#desolate oath

[blackwelliath]

Ten tenets of writing I use to flagellate myself.

I wrote these down to help myself. Maybe they can help someone else, too.

Tenet 1. Leave the apple alone. Let the apple be an apple. Stop attacking it with adjectives.

Tenet 2. You are not Shakespeare. The reader doth not needeth each arbitrary hand gesture and head tilt. It’s not a play. Drop the stage direction.

Tenet 3. You've earned the menace. It might be too subtle for you to notice because you’re standing too close. Step back. Check. Stop before it becomes redundant.

Tenet 4. Mr. Neel would rather kill himself than describe anything as blooming. Keep characters consistent.

Tenet 5. Sentences, paragraphs, and chapters are allowed to be short. Stop it.

Tenet 6. The coup must be earned. Building a foundation to get to the cool thing is half the fun.

Tenet 7. You’re allowed to not trust the reader sometimes. YOU’VE SWUNG TOO FAR. COME BACK. The reader cannot derive the plot through osmosis.

Tenet 8. Chapters are thematic. Not just a mishmash of scenes.

Tenet 9. If you’re grumpy, walk away. Forcing it will make it dog shit.

Tenet 10. Do it for Silent Alpine Reader #47. May his bread remain crusty, his coffee strong, and his favorite AO3 stories be marred by neither kudos nor comment.

[desolateoath]

Vash: This could be us. :3 Gale: ...you forced me to mercy kill an innocent man. Vash: That was pretty hot. Gale: The building was on fire.

Ref. Chapter 27

[blackwelliath]

Giving Astarion a pet warlord. Giving Vash an emotional support vampire.

Desolate Oath™

[blackwelliath]

Act 2 finale is coming up. Chapter 40 goes live June 1st.

After that, I’ll be taking a month to go back and refine what I’ve written so far, just like I did after Act 1. Then onto publishing Act 3.

I need you guys to understand how much I adore Danis.

This story is really about him, deep down.

Outside of the political maneuvering, violence, and manipulation... there is Danis.

Standing up to a Bhaalspawn and remaining absolutely unmovable.

Pouring a little out for Danis.

[blackwelliath]

Desolate Oath: Abridged

Chapter 6

[desolateoath]

Fantastic meme art from @drmace

I was having too much fun. (:

[blackwelliath]

Chapter 39 - A monologue about grief.

Writing Chapter 39 affected me in unexpected ways.

To lay it out plainly, Desolate Oath is bleak. There is humor, sure, but it is psychological horror first. Some scenes have made me emotional, but there was something about Chapter 39 that cut me to the core.

It made me dream about being on death row. I wasn't afraid, but I felt a dreadful anticipation. My mind drifted from what it might feel like to die, to the simple acknowledgment that my death was inevitable either way.

There is something different about standing on the cliff edge waiting for someone to push you and not being able to stop it.

I've lived in a constant state of existential dread since I was very young. It's a part of my personality at this point. It colors every decision I make.

Is this something I'm proud of? Will this make a good story later? Is this worth the time it will take to accomplish?

Time is currency, and life is a flea market. There are no returns once you purchase a moment.

…Writing Chapter 39 forced me to spell out what happened to Danis's family. The scene involves a tower dropping as people run for safety.

As an older gentleman, it made me realize that I never got to properly process the events of 9/11. It's been decades, but it's lingered.

I lost someone very close to me four months before it happened. It didn't leave much room for me to grieve with everyone else, even though it impacted me all the same. It was too much for twelve year old me to process at the time.

The planes hit. The bodies fell. I saw it all - along with the rest of the world.

The worst part was that the world kept turning.

Twenty five years later, I'm sitting at my desk surrounded by three monitors and a sick RGB chassis, excavating the ruins of my tattered mind through a Baldur's Gate 3 fan fiction. It's absurd, but this is exactly why writing means so much to me.

[desolateoath]

Playing 4,000 hours of Dark Urge campaigns changes a man.