Shardkeeper

[shardkeeperwip]

Shardkeeper (Intro)

Hello! I’m making a sideblog for my sci-fi adventure WIP Shardkeeper!

Earth is just entering the interstellar stage after a failed alien invasion and now must deal with the fact that not only are aliens real, they can visit the planet once thought to be so alone.

Still, life goes on. People adjust to strange new realities. Humans have always been adaptable. Rebecca Tarver has grown up in a world where this is the norm. She’s a shy kid dealing with normal issues like “figuring out how to talk to people without seeming too weird.”

But then Rebecca bonds with a strange creature: a fragment of a dangerous alien. She wants nothing more than to send this Shard on their way and get back to her normal life. Unfortunately, Shard is being hunted. As Rebecca learns more about the various groups seeking her new companion, she discovers that “getting back to normal” might well be impossible.

Themes/vibes: adaptation (and resistance) to change, the interplay between characters’ “mundane” trauma and sci-fi nonsense, growing up and self-discovery, the aforementioned sci-fi nonsense (aliens, wormholes, spaceships, all that fun stuff).

Other WIPs: Cursebreaker, unnamed Vampire story (details to come)

main blog is @emeraldmew

[comicaurora]

Do you have any advice for coming up with non-main-plot hijinks? In my writing, I find that my long stories tend to have too straightforward plots, without complications and smaller problems to help with characterization and stuff

Complications and smaller problems are a natural consequence of your characters being characters and not just plot-executing automatons. If your characters feel too married to the plot to have non-plot wants and needs, it might be worth going into your mind-palace and asking them a few questions:

What do you do when nothing needs doing? How do you relax? CAN you relax?

How do you handle peace? Do you enjoy it? Do you trust it? Do you look for distractions, or for threats?

What would you be doing if the plot wasn't in the way? Have you ever really thought about it?

Now that things have slowed down a little, how do you feel about the stuff that just happened? Do you need to talk about it?

I'm the writer, so I know what's coming next, but you don't. What uncertainties are currently preying on your mind? Do you want to do anything to resolve them? How do you handle it if you can't?

What goals do you personally have that aren't shared with the rest of your crew? Do you have an opportunity to pursue that right now? Do you think anyone else in the crew might want to help you with that?

The camera mostly focuses on the important plot beats, but what do you do when the camera's off? What's your morning routine? What do you do for dinner? What does a Normal Day look like when the plot's not intruding?

The events of the plot typically put the characters into a reactive state, responding to outside circumstances and problems. What do they do when they're in an active state with nothing to react to? How do they want to steer themselves when they're given the choice?

[shardkeeperwip]

trying to do my rewrite of chapter 2 but my head is not in the right space so every time I see a typo I feel like a hack.

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

Happy pride month!

Here's a few fun ways to explore queerness with non-human cultures for your fantasy and scifi worlds!

- give them more cultural genders. Not just "nonbinary as a third gender", give them some weird genders! Sub-genders, even! And don't make it all tied to their biology, though having a variety of biological sexes is also a lot of fun.

- maybe they don't have genders the way we usually define them, and they use something else as an important identity with associated pronouns and outward expression.

- get creative with their relationship structures. Maybe polyamory is their normal. Maybe they have a committed partner most of the time, but then they have a breeding season where anything goes. Maybe they are functionally an aromantic culture and they don't really do committed relationships like that.

- if they have distinct biological sexes, what options are available for those who want a medical transition? Maybe it's a more low fantasy world in a historical setting and they don't have that option, but what other steps might they take to "pass"? If their concept of gender or an equivalent identity has nothing to do with their biology, what does it even mean for them to be trans?

- in a species where biological sex is naturally flexible, shifting between egg and sperm production on a whim or just because of environmental changes, what does that do for their gender culture?

- interspecies relationships are inherently a little queer, when you think about it. What does attraction between species look like? Are there some cultural barriers they have to navigate?

- if queerphobia exists in your world, don't be shy about exploring the effects it actually has on the characters. If there is no queerphobia, what does that really look like? Was it a struggle to make that happen? Think about the generational history a little, and how different it might look to our own reality.

and please, just like with disability, religion, fatness, and varied ethnicities, if you find yourself coming up with excuses for why queerness of any sort could not possibly exist in your world, even if you think "well just not for this specific population" maybe examine that a little deeper and ask yourself why.

[luna-azzurra]

Tips for Writing Injuries! (AGAIN)

Your action hero just got shot in the shoulder, stitched it up in a motel bathroom, and is now running through a forest. I need you to know that a shoulder wound severs muscle, nerves, and sometimes bone, and the human body's response to that is not "mild wincing followed by full range of motion." here is what injuries actually do to peoplee...

⊹ Adrenaline is REAL and it does allow people to do extraordinary things immediately after injury, BUT it is a loan, not a gift. you borrow the function and you pay it back later with interest. Your character might genuinely be able to run for twenty minutes after being stabbed. and then the adrenaline drops and everything the body was delaying arrives all at once. the collapse is NOT weakness. it's biology collecting its debt. write the debt collection. it's more interesting than the heroic sprint anyway.

⊹ Blood loss changes cognition before it drops you. you don't go from "fine" to "unconscious." you go through a whole middle stage of confusion, poor decision-making, emotional dysregulation, a strange calm, tunnel vision, difficulty forming sentences. Your injured character making a bad call, saying something they normally wouldn't, becoming suddenly and inexplicably gentle--that's blood loss. use the middle stage. it's dramatically rich and almost nobody writes it.

⊹ Recovery has a timeline and the timeline is long and boring and inconvenient to plot. a broken rib takes six weeks and during those six weeks sneezing is a genuine emergency. a concussion means no screens, no reading, no bright lights, and symptoms can persist for months. a stab wound to the abdomen means weeks of infection risk, limited mobility, and a specific kind of exhaustion that has nothing to do with sleep. Your character being sidelined and frustrated and useless for a long time is not a narrative problem. it's the story.

⊹ Pain also affects personality in ways writers skip. chronic pain makes people short-tempered and then guilty about being short-tempered. it makes concentration difficult. it makes intimacy complicated, both emotional and physical. a character who was patient and warm before their injury and is now snappy and withdrawn is not a character regression. they're in pain. pain is exhausting in ways that don't show on the outside. the people around them noticing and not knowing how to help is a whole story in itself.

[tiredafel]

so. a meme from me. to show how ive been lately

[shardkeeperwip]

Just curious, do you have an AO3?

No, I don't. I haven't written proper fanfic in quite a while.

[shardkeeperwip]

Chapter 1 re-re-re-written with the correct constellations in the sky.

[shardkeeperwip]

have to rewrite a scene because the constellation I have the characters looking at doesn't actually appear where they're looking from.

[shardkeeperwip]

coming up with alien holidays that I have no idea how to fit into the plot

[shardkeeperwip]

idk why but I tend to have dreams with a framing device (i.e. watching a movie, playing a videogame, finding a story dream!me wrote in a notebook, etc).

Woke up from "watching" the first three episodes of a new partner-monster anime starring an absolute idiot of a protagonist who ends up meeting his partner monster at the end of the third episode.

(The late meeting of his partner is not why he's an idiot. He's an idiot because he's part of a govt agency trying to cover up and defend people from the monsters and he is spectacularly bad at his job while utterly convinced that he is the shit. He fails to save a civilian and the civilian strait up dies - and gets better - and then he semi-adopts this civilian as a little brother.)

I don't know if I'll ever do anything with this concept but it was a very memorable dream.

[aye-write]

Saw this on Twitter. What 3 potions would you drink?

I would take brown, white, and yellow!

[shardkeeperwip]

My new laptop having a smaller screen is proving annoying when trying to have multiple docs open for writing draft 3.

[emeraldmew]

more kids should witness a alien spaceship crashing

it's a rite of passage

[incandescent-creativity]

Do you ever write a sentence and then realize “Nah, that’s too self aware for you” and backspace a bunch of times.

[incandescent-creativity]

[writingwithfolklore]

Don't Mess Up Your Character Introduction

Your characters only get one introduction, and from that very first moment, readers will form their opinions and impressions of that character. Once they have, it’s incredibly hard to change their minds, so you have to make sure that you make the right first impression.

In my last novel (currently querying right now!) I had a beta reader come back to me to say that he really didn’t like my female protagonist. However, in his notes on the actual manuscript, there were several parts he highlighted because he was very sympathetic to her—so why didn’t those parts sway him? It was because they came too little, too late. He’d already formed his thoughts on the protagonist as a person.

I heard recently that Finding Nemo’s flashback that the movie opens with was initially later in the film to explain why Marlin was such an overprotective parent, but test audiences really hated him, and by then, all the tragedy in the world wouldn’t convince them otherwise. Instead, Disney moved the flashback to the beginning so that we started the movie sympathetic to him, and were able to overlook or understand his more annoying/frustrating traits.

I’m saying that right out of the gate, if we’re meant to root for them, you need to show us why. If we’re meant to hate them, you also need to show us why. Don’t hold onto your cards, don’t keep secrets too late, because once we form an opinion on someone, it’s difficult to change.

When that opinion does need to change (such as when you’re pulling off a villain redemption arc), it typically takes the entire story and genuine character growth to do.

See my post here on why we root for a character.

[nondelphic]

there’s no such thing as a wasted draft. even the trash ones fertilize the good ones. compost your failure.