Since I joined this thread, might as well blab a lot in it. When I first decided to try to write my epic fantasy story I made words for the scenes only as needed - all the little details I left to the reader, since that is what I prefer as a reader. I don't want to be told a person is white, tall, with blue eyes unless it is relevant to the story. If height is a factor, mention it, otherwise don't. Don't describe the color of a dress unless it matters. Let my head make the images, it's really good at that since that is how I think - I just experience thinks :). Then I got feedback saying those details are hard for people to come up with on their own so I put the story on hiatus and has been learning to write the details my head sees, and make more words. Here is what I did at first - it is WORDY on purpose. I put words on words, then asked a few people I know who are really good editors to tell me how to figure out which ones I actually need. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Q24vM-ZBrp8HKpU3wHxyYoSITRXMm2ImGev0jfpoJa0/edit?usp=sharing
I tend to the opposite end too easily; scenes positively dripping with details, because I love words and overdo it. I've gotten better, though.
I have to work at words - I don't use them in thinking. Being nonverbal I never developed the "internal narrator" most people have. For me "orange" is a collection of sensory experiences that I have work at to make into a word. So using less words is less work :). But then people said "yeah, but the rest of us don't think that way!" Which is fair. If I want people to read my words I should write them in ways they can relate to, not ways I relate to. I already thinked the story, I don't need the words. :)
*grin* whereas I'm hyperverbal so I do the opposite problem. Honestly I prefer written words over spoken though, and when I'm reading fiction I don't tend to perceive the words as if they were being spoken to me. I drink them. I swim among them. They're not really a linear thing; gods, how slow would that be? It's why I can't stand audiobooks. They can't possibly work the way my head does. But I've been reading since I was 2 years old. I suspect though that lack of an internal narrator sense in you affects how you see computery things like programming. Helps your head work in those terms. At least, that seems to make sense to me. Hope I'm not really far off on that one.
I don't do spoken words at all - I can make sense of short bits, if spoken clearly and carefully and given time to think the sounds into words, then think the words into whatever it is my brain does for thinking (my doc calls it "experiencing thoughts"). Computerese is easy - it's just symbols. They don't have to make sense in any way other than logic. Naming variables A1, B3, C4 works for me (and drives most developers nuts because they see the names as meaning something). if (x == 0 || not g3) makes as much sense to me as if (purple isa cow OR nobody ) but my fellow coders would kill me if I wrote the second one :D
@Lissa Lysik'an: Somehow that kinda makes me think of some of C.J. Cherryh's sci-fi, especially her Chanur series, where the sheer difficulty of communicating between beings that think in radically different ways is emphasized. All sci-fi is really humanity talking about itself, anyway, and in this case picking apart the convenient illusion that neurotypical, educated people who share a (privileged, in their milieu at least) culture tend to develop, that everyone understands each other, that "everyone's just me in a different flesh-suit with differing self-interest". Cherryh, as a historian and classicist, knows better. I hope that comparison doesn't draw offense (that's probably Tumblr making me a little over-paranoid).
I'm very much down for there being a NSFW writing thread, I have a feeling if I'm going to regularly be writing original stuff again it's. Going to be a lot of weird porn. @Lissa Lysik'an I really enjoyed your dragon story (haven't read the other yet), you nailed the description. Only adjustments I would make is that there were a lot of complex, dense sentences that could probably be split in half :)
It doesn't draw offense. I been in the real world enough times to know I'm different :) I try to avoid it, but sometimes you just have to interact with people *heavy sigh*
thank you! That is the exact kind of feedback I need - how to balance no-words with too-many-words. The second link I *know* is too-many-words since that was what I was trying for - to make long descriptions. It was much earlier written than the dragon story.
I wouldn't really recommend the experience by itself but occasionally worthwhile things can be obtained at such a price. Or horrible things averted. One day everything will be do-able over whatever-the-Internet-becomes and interacting with humans through other means will be strictly voluntary. I look forward to it. @KathyGaele: Think it should be in the Secret forum, this NSFW writing thread? Some people might not want it easily readable. I'd still recommend using an alt ID if one worries about one's pornomancy being discovered.
*peeks into the writing thread among the great writers* Spoiler: An Offering, Contains Spoilers For A Comic Bel and I Are Writing Icarus- Hero Riven goes to the graveyard with DI, for moral support he says, but she knows it’s because he doesn’t want to go there alone. The only gods either of them believe in are the ones who gave them powers, and the cult of that pantheon has no afterlife. They stand next to each other in front of Icarus’ grave in silence for a time. The day is sunny, and beautiful, and perfect, there are no clouds in the sky at all. It hasn’t rained in a few weeks, but that isn’t a problem here, not in the summer. “I can go, give you some privacy with them?” Riven had said. DI had refused, she didn’t want to be alone with this glaring reminder that they were gone, not now. “Their real name was Leo, did you know that?” she tells him. That’s not what they’ve written on the tombstone, they’ve written “Icarus- hero. 1989-2015.” Riven had been barred from the funeral, being a villain. Even though he was the one who saved everyone in the end, he’s still evil, according to anyone who ever mattered enough to decide such things. “No, I didn’t,” Riven says, and DI isn’t surprised. After all, he doesn’t know her real name either. Unlike Leo’s real name it had never fit her, so she’d discarded it years ago, but it’s still strange. He’s her best friend, outside of her team, and her closest friend left, now that Icarus is gone. “They never told me their name, the first night I met them, if they did I was too drunk to remember, and it never came up, I only ever really knew them after they triggered and they were Icarus, then, not whoever they’d been as a human.” DI looks over at him, when he says that. He’s out of his “uniform” as the villain Aletheia, and he’s wearing mourning clothes in dark colors. The funny thing is they aren’t that different from his uniform, except like this he doesn’t hide his face. “You buy the idea that we aren’t human, then?” she asks. She looks more human than Riven, with his unnaturally white hair and violet eyes, could ever hope to, and she knows that gives her a privilege he does not have, but she still considers both of them human. Icarus was human to, in her mind, even though they had wings. “I didn’t feel sad, when I made my parents forget. I hadn’t really considered them significant in months, from the moment I triggered onwards, really. I don’t know how I mustered enough of an emotional connection to Icarus to care that they were trying to jump, but that was the first time I felt anything at all towards a human. People don’t feel like that unless there’s something wrong, and before I triggered I made connections fine,” about halfway through speaking his sentences slow and his words become clipped and almost emotionless, like the first time DI heard him speak aloud, not through sign or writing or gestures or facial expressions or through another Codependent translating his thoughts into words. In his motions too, he’s stiller. Normally he moves his hands as he speaks, and he had in the beginning, but they’ve stopped. “I’m not human, I’ve never thought of myself as human. I don’t think I’m better than humans, I’m just different. You’re lucky,” he says, “you look normal.” DI knows he’s just venting, that it’s partially his grief talking but she can’t help but feel bitter at this, as if looking as she did before her trigger is something to be ashamed of. “It’s not my fault you can’t connect to people. I’m still friends with you and I walked in on you killing someone when you were nineteen years old. Be glad I think of you as human, be glad I gave you a chance even when I thought you monstrous.” “You... you thought I was a monster?” Riven, who is tall because of something to do with his trigger that he’s refused to tell her about, appears to shrink into himself. “No, Riven, not a monster, monstrous,” she corrects. “I’ve never thought of you as a monster, you’re not really that deformed.” “Wait, you think that some abhumans are monsters, but I’m not one of them?” “Yes. For example, your teammate, Hellion? He’s a monster, he has no human aspect left, he is nothing but an entity made of flame.” "That doesn't make him any less than you or me" Riven is getting agitated, and DI remembers that he’s only a few years older than Icarus was, even though he’s done all of these great and terrible things. "I didn't say he was." "We're both equally monsters D. Maybe you aren't, you haven't killed anyone." "That was your choice. You are the one who killed them, not the Director. Those deaths are on you." "You don't think I know that?" Riven turns away from her, tugging his hands through his hair. He turns back around. "Because I was such a good decision maker as a traumatized 19 year old, fresh out of getting the ability to screw with people's minds. Because I became something I was taught to fear. Of course I was in a good place." "That still doesn’t justify killing people," it should trouble her more, but Riven has always been careful to only end the lives of normal humans, and DI is only more troubled by her lack of any disgust at his actions. "I tried to save Icarus, didn't I? I tried to save them. That has to count for something right?" “Icarus is dead Riven.” “No fucking shit! They’d be dead nine years earlier if not for me, doesn’t that count for something?” “Does that justify the innocent lives you took?” DI asks. DI doesn’t realize Riven has pushed her until she stumbles back. It’s not hard enough to knock her flat, but it does knock her off balance. “You don’t know me,” Riven says. He puts his hands over his ears. “You don’t know me.” “Riven, that doesn’t work on me,” DI says, trying to calm herself. When he gets like this it usually takes either Nat or Sam to talk him out of it, and neither villain is here at the moment. “Right.” He moves his hands so that they are hanging by his sides. “Right” Characters if necessary: Spoiler: TW: these characters have been through some... things Riven AKA Aletheia, villain, member of the Codependency, at the time of this story about 27. Cis male, heterosexual/romantic, suffers from mild paranoia, anxiety, and PTSD stemming from his trigger, a school shooting, and an abusive relationship in his late teens. His power is the ability to manipulate perceptions through speech (the way he describes it is "rewriting memories/perceptions") an example of this is he accidentally made his parents forget he ever was by saying "You don't know me" while freaking out. DI (Detective Inspector), hero/rogue, leader of her (as of yet unnamed?) group of vigilantes/superheroes/pr heroes, at the time of this story in her early 30s. aromantic pansexual, the most sane of her friend group, has mild anger issues, trigger unknown. abilities are truth (which grants her immunity to riven) and heightened senses that are very useful in her old job, that of a policeperson (she has since fled the UK for... reasons). Currently pregnant with Icarus (the dead person's) child, named Angel. Icarus AKA Leone, hero, part of DI's group, died at 26 or so. Adrogyne, pansexual/romantic, depressed. Triggered by a fall where he gained wings, that and flight are his powers. Dead parent to DI's child, died in a hate crime against abhumans/monsters (people with powers) Sam and Nat (Circe and Aisling) other members of the codependencies, trans girl and cis girl respectively, Riven's girlfriends and they are more developed and main characters, just not in this one storylet)
Interesting, @wes scripserat. I get the feeling that assignment as "hero" or "villain" is somewhat ... arbitrary, in this world? Not so much the consequence of one's actions?
@Morven Well, I mean, Aletheia has killed people (including that abusive ex), while, for example, Icarus hasn't (though DI and some other group members have), but a good chunk of the designation comes from government controlled pr. a bit like the x-men in that abhumans/monsters are disciminated against- one of aletheia's kills was a person who attacked him in broad daylight and nobody stopped him. the way the universe is structured is that its difficult for someone who has triggered to be able to empathize at all with people without powers, and the more obvious the monstrosity the worse it is. Spoiler: spoilers for later in therion (the story) the powers are the result of a grand chess game between two ambivalent gods (librarian and translator, or the one who sees and the one who hears), and every power has the potential to allow in a chess piece, which is where the empathy went. for example, aletheia is the white queen, though he isn't in this story, because this story takes place after everything.
another offering, *places on this alter I am suddenly visualizing* Spoiler: random thing from lacrimae verse I don't like the world how it is when everything is all growed up. I hate it. The grown up world doesn't have any dragons in it for example. Or vampires, or the angels who aren't really angels but everyone from the grown up world calls them that so I do to. Oh, sorry, I'm doing the child thing again I didn't mean that, it's hard sometimes to know which way to talk when you live in your own bones. Because I died, you know, falling through the cracks between the above and below. Which isn't really hell, it's just the proper world without any human restrictions forcing things into logical shapes. Because our logic does that sometimes. If we think something shouldn't be and it doesn't have time to flee below, it dies. I died because I couldn't stop seeing the below. My brain went wonky and I could see the between pieces, and that broke me because no one believes you when you say you can see angels, even those who say they believe in them. I may live in my own bones but I'm not always there, we have a house made out of memories, me and the other broken. I think I was 17, or maybe 15. The only age related memory I have anymore is being very proud of being the same age as the fingers on my hand had quantity. It's hard, sometimes, knowing how wrong reason is. But Boston takes care of us, even if she couldn't save us. And that's worth something, right?
For a dA group's Theme of the Week, "Hospital". Ties into attunement verse, the Nasim and Jawna are identical to the ones I talked about in the OC thread Spoiler: Lest chance again escape you Sarah calls, during your lunch break, and you can't get any information out of her in between the sobs and stumbling over words that got stuck in her throat. Five minutes later you run into Hawa – your boss – who tells you to just go already. You take a cab. – The most startling thing is how small she looks, with the needles poking into her arm and the oxygen mask, strapped to the bed between sheets and cables and tubes, she heaves every breath and coughs and sputters and some more tears escape down the sides of her head. The nurse, Nina, bright mind, could be a doctor if she wanted, says they washed out her eyes, the reddening should recede soon. It's the lungs that are the problem. You can't clean lungs out that easily. – The doctor, Amir's son – Dariush, Dariush is his name – visibly pales when he spots you in the room, a flinch of his eyes betrays is intent, but he judges the distance to the door to be too great. "What happened.", you demand. He straightens. "Ran afoul of an infestation of Parasect in the basement of the abandoned house down Pak Tinat, we're giving her dissolved chlorine and some other stuff to breathe to combat the spores that got into the airways, but that is about as much as we can do, Jawna." Your gaze darkens, and the backs against the wall. "Parasect?" "Yes, the hazmat crew brought some samples. To be honest, I have never seen that particular type of Parasect, not in my studies nor in real life..." You feel the blood draining out of your face. It's impossible. You burned them yourself, torched the tunnels for an entire day until the rock glowed red and the sand turned to glass, and then you burned the hazmat suits. Nothing should have survived. "I... I'll go look. You, keep my daughter alive." "Yes, Jawna." – The beast they've dragged out is all too familiar. You swore you torched them all, when your Nasim had been barely a year old, when the war had barely been over, when your husband's ashes had barely been cold. You burned them until nothing was left, this abomination of science, this crime of war that they wanted to send out, a single breath and they'd spread across your larynx and lungs and settled, burrowing deep into your tissue. You didn't die of the poison. You suffocated first. You had not gotten them all, and now your daughter, your Nasim paid for it, victim of a war she had not been part of. Curse them, Arceus curse them all. – Tiny red splatters on the inside of her breathing mask, and they dare not up the concentration of... whatever it is they're adding to her oxygen. Rattle, rattle, wheeze, cough. More red. Parvin has curled herself up under Nasim's bed, out of sight, but she won't leave her sister's side, even while her sister is slowly coughing up her dissolving lung. They wanted to send those monstrosities into the field. Parvin tugs at your hand, frowning, and dabs a tissue on your knuckles. It comes back bright red. You pull your nails out of your palm, and resolve to cut them when you get home tonight. – Zahra seems far too happy to see you, given that she is a) the daughter of one of the miserable wretches who made that weapon, b) not your daughter's doctor, and c) has evidently just given your daughter something that was not on the plan. Her smile actually reaches her eyes, until she sees your expression and it drops about halfways around to panic. "You better have a very good explanation for this", you growl. Zahra takes a deep breath, nods, and smiles. "My father was part of the research - " "I am aware." "And it turns out he smuggled a copy of the data out, counter agent and antidotes included." You just stare. "I figured, it would be her best bet." – Nasim's breath still rattles, but quieter, she coughs stronger, but less frequently, and she doesn't cough up blood any more. Her eyes are glazed over, but not reddened. Her blood toxicity has dropped. Dariush told you they've added – you can't piece the exact term together any more, but something to soothe her inflamed airway, and to reduce risk of further flare-up. He says she'll probably develop asthma. You say, She's alive. Everything else, we can deal with. – A foreign businessman wrote. He's interested in the rescued notes, says he wants to help prevent another case like this. The letter catches fire from your fingertips. – Nasim coughs and sputters, and presses the mask back to her mouth. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Next to her, Parvin imitates her. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Her grin is a little bit lopsided. "When I said I'll bring up stuff that'll take everyone's breath away", she gasps, "I was not being serious." You close your eyes, rub the bridge of your nose, and laugh.
Spoiler: Just Five More They don’t tell anyone, that they can stop time. Because it wouldn’t work to save anyone- they can’t move anything except themselves and what they were holding, or small things in the area they were. So they just use it to talk longer, talk longer about all the things they want to say. The first time Bevvan stops time, it’s accidental, in the hallway at school and it’s just about to ring the bell for the next period, that would mean the conversation would have to end, because he has class even though Elwyn doesn’t. They don’t notice it at first, the bell doesn’t ring and they don’t take account of that, they just keep talking. Eventually they notice that they’ve been talking longer than they can, and Bevvan glances at his watch and sheepishly notices it’s soon to be time to go, and that starts thing up again, and both of them cover their ears because the various white noises their brains had filtered out before time had stopped had ceased, of course, then started up again. The bell rings and they decide that’s it, they’re just startled by the bell and nothing’s strange and Elwyn smiles and Bevvan rushes off, dragging his bookbag behind him. --- Slowly the stops become intentional, and they never last quite as long as they want them too. Then they stop happening as often, even when they try. Elwyn tries to make a stop just as Bevvan’s mom comes to pick him up, but it doesn’t work, she arrives and the doorbell rings sooner instead of an infinity later. So instead they just hug as long as they can, and Bevvan leaves, and Elwyn stays behind and doesn’t talk for a few days. --- Elwyn goes off and they can’t stop time anymore, phone conversations take up a normal amount of minutes and there’s no pausing just before they have to stop. As if to make up for it the pause the first time they see each other again in months takes a very long time to unpause, and they get some strange looks because they were stopped so long they don’t remember how they’re supposed to be standing anymore.
