#barbex writes

This week's homework is based on V.E. Schwab's questions to answer to create memorable characters:

1) what they fear? 2) what they want? 3) what they're willing to do to get it?

And maybe I should think about that a little bit. The one big difference between original fiction and fanfiction is that I don't know the characters all that well in my original fiction. In fanfiction, certain things are set, even if I veer in out-of-character scenes all the time. But I think I can write these scenes convincingly enough to take my readers along.

With the original fiction, I only have a few vague ideas about the characters, expecting them to come more alive as I write them. But, wouldn't you know, that's like really a lot of work! I feel like I'm writing forward, dragging the characters along, while they, reluctantly, let me know how they feel about all that.

Maybe I need to know them a little better?

Let's see, my main protagonist is Sonja, newly divorced woman who gets dragged into a fantasy world via a portal. She meets a man acting as her guide in this world. His names is Kayden (for now, names are temporary), young, kind, and handsome.

The idea for the story is the older woman being made to fulfill a prophecy with her young guide, her slightly grumpy about this stupid quest, him all golden retriever sunshine, as they fall in love and... well there's a another group involved, also a dragon, well, the rest is kind of foosy goosy loosy...

On with the questions:

What do they fear? Sonja fears that she's too old and damaged for happiness now. Kayden fears that he will not meet the expectations set upon him.

What do they want? Sonja wants to be someone for once in her life. After years of feeling invisible in her unhappy marriage, she wants to make an impact now. Kayden wants to fulfill the prophecy, because he has been raised in the knowledge that this is his destiny.

What they're willing to do to get it? Damn, that's a tough one. At this point in the story, Sonja just wants this all over and done with, but that will change, later. But Kayden? I don't really know.

You know, this was quite helpful, at least in showing me what I don't know. I won't be filling out any character questionnaires, but I will think about these questions and how they influence my story some more.

Friday is for Dragon Age Drunk Writing Circle at @dadrunkwriting and even though I was not drunk, I dug out an old prompt and wrote a 599 words ficlet for it.

How does this even work? I'm sitting there, on my writing days, well prepared and with plenty of time, struggling to get some words out, and then I spit out twice as much on this, just before bed, lounging so hard I'm almost falling off the couch, while the TV is still on.

Since I was giving out homework last week for @the-wip-project Summer Writing to take notes about when, where, and how much we write, let's see how it looked for me:

I don't even care all that much about the specific numbers, but it is quite clear that writing on the couch with or without the TV on, is not very efficient. That was to be expected, of course.

There's a reason why I'm calling the former kid's room/guest room my writing room. It may not be much but it is a room with a computer where I actually write. Note to self: utilize this more.

Can you believe it’s already been a week of August and I forgot to make my monthly post?

Summer! Summer is hoooooot. But, lucky for me, I was in Norway for two weeks, where it was a little bit colder.

Norway has excellent connectivity by the way, EXCELLENT mobile connectivity. Not only did I write a lot, I could even upload two chapters.

I wrote another chapter for the Grunt fic Yin to Yang. 

Grunt and Jinaya on an undercover mission and Grunt learns that the tank didn’t teach him a lot about how to deal with a pretty asari sprawled across his lap.

In Service to the Inquisitor has another update. Cullen gets a spanking. XD

Now to my reading list:

I read Ship of Theseus by @blueteaparty again and I still love it. Such a great concept, how much is the person the same when the body is new and the only Synthesis fic I actually like. Also a new chapter of Dualism, which is still as fabulous as ever.

@hollyand-writes updated A Chance Engagement and I squeeed! I love this fic so much, Dragon Age 2, Merrill x Carver in a Regency AU. 

And I’m currently reading Heat by Kate_Shepard @cdrkateshepard. I’m not done yet but I really like it. 

replied to your post

“WIP list”

thank you for sharing! "The Braided Smith" is such a lovely, intriguing title :D please tell us about it!

Look, it even has a cover!

This got long again...

What a great question. 

I sometimes think that my original fiction OCs get angry when I write the fanfic characters and OCs again. 

They yell at me “Why do you care so much for them? Don’t you see that I could be this broken too?”

“But dear OC, look at that amazing backstory, so much pain!”

“I could have that too!! You just have to write it!”

“But I could never do that to you, my sweet OC.”

OC stomping their foot. “But I want that! I need that! Give me that tragic backstory now!”

Me, wailing: “But it hurts me to hurt you! My poor baby!”

OC kicking my ass: “Don’t be such a whiny ballsac. Tragic backstory, now. And make it really painful. No cheating, I’m onto you!”

Oh dear, where do I even start? 

Skipping all the fanfic WIPs, I currently have one… two… three? things in the works.

There is Tempting the Dragon. The first chapters are already published on [wattpad] and my [blog] (I intend to continue them on the new author-blog soon). But I got stuck on it and put it on hiatus last year. I have two new chapters written now and want to add at least two more before I continue publishing it.As in pretty much all my ideas, a normal, kind of boring woman gets thrown into an adventure. In this case, Vibeke finds an injured and very attractive man in the garden and he has dragon wings. He comes from a fantasy realm, and decides to take her with him to solve a mystery because he feels that they have a fated connection. And as always I’m writing this by the seat of my pants and Vibeke has just developed the ability to throw balls of lighting in the fantasy realm (I didn’t plan that). Something unusual is going on in the fantasy realm, there are secrets, attacks and lots of things nobody wants to talk about and Leelan and Vibeke have to get to the bottom of it.

Then there is the Shifterwolves OT3 story that doesn’t have a name yet. It has 15k words by now and my guess is that that is about a third of the complete thing. Once again we have a normal woman, Lisa, whose catch phrase is “I do spreadsheets!”, thrown into a situation she isn’t prepared for. In this case she meets a woman and a man who are wolfshifters. By touching an amulet, they form a connection between the three of them that makes them intensely attracted to each other. But they can’t work on their feelings and whether they’re only caused by that amulet because monsters from other dimensions attack the world. The wolveshifters are fighting the monsters but they’re so disorganized and never quite know how each monster can be defeated. Enter Lisa and her spreadsheet-superpowers!

And because I don’t have enough to do, I started a new story two weeks ago. It’s called Slave No More for now and it kind of scares me. It’s a scifi story, a woman abducted by aliens, her memories scrubbed and forcefully addicted to a drug that makes her numb and submissive. She manages to escape her prison during an attack and is lost on a foreign planet with no memories of her former life or the recent abuse but she knows that terrible things have happened to her and that she doesn’t belong on this planet. She fights the withdrawal of the drug, has to hide from hostile aliens and doesn’t understand any language. At some point she will meet an alien who is not an abusive asshole but she is paranoid and traumatized of course and doesn’t trust him. There will be love in the end but it will be a long and difficult path. 

Ohhh and then @thatwriternamedvolk has started spinning an idea off some old thing I used to write and now we have a thing here that I like to call Herculetta Poirot And The Fashion Disaster Murder On The Space Train. @thatwriternamedvolk has some awesome ideas for the design of lizard aliens in corsets and tophats and maybe this could turn into an illustrated story. We just need to write it first.

Geez, this got long.