#thewrongwords

Hello. I’m pretty new to tumblr and the writeblr community, and thought it was about time to introduce myself. I’m predominantly a sci-fi writer; I study psychology, and I have been writing professionally since I was 15. I’m currently working as a social worker until I’m fully qualified as a psych. I love what I do, but I also see the best and worst of what people have to offer- I leave a lot of myself, what I think and how I feel at the door for work, so writing is really key for me in maintaining my sense of self.

Hello! I have been working on some character development tools and techniques to assist with my draft re-write (and also as procrastination so I’m not re-writing my draft, let’s be honest). Something I had an idea about is that all of the characters we write are sort of reflections of ourselves - things we love, hate, fear, desire, imagine. The idea has helped me draw out some more information about what really defines my characters and their behaviours, and I’d love for you to use it so I can get to know your characters and writing style better, too. So, my question to you is this: If you and your characters stood at a mirror, looking through but seeing only each other, what would you say? What would you thank each other for? What would your character curse you for? Would your character think you a god? A tyrant? 

My example for my WIP is below. @beatlesandbards @morriganwrites-0124 @whalesarefromspace would you like to have a go?

Adam has spent a lifetime mistrusting, a lifetime calculating for his survival. Perhaps he would not speak, would not trust himself to do so. I would not be a god, or a tyrant: I might be an equal, but ultimately, he would believe himself to be the master of his own fate. But – there are questions he would be confused about, things he wanted to ask. I would want to tell him that he was good in ways he could never understand, and that made me sad in ways that only he could. 

Adam would break the glass, and never once regret his silence.

Clara would make me wait, alone, watching the empty glass for days, if she could. I wonder if she knows how many secrets she has yet to tell me; a younger Clara might worry at the secrets I had left to tell her. Clara, now, neither knows nor cares for my words. To Clara, I would be a spectre, a ghostly judge whose words she long ago stopped hearing clearly, forestalling her askance of the one question she might have had. 

Clara drowns in whispers, and only stays long enough to see if any of them are mine.

Lark would rage against me, against all the agonies and injustices I had placed in the world. Perhaps I would explain that those agonies and injustices already existed, I just put them into words – somewhere where maybe they could do some good. Perhaps he would continue on his path to anger – or, perhaps, there would be silence. It would depend on the Lark I met – the one at the start, or the one journeying towards his end.

“I didn’t believe in you at first, you know,” I would say. “But I do now. I do now.”

Larisa would make me laugh.“I don’t know how you survived so long. I hardly even know where you came from!” I would insist, smiling and chiding us both in equal measure. Ever the cat that got the cream, she would smile, and perhaps agree that it was in fact her own intention that brought her into being.The conversation would flow, after that. Larisa would sit by the glass, cross-legged and smiling, as we talked. She would have the same questions as Lark, though he had not the temperance to be able to ask: the hows and the whys of the world she had been made in. Larisa would delight in having answers, even when she could not delight in the answers themselves.

Eventually, I would leave her, thinking it a pity that I had written her just to die.

Jason would have questions. Thousands, from the littlest thing to the largest. Shrewd, and more cunning than I, Jason’s questions would spring from an ingenuity that I am still in awe that he possesses. 

I would walk away long before Jason came to realise having all the answers wouldn’t change a damn thing, as his story has long been written. 

“Tell me how it ends.”

When I am in joy, I find the right words elusive. My need to write diminishes, cast downwards to slumber deeply inside my memories.

When I am in sorrow, my world fills with blank pages, choked with the need to write, but so burdened by doubt that such a feat becomes impossible, and words remain unwritten.

Hello. I’m relatively new to the writeblr community, however I notice some of you pop in short notes before your writing, and I thought I should do the same to explain some of my writing. I’m predominantly a sci-fi writer; I study psychology, however have a strong interest in other sciences, so I guess that makes sense. I’m mostly just writing here to prove to myself that I can, really. Maybe along the way I’ll find that other people have an interest in the stories I have to share.

I have two (and a half) books I’m currently exploring. The below is an extract from the first. 

“The human race has always walked the razors’ edge: between good and evil, light and dark, survival and extinction.

Or, perhaps, that’s just what we’d like to believe. After all, history is just what we’ve written- we set the stage, we wrote the scenes. We forgave our heroes, condemned our villains to a fate we convinced ourselves they deserved. 

And maybe they did. Or maybe we chose to see black and white, right and wrong, when there was nothing different between the two at all. Perhaps it is the design of all humans to choose this strange balancing act for themselves. To live their lives truly believing they know wrong from right.

Before I learned

To love myself.

Perhaps that’s why it didn’t hurt

When you left

And all that remained

Was the familiar ache