Desmond Vallence - A Mood Board

Song of lost secrets (wip intro)

They sat in silence for a while. This time though, the words seemed to flow more smoothly. Tilting his head, he begins, "Did you know I was afraid of the ocean before we met ?"

General:

Genres; romance, fantasy, YA

setting; a small pirate town in the early 1720s

themes of; death, lgbt relationships, forbidden love, manipulation, courage, late redemption

POV; 3; third person limited

status; planning, character development

target length; novel

tag; #wip: song of lost secrets

CW's; torture, mild homophobia, mental/childhood abuse, kidnapping (none mentioned in summary)

Masterlist

I'm incredibly bad at writing summaries, so bear with me.

Summary:

Sols follow two teen boys; a siren, Hesperus, and a human, Salem. Salem was raised to think sirens are dangerous liars, but after their initial encounter, curiosity leads him to secret meetings with Hesperus. Over time they grow to like one another, but they cant openly be together due to the human society's toxicity towards merfolk; putting Salem at risk if the word gets out. Salem also has to deal with the decision to pursue his mothers dreams or to stay in Khirgurum with his family, best friend, lover, and home. Their secret encounters strain Salem's relationships, thus testing his priorities as well as his honesty. Nasira, another siren, has dissaproved from the start; doing all she can to stop them from seeing one another.

Characters:

salem

hesperus

nasira

emene

Silvia

Evan

Rayen

This will be updated as I see fit, and character profiles will be linked once posted.

🎃 Trick or Treat 🎃

Yes, you read that right! “Trick or Treat” is making its third comeback this year 🍬🗡️ Spread this post to get the word out. I’ll send an ask to everyone who reblogs this! 🎃

The Event

Let’s celebrate Halloween together with a fun game! During this event, we’ll knock on people’s ask boxes and send them a simple question: Trick or Treat? 🦇

The recipient decides if it’s to be a trick, or a treat, as the owner of the house.

🍬 Treat — If the recipient choses treat, they share something with us as a treat. This could be a snippet, a line, OC trivia, or what have you!

👻 Trick — Turning the question around, the asker now has to share something of their own! But, seeing as it’s a trick, they may leave something under a read more, or link to something, that may catch you off guard… 😱

The event is held* through 25th-27th of October.

(Examples of) What you can share:

A snippet

A scene

OC trivia

Worldbuilding fact

Picrew / Art / Zoi / etc

A song, or even a playlist

A moodboard

Poetry

Anything you think is a treat you want to share!

If you get “Trick 👻”, pulling a trick is up to you.

❗ Tricksters ❗ Keep to etiquette. A rick roll is fun, a spooky gif, a picrew of your character dressed up for Halloween, and other fun tricks are what I hope to see, should someone chose to pull a trick.

*I will be sending asks during these dates but you are welcome to start this event any time you. Remember writeblr etiquette and send an ask back to the one who sent one to you! (Excluding me 👻)

🧡 Enjoy 🧡

agreeing with this entire list, specifically number 2 and 8.

What I Love In Writing

Lately, I've seen so many negative posts (including my own) circulating about things not to do in writing, "advice" about which words to avoid, which tropes are most annoying, etc., etc. No wonder writing is often seen as a discouraging avenue to explore. In response, I've decided to make a post about things I personally LOVE to see in other people's writing, things that make me want to read more and more.

Attention to physical details that are less commonly described in stories. Three of my personal favourites are descriptions of hands, necks, and shoulders, which are just as expressive as eyes and other facial features.

When writers stretch a word's known meaning in a way that feels new and off-kilter. It always surprises me and draws me in. I particularly like when a noun is made into an interesting new verb. For example, "His eyes lanterned the dim room." Even though it might not make immediate sense, it can evoke a variety of new readings and emotions based on the context. If the scene calls for it, invent your own vocabulary. Language is yours.

I personally love contrasts between emotional states and settings, like when a character is facing turmoil on a beautifully sunny day, or, alternatively, two characters expressing their love for each other in a place that's falling apart.

How wonderful is it when someone can pull off the present tense elegantly? That sense of immediacy is refreshing.

Lengthy sentences that cascade rhythmically and emotionally to the point that you reach the end of the sentence and think, "Oh my gosh, that was only one amazing sentence!"

I love when characters are raw and real and messy and complicated, when they feel like people I could meet in my everyday life. I love when good characters do bad things and bad characters do good things.

Metaphors and similes, especially ones I've never read before.

I like when ugly or unexpected things are described beautifully. There is a difference between romanticizing something ugly and acknowledging an ugly thing's attributes thoughtfully enough to illustrate it with the same care and passion as a universally accepted lovely thing.

Personally, and I've changed my mind on this one recently, but I think it's sweet when I can pick up on favourite words or phrases the author likes to return to now and again. I understand it can be repetitive at points, but it's also like discovering a secret, cherished thing I can share with the writer. It adds to the voice. (Side advice: give yourself the liberty to change your opinions and try again with writing techniques you previously disliked).

Emotion, emotion, emotion. I'm an emotional person, and I like emotional writing that always walks that line between "balanced" and "too much." Not necessarily in that everything feels exaggerated or out of proportion with the plot, but that I can sense the characters' emotional states at all times, and sometimes even the grammar or language can reflect that - shorter phrases for an abrupt feeling, elongated ones for drawn-out, languid moments. The world is gorgeous, and our feelings are gorgeous. Writing that can capture that sensitivity has an everlasting effect on me. Like I'm at a party and the lights are too bright, the music is too loud, there are too many people, but it's all a reminder that I'm a human being. We're alive.

There are many, many more aspects of writing I love, too many for me to name but these are just some of the first that came to my mind. Amid all the cautionary writing tips you read out there, I encourage you also to establish for yourself the good things you should do. The risk of perpetual don'ts is a perpetual blank page.

Do what you love, and love what you do, but above all else, do.

# Character profile: Salem grey

Picrew used, full credit to Naylissah. (moodboard here)

Role: protagonist

Name; Salem

age; 17

birthday; 14/8/1704

species; human

sexuality; gay

height; 5'10

"I didn't wanna end up like this. I'd have gone so far, I know I would've."

motivations; desire to be seen, freedom,

mannerisms; fast paced speaking, lots of questions, loud, nose scrunching, big movements, tilting his head, skipping letters

fears: drowning & dissapointment

hobbies: knife throwing, sailing, drink tasting

Criminal record:

aggravated assault

disturbing the peace

extortion

open container

underage drinking

arson

theft

No matter how much you dislike your own writing, I promise you it’s better than AI

My fave & least favorite things about being a writer

Yay I'm a writer:

perceiving books differently than non writers

finishing a piece

designing characters

choosing chapter titles

finally figuring out how to fix a plot hole

when writing just becomes so smooth and rolls from your brain like an old film strip

writing romantic scenes of my fave ship

sharing my writing with people

those random top tier ideas you have to jot down before they go away in 10 seconds

thinking about people loving your story in the future

developing villains

making playlists & moodboards for my wips

writing desperation (for some reason ??)

Please never again:

describe the setting correctly

coming up with a cover

the first draft.

"so which ending would make the most sense'

share my writing with people

killing my fave character (i do it anyways)

trying to remember a word i cant even describe

make the side character parents well rounded

that one super cool idea you get 3/4 way through the story that doesn't actually fit anywhere

actually having to fix plot holes

writing.

I love my neurotic emo son

Trying to write fanfiction for the first time is so humbling, it feels like I've never written anything ever.

hey if you're the type of writer that's like me where you tend to write specific scenes first that vaguely weave together into a plot, you might like using obsidian as a writing app.

my frustration with other writing applications is that i will write my scenes out of order and it's hard to move things around and rearrange them on a regular document.

but with obsidian there's this canvas feature where you can just write all your scenes and plot moments on these little cards that you can freely rearrange. you can color code them and connect them too.

here's the canvas i've created for my current multi-chapter fic: (if you zoom in you can see all the text in each card this what it looks like zoomed out)

as you can see, i color code them based off chapters and will group them next to a document card with the working title of the chapter. anything not color-coded are scenes that don't have a proper place quite yet or it's just world building references. this app can also be good for note-taking and collecting research!

best of all, it's FREE!!! the only downside is that if you want your stuff to sync across devices, you do have to pay for that. i constantly hop between my laptop and desktop so i pay for the syncing. but if you write on only one device it's completely free! EDIT: some reblogs have mentioned that you can apparently link your own personal cloud storage (dropbox, gdrive, icloud, etc.) to obsidian for free! that way you can access your obsidian vaults across multiple devices without the extra fee. i don't mind supporting the devs but just something to look into if costs is a concern.

i typically use it for organizing my thoughts for a first draft. once i get all the scenes arranged and mostly written out, i will copy and paste them into ellipsus (also free & highly recommended as a google doc alternative) so that they're all in one document that i can edit.

Alia vallence - a mood board

– More than royalty

"Please, can we try again? Let me love you one more time, thats all I need. I'll do better."