of the gods.

(1/ ) Knowing when your novel is ready for beta reading.

I recently finished a beta reading round for my industrial fantasy/horror novel, Arterial Gold, and it was a great experience for me and my beta readers. The beta round lasted 2 months, and 20/20 of my beta readers completed the book and gave me excellent feedback.

My experience isn’t universal, unfortunately, but I’d like it to be. In this post and those that follow, I’ll be discussing my beta reading experience and sharing tips and tricks that will help you have an equally valuable experience.

After countless hours of hard, hard work, you think you might be ready to send it to beta readers. The purpose of this post is to help you learn what it looks like to be ‘ready for beta reading’, and to help you get there.

Beta reading is simultaneously exciting and terrifying–you’re often letting people you don’t know read your novel for the first time, after all. In writers’ circles, beta reading is most often seen as a necessary but painful experience. I disagree. 

Having beta readers can be good; useful; valuable. If you’re intending to publish your work, I strongly recommend them … but they’re not necessary. If you don’t want beta readers and you’re only doing it because you think it’s expected of you, you’re not going to get much out of the experience. Know that beta readers will make your book better, but only if you’re willing to listen. If not …

Don’t waste your own time. Don’t waste your beta readers’ time.

Beta reading also is not painful if you approach it with the right mindset. This is an important point, so I’ll talk more about it later. For now, all you need to know is that beta reading is not, in fact, necessary but painful.

Now that we have that out of the way, I have a few questions for you.

the pov characters: ceallan haldar, a girl for whom magic is painful and dangerous to use, but who finds it catching up to her anyway. tordrai moran, a girl for whom magic comes easy, but trust - especially after the deaths of her family - does not. sorsha macrain, a girl for whom the magical world has never been kind, but who is determined to create a place for herself within it.

the secondary characters: mara vaikar, coilbi haldar, lleana lissiel, raegan caldan, lura ren, galan brae, cayden hall

the setting: caimor, a country with a rich but oft discarded history. magic lives within many people, but external, more powerful magic sources are the reserve of the already rich and powerful, while stories of the old caimich kingdom and free magic are discouraged. the magic-possessing ruling class is divided into four elite orders of the hearth, moon, ring and bones, ruled over by the order of the veil, while those who are not accepted by magical orders are left to fend for themselves and muddle through, whether they can sustain their magic by themselves or not.

the magic: magic comes both from humans internal sources (life magic and soul magic) and from natural external sources (fire magic, earth magic, water magic and air magic). in order for magic to be used properly, a link must be established between the user’s internal magic source and their preferred external magic source. such sources as rivers and valleys are owned by magical corporations and magic is extracted to be sold at high prices to the rich and the establishment.

the plot: when ceallan finds magic returning to her, tordrai’s traitor father breaks out of the magical veil prison, and sorsha decides to take action on her own lack of magic, all three girls set themselves on a path searching for the resting place of the legendary queen ealda who set magic free and wielded power known only to the gods. ceallan wants answers, tordrai wants freedom, and sorsha wants power. they all want queen ealda’s sword, and they will all fight for it.

also featuring: urban(ish) second-world fantasy. found family. rivals-to-allies-to-lovers. different types of magic. roadtrip quest. a really cool magical sword. celtic-inspired folklore, myth, and legend. wlw main characters.

LUCY & THE END ( a wip introduction by d.y. )

she presses her weight down onto the skull, cringing at the wet squelch underneath her boot. slimy black liquid drenched the leaves and earth beneath it and the rest clung to the bottom of her shoe like glue. “gross,” she says, shuddering. 

SYNOPSIS

twenty-seven years ago, the world ended. 

while that is a little bit dramatic, for all intents and purposes it’s the truth. cities were overrun by monsters, hellbent on killing and consuming any human life they came across. it was hell on earth for years. 

once some form of stability was found, humans began to learn to fight back. they began to call these monsters hollows, some chose to study them, others decided they were best dead. lucy would fall into the second category.

after the death of her father, she was left virtually alone. there wasn’t anyone looking to take on the burden of a child and thus lucy ended up on her own. it’s during a near-death encounter with a hollow that she meets her companion and closest friend, jo. she’s a sweetheart of a dog, ready to tear anyone who even seems like a threat to lucy apart. 

and for a while, it’s just them and the whole world is their oyster; everything is going as fine as things during the end of the world could be going until they meet jasper finch. after begrudgingly saving his life, lucy finds herself entangled in his life (and stupid plan to play hero) far more than she ever wanted to be. 

GENRE / post-apocalyptic + fantasy 

AUDIENCE / adult

FEATURES / found family, female lead, the dog does not die, emphasis on characters, unrealistic fight scenes + lots of moral dilemmas 

WARNINGS / body horror, graphic violence, drug use + swearing

STATUS / first draft

a writeblr (re)-introduction

hi writeblr! i’m rochelle and even though this writeblr itself is new, i am technically not new. i used to be @faerisms​ and you may know me from my greatest hit on the internet: this dumpster fire of a post. i am sad to inform you all that i am no more coordinated or better a writer since writing that. character development does not exist for me sadly, given that i’m less a person and more a collection of very bad choices. 

about me: 

22, she/her, chinese-american, enfp, (triple) gemini, chaotic good, hufflepuff 

my greatest talent is quoting any scene from any episode in the first 4 seasons of spongebob

90% of my personality is informed by 90s anime and bad memes

i once ate a giant tub of mac and cheese at 2am in front of my university’s dumpster like i was some kind of raccoon and it was a glorious day 

might honestly just be 3 toddlers stacked in a trench coat who knows!

favorite book series of all time is fonda lee’s “the green bone saga” 

about my writing: 

i write a lot of speculative fiction (mostly fantasy, supernatural and horror) mostly in the ya genre, though i think all of my stuff has/should have crossover potential 

if i’m honest, i’m bad at everything but descriptors so watch me describe a setting for 20 minutes and then hit you with the world’s worst dialogue 

all my characters have at most 3 brain cells so please forgive them 

i don’t know how to outline/think things out beforehand so everything i do is just spur of the moment. don’t be surprised if things get redacted and replaced in the future and there isn’t too much consistency because i’m figuring things out as i go 

current wips (titles subject to change):

the crimson year is a high fantasy set in a version of china inspired by steampunk, chinese mythology, and traditional wuxia elements. about kings and ambition, beautiful spirits lurking in the dark, court politics and intrigue, and how the lines between good and evil, hero and villain, right and wrong, are never quite as clear as you hope them to be. 

teeth and lungs is a ya mystery set in a small idyllic town where the diner jukebox only ever plays one song and most kids’ big city dreams are just that - dreams. three childhood friends reunite after years apart when a death shakes the community, and learn that the sinister truth behind it all is inseparable from their own pasts and futures. 

song of broken wings is half contemporary romance, half historical fantasy, and a retelling of the chinese myth ‘the butterfly lovers’. two unfortunately fated souls travel hundreds of years and thousands of miles to find each other again, but will their reunion escape the dark cloud of tragedy that has followed them throughout their previous lives? 

yet still we rot is an anthology of short horror stories likely coming soon to a wattpad near you. heavily inspired by asian mythology and stories i once heard whispered in the dark. always look behind you. you never know what’s really out there.

In your head:

Trying to describe it like:

1) Find some good fight scenes to reference. Note that while it should look *something* like the fight you’re going to write, you can be pretty flexible as long as you can translate the movements of the original fight into something that makes sense for your setting. For example, I once adapted elements of a bending fight in Legend of Korra into a lightsaber duel, even though the LoK fight didn’t involve swords or melee weapons, because I was able to retain the spirit of the LoK blocking in swordfight form. Turning that LoK fight into something involving guns, on the other hand, would be tricky. The reverse is also true - it’s tough to turn a gunfight into melee combat.

2) Watch the reference scenes a few times, and try to identify what about the blocking makes it cool. 

3) Watch the reference scene again, but this time watch it in slow motion or pause it every couple seconds. Make a mental note of what’s happening frame by frame. Try to break it down into smaller pieces as well as large movements - don’t just say “he swings a sword,” make a note of the micromovements that go into swinging a sword.

4) Block your fight scene without any flair or description. Just write a list of simple, one-line descriptors of what happens blow by blow. Draw on your observations of the reference fight scenes from steps 1-3. You shouldn’t copy a fight’s blocking verbatim, but you can borrow individual elements as long as the way you describe it in Step 5 brings something new to the table. (The equivalent in art would be using references. Tracing a picture and calling it yours? Bad. Plagiarism. Looking at pictures similar to the thing you want to draw and using that to figure out how it should look? Or looking at art and saying “hey the way they did x is really cool, I want to emulate that part of their style”? Good and fine.)

5) Once it’s blocked, THEN you go back in and add flourishes. Note that you shouldn’t add flourishes to every sentence. Some of them should be short & declarative. But figure out the places where you can add relevant information and flesh those out more. 

If you’re still struggling to write a fight scene, here’s a list of questions you can ask yourself about the fight scene. Use the answers to inform the blocking AND how you embellish on that blocking.

Are there lots of acrobatics? 

Is it fluid or choppy? 

Are the characters going for glancing blows or are they throwing their whole weight into the strike? If melee combat, do they have to follow through? If ranged combat, is there recoil? If it’s a heavy blow or recoil is involved, what does that feel like?

How do the characters and their weapons hold up as the fight progresses? Do they need to reload ammo? Do weapons break? Do they injure themselves? If the answer to any of those is yes, how does that change the course of the fight?

Are characters using the environment in interesting ways? 

Does the fight damage things around them? 

Are the weather or other conditions (lighting, smoke, hazards) complicating the fight?

Does the fighting style reveal something about the character, or the relationship between two characters? 

Does a fight have extra dimension because of the characters’ relationships, or the context of the fight?

What do the characters want out of the fight? Is it a no-holds-barred fight to the death, or is it a ceremonial fight with rules and norms to follow?

Is it strenuous? Do the characters tire? Do they sweat? Do they get dirty? Do any of those factors affect the fight as it goes on? How do characters deal with pain?

It’s no secret that characters are the backbone of every story. You can have a killer plot, a setting like no other, and a plot twist to end all plot twists but if your characters fall flat so does everything else. 

So how exactly do we make characters who seem to jump off the page? How do people create characters that come alive in our heads so vividly you miiiight consider you accidentally did a hallucinogenic drug? 

If you ever find out let me know but I’ve got a few (100% not professional certified) tips! 

1. They have to have a purpose. 

What are they doing in your story? If you removed them how different would the story be? Would you have to shift around maybe one conversation or would the entire plot be disrupted? 

If it’s the first, you either need to consider cutting your character or rearranging your plot so they could not be replaced by a potted plant and leave the story exactly as it is. 

If it’s the second then you’re probably good to go, let’s move on to the next bit! 

2. Do we really care about them? 

They don’t have to be likable. They just have to be the kind of character a reader can get invested in. Now, this is not to say your horribly twisted villain should be portrayed as a cool dude (but it also isn’t to say that a villain can’t be the main character or potentially have a redemption arc). 

So what does it take to create a character that readers can get invested in? 

They have to be relatable. Now, we can’t all be the half-divine, genius, globe-trotting, kind of batty academic or the sixteen-year-old inexplicably chosen to lead a nationwide uprising or whoever you’re writing but they have to have something we, normal, complex, and diverse readers can relate to. 

So make them self conscious, make them sympathetic, make them good at something and bad at something else. Give them someone they would die for, give them a story we’ve heard before but will never get tired of hearing, give them disadvantages, give them heartache, give them those random, desperate acts of bravery, give them chances, let them fail, make them real. 

We read, in part, to see ourselves as the heroes. It’s that wonderful, indulgent part of reading. We can’t always lead armies or summon demons in real life but we can in books. That is, we can, if we have characters we can understand and relate to. 

3. Do they grow? 

It’s a common problem. A character goes through a life-altering experience, their family dies, they discover a terrible secret or a hidden power, they rise to a position of power, etc etc etc. Aaaand when the dust settles and the smoke clears are they changed? Have their experiences and situation forced them to grow? Are they better? Are they worse? Do they even know who they are anymore? 

No, they’re exactly the same. 

Not only is this unrealistic, it’s boring, it’s one-note. Everything in our lives shapes us so the idea that some massive change or experience wouldn’t change us? It’s ridiculous. 

Take some time to really think about what your character goes through. Consider how this could affect anyone, then, consider your character’s personality and background and ask yourself how it will affect them. Plan and write accordingly. 

4. Relationships 

We get it, he’s a lone wolf. He has no friends, his family is either dead, abusive, or distant. He never lets anyone in, he’s mysterious, probably has a drug problem but in a “hot way”, he wears a beanie. Friends? His only friend is the cold hard fist of Real Life punching him in the face daily. 

He’s also boring af. 

Relationships tie back to getting readers to really care about people. It can be romantic, sexual, platonic, familial, but characters need relationships. Granted, they may start out a story without very many or, with negative relationships, but leaving room in their stories for the creation of relationships is a really powerful tool. 

Having characters who care about other people is one of the best ways to draw readers into their stories. The dynamics between your cast of characters and make or break not just the story itself, but your character’s arcs. Ask yourself how your character’s relationships can/will/should affect the story. Will the tide of the battle turn in their favor? Or will your MC give up everything to save a loved one? Will your character take a turn down a dark path? Or will their best friend pull them back to the right side of things? 

5. Making them vivid 

Vivid is pretty broad and that’s purposeful. This section is about making them vivid in as many ways as possible. 

Visually: describe them clearly, don’t beat around the bush (this is about skin color. If your character is black say they’re black, don’t call them espresso or cocoa). How can their appearance relate to who they are? What does how they present themselves say about them? 

Personality: give them quirks, give them a distinct voice, give them inside jokes, and hobbies, and beliefs, and all the things real people have. 

Don’t be afraid to use real life as a reference. 

Voice: one of the hardest parts of character development is giving your characters unique voices. Consider their backgrounds, cultural, economic, time period. Think about who they grew up with or spend a lot of time around? Do your best friend characters have some phrases they borrow from each other? Do your sibling characters both mispronounce a word the same way? Make sure you consider their beliefs and personalities here. If something sounds out of character trust your gut, maybe that character shouldn’t be the one to say it. 

6. Write them. Revise them. Repeat. 

I think this one speaks for itself. 

This is by no means an exhaustive list but it’s definitely a start so hopefully it will put you on the path of creating complex and original characters. 

Get out there and write some killer stories with some killer characters, y’all. Happy writing :D 

                                    WE BURN SO BRIGHT

                                                 a wip intro by cindy

GENRE: ya fantasy

STATUS: first draft, writing

POV: first person, present

THEMES AND TROPES: found family; discovering identity; coming of age; lgbtq+ romance; poc rep; anti-heroes; anti-villains; friends to lovers; magic

                                                            ———

SUMMARY

THE GODS HAVE ABANDONED US.

For ten years now, the gods have been silent. Magic has gone awry, and more and more deviant magic runs rampant in Ara’an. After five years of civil war, the Fu’hers have risen to power, creating the Council—the democratically elected leadership from those still blessed by the former gods. To restore the peace and stability of the nation, the Council begins to eliminate and punish those who have been cursed: those without magic, or those with affinities aligned with demons rather than gods. The gods’ last command, they claimed, had been to give the Council the essence and power to lead Ara’an to glory.

ARISTEIA HAYASHI stands trial for the murder of a Council member, the one with the same Water affinity as her. Accused of wanting to take power from those the gods have blessed because of her unprecedented growth of magic, Aris narrowly escapes the Council’s punishment and flees with the help of her best friend to the most dangerous parts of Ara’an. She is plunged into a world full of monsters, human and xitan alike, left with nothing but her magic and her trust in her friends.

Determined to overthrow the Fu’hers and restore peace and stability to Ara’an, Aris is joined by a group of revolutionaries who she has no choice but to trust and rely on. Revolution, Aris finds, requires first untangling whatever lies the Council has spun in the five years they have been in power, and she realizes that perhaps the gods have not been so silent after all.

“Humans, you burn so bright.”

                                                            ———-

CHARACTERS

ARISTEIA – water affinity, the only mortal to have the full power of a god’s affinity, can summon and control water, brave and brash, aris will do anything to defend those she loves, even if it means fighting the gods themselves.

CASTOR – ice affinity, best friend of aris, is very protective of both her and his sister, sharayah, can only freeze present objects, withdrawn and a follower, castor is willing to follow aris to the depths of hell and back if he had to

SHARAYAH – light affinity, younger sister of castor, can only summon and manipulate sunlight, fierce and reckless, shar takes more risks than her brother does, she hates to be left behind and won’t be deterred from saving the world alongside the others

IZIAH – shapeshifting affinity, can turn into a falcon, lives outside of bustling capital, where he hides his xitan related affinity, quiet and reserved, a loyal and trustworthy friend, so caring he sometimes feels it would break his heart completely to lose anyone he loves

SORAKIR – fire affinity, can imitate fire but is not real, quick to react, hates to talk about himself and has walls to hide his inner self, charming but also somewhat withdrawn, sora saves aris from her trial and allows for her, castor, and shar to escape from the council

TAGLIST

hear them scream (hear them cry)

if you ask polaris, making masks used to be an art. but polaris is old and wizened - as old and wizened as an immortal muse could become, that is - and she is from an age before there was war. now, making masks is merely the mechanical shaping of the bark of a cedar tree into the most fearsome of creatures, or the most useful.

but if you ask polaris, making masks used to be an art of an age long past. if you sit with them long enough, they will tell you a story of masquerades and courts and warfare waged over whispers behind closed doors. they will tell you a story of forbidden love and forgotten kings.

WHILE WE BURN - a wip by e.d.c.

in the end nothing matters

in the end all they are is sacrifice

she knows this, and yet –

she longs to be more

genre ∣ ya/na high fantasy

themes & tropes ∣ royalty, sacrifice, myth & legend, friendship, death & grief, enemies to friends, found family, loneliness, platonic love, empathy, twisted traditions, a battle for the throne, grey morality, flashbacks & introspection, trust, depending on another in tough conditions

status ∣ plotting / skeleton draft

waad mansouri longs to be king. longs to conquer the unconquerable north. a lone knight from a fallen kingdom she travels to the foot of king’s mountain, set on battle. on bloodshed. on power. 

what she finds is a battlefield eternal – bodies of the fallen hung from trees and buried in unmarked graves, a warning – only the strong will pass, only the brave will survive. make your way up king’s mountain, the legend states. make your way up and fell your final demon – make one last sacrifice, and you will be king, you will rule the north worthy.

the journey is grueling. the mountain is cruel, the weak of mind and soul will not make it, will not earn the trust of the north and her people. passing the graves of kings long gone, the past haunts dreams and nightmares alike, keeps clawing at the battle scarred – a silent warning, don’t go don’t don’t go 

waad mansouri longs to be king. longs to be more – longs to make one final sacrifice, that of loneliness, of grief.

waad mansouri longs to rule the north. and rule she will.

taglist ∣ send me an ask to be added, dm me to be removed