Frustrated by my inability to do much of anything today. I spent an hour doing some very simplistic drawing this morning and had to spend most of the afternoon asleep.
#WordWeavers 12 Mar: What would your MC enjoy most about our world?
Ah, fuck, I dunno. Our world sucks about as much as his world. It's not that different, it just has fewer androids.
Like, there are consequently fewer organised hate groups whose particular hate is androids, but there are also no laws recognising his rights so...?
>my market.
Getting COVID and not really recovering even to my normal sick sick kind of stalled my initial attempts to launch something. That and I struggled to connect with readers when I only had one story out. Having gone from moderately-well-networked under my other pen name to co.pletely unknown, I floundered a bit.
But since working on things properly this year and moving to Madtodon, things have really picked up!
While my number of readers is still small, they're so lovely and>
>enthusiastic! It's wonderful hearing from people who genuinely enjoyed my works!
I'm looking forward to bringing out my next book, once I've had a bit of rest.
Having recently become unemployed for health reasons you'd think I now have plenty of time to write, but the truth is writing is also work and eeeverything needs to slow right down for me at the moment.
I hope in a few weeks I'll be able to start moving slowly again though.
#WritersCoffeeClub 6
Are you self-published or trad-published? How's it going?
Self-published! I have the impression that the traditionally published erotica market has almost disappeared these days. While some of my stories are more like erotic romances, they feel a bit too steamy for romance to me, and the happy ending isn't always certain to be forever, so I don't rate my chances in the trad romance market.
But I'm writing what I enjoy and have had some success this year at staring for find
>my market.
Getting COVID and not really recovering even to my normal sick sick kind of stalled my initial attempts to launch something. That and I struggled to connect with readers when I only had one story out. Having gone from moderately-well-networked under my other pen name to co.pletely unknown, I floundered a bit.
But since working on things properly this year and moving to Madtodon, things have really picked up!
While my number of readers is still small, they're so lovely and>
*Sees someone else's toot about feeling unpopular* *relates* *checks their bio* *discovers I follow them but they don't follow me back*
Well, that's done wonders for my self-esteme :-/
@f6548c48@0fca1410 I've had cats before and am familiar with how much puke they produce. Not that it matters, the big thing is that I'm chronically ill, and if I can't deal with puke when it happens, that's a problem. I would probably also need to be in a living situation where the cat can go outside as dealing with a litter tray regularly is probably not possible.
It's been so long since I stuck my face into the soft belly of a cat - I can barely remember what it feels like
I get that not all cats allow you to do this, but I have had cats that did, and friends, it is the best.
>But Oviposition, threadbare as it is, had given me this setting with the ruins of an ancient subterranean civilisation, dead gods, and a bunch of hapless archaeologists.
The angst my characters needed required me to work into that setting a complex and subtle magic system that embedded political complexities in the world and in the characters very bodies and personalities. What I needed for the characters shaped the world I created, but that world needed to be full and rich to support>
>Lovecraftian backdrop for the setting than Ruinous Attraction would have had on its own.
The plot of both stories is pretty simple. Lbr, Oviposition is barely more that PWP, and most of the story in Ruinous Attraction comes from the interplay of the characters - the plot itself is pretty basic: they're trapped in an enchanted room that's making them increasingly horny and they do it. It's the characters histories, personal circumstances, and initial animosity that makes it interesting.
>But Oviposition, threadbare as it is, had given me this setting with the ruins of an ancient subterranean civilisation, dead gods, and a bunch of hapless archaeologists.
The angst my characters needed required me to work into that setting a complex and subtle magic system that embedded political complexities in the world and in the characters very bodies and personalities. What I needed for the characters shaped the world I created, but that world needed to be full and rich to support>
> without significant differences to them and the plot.
This has exercised my world-building muscles in a very different way to the organic way such things usually develop. Thinking about how I create the a background that will generate the same emotional notes in a very different place.
A surprisingly large amount stemmed from the fact that the plot required ruins and caves and explorers, and the kinky happenstance that Oviposition involved an unknown tentacle monster invoked a kind of>
>Lovecraftian backdrop for the setting than Ruinous Attraction would have had on its own.
The plot of both stories is pretty simple. Lbr, Oviposition is barely more that PWP, and most of the story in Ruinous Attraction comes from the interplay of the characters - the plot itself is pretty basic: they're trapped in an enchanted room that's making them increasingly horny and they do it. It's the characters histories, personal circumstances, and initial animosity that makes it interesting.
#wordweavers Oct 4. Character development, world-building, plot — how much attention do you pay to each?
These things do not come apart for me. They all inform each other.
THAT SAID, I do go pretty deep into character in their response to plot and their world.
I've also had an interesting challenge with The Sussuran Chronicles as the first two stories I rewrote from an entirely different world. So the rewriting focused a lot on building a whole new world that would fit the same characters>
> without significant differences to them and the plot.
This has exercised my world-building muscles in a very different way to the organic way such things usually develop. Thinking about how I create the a background that will generate the same emotional notes in a very different place.
A surprisingly large amount stemmed from the fact that the plot required ruins and caves and explorers, and the kinky happenstance that Oviposition involved an unknown tentacle monster invoked a kind of>
#WritersCoffeeClub 4: How do you write the time? In text or numbers? Both? Why?
Goddamn, this is a hard one and I go back and forth on it!
Short answer is I do whatever I think will be least disruptive to the reader in context while staying consistent.
This tends to mean numbers in description and words in dialogue, but it really depends on context and how cumbersome writing out the words would be to read. If the way a character says the time is causing an issue, I recast it.
Fortunately, this hasn't really been an issue in my Ruby Jones work. People think more in amount of time passed (which I treat as I would other numbers - numerals up to 10 and then words) rather than specific times of the day. But it has caused me frustration and dithering and the hope that an editor just applies the house style somewhere down the road where my other pen name is concerned.
@7ac7aa0e Same. Turning down Karlach was really hard, but I was like... Sorry babe, buy can you not see how hard I am trying with Astarion here?
And then the first time I tried it on with him he shut me down So Hard 🤣
@133a688f Yeah, except it won't be teenage white girls; it'll be black and brown people.
I know you didn't say white, but phrasing it as being a problem because of teenage girls doing minor theft projects a certain idea of what constitutes innocence and minor crime. One that doesn't match who Trump and his followers are fantasising about killing. It's good to not play into the same tropes they do.
No one should be summarily executed for a crime.
#WordWeavers 30: How educated is your MC?
A controversial topic. As an android, much of Evan's programming involved complex training of a multi-modular neural net. But he was never educated in a way commonly understood by humans to be worthy of qualification. Many androids struggle to find work because industries they were designed to work in for free now regard them as 'unqualified'.
Carter majored in Politics at uni before graduating the Police Academy and earning his place on the force.
#Wordweavers 26: Is the antagonist or protagonist more fashionable?
The protags are DEFINITELY more fashionable. Evan takes a lot of pride with his appearance, and since having the freedom and money to buy his own clothes he chooses them with great care.
Carter is not as fashion conscious as Evan - he has a more laid back style - but he still cares more about his appearance than the reclusive Donovan Terence, who is our primary antag.
#WordWeavers 27: Do any children under two or older people factor into your story?
Nope, nope, nope. I am not big on writing about children.
There are some androids who are 2 years old, but they are mentally grown-ass adults.
@951f37cb It's a question of modality and whether it's possible that there might be nothing. I'm extrapolating from that a little bit, but your question would be a part of that discussion.
Personally, I am all in for scepticism, but niche modality questions are of less interest to me, so I can't say much more than that 😅
@951f37cb Oh jesus, OK, I know this is a joke, but there are actual philosophical papers about this. It was an actual research area for one of my supervisors.
@fbd8d4b4 >must be solved that arises from the characters being in the situation. You can improve it by clarifying existing issues in the narrative or introducing a problem for the characters to solve.
Example: The Tell-tale Heart is a short story about a man who goes mad with guilt because he killed someone and still hears the beating of his heart beneath the floorboards. Strictly speaking not a lot happens, but by the end of the story we are in no doubt about what the beating is, why the man is>
@fbd8d4b4 >plagued by it, and that he is mad. The story has answered the question it set out to address, and the central enigma is the beating of the heart the man wrestles with, ultimately losing the fight with his guilt to reveal his crime, resolving the enigma (for the reader, at least).
Sorry, I went on a bit here. I hope it's helpful. Once I started thinking about short stories in this way I got a lot better at actually selling the stories I wrote.
@fbd8d4b4 >Can you strengthen how you show that it has been solved at the end? If part if what you want to do is show that the problem is unsolvable (maybe you like bleak, depressing ends - I sometimes do) can you bring *that* out more strongly?
If the story just kinds peters out the reason is usually that you have characters and a situation, but you haven't clearly identified what you want to tell people about those characters in that situation, or there's no specific problem you've shown readers>
@fbd8d4b4 >must be solved that arises from the characters being in the situation. You can improve it by clarifying existing issues in the narrative or introducing a problem for the characters to solve.
Example: The Tell-tale Heart is a short story about a man who goes mad with guilt because he killed someone and still hears the beating of his heart beneath the floorboards. Strictly speaking not a lot happens, but by the end of the story we are in no doubt about what the beating is, why the man is>
@fbd8d4b4 >on this theory, the central enigma must be resolved by the end. I'm always a bit of an 'anti-narrative' fan, who enjoys story structures with surprises, which is maybe why I prefer the other way of putting it, but even if you do want to buck trends, narrative theory can help you get unstuck when you don't know why a story doesn't feel right yet. So, one way is to take a step back and ask what the central enigma is. What problem are the characters solving? Does it get solved?>
@fbd8d4b4 >Can you strengthen how you show that it has been solved at the end? If part if what you want to do is show that the problem is unsolvable (maybe you like bleak, depressing ends - I sometimes do) can you bring *that* out more strongly?
If the story just kinds peters out the reason is usually that you have characters and a situation, but you haven't clearly identified what you want to tell people about those characters in that situation, or there's no specific problem you've shown readers>
@fbd8d4b4 >that reason is, and check that you've conveyed it to your audience.
Another approach from narrative theory is to identify the story's 'central enigma' - this is the problem to which characters are responding that drives the action. The central enigma sometimes arrives a bit later in the story than the beginning, but in a short story you don't have a lot of space to grab a reader's (or submission editor's) attention, so you should at least tease about the central enigma in the opening>
@fbd8d4b4 >on this theory, the central enigma must be resolved by the end. I'm always a bit of an 'anti-narrative' fan, who enjoys story structures with surprises, which is maybe why I prefer the other way of putting it, but even if you do want to buck trends, narrative theory can help you get unstuck when you don't know why a story doesn't feel right yet. So, one way is to take a step back and ask what the central enigma is. What problem are the characters solving? Does it get solved?>
@fbd8d4b4 >so that the first paragraph sets up reader expectations about what the story is about, and the last paragraph brings together whatever threads I have laid out in the course of the story and showed how they came together to suppose that.
The 'what it's about' is sometimes referred to as 'the premise' of the story, in contrast to an essay's 'theis', but the point is that there was *some reason* you wanted yo tell this story, and even if you want to be a little cryptic, you have to know what
@fbd8d4b4 >that reason is, and check that you've conveyed it to your audience.
Another approach from narrative theory is to identify the story's 'central enigma' - this is the problem to which characters are responding that drives the action. The central enigma sometimes arrives a bit later in the story than the beginning, but in a short story you don't have a lot of space to grab a reader's (or submission editor's) attention, so you should at least tease about the central enigma in the opening>
@fbd8d4b4 The best advice I can give about writing a short story is that it's a little like writing an essay. It doesn't feel like it, but the ending should still answer a question set out in the beginning, or satisfy some promise. If you're struggling with the ending, have a sit down and think about what your story is about, and write something that shows how the story captured that at the end.
After I've written a story, I usually go back to the first and last paragraphs and tighten them up>
@fbd8d4b4 >so that the first paragraph sets up reader expectations about what the story is about, and the last paragraph brings together whatever threads I have laid out in the course of the story and showed how they came together to suppose that.
The 'what it's about' is sometimes referred to as 'the premise' of the story, in contrast to an essay's 'theis', but the point is that there was *some reason* you wanted yo tell this story, and even if you want to be a little cryptic, you have to know what
@b541bfe5@c5dffaf5 Depends where you go - 'Hey girl' is often used for all genders. See also 'Sup, bitches?' Also 'queen' and various other originally female-coded terms, although I'm not sure guy or dude is new to being gender neutral, that's been around at least 30 years and I would hazard considerably longer.
@fbd8d4b4 The best advice I can give about writing a short story is that it's a little like writing an essay. It doesn't feel like it, but the ending should still answer a question set out in the beginning, or satisfy some promise. If you're struggling with the ending, have a sit down and think about what your story is about, and write something that shows how the story captured that at the end.
After I've written a story, I usually go back to the first and last paragraphs and tighten them up>
#WritersCoffeeClub Sept 26: Have you used a MacGuffin in your writing? Be honest.
I don't think I have in any of my current Ruby Jones work. I maaaay have something of that description in the next Sussuran Chronicles book, but I kind of hope that by the time I come to write it I will have given the thing a decent in-world reason to exist beyond 'it's gonna make my MCs switch bodies'. At the moment, yeah, it's a MacGuffin.
@0eb69558 people who are critical about free porn drive me batty.
It's FREE. The very least you owe is politeness. Don't like? Don't consume. The back button is right there!
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