Yay! We are making a feature film! I almost put future film, but anyway-we are launching crowdfunding in April for The Woman Who Knows, a psychological thriller murder mystery!
Comment below if you will back us! Please? Pretty please?
Yay! We are making a feature film! I almost put future film, but anyway-we are launching crowdfunding in April for The Woman Who Knows, a psychological thriller murder mystery!
Comment below if you will back us! Please? Pretty please?
Are We Having a Romance Renaissance?
From booming book sales to romance-only bookstores, we may just be living during a romance renaissance.
https://bookriot.com/are-we-having-a-romance-renaissance/
#PennedPossibilities 618 Is your SC prone to jealousy? How might they handle any envious feelings?
Only one of them might feel jealousy, but it's for a friend, it has manifested not in terms of exclusivity but in terms of just wanting her around.
#WritersCoffeeClub Mar 19: What’s your narrator’s sense of humor like?
In my current project, the narration has little to no humour at all. It's a dry, quiet style of writing... until the fight scenes.
#WordWeavers Mar 19: What role does writing have in your life? Is it for fun, therapeutic, work, or something else?
Writing is a huge part of my job--research professor and writing instructor--but my creative writing is mostly "therapeutic" in the sense that I'm just a happier person when I'm engaged in the specific kind of problem-solving that's necessary for writing.
#ScribesAndMakers Mar 19: At what age did you start creating?
I remember trying to make stories and pictures as a little kid, then again with writing in my teens and twenties, but it wasn't really until I was 39 that I came up with a viable idea for a story and wrote it and thought, "Huh. This is actually good..." and it's been like that ever since.
#Today 19
Good day!
It was snowing during my walk yesterday morning. I doubt that happens again until autumn, but you never know.
Editing continues to go well. I’m also preparing to publish Trust in the Forgotten again, this time to Kobo. I’m aiming for within the next week.
Be everwell.
I love seeing Austen's 21s C merchandising being discussed. A friend works for a company with over 20 Austen-themed items for sale. She's going to hook me up with Austen file folders!
https://www.tatler.com/article/austen-mania-jane-austen-economy
#AmReading #AmWriting @bookstodon #books #Bookstodon
#WritingCommunity #ReadingCommunity #Regency #Georgian #JaneAusten @romancelandia
#WritingCommunity - is it ever okay to give up on a Writing In Progress #WIP?
Should #writers always finish a project, even if they're not feeling it anymore? Or does this just result in accumulating a collection of unfinished stories?
#Boosts appreciated - hoping to write an article about it on my #blog
#WhoNeedsABlog does book reviews?
(Content Warning: All words are generated by humans)
#Writer #WritingCommunity #WriterSky
#SciFi #BookReview
https://cjpayling.wordpress.com/2025/03/19/who-needs-a-blog-with-book-reviews/
How do you, personally, make characters?
Do you design them to interact with each other?
Rarely. Design is a squishy word. Do they show up on stage for a purpose? Yes. Randy showed up for May Ri when she was required to marry someone. (It was in the contract she signed along with a one year time limit.) We soon learn he was supposed to marry May Ri's friend, but he agrees. Streak Carryingaton and Thorn Rose appeared together, from a reference in another novel to a pair of astronauts. I immediately decided they were a couple, because their very existence needed to disrupt an entire lost civilization. I guess that's "designing them to interact," huh? Not like I'm taking out a piece of paper and writing a character sketch or list...
Do you flesh out their backstory before you start writing?
Pretty much never. Backstory generates itself. As people interact, I end up asking myself why certain details matter. Why did Randy mean to marry Reina not May Ri. Why was he on Mars? Why was this guy especially nice? Turns out he was a woman's rights activist at a period in time, like now, when reactionary forces put the hammer down. Lots more came from that. That sorta thing. I've been caught showing such rich generated backstory that I've been called out to write that story. My first published novel was the backstory in another novel I never finished as a result.
Do you discover them as you go?
Yep. As above, I find characters when I need them to fill rolls that pop up.
Do you decide on race, gender, religion, sexuality, and all that ahead of time?
With Streak and Thorn, I knew I was writing a feminist parable of the 1960s moonshot years, detailing the prejudice and the sexism, but also poking religious fanaticism in the eye. Streak and Rose need to be different, so I made him a day angel and her a daemon. (Mind you, they're both entirely human and their "types" are inherited from other stories, so the angel x daemon thing is a serendipitous matchup.) Their people distrust each other in this time period; essentially (NOT physically,) he's black, she's white, and they're a couple. Defines their sexuality. The concept of religion doesn't apply. And that's the thought process I started with. The rest flowed from action in the story.
Sometimes sexuality is important. Cloud Dancer is gay because I wanted to have him talk with the main character about what that felt like, and to help flesh out the society they live in. Other characters made my gay-dar antennae twitch, which eventually led to me writing a gay romance side story for them. All discovery while writing.
Do you divide them between heroes and villains?
People show their true colors, but when certain people show up on stage, I know their purpose immediately. When one of the board of directors for EM Mars Corp shows up in May Ri's habitat, ordering the women congregate in one dome, stating they're redistributing women's labor to put them to better use, and names "being married" one criteria, it becomes obvious something's wrong. He becomes a recurring villainous antagonist and he's helping me now advance the plot. He's May Ri's nemesis. She regrets not letting him die the time she could have done that.
Do you "see" and "hear" them in your head?
I can't visualize people in my head as some people can. My type of shy often makes me not look at people, to avert my gaze, especially when I was kid and I suppose one learns this type of visualization. I can take a thing, like a plush toy and rotate it in my head to see all sides, so I think it is learn it or lose it. In any case, I can only tag people's attributes in my head.
I try not to describe people except vaguely, like eye color and height, so readers can relate to them better. Half way through Mars Needed Women, all we know about May Ri is her daughter has dark hair like she does, and that she's physically fit, and better than average height. That's it.
On the other hand, I assign characteristics when I think it will enhance other characteristics. The first person born on Mars has red hair and freckles, but asian eyes. Since she's treated as something of a big sister and a princess by all those born after her, I wanted pretty. The asian eyes got her the title Onēsanue (O - honorific, Nēsan - Big sister, ue - higher, special) and Japanese ancestry, which got her the surname Īto, which in turn helped describe her mother, one of the Directors, etc.
In another story, when it became important that a woman could sing, she got a soprano voice. The voice of the main character, who is the daughter of a famous opera singer who died, is only described as singing her mother's songs in the shower, and crying at the same time.
Lots of process here. Hope it helps!
#gender #fiction #writer #author
#mystery #thriller #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
I've thrown this question out before, but there's always room for new thought on it:
How do you, personally, *make* characters?
Do you design them to interact with each other? Do you flesh out their backstory before you start writing? Do you discover them as you go? Do you decide on race, gender, religion, sexuality, and all that ahead of time? Do you divide them between heroes and villains? Do you "see" and "hear" them in your head?
#WordWeavers Mar 18: Is there a connection between how you write (plotter vs pantser) and how your MCs deal with their goals?
Sure, it's that I know what kind of people they are and how they'll solve problems, but I don't set up their actual solutions until I'm in the moment of writing a scene. My climaxes are typically almost entirely improvised. My writing buddy pointed out that this is most definitely a result of a lifetime of playing D&D. :)
#WordWeavers Mar 17: How organized are your characters?
I've divided them into dominant personality traits in a way that makes them bounce of each other: the shy one, the brash one, the moral one, the leader-type. That's how they're organized in the story.
(I know that's not what the question is asking.)
#WritersCoffeeClub Mar 18: Happy Awkward Moments Day! What's the most awkward moment you've ever written?
I'm not much for social awkwardness. I don't find it entertaining, one way or the other, but I do have a scene where one of my characters tries desperately to find somewhere else to sit in the cafeteria, realizes no one will have him, and then slumps back to the first friends he made and *kinda* tried to ditch.
#WritersCoffeeClub Mar 17: Does alcohol intake influence your writing?
Nah. I basically stopped drinking. I started getting hangovers for the first time in my life by my early 40s, and it's just not worth it any more.
I did this the other week and it was awesome! Become part of a Tolkien archive!
J. R. R. Tolkien Fandom Oral History Collection // Archives // Raynor Library // Marquette University https://www.marquette.edu/library/archives/tolkienfandom.php
#Today 18
Good day!
I can’t begin to convey how rewarding it is when I have days where I sit down to edit & jSEE what needs fixed, as if the problems are highlighted.
Patience.
That’s how we learn. Patience for ourselves, for others. Is it a lost skill? Too often I wonder…
Be everwell.
Recently, I asked which Austen/Bronte character you would interview, and I still maintain that it would be Wentworth for me.
#AmReading #AmWriting @bookstodon #books #Bookstodon
#WritingCommunity #ReadingCommunity #Regency #Georgian #JaneAusten @romancelandia