That Feeling When You Start Filling Out A Character Sheet Only To Immediately Need To World Build Because

OO a tag! Thanks, @aalinaaaaaa

So I don't have folders for my WIP, kinda. I have a notebook and a collection of templates from the writing site I write on that I slowly fill out. Anyway

Within my notebook!

Stars Of The Sky

God-named

Ancient Gods

A bunch of pages dedicated to individual gods

Template collection (That have a few things filled out)

Characters

World

Yeah I don't have much. This doesn't include the main document, and what things I do have filled out aren't complete. However, I have thoughts on various things for this story. I also have a pronunciation guide, but don't know why anyone would want to know how I think names should be said (Like Hades' family line, Ariea, is said Ah-ree-ah. I doubt anyone can see it, but it is not said the same as area.)

If we looked at Sightless... Well... there's the document it was written on? I did nothing planning wise for Sightless.

WIP Folder Tag

Thanks to @ruvastuon for the tag!

The premise is to post all the headings under the folder/section for your WIP, and people can send asks for the titles that interest them!

For this, I'm going to go a little left field. In the past, I've presented my Scrivener files for this game.

But for today's edition, you're getting the headings from my notebooks! Two of them, in fact 👀

One of them is for any time that I know I won't have my laptop with me/otherwise in easy reach, such as the train or on holidays.

The other is my notebook. Story ideas go into this one, including ones that are dripping in spoilers for a book that doesn't truly exist yet!

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The Fancy Paperblanks Notebook (The Prose and Pieces notebook)

General

A Deal With the Ancients

Limbo

A few scribbled lines

Writemas — Day 22

Another errant quote

No Good Choices

The Crow's Gift

This Blood-Stained Charcuterie

The Forest's Disgrace

The Swans' Departure

The Markings of the Raven

Obsidian Sapphires

The Temple of Verelise*

Alycja's ceremony*

The walk home*

A Deal and A Proposal*

Dinner that night*

A Conversation on the windowsill*

Ard na Preaghaun*

If You Must*

*These relate to the first redraft of Obsidian Sapphires; A Healing for the Birds is redraft #2

Flamebearer

A Brush with Fate

Stir into life

Before the Blue Embers

Upon the Precipice

The Royal Council meeting

The Highest Bidder

A Promise to Keep

Soulswapped

The New Status Quo

A Question for a Question

A Healing for the Birds

Star-Crossed (including a deleted starting paragraph!)

A Broken Seal

The Next Stage of Pilgrimage

The Chase for the Chalice

A Wish in Exchange

(Cerigo's perspective of the above scene)

A note

An unfeatured paragraph

A Conversation in the Aftermath

The first of the interrogations

Interrogation #2

A Prelude to the Questioning

The Third Interrogation

An Important Visitor

The Lady's Lament

The Fool's Deal

A tidbit about Ruadhán's house

The Notebook I bought in Lidl (The Notes and Ideas notebook)

Little to no major spoilers :D

The meshaika

Background events of the Temple Chaos

The aftermath

The moment the friends vanished

A note on the High Councillors' strategy

The purpose of Morilast's Mark

What's the story's core?

Aileste

Eshani's manor

Claudia's manor

The central ballroom

Naimorste

Seldaikan mages and how they define magic

Alycja's career desires

Cerigo's stance on the aftermath of Chapter Two

Spoilers!

For A Healing for the Birds unless otherwise stated

A comparison of the two balcony scenes

Throwaway ideas

The plot (Chapters One to Three)

Shifting of the Guard (happens towards the end/after Soulswapped)

Some major questions to be answered

Eshani and Claudia's response to the events of Chapters Two/Three and a bit beyond

Alycja's dilemma over the Chalice

—

There's a few more entries after this, but they relate to Chapter Four/onwards-ish of A Healing for the Birds, some notes on a potential sequel (they're on the aftermath of the end of the first one!) and what Cerigo told Cheyoria after she came home the night of the ruined ceremony. Extremely spoilery stuff (ask if you want, but maybe do it off-anon or in a private message 👀😅)

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Anyway, I'm going to put an open tag to see everyone's wip folders, and also send tags to @nightmaricwriter @seastarblue @willtheweaver @bardic-tales @finickyfelix @yaboiii-azzy @thatndginger @winterandwords @wintherlywords @jev-urisk @writingamongther0ses @avrablake @ark-inkweaving @oros-ash3s @bloodlessheirbyjacques @space-writes @thebookishkiwi @vesanal

reblog if you’ve read fanfictions that are more professional, better written than some actual novels. I’m trying to see something

Better than what I imagine the requirements of invoking anti-Dark-God magic are. (Who would want to recite a whole incantation in a different language while pouring your blood on the ground and hoping you have enough magic power to not fail and or die that could very easily be stopped by even a second of hesitation- I'd fail.)

Magic system

How many WIPs

And

Challenges you have faced with your WIPs

Thank you for the ask <333

There's an essay incoming, beware

—

How Many WIPs?

I have no less than four novel-intended wips (Flamebearer, A Healing for the Birds, Soulswapped and the Lady's Lament), plus a few shorter works (The Disappearance of Charimone Eschredaine, [Succession of the Underground*] and [The Assassin's Promise*]) and a developing anthology of certain characters' backstories (This Blood-Stained Charcuterie)

*Placeholders; I've no clue what to call them yet

Challenges Faced With WIPs

A Healing for the Birds:

The main challenge with this is dealing with all the plot threads. One thing that has remained consistent even after all the changes since the first ever iteration of this wip (it used to be called Seafarer, then Obsidian Sapphires, and now this), is there being loads of plot threads. The difference is now those plot threads are more centred around the Allaitri Chalice and the political chaos of it being unearthed.

Up until recently, I wasn't sure what the core of the story was, but now I know. It centres around familiar ties and the things that people do in the name of love. (Sounds a bit corny out of context, though lol)

Flamebearer

I put this one on hold because I know it's going to be complex due to the heavy political themes in this. Unlike A Healing for the Birds, where the political situation is a little bit lighter and more petty, in a sense, the political scene is very charged here. There's a lot of resentment pointed towards the royal family due to things like Serrantine trying to rejoin Selade or the legacy of the Twenty-Year Winter, leading to unrest, death, grief, a lot more sombre and complex issues to deal with. I hope to be more confident in my writing so I can do Flamebearer justice, I find people seem to really like the premise and starting ideas, its associated Flash Friday pieces do quite well 😅

Soulswapped

Again, another wip put on ice to focus on the bird wip. I do want to get back to this at some stage, I have some vague ideas for how I want it to play out. I don't envision it to be as long as the two above, because its concept (the main character has to fight her way out of jail and the court it's in) is more constrained. There's nowhere near the amount of plot strings here. (The darker intrigue happens around the end/slightly thereafter 👀)

The Lady's Lament

I do not have experience writing contemporary stuff, which I think is what made it hard to start it. The concept's there, easy enough, but it's just actually sitting down and planning it that's the main thing.

Another challenge that is unique for this one to an extent, is the presence of Gaeilge here. The book is intended to be an ode to Irish culture, and if I was to complete it, I do intend for there to be a Gaeilge translation.

This Blood-Stained Charcuterie

One word: timeline. The setting for this collection has thousands of years worth of history, and so the challenge is figuring out who killed who and when. And not to mention all the stuff going on in the background, some of it is more influential than others.

The Magic System

Basically, it's based on the idea of magic being a biological substance present in the world. Most living things have a tolerance for it, but not all living things can actively use it.

Even then, there's two broad categories; faerie creatures, whom rely on simpler magic like moving things or simple tricks, and then the faeries/Carithaikh [start with one fae/one human parent, subsequent generations by any combination that isn't two faeries; these people can also be dubbed as witches], who can perform magic in a wide variety of ways.

Most people are born with an affinity to an element (such as fire, plant, water/ice, air, light, shadow, blood, lightning, dust, rock, metal, etc), which is then honed as the person gets older. It is also possible to learn certain elements, but some are harder than others, going on into near-impossible (e.g, it's hard to learn fire if one doesn't have an affinity for it [the genes of those who do are adapted to prevent burns and manage the heat more efficiently], but water is fairly easy to learn).

Another aspect that some people have but is much less common, are skill-based abilities. Shapeshifting and teleporting are the most common ones, but there's also a select few who can weave souls or see/interact with the domain of the spirits. Those last two are about one or few in a generation. (And interestingly, in Helinda there's no records of anyone who can interact with the spirit world, likely because Helindians burn their dead!)

But sometimes you'll get people with bespoke abilities. Some are merely unusual powers, such as purple fire, wood manipulation, blending with the shadows etc.

Others, are actual divine elements. They manifest as fire, light or water, and usage of then can have catastrophic effects. If the user doesn't die after using divine magic, it can cause things such as blindness, burns, nerve damage/neuropathy, constant dehydration, reduced magical abilities/stamina, chronic fatigue and/or other symptoms.

If the user has a part of a deity's soul entwined with them, then the effects are mitigated to an extent. (It occurs frequently with Fate's reprisals [her element is blue fire])

And then, there's also the external systems. These rely on the magic of the world instead of/as well as the user's. Things like runes, languages, diagrams, items, gestures and/or other tangible things are used for them.

These systems vary from place to place and between cultures, they're like programming languages in a sense. Each system has strengths and weaknesses.

For instance, Helinda's five-pointed star is great if you are a) in Helinda [or Morilaste]** b) looking to do things like a locating or summoning* spell, as well as anything relating to Helindian geography. It's great with maps!

However, it's not great for highly complex spells with lots of rules. That's where Seldaika's system shines. It has a four-pointed star, but the main mode of it is its language. It's a spell language, the grammar and vocabularly are tailor-made to support spells. Intention is also important, which is an aid in differentiating normal speech from a spell. Gestures also come into play, as do wands (syrchels), which are used as social indicators and statements of magical intent as well as to apply runes.

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*summoning items is perfectly fine, as long as it's not someone else's item. Summoning people/spirits is illegal under Helindian law

**there's a decent amount of lore underpinning the reason for this phenomenon

—

I'm going to end it here, I hope you enjoyed it :D

Oh I don't even have backstories yet. I just have the mc's name, age, and gender. No backstory. Which I should do...

...

Pain.

me with my fancy lil character building template

Ya know, a tie is unhelpful. Alas, I continue to ponder-

*book flies from off screen*

What shall I d-

*book makes firm bonk against face, the cover reading "this is a lie"*

...

Ouch.

I am in a weird state. I want to do three different things for my current story. Each requires different levels of thought and different processes in general.

Which sounds fine. Just do them one at a time, right?

Wrong.

I want to do these three things all at once. I lack the number of brains and arms for that. And lack the laptop amount for that. I can't write on two different tabs at once on the same laptop. I also can't write in a notebook and type on a computer at the same time.

And none of the three things involve writing the actual story. I have the better part of two chapters written. I'm just trying to get lore and settings written out so I can reference these things.

My brain is just absurdly all over the place.

To explain the different processes thing

-I write my lore related things in a notebook. A notebook that is strangely perfectly themed for the story I am writing. Some setting things get mentioned, but they aren't the focus of the notebook. Plot things also go here. Except I don't write outlines for plot things. I know what I want to happen and don't plan things. Yes, it becomes a discombobulated mess.

-I do character profiles on my laptop. It is very easy to reference while writing. Just flip between tabs. Obviously, I could also write my lore on my laptop, but I personally like having the lore in a notebook because I can make myself a table of contents and use plastic tabs to note the themes of certain parts for the story.

-I am thinking of having more general worldbuilding that is unrelated to lore be done on my laptop. Yes, this is my admission that I don't do worldbuilding often. I just have ideas and write them out with no planning. But I realize that that process won't work as easily for the type of story I am currently writing.

So for this poll, world building would be mostly settings, linguistic things, ecosystem things, and other things that would fall under this category aside from lore.

Lore would be the history of the world, mythological/religious things, and get into detail on the God-named and unnamed and their differences.

Character profiles would, as one could guess, would be character information compiled into a headache-inducing mess, especially since I don't actually have locations fully made (some exist but are unnamed, others are named and maybe exist as a concept without specifics, and others are vague ideas without names or specifics)

You'd think with that idea in mind, I would want to world build more, but I... I want to do all of these things at once

I wanted those to be alphabetical. I am a chaos gremlin.

what made you start your blog?

show us a picture of your handwriting?

From the 40 assorted questions

Here's both answers in one image!

I will read at least 90 percent of it.

Listen to? It will reach my ears ig.

that "OKAY SO" before someone u love starts infodumping........ most blessed feeling in the world

reblog if you have skilled writer friends and you're damn proud of them

Petitions - UK Government and Parliament

Petition: Do not stop transgender people from receiving care in mainstream hospital wards

The previous government proposed changes to the NHS constitution which would mean transgender hospital patients in England may not be treate

Well fucks? Get to it!