help, so here are the basics summarized as simply as I could manage on my phone (“dialogue tag” just refers to phrases like “he said,” “she whispered,” “they asked”):
“For most dialogue, use a comma after the sentence and don’t capitalize the next word after the quotation mark,” she said.
“But what if you’re using a question mark rather than a period?” they asked.
“When using a dialogue tag, you never capitalize the word after the quotation mark unless it’s a proper noun!” she snapped.
“When breaking up a single sentence with a dialogue tag,” she said, “use commas.”
“This is a single sentence,” she said. “Now, this is a second stand-alone sentence, so there’s no comma after ‘she said.’”
“There’s no dialogue tag after this sentence, so end it with a period rather than a comma.” She frowned, suddenly concerned that the entire post was as unasked for as it was sanctimonious.
