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Time for author reveals!

I wrote: Interview with a University Snake Wrangler, expanding Snake Fight Portion of Your Thesis Defence into a student newspaper interview. The comments were very enthusiastic about it: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28297368

But that was just a treat, my main story was hase Wasps in the Library for Naomi Novik's Scholomance, with El being cosy and homely with her friends, and venturing into a dangerous segment of the library with Orion. It has All The Feels: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28140054

But I got more comments on the snake fight, probably because it's fun but short :)
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Darchi's tumbled to her hands and knees on the dark hillside, nearly going head over heels on the slight slope. She hissed under her breath, and the undead owl perched on her shoulder hooted reproachfully.

"I am being careful, Grandmama!" she hissed back. "You're supposed to warn me! That's why we were so pleased to find the owl."

The owl hooted quietly in gentle rebuke, and Darchi cringed inside. She methodically rearranged her limbs until she was sitting securely with her knees clasped in front of her. The owl had flapped the remains of its gigantic wings about her head keeping its balance as she shifted position.

After a moment she spoke more calmly. "I'm sorry, Grandmama. I'm ok."

A gentle, comforting hoot.

"There's the spirit house." Close enough at the bottom of the slope for her to see without the Owl's night eyes. "Can you see anyone?" she asked again.

The owl hooted tiredly.

"Yes, I know you'll tell me," she sighed. "I guess, I just mean, I'm ready."

She rose elegantly to her feet, and took a small, measured step down the hillside, squinting at the dark ground to avoid another tumble. She glanced up fixing the position of the dim shape of the spirit house in her mind, and then down at the slope and took another careful step, and then another. Closer to the corner of the graveyard where foreign dead were buried, hemmed by the smaller, separate, spirit fence. The failings spirit fence. The corpses she might be able to use.
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Bloody Jack

A young adult or children's book about a girl who is orphaned in the late 1700s, is lost in london childrens gangs for a bit, and ends up joining navy ship as one of the ship's boys. It's written very well. It's very reminiscent of Hornblower or M&C, but doesn't feel like a retelling.

Language in historical books

There's no choices without downsides here. Certainly when I've been forced to dabble in this region, even when I loved the result, it was not very defensible on many axes :)

You can use period accurate language, which is incredibly hard to get right, and will be hard to read for a lot of readers, and also likely sound fake since most people don't know what was accurate.

You can use "50 years ago" language, trying to sound "a little bit" archaic, and hope people will get the idea. I usually end up doing something like this or the following option, even if it doesn't really make sense.

You can use modern language but remove anything that "sounds" too modern. This is not very satisfactory, but usually works ok.

Or you can just use modern language. This usually throws people out of suspension of disbelief, even in works where you don't expect them to go for accuracy: even if you're using modern language, if you use slang from the last ten years without being deliberately tongue in cheek, it usually sounds weird to almost everyone.

The trouble is (as with most writing, but more so), you're trying to craft an *experience* of archaic language, not necessarily write accurate to what would actually have existed. But that means it needs to relate to people's expectations: they can do a certain amount of learning by reading, but your book also needs to be sufficiently accessible they can. But different people will have different levels of knowledge, so what seems right to one person, will seem impenetrable or too fake to someone else.

"kip"

According to my sources, "kip" meant a hovel (in Dutch?), then a brothel (maybe still does in Ireland?), then a boarding house, then a freelance place to sleep (both featured in down and out in Paris and London), then a short sleep.

Bloody Jack is using "place to sleep" in 1800 London, to mean the hideout where the children's gang stayed at night, or somewhere other than hammocks someone regularly slept on the ship. I don't know if that's from more accurate sources than whatever I found, presumably slang was ahead of what got wrote down. Or if it's deliberately using a milder archaism.

It's funny, why THAT grabbed my attention, when I know most of the other language is modern and at least as inaccurate. I guess, just because I knew a tiny bit about it, it drew my attention.
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We haven't had the reveal yet, but how did writing yuletide go? This was my fourth year, and third year of doing nanowrimo as well, after which yuletide always feels a lot more possible :)

This year I managed another fairly short story, by which I mean I crammed as much stuff I loved about the characters as possible, but didn't try to write much of a plot.

In retrospect, my first story (Ivan, By and Illyan), which out of all my stories felt like it had the most "stuff" in it, was only 6,000 words, whereas last year's (Cordelia, Gregor and Ivan), which I'd expected was going to turn out about the same, was actually much longer, about 16,000 words.

Escape from the Orc Lair of Unnecessarily Revealing Armour in the second year was the shortest, only 2,000 words, partly due to the "script for comic" format instead of prose. I thought I could have added more scenes but I felt like they wouldn't have added that much.

Somehow how "dense" a story feels is different to how long it actually is. I don't know if that's just a story being "better", or if it's more quantifiable than that. It's something like the opposite of writing a story which is so formulaic you forget it as soon as you've read it, but not completely.

The first story focused on lots of emotional themes I really liked: Ivan's relationship with Illyan as a sort-of father, Ivan coming into his own as an adult, Ivan's awkward friendship with Byerly, By being By, what a BDSM and/or LGBT club gentlemen's club on Barrayar might look like. And touched on stuff revealed in Red Queen, which I hadn't actually read at the time. And dwelt on ImpSec, how all those senior military intelligence operatives actually interacted with each other, how day-to-day capital spying actually worked, how it felt to be By, when he was enjoying his persona and when he wasn't.

I think that's why it worked so well. And it so happened I manage to cram them into a fairly short slice of reminiscence and action, when I could have included perfectly good but not necessary stuff that padded it out into a proper plot. The third story was a bit more like that: I had a core of stuff I really liked, about Gregor being Gregor, and Cordelia being Cordelia, but I overshot on the plot a bit.

Whereas in the first story, I was quite nervous how it would come out because I hadn't written any fanfiction except a couple of unfinished pieces a decade before, so I hesitated a lot, but also sank a lot of effort into "can I make this better?" that I think translated into finding extra ideas that could be crammed into the same space. I should try to do more of that :)

Like how HHGTTG or Foundation are really short by modern standards but don't feel short.

I've slowly evolved some habits in responding to prompts. Something like, look at the prompt, fish around for potential ideas (both above stories were basically generated from "all the characters in this prompt are great, I just want to write about all of them") which often involves mulling on it for a few days. Then think of specifics, instigating incidents, etc, and other things I might like to cram in. At this point I usually have too many things I *want* to do (often "I know, a crossover as well!") and I have to be ruthless and pick the best idea I think I'm fairly confident of actually being able to do. I can always bring in ideas later if they feel like they fit, but my perfectionism always wants me to use ALL the ideas and I have to be firm in rejecting that.

Then there's some writing. Then I usually find that everything is a bit "off", that I had an idea of what I wanted the characters to do, but what I wrote is a bit out of character, and I need to rejig it -- someone complaining wearily instead of complaining angrily, character A asking "Do you feel X?" instead of character B spontaneously coming out with it, removing or adding some slapstick style humour where it was forced or would fit without being cringy. This needs a couple of days off to let everything "settle down". I've got better at doing it quickly as a lot is the same skill of letting go of ideas I wanted but don't work, but time is still the best way for me.

And then we have a story and I move onto the next thing!
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Woo, I did nanowrimo! Well, not quite, but I did about 25,000 words between November and maybe a little head start in October. I continued a story which had been knocking around in my head before.

I learned a lot which I think I've already talked about elsewhere, mostly I should invent vivid characters and use them to sell the premise. So I'm quite excited to try that on some shorter stories and see how it goes.

But what about this story? Well, superhero urban fantasy, partly inspired by LitRpg although I don't describe it to people like that because the connotations aren't as positive.

A large alien macguffin appears in pieces scattered across london. The same thing has happened in other large world cities the last decade. Everyone who touches them gets superpowers but (as earlier cities learned the hard way), lapses into a coma eighteen months later. Unless, you touch every one of the different pieces, in which case the game ends right then, you're coma safe, but everyone else succumbs immediately.

This leads to a lot of conflict, and superheroes from one city often plan to work together as a team, but then fall into conflict later after all.

Macguffin shards not touched by people activate something non-human nearby instead, turning it into a monster, which can be benign but often rampages, fighting these is something superheroes are often called upon to do. There's often some sort of theme, e.g. in Tokyo, giant monsters, in London, monsters dwelling in an underground labyrinth across the city.

The protagonist Dennis get a straightforward "blast it" power but immediately starts thinking how to exploit it most effectively. He fights a couple of monsters I love including the adorable CRUSHBOT-9000, meets another super, meets a whole group of supers slowly coalescing into a team, clashes with some other supers, and eventually about half way through the book the situation starts to settle down into a stand off between:

* A slight majority of London supers, members or loosely affiliated with one super team hoping to resolve the prisoner's dilemma situation amicably, including most of the protagonists, and becoming recognised by civil authorities as an authority on all things super, and have a giant mansion where they act like rock stars
* The Raven Woman, who thinks she's a god, scarily infests everyone dreams, and has coopted other powerful supers to work for her
* The government, trust us, get registered, work as auxiliary police officers, we have a plan to fix the coma thing, need to know, you don't need to know, no, none of the people we've disappeared have been "disappeared", oops, forget we said that
* TBD based in the labyrinth

A lot of this gelled as I was writing so what I have is a bit inconsistent with the tone and worldbuilding which came later. It has several high points I really, really enjoyed writing, but I'm not sure if it's worth working into a consistent whole or not. If I can I would love to at least fix the formatting and gaps in the first half so I can show people, but I'll keep you posted.
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Producing wordcount

Last month I did another NaNoWriMo month. I wasn't sure if I would, as I've been more wanting to work on techniques that work in shorter works, than in planning a whole novel, but idea that grabbed me was for a superhero novel I'd been doing bits on before that, so that's what I went with.

Details about the novel to follow, I won't try to force myself to cram all that into this post.

I set myself a more restrained goal, the same as last year, of about 30k, or whatever felt right. That was a good choice -- I can do a whole 50k nanowrimo when I push myself and did the first year, but it required using some time I was off work, and took my attention away from everything else a lot. And, it works when I have a good idea what I'm writing, but it was a real struggle to invent enough of the world and characters to keep up with what I could write.

In fact, this year, I came in slightly short of my original goal, but I'm fairly pleased with that. I feel like between the three years I got a good spread of what I could achieve pushing myself different amounts, and all of them have a place, and it's good to know that -- unlike how I used to be -- the alternative to "obsessive dedication" isn't "absolutely nothing got done" :)

That said, I think I would have benefited from being firmer about sticking to a daily word count target. I don't think I should have aimed for an average, as if I get behind I lose all my motivation, so trying to "catch up" to lost days when I wanted to pay attention to something else just wouldn't have worked, which is why I gave myself more latitude in the first place. But, despite (amazingly!) having cured myself of not starting *at all*, not having a specific target can translate to not getting very much done on a particular day. A specific goal would help with that, and I may try to do that more specifically in future: not every day necessarily, but decide something like a 1000 words "three weekday evenings and double at the weekends."

The other difficulty is that often I need to specifically come up with more plot to happen, and no amount of trying to write words helps, I need thinking time. But it's easy for that to turn into procrastination time. I think I need to find a level of outlining that works for me, and have a split target of "outline N lines, or write N words" or something like that.

Or maybe, deliberately feel out characterisation and worldbuilding choices by writing short vignettes which are NOT the novel, and then once it's more clear, try to do the actual writing at stronger pace. Lots of famous novels are mulled for years before they're written, and often "two novels a year" authors, while often really good, produce novels without the same depth as other novels of the same length.

Like, this blog post. I'm writing it about as fast as I can physically type it. But I don't usually write fiction like that, except for some scenes where I'm familiar with all the characters and what might happen and am just really excited to get to it actually happening.

Writing characters

Another big realisation was, if I have cool characters, ones I'm invested in, I'm excited to write. If I don't, then I'm not.

I never expected to do much creative stuff because as a child I found intellectual stuff easy and people hard, so I just always assumed I'd be an abstract-thought type person. I was pleasantly pleased to find that writing was a habit that DOES work for me.

But even so, I often had ideas for premises I found really interesting -- magic systems, virtual worlds, etc, and I just assumed I'd be like an old-school hard-sf writer who mostly wrote about physical sciences and didn't write about characters. But it doesn't turn out like that. I can write lots of worldbuilding, but actual prose tends to flow when I have characters, and even the worldbuilding is a lot better for looking from a point of view of "what's this like for people actually living in it?"

What parts of writing am I good at

Well, I don't want to over-egg the pudding here, I'm probably not as good at *any* parts of writing as people who are *good* at writing, but which tend to work out well for me?

As mentioned, premises -- people over-value premises as a good premise without a good execution doesn't bring much, whereas a good execution can shine without a good premise. But still, I think books with excellent premises benefit from it, and all my stories have a core idea which is really interesting when I describe what it's about, even without knowing about the content (at least to me, I often stumble describing it aloud).

And characters, I'm often giggling at the characters bouncing off each other, and I never expected that to be one of my strengths.

What about everything else. Poetic prose? Good plotting? I think those are things I can *do*, but aren't usually what drives readers to love them.

"Fun" ideas

I don't quite know how to describe this, but often I have an idea and think "that moment would be really cool" or "that cultural reference would be really funny there", but then can't tell if it looks sort of contrived.

Reading other people's writing, some moments stick out to me like that's what happened. It isn't always. I've heard people describing their process, and sometimes they built a scene around a payoff, adding all the necessary initial conditions to the scene that when I read it feels like it grew naturally out of what came before. And sometimes I hear an author talking about why they wrote "that line" and it was for some completely other reason than I guessed. But I think it is a common flaw, dropping in something that seems funny, trying to do slapstick in prose, or putting in a cultural reference that sticks out uncomfortably, or trying to do an emotional pay-off of character X telling character Y where to stick it that feels fake, because you liked it, and didn't realise or didn't let yourself realise it didn't stick.

Obviously this depends on taste. Sometimes it works for some people and doesn't work for others. Some things don't work but aren't cringe-worthy when they don't work, and some things really, really, are.

My philosophy has been, put it in (or at least put it in in square brackets), and then decide, LATER, whether it works or not, and if not, don't get hung up on taking it out. Rely on the scene to be good, don't stretch for that particular line.

At the time I'm writing it, I'm literally incapable of telling if it works or not.

Writing with people

I really like writing with people. But it's not actually an especially efficient way for me to write. Writing in a quiet room with mandated silence does help, but it mainly forces me to start and I've got a lot better at doing that anyway. And I find a lot of things, even just hearing people start and stop typing, quite distracting.

Meeting up with people with mandated quiet periods for working and short breaks for chatting would probably work well, but I'm quite content going along for a bit, filling up my encouragement and social meter, and heading home after a bit. And writing at home with people there is usually fine too.

And posting cryptic comments on twitter helps me a lot, for whatever reason! :) Although there hasn't been that much this month :)
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I nominated for Yuletide. After lots of "how could I possibly choose", I decided that I might as well pick three works I liked and thought would make good fic, and not feel like I had to pick the BEST three. I can probably dredge up more obscure things I loved, and would really love to see fic from, but I find it hard to bring to mind things I've not thought of for ages.

There's lots of things I love, things like webcomics and webfiction which might deserve attention. I eventually chose three I thought would make good stories.

Elements (experiments in character design), the tarot-like cards showing a character for each chemical element. They're just so pretty, each looks like it tells a story. I was sad the physical cards seemed to be sold out and never for sale. They were nominated two years ago, and I was sad to see not last year.

And two webcomics, Leftover Soup (from Tailsteak, the author of the awesome 1/0, ooh, maybe I should submit that instead), and YAFGC (Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic, like Oglaf, very not safe for work, but sort of in a surprisingly wholesome way).

Did other people manage to nominate things?

I am also basking in the disconcertingly competent assumption that, I expect to be able to, just get a story done, without a whole lot of putting it off. I'm not at all used to signing up to something with a deadline and not assuming I'll panic but it's worth it!

I looked at my notes from last year for "what might I be interested in nominating next year". It was mostly the same sorts of things. Although one was, "Steven Universe, if it doesn't exceed the limit of number of works", I guess that must have happened now :) Although I find it really hard to predict. I went to look up Vorkosigan, the universe I was surprised was still eligible when I wrote for it two years ago, and it looks like there's more than a 1000 fics on ao3 from before that, am I misremembering how eligibility/search works?
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I have decided I do not have more time to spend revising my novel. I really enjoyed it, although it is still pre even a first draft. But thank you ever so much to everyone who was excited to see it, if you're ok reading the rough version, please do, thank you so much.

This is a novel about Hashara, an angel who helped make the world but screwed up, and is trying to do better, and her girlfriend Lizzie. Hashara looks like a tall woman with curling horns and matted goat hair. Sometimes she's up, sometimes she's very persecuted.

Expect lots of musing about the relationship between angels and God. An angel asking, "What DOES God want me to do? Do the humans know any better than I do?" Angel magic and human magic. Angels-as-demons. Angels as genius locii. The fell children of misguided angels, the nephilim, prominently including such supernatural creatures as vampires and maybe leviathan. A flamingo-breeder. Lesbian lovers. Old church ladies. Awkward conversations with bishops. Lots of me-ish dialogue.

The link is in the immediately prior post. If you do not have an LJ or DW account, you can ask me to email you a link (yes please, you're very welcome!) or to log in with openid (or maybe facebook) and comment on this post.
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As I passed Aunt Vera's, I wandered up to the open garage to see how she was doing. A week ago, she had borrowed mum's bar billiard's table. Mum had said it would be good for her to give the mad science a rest occasionally and try a different hobby. I was excited to see what she'd turned it into.

As I peered into the garage, she was indeed tinkering madly with the billiard table. Four steam funnels rose from the corners, and a dense web of different wires wended between them almost creating a wall round the table a meter above it. At the head of the table, dozens of different dials had been wedged onto a narrow wooden board, several resting at awkward angles suspended by the wires and pipes plugged into them.

I must have made a noise, as she suddenly spun around, labcoat and goggles swirling about her. "Ah, Sarah! What perfect timing. I have a lot to show you."

"Uh. My parents are going to be cross if I'm late for dinner agian. And I was going to call Carol later."

"Pish!" she exclaimed. "Pish-tosh! "This is Educational, and they will appreciated you being educated,"

"But I am being educated," I protested. "I have homework and everything. Homework I need to get done, if I'm going to call Carol before 10."

"Pish!" she said again. "Is Carol going to show you how quantum mechanics works?"

"Well, I don't expect so-" I began.

"Well then!" she announced with finality. "You need me to do it. No niece of mine is going to go to university with a piddling A-level knowledge of quantum mechanics."

"But, Aunt Vera, they don't teach quantum mechanics at A-Level. Not even in physics. And I'm studying Biology, and Economics and Japanese, and..."

"PRECISELY MY POINT", she yelled, a foot from my ear. "You would swan off to university with no knowledge of physics, the very forces which stop you falling through the ground. Did I tell you about my adventure of the intangibility harness and the Earth's crust?"

"Aunt Vera", I shouted, and winced as I realised how loud I was screaming. But she stopped, a bit put out, and I continued. "I'm not a physicist." She looked heartbroken, and I tried to school myself not to fall for it. "But I'd love to see what you've--"

"Excellent," she crowed, and dragged me up to the table. Wires festooned the edges, and at the top where the score used to be, a bank of complicated dials and levels waited.
I toyed with the idea of a comic fantasy style explanation of what I'd learned about relativity. Unfortunately, I really loved how the byplay turned out, but the actual explanation didn't work well. There's a lot more, but it's mixed "fun arguing" and "didactic bad explanations".
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The fic I received was all the words that ever were or ever will be , a telling of some of the events in Bujold's Curse of Chalion from the Daughter's perspective. It didn't tell anything new, but I loved how it empathised with the Daughter's frustration, and told some of the story of her Father's curse from her point of view.

And I wrote Escape from the Orc Lair of Unnecessarily Revealing Armour, a Rat Queens and Oglaf crossover. It is told in a script-for-cartoon-panels format (although, as a literary device, it might not translate that well to an actual comic). It is quite smutty with bdsm and dubcon, in the general vein of both original works. If you like the sound of that, awesome, if you don't, you probably don't want to read it, although I include a break to read the set-up and ending if you'd like (see author's note).

ETA: Fixed link to my story.
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So, I was too busy to actually spod about it, other than a constant stream of oblique hints (thank you, cheering section on twitter!) but I did nanowrimo.

I was confident I had MORE time, and ability to schedule a large chunk of time without dropping everything else. But I didn't know if I had enough, or if it was a sensible decision.

But I was excited to try a large personal project and see if I could do it. I've toyed with the idea before, but never felt like it was a serious possibility -- I was always too likely to push myself too hard and flare out, without any ability to pace myself.

I think it was about the most I could possibly manage in a month, without a really significant impairment of work or of all other social things. Not parkinson's law, but that was about as much writing as I could manage in a day, even under good circumstances.

As it happened, the first week didn't really get started, so I ended up writing 2k words a day for the rest of the time, but I stuck to that almost all the way through. And that was usually about right -- I had about that much ideas in my head, and I could mostly go ahead and write them, and after that, I had to *think* about what would happen next.

I really enjoyed the setting and characters, they did often come alive for me (waiting on reports if that actually made it into the fic or not).

When I did pause, it was one of a couple of things. Once or twice, because what came next needed a bunch of stuff to build a story out of (a bunch of characters for the protagonist to meet, or a problem for them to encounter). More often, but less fatally, because what I wanted to happen wasn't clicking, and I had to review what I intended, what was actually needed for the novel, and what I was attached to but could be compromised if it didn't fit.

Many thanks to everyone who expressed an interest in seeing the finished work. I noted everyone down just in case. I am really, really excited to share the novel, and am very serious about getting it to anyone who would like to see. But on balance, it really is better if I fix a lot of minor problems first (things like characters having names Placeholder1 etc :)). That should be fairly easy, but I officially took December as a break where I didn't have to write any more on it :)

Yuletide was comparatively easy afterwards :) I'd already come up with a basic idea, and it took a few evenings rather than just 2 hours to complete 2k words, so a lot slower than one day's nano writing, but still, finished without any last minute panic (go me!)
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For a plot bunny (yes, really :)):

You have a multivalued function from a sphere onto "some surface", continuous everywhere except two points. (Or, equivalently, a function from "some surface" to the sphere, I guess?)

If you look at points on the surface which map onto the same point on the sphere, and connections between them of "paths" on the sphere (up to continuous deformation), I feel like they end up acting like the integers, where "+1" and "-1" correspond to a clockwise of anticlockwise circumnavigation. Or possibly some subset, a cyclic group of some finite order, if there are repeats. Is that right?

If you have *three* points, what can the relationship between the points look like? What about more?

I remember doing something like that but not what it's called.

I'm trying to put something like the shadows of amber onto a more concrete mathematical footing :)
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To give context to my previous tweets, in my novel, something like a creation narrative literally happens: God, angels, adam and eve, the war in heaven, six thousand years later, the present day. It's not exactly the same as any accepted belief system, but something along those lines.

I have not decided if that's *instead* of the geological history we have evidence of in this world. If so, I need to, um, explain biodiversity, and dinosaur bones, and geology, etc, etc, etc. And coming up with a plausible present day derived from that history is more world-building than I want, I'm basing it on "like the present day, but with fallen angels occasionally wandering about".

Alternatively, the two histories are sort of parallel, God "smoothing out" the older history somehow. Which makes sense, but is a bit of a cop-out.

So far, I've just not mentioned it, but it feels like a question hard not to have any idea of.

In terms of certainty, there are still characters, like the main character, who personally remember the war in heaven and the creation of the world, and interacting directly with God. Not remember *very* well, because time passes, but have a reasonable certainty that things happened like that. And some knowledge of magic etc supporting their assertion of knowing how the universe works.

(What happens *outside* this world *since* the creation is left uncertain, because that really would overload my worldbuilding.)

But I haven't really addressed what non-religious philosophies exist. People who don't find the evidence for God convincing? Presumably those people do exist, and for people who think the evidence is convincing in *this* world, they will seem exactly the same as atheists in this world. But for me, they're more like flat-earthers. People who think God created that universe much as described, but hasn't intervened since and/or has no special moral place? They presumably exist. I think I have those characters, though they haven't had conversations about it yet.

That's what I meant by "can I have dinosaurs" and "can I have atheists" :)

ETA: And as London Crawling points out on twitter, it would be plausible to have people who believe in dinosaurs and angels, but find the account of a prime mover who personally created angels unconvincing. In fact, that might even be accurate in this world -- my account of creation is all given second hand.
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I've always loved Three Musketeers. Yes, it's absolutely ridiculous, but it's so me. Oh, no, you can't say "he was ambushed". You have to say "he saw a musket barrel protruding from a hedge, and being a perspicacious young man, realised it was unlikely it had come there by itself; more likely it had been carried there as part of an ambuscade upon his person. On which realisation, he threw himself flat."

Latest writing idea

A hybrid three-musketeers/wild west. The idea is, to capture the *feel* of a setting where people take fatal risks. And also, have non-fatal duels because it establishes you as someone to take seriously (in terms of, not accosting, not in terms of, respecting your good sense).

So, secondary world discovered. Similar to this one, but unpopulated, with magic. At the right locations, with the right preparations, you can transport a human through, but not much else.

The magic works in a very ritualistic way: imagining repeating patterns, colours, concepts, in various combinations, triggers various powerful-but-simple effects, including plain force, emotional manipulation, and a few others. Anyone can do that in theory, but it takes a lot of preparation and dedication to learn the combinations that are actually most effective.

Magicians are in demand because they can hunt energy creatures which roam the world, which are useful for ££££. And because anyone with magic is like a musketeer or a quick-draw in the fictional west, people respect them because they have to, whether or not they like them.

Communities are a mess of whoever ended up there scrabbling to survive and bring a profit back to our world, people working for corporations on this side, arrestees serving a prison sentence in exile rather than in prison, etc, etc.

I think I can handle the magic duels and magician-magician interactions. But what are the communities clustered around the portal-areas like? How often can portals be used? Which of those political ideas make sense? What would the communities look like? I'm going for something like, a new mining town. What economic activities are going on here, what are the most plausible to ship back (given the constraints that you can't mass-ship goods)? Does temporary-transportation make sense? What other questions should I try to answer?

Also

I was also thinking, there is almost no chance I will ever try and submit any of my (rough) old stories for publication, ever, so I should probably arrange for them to be online somewhere easy to read. Probably on AO3 linked from my LJ/DW, but would anything else be better?
jack: (Default)
Orrie Gamal Poster: I want to froblicate my woozle. I've tried flimbling it, and that doesn't work. And I've tried wimbling, wombling and wumbling and I don't think those do what I want. And I can't do theminraining because I don't have a froog. What am I doing wrong? Do I need to frogwockle it?
Quickdraw Mactrawl: Have you tried flimbling it?
Oblivious Ollie: Have you tried flimbling it?
Ditto Ditta: I don't know if anyone's asked this already, but have you tried flimbling it?
Eager Edsel: FIRST POST! I don't really know, but have you tried flimbling it?
Expert Edgar: Lots of people have this problem. I've worked on something related, so let me spend several thousand words pontificating about related matters. But none of that may directly help you. So you have you tried flimbling it? What happened when you did?
Orrie Gamal Poster: As I've said several times already, I tried flimbling it. Here's a detailed description.
Quickdraw Mactrawl: You shouldn't have tried flimbling it! That won't work in your situation.
Oblivious Ollie: Have you tried flimbling it?
Ditto Ditta: I see several people have suggested flimbling it, but that won't work.
Eager Edsel: I know I said this already but I don't know if you saw my comment. Have you tried flimbling it? How about now? Have you tried it yet? If not, have you tried wimbling or wombling it?
Expert Edgar: Ah, I see your mistake. Let me rephrase it with more technical jargon. I know you might not have realised this, but flimbling it won't work.
Eager Edsel: Or how about wumbling it?
Oblivious Ollie: I don't know if anyone's asked this already, but have you tried flimbling it?
Eager Edsel: Have you tried flimbling it?
Orrie Gamal Poster: YES I HAVE TRIED FLIMBLING IT SHUT UP ABOUT FLIMBLING I KNOW ALL ABOUT FLIMBLING, DOES ANYONE HAVE ANY OTHER SUGGESTIONS?
Orrie Gamal Poster: NOT wimbling or wombling.
Orrie Gamal Poster: And NOT wumbling either for that matter!
Expert Edgar: Ok, I see my mistake. I've taken the time to read your post. I think you might need to theminrain it even though you don't have a froog. Alternatively, you could try frogwockling it, but I'm not sure that will really do what you want.
Ditto Ditta: All of that Expert Edgar just said but more vague and waffly without really knowing what I'm talking about.
Oblivious Ollie: I don't know if anyone's asked this already, but have you tried flimbling it?
Orrie Gamal Poster: As I said, I can't theminrain it because I don't have a froog.
Orrie Gamal Poster: I tried frogwockling it, and my woozle seems even less froblicated than before. In fact, it's smoking a bit round the edges.
Orrie Gamal Poster: YEOUCH! It's smoking quite a lot round the edges.
Orrie Gamal Poster: ...
Orrie Gamal Poster: I unfrogwockled it with some difficulty, and now it's slightly woozled, but I'm not sure where to go from here.
Expert Edgar: Did you try to frogwockle your woozle without flimbling or themraining it? Because that might ruin it entirely.
Orrie Gamal Poster: Aaaaah!
Oblivious Ollie: I don't know if anyone's asked this already, but have you tried flimbling it?
Oblivious Ollie: Or, if you don't want to flimble it, can you theminrain it?
Expert Edgar: I think theminraining it is the only way to go even if you don't have a froog.
Orrie Gamal Poster: I've said this again and again, I want to froblicate my woozle, but WITHOUT a froog. Does anyone know how to do that? Please stop telling me not to do that.
Eager Edsel: I didn't really read your last comment, but maybe if you told us more about your problem we could suggest another way to help?
Expert Edgar: I think Edsel is right.
Orrie Gamal Poster: OK, here's an extremely long account of lots of things I tried mostly related to frooting my whombaht that show I don't know anything about woozles in the first place. But in order to do that, I need to froblicate its woozle, but I can't theminraining its froog because whombaht woozles are undefrooglicious (and any rate, aren't wumble).
Drive By Miss Daisy: If that's the case, you don't want to froblicate your woozle at all. If you themrain your whombaht's wumble directly, you can womble it itself without any woozles or froogs at all. Did you try that?
Oblivious Ollie: I forgot what we were talking about, but have you tried flimbling it?
Orrie Gamal Poster: Yes! Thank you miss daisy. That solved my problem. I don't know why no-one else could just say that even though it directly contradicted my original post and relied on a lot of information I didn't think was relevant once I went down a blind alley.
[5 year later]
Quickdraw Mactrawl: I just found an old notification for this thread and I realised I may have posted too quickly. Whatever you do, don't themrain your whombaht's wumble directly because I'm not going to explain why just in case it's useful to anyone who finds this forum thread later and doesn't know if I know what I'm talking about or not or if it applies in their situation.
[5 years, 1 day later]
Oblivious Ollie: I just saw this. I don't really know about woozles, but I think I read something similar once and someone suggested flimbling it. Have you tried that?
[10 years later]
Dame Spam-a-lot: That's a really interesting post! Do you mind if I quote a few of your articles as long as I provide credit and sources back to your website? My website is in the exact same niche as yours and my visitors would certainly benefit from a lot of the information you provide here.
[15 years later]
This thread was locked by Orrie Gamal Poster.
jack: (Default)
I got carried away by this, and spent two days worth getting it written. I've always been fascinated by mentions of stories about demons who repented and joined the church, but rarely actually read any. I didn't have any time to edit it, comments welcome, but especially about the overall story, or anything particular you liked or I got wrong, I know there are still some spelling and grammar errors.

When the assistant called her name, Hashara wobbled nervously to her feet, balanced on awkward mythological hooves. Nowhere in London was designed for hooves, or curving horns, and every day she shied away from the glares and suspicious looks and hate and pity and polite glances deliberately skating off her. People's surface thoughts echoing in her head, stopping drifting on dinner and TV and sex, long enough to reject her. Even on halloween, everyone else dressed up as sanitised demons, a human with a mask. Not a body covered with long hair, and gnarled, twisted horns. She showered daily, and rubbed wax into her horns and skin cream into her skin, but she still felt like a dirty, matted, horror. She'd resisted the idea of getting her hooves shod.

The assistant glanced up from her clipboard, and with an iron grip on perfectionism, hesitated no more than a second in calling "Hashara [embarrassed, shocked pause], devourer of souls? Hashara, the Bishop will see you now."

Read more... )
jack: (Default)
12 hours until I have to decide if I dare do nanowrimo. My head is filling with worldbuilding ideas, but no plot. Are fictional encyclopedias a thing yet?

More seriously, I'm less rushed off my feet than most years, but I'm busy with lots of stuff, I'm not sure I can devote enough time this month to writing a whole novel. But I do want to devote more time to blitzing on a hobby for a little bit, especially ones where I have something to show for it afterwards.

Who ended up doing yuletide this year?

Is anyone trying NaNoWriMo?

(Usual disclaimer: Every year when people talk about nanowrimo someone gets really defensive and says "everyone who does NaNoWriMo thinks a 50k word unedited novel is a path to instant published success". I don't know anyone who thinks that, if you want to debunk that idea, please go find someone who believes it and don't try to persuade me :))
jack: (Default)
Abstract representation of society: So, there's actually two genders, and everyone is one or the other, and romantically compatible with the opposite gender, and everyone wears the clothes "appropriate" to their gender and acts in a manner stereotypical of their gender and there's no exceptions.
Abstract representation of society locutor: No, wait! Apparently some people don't fit into those two boxes.
Abstract representation of society: Hm. That doesn't fit. Let's represses it! I'm absolutely sure that won't be a pile of civil-liberty-violating repression and life-ruining clusterfuck.
Abstract representation of society: Doh :( I suck :(
Abstract representation of society locutor: OK, let's update the definition. OK, so there's exactly two genders, and everyone is always attracted to EITHER the other one, or, sometimes, the same one. And, um, I'm sure we can make this other stuff fit.
Abstract representation of society: ... OK, sounds good, I guess.

Database Architect Peep!: Hold it, good society! Let me save you fifty years of heartache.
Database Architect Peep!: Wouldn't it be just as easy to say that anyone might be attracted to anyone, and then it all works, whether people's romantic preferences fall into neat biologically determined categories or not?
Abstract representation of society: But what if they don't?
Database Architect Peep!: I say again, whether they do, or not?
Database Architect Peep!: You don't get a prize for being as repressive as possible but no more. Just go ahead and accept that using broad categories of people can help you think about things, but you shouldn't legislate them unless you actually need to.
Abstract representation of society: But, won't there be other edge cases that don't even fit into this system?
Database Architect Peep!: Yes, probably.
Abstract representation of society: But I can't fix it all at once.
Database Architect Peep!: Look, it's ok. At a minimum, you've shown the boxes don't work. Don't just move to a different set of boxes, be flexible. That's a good start.
Abstract representation of society: But I have to have SOME boxes? Don't I?
Database Architect Peep!: Well, it's ok for now, but be prepared to be flexible when you need.
Abstract representation of society: And what about the edge cases that need more boxes?
Database Architect Peep!: What do you think?
Abstract representation of society: Don't violently repress them..?
Database Architect Peep!: Atta girl! Atta boy!
jack: (Default)
One day Achilles came running up excitedly to the Tortoise. "What blood type are you?" he asked.

"Um," said the Tortoise. "I'm not sure. How can I tell?"

Achilles paused in his enthusiasm for a moment. "Well, are you more workmanlike, or more passionate?"

"Um. Well, on balance I think I'm more workmanlike. I think you're passionate. But I don't like where this is going..."

"Oh, don't worry. My new guru told me all about it. If you're more workmanlike, you're probably type A. And you're right, I'm type B: impulsive and original!"

Read more... )

You should also read http://lesswrong.com/lw/nm/disguised_queries/ even if you don't like Elizier Yudkowsky in general. You may think "duh", but even when I know in theory that just because having a word for something doesn't make it a well-defined or important concept, I find it very helpful to have it helpfully spelled out for me until I stop making that fallacy!

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