seeingteacupsindragons

[seeingteacupsindragons]

I actually want to get down to writing that post (or posts, depending) on being a critique partner and finding critique partners and evaluating them, etc. but, I need to know:

What questions about all of that do you have? I want to make sure I'm actually answering them and not just rambling about well-known stuff.

[seeingteacupsindragons]

Finished chapter 2 of this round of revisions (draft four) (at least for now) (it will need to be cleaned up later but I think it's probably mostly in shape) (but I rearranged a lot of bits and bobs to get there so it's probably totally fucked).

Per my earlier agreement with myself, nap time. Then, into the last scene I know I need to rewrite wholesale. Then, hopefully, only minor tweaks and cleanup.

It feels like the end is in sight!

(And then I have to write a synopsis and start querying. FML.)

#writing #Tiadane #writeblr

[seeingteacupsindragons]

Y'all, the world is sleeping on what NASA just pulled off with Voyager 1

The probe has been sending gibberish science data back to Earth, and scientists feared it was just the probe finally dying. You know, after working for 50 GODDAMN YEARS and LEAVING THE GODDAMN SOLAR SYSTEM and STILL CHURNING OUT GODDAMN DATA.

So they analyzed the gibberish and realized that in it was a total readout of EVERYTHING ON THE PROBE. Data, the programming, hardware specs and status, everything. They realized that one of the chips was malfunctioning.

So what do you do when your probe is 22 Billion km away and needs a fix? Why, you just REPROGRAM THAT ENTIRE GODDAMN THING. Told it to avoid the bad chip, store the data elsewhere.

Sent the new code on April 18th. Got a response on April 20th - yeah, it's so far away that it took that long just to transmit.

And the probe is working again.

From a programmer's perspective, that may be the most fucking impressive thing I have ever heard.

#I mean honestly the amount of time/money that went into that baby #yeah they were going to make the effort to fix the thing if at all possible #we cannot like just #have another probe there #it took 50 years to fuckin' get there

[seeingteacupsindragons]

I actually want to get down to writing that post (or posts, depending) on being a critique partner and finding critique partners and evaluating them, etc. but, I need to know:

What questions about all of that do you have? I want to make sure I'm actually answering them and not just rambling about well-known stuff.

#writing #writing questions #critique partners #critique #editing #revising #writeblr #writing help

[seeingteacupsindragons]

#YEAHHHHHHH #listen this is the place we were made to be okay #and humans are gonna human and go other places #but it's not going to be EASY

[seeingteacupsindragons]

Thinking about this again, so I pulled up the last query letter I sent out, to see what the "stakes" were there, since it did very well at the time.

It's this:

If the magic Ambrose relies on won’t come to his call, maybe something else will. Something Ambrose was charged with keeping under lock, key, and ward four years ago: wild, parasitic magic that could spark Witchhunts affecting more than a teenager desperate to save himself.

This is not an "or else" claim. Nothing about this is actually tied to Ambrose failing at what he's trying to do. In fact, it's actually indicating, "If he does this thing he's trying to do, terrible things could happen actually."

This is actually me going to potential readers like, "Hey, hey, look at the cost of success."

It's actually me going to readers and, "Look what my character has to struggle with."

I couldn’t sleep last night, but desperately needed to try because I had an early morning today, which sent my brain down various useless rabbit holes, one of which was: Story Stakes.

Generally, this is something very important to communicate in your queries/blurbs/pitches/cover copies. People need to know why anything in the story matters. But a lot of people interpret stakes as, “What are the costs if they fail?” and that just seems too limited to me. It’s always an “They Win, Or Else.”

And it feels fake. You can write “Or they’ll all die,” or “The rebellion will be quashed forever,” or, “The galaxy will explode,” as much as you want, but very, very few stories actually follow through on that. To me, it doesn’t hit me with much impact, because I know it’s not a real option or risk. This is a story. Stories almost never end that way, and many of those would be hard to actually accomplish.

So maybe they’re stakes for your character. But they’re not stakes for a reader. My emotional investment in the story isn’t going to be tied to fear they might explode the damn galaxy.

I have rarely written characters who were motivated by what would happen if they failed, or had them think often about the costs of failure. Most often, I write characters who are pursuing something more and think about what they might miss out on gaining. I write characters who are going to be emotionally destroyed if they cannot succeed because they weren’t good enough/didn’t try hard enough/made mistakes.

And to me, that’s much more engaging. Will the character lose much but time and an opportunity? Maybe not. But how do you go back to the status quo when you were a fingertip away from something better?

The status quo is losing. Remaining how things were is the price of failure. You don’t have to backslide from the book’s opening for the characters to have lost. I don’t have to write an Or Else.

And I think it’s also much more likely as an ending than horrific catastrophic failure. A character losing out on something they wanted and having to emotionally confront that and move forward is actually reasonably common. A story with a bittersweet ending where things are in some ways better and some ways worse but not what the characters were hoping for are reasonably common—and they often hurt a reader worse than watching everything fall apart does.

I give characters hope and desire and if the reader doesn’t truly believe they won’t really get what they wanted, they’re at least likely to follow along for the emotional catharsis of seeing them win instead of for fear that they lose.

I’m still tired and still haven’t slept. Maybe this doesn’t make sense to anyone but me. But I prefer to lead with carrots and not sticks, especially for readers who don’t have to invest.

#writing #Ambrose Clarus Valcour

[seeingteacupsindragons]

It's extremely rude that I have to actually describe ?????????????????? in a novel instead of just typing the long string of punctuation and expecting that to work.

I mean, I think the target audience would get it, but I still can't do it.

#writing #writeblr

[seeingteacupsindragons]

Reblog with your score

#11 #which is more than I anticipated #I think if this is a variety thing it could use games like Bejeweled and such #PopCap games

[seeingteacupsindragons]

Conversations at work today:

Me: Is the aorta an organ?

Medical Affairs: Hell if I know.

[Pause]

Medical Affairs: As of February 2024, yes, it's classified as an independent human organ.

Me: Honestly, I have no idea what organs are.

#Marr's Work Adventures #honestly though what IS an organ even #who decides this shit

[seeingteacupsindragons]

"Do you have any idea," the frog said, "how hard it is to find a princess?"

"No?" said the princess, who had many friends of that persuasion.

"And convince one to kiss you?"

"No?"

"It's the only way to break my curse."

"To turn you back into a prince? Ew!"

"I'm a princess."

"Oh!"

#I love the lesbian princess

[seeingteacupsindragons]

You know those "Modern god pantheon" stories that like to revolve around the, "Our believers have waned and so has our power," thing?

Thinking about that today, and. Something like 7% of all humans who have ever lived are alive today. The world's population today absolutely absurdly higher than anything those ancient populations possibly could have conceived it being.

And thanks to technology and communication and the "shrinking" of the world, more people have probably heard the names of many of those gods then ever worshiped them before. And many of those gods actually do have followers and worshippers today. Yes, people do worship and believe in Norse gods and Greek gods and etc.

I can't fathom how many smaller gods must have been forgotten about entirely. But the fact is that we remember so many of them.

What I'm saying is, modern gods where they have more power than they could have ever fathomed because their believers are just statistically so much higher and so many more people know their name.

#writing #mythology #religion #writeblr

[seeingteacupsindragons]

The beginning and the ending.

This story is already full of everything I need.

#Yuri!!! On ICE

[seeingteacupsindragons]

I feel like you’ve been asked this before but I cannot seem to find the ask. I was just wondering how many books are left in the jeweler Richard series. Currently on book 5 and I am in love.

The series isn't over yet, so we don't know! Currently, there have been 12 published, and volume 13 is being serialized before publication, and I believe Tsujimura-sensei has indicated volume 13 isn't the final volume of the series, either.

There's also a fanbook collection of short stories, and one collection of novellas, for a total of...fourteen, I suppose, not including all of the still-uncollected stories on sensei's website.

I hope you continue to keep loving it.

#Jeweler Richard #The Case Files of Jeweler Richard #Housekishou Richard

[seeingteacupsindragons]

Take the test

You can only do 12 options in a poll so if you tie choose which one you prefer???

#90% Paladin #as is only right and proper #also 90% on fighter but it's a fighter subclass so like????

[seeingteacupsindragons]

For you 🌈🌊☀️👑💐😘

I was looking for something else in my inbox and found three of these sent in the span of about two weeks from 2022 and I cannot remember why or what was happening at the time, but, uhhhhh, thanks Anon if you're still around

[seeingteacupsindragons]

Me: I'm feeling very sociable. I wanna chat with people. I wonder if anyone's around! My brain: You really will do anything to avoid your edits, won't you?

#writing #editing #I'm not sure I totally think that's what's happening but like #probably a factor

[seeingteacupsindragons]

Me this morning, apparently: What if that fatphobic way people describe villains, but for skinny people?

#I am a skinny person #my face has looked like this before #it was creepy and unhealthy #my writing #Tiadane