Tagged by @elisabethrosewrites! Thank you for tagging me & creating this game!!
Rules: Do you ever write a line that just feels so right? Pick five of your favorite lines you’ve written and share them. They can be recent or years old, doesn’t matter. Then tag five people.
1. When he reached for the pack of cigarettes laying amongst a half-full glass of water, a lighter, his badge, and his gun, his hands were shaking violently, like leaves in a storm.
2. He was like a screw too small for the tool of life.
3. They both looked foolish and flushed against the filthy dirt parking lot, at least to anybody who wasn’t taken up in the violence of it all.
4. The smell of chemical-lemon assaulted his nostrils.
5. Alistair sucked patience through the cigarette, the opposite end glowing coyly in the dark.
Months after surviving the explosion of his home Station, Harlow crash-lands on known planet Margaric, within charted space, and must learn to survive on his own. Supposedly recent maps and data on Margaric are inaccurate or straight up wrong. A research station stands overgrown and abandoned. A fire burns endlessly in one spot. Strange noises echo out of a deep, dark hole at night. While he fights to remain alive, Harlow must also unravel the planet’s secrets.
Title: The Mystery of Margaric fka Harlow in Space
Status: World Building, Character Developing, & Outlining
Genre: Thriller, Mystery, Science Fiction
Age Rating: 13+
Main Characters:
HARLOW -
18, male, he/him, young scrappy weapons expert with a love of knives, quiet, guarded, & serious, very cautious, detail-oriented, hates bugs, always touching things, 5′6″ stringbean, freckles, long auburn hair kept in a ponytail, hazel eyes, oval face, soft jawline. He was a loner on The Station, where he was born and raised, and somewhat estranged from his family. Even if it wasn’t all gone, he isn’t sure he would have wanted to go back. There is nothing to keep him from becoming consumed by the mysteries his new home has to offer.
THE RESEARCHER -
The woman who last occupied the abandoned research station. Her research and her belongings, both personal and otherwise, were all left behind. According to public access data on Margaric research, she and her station are still active on the planet. Tell that to the grasses growing up through her keyboard.
Setting:
THE PLANET OF MARGARIC - A small planet somewhere in the known, charted, explored universe. 60% of the planet is covered in tall, steep, snow-capped mountains that are impossible to traverse if you’re not prepared. Between the mountains and in the large valley that spreads over the other 40% of the planet, trees similar to Earth’s pines and firs grow large and wide, and at their feet grows thick, lush thickets, bushes, wildflowers, and ivies. Dominating one side, and about one half, of the valley is a deep lake that appears eerily still and mirror-like.
Some Songs:
Fever by Baltazar
Revolution 9 by The Beatles
Bonfires by Blue Foundation
Black Mambo by Glass Animals
Faraday Cage by Elliot Moss
Taglist & some comments under the cut! I’m posting this initially with DW’s taglist, please let me know if you want to be on the longterm taglist for this work to be tagged on future related posts!
this wip is meant to balance out my other wip, Daydream Walking, where it has very few characters, focuses on one world/time, and has way fewer plots and subplots going on.
some inspirations for this wip include the games Firewatch and Subnautica!
Tagged by @farrradays (again) (just one more from you after this, shhh)
“Oh, okay. I’ll tell you how. There’s a big button off to the right, kind of in the middle of four other, smaller buttons? It has sort of a very simple arrow symbol on it? See it?”
Harlow scanned the control panel, not for the first time. Soon he located the button, but it felt like it took forever. He felt hot under his skin, a bit flustered, despite the fact that Ashton was nowhere near him, probably really far away, actually.
“Yeah, found it,” he said as he hovered one finger over the button, so he didn’t lose it in the frickin’ sea of buttons.
Tagging: How about @mouwwie, and anybody else who wants to!
So far? Ooof, Fantasy (futuristic), murder mysteries, historical fiction, scifi, adventure, “regular” mystery, “adult fiction”, and I feel the potential for so much more inside me. I just have so many interests and the variety of things I would like to write lines right up with that!
Are you a planner, pantser, or planster?
I’m not 100% sure yet, but I’m feeling a bit more planner than pantser, even though I definitely dove into Daydream Walking with v e r y little planning. (My new wip, The Mystery of Margaric, is receiving a lot more planning attention)
What is your approach to research?
Ahh, people have?? Approaches?
I just read and listen and watch things related to what I want to know about, and stockpile especially useful links, sometimes just piled up in my bookmarks and sometimes sorted/pinned into boards on Pinterest. Sometimes I write things down if I need to.
I don’t have the most organized approach oops
What POV is your novel? Why are you writing it this way?
Close second person and just because . . . that’s my favorite way to write! The original chapters of Daydream Walking I’m currently releasing don’t reallyyyy reflect this, since when I wrote those I didn’t have the most confidence and was unused to writing a Story on My Own (I have a big long roleplay background). I was holding back a bit, and I’m still working on breaking out honestly.
I just reallyyy like digging into a characters feelings, thoughts, motivations, etc etc etc. This can also make things kinda . . . lengthy, but I don’t mind.
Do you know how your story ends before you start writing?
Ahhh I would like to have at least a vague idea, yes. With Daydream Walking I had NO clue how it was gonna end, though now I have . . . sort of an idea?
When creating characters, what comes first: appearance, backstory, motivation, personality, something else?
Normally when I start creating a character, I start with name, age, gender/pronouns/sexuality, appearance, and a rough idea/list of character traits/values/motivations/desires/etc, and work on tying in family, background, and the rest of it from there.
What trope do you actually like?
Oh God, I just can’t pick one
How did you come up with your title?
Daydream Walking: I literally don’t remember. I think I heard something on the radio while I was traveling with my family that made me think about those words together and it just Felt right. I also considered Nightmare Walking.
The Mystery of Margaric: While I was messing around with the really really rough concept, I had just been calling it Harlow in Space, but as I developed it a bit more and decided what the story was I actually wanted to tell, I felt the desire to have something a little longer, a little more classic, old-school if you will. Something you’d see on an old paperback, you know? So once I knew that I knew I wanted it to be “The Mystery of ____” and I went about naming the planet. Initially I wanted the planet to have an H name, probably of Greek origin, but then I didn’t like the idea of the planet and the main character both having names starting with H. So I switched to M, and through some browsing of lists of M-words, I found the word Margaric, which basically means “resembling pearl”. The word is basically only used for margaric acid and nothing else, so it seemed like the perfect thing to both stand out and also not be a completely made up word. (Not to bash completely made up words, I just don’t feel I’m the most skillful at coming up with them.) (The idea being that the planet looks very pearl-like (pale, blues and pinks and grays, but with a lot more jagged texture than a pearl normally has) from space.)
If your WIP had a theme song, what would it be?
Listen, I’m a music person, a music man, if you’ll allow that. All of my everything has up to a dozen or more theme songs. But if I had to pick ONE song for each wip:
Daydream Walking:
The Mystery of Margaric:
How has your MC developed, not within the plot, but since you first created them?
Alistair: Got more angsty and unstable
Clay: Got more goofy & flamboyant (he was originally a lot more . . . all around suave)
Quince: Acquired more depth (re: things he’s passionate about and dreams he once had)
Miles: Is actually a morphed version of my of my bestest, oldest friend’s characters. In my hands he has become completely different, he basically went from hotheaded tough boy with a heart of gold to a complete softie sweetheart who gives good advice.
Harlow: Still not super developed but he’s gotten more and less sad as I’ve changed my mind about his backstory. (Also he was originally going to be nonbinary but then I decided I wanted to write about another trans man)
Your MC faces certain death. What are their last words?
Canonically (for now), sort of at least, in DW: “Shit.”
My questions:
1. Do you have a favorite “writing drink”?
2. Do you have any books/comics/TV shows/any other media that inspire you to write?
3. Do you have a particular method for naming your characters and/or locations?
4. How long have you been active as a writeblr?
5. Sprints: Useful or Stressful?
6. How much control do you feel you actually have over whether or not (or how) your characters get along or don’t get along?
7. Do you have a favorite character of your own right now?
8. What was the last thing you read? (doesn’t have to be a book)
9. What was the last thing you listened to?
10. Do you have a favorite texture?
11. A place you would like to visit for the first time or return to?
