Milfs…,, Milves,

Valerio Minato's photo that won the Astronomy Picture of the Day Contest by NASA on December 25th, 2023.

In the picture: the moon, the Monviso Mount and the Basilica of Superga (on the Superga hill) outside Turin are all aligned. it took him 6 years to take this shot (and I take it as an example to never give up on your dreams).

Okay but imagine super-zombie-strength Duane with a fully metal pymaric body. He'd be Alderode's terminator!

Full Metal Spellwright!

Re: Vienne, the world tends to be very forgiving of brilliant yet neglectful geniuses who spend their days buried productively in their Great Works and leave the care of their children and families largely to others, provided that they are male. The female ones, not so much. Kasslyne isn't all that different from our own universe in that sense.

Yep.

One thing I wish I’d stressed more in her story and hadn’t left presumed, was the marriage itself. Vienne didn’t particularly *want* to be married to anyone, but that’s not a choice she was allowed. She was happy enough with Mathis but would have been content to remain alone with her work and her business.

Likewise she never particularly wanted children. When she actually became pregnant, she was assaulted by almost overwhelming approval from everyone around her. All of a sudden they stopped making her feel like a freak, and she felt like she’d become the woman that the entire village had all her life expected her to become. This resulted in a lot of emotional pressure to keep the baby. That’s not something Mathis could ever understand. He had his own pressures for sure and she did all she could to help him with those, but he never gave a second thought to hers.

I relate a lot to Vienne. I knew by the age of ten that I never wanted kids or a spouse because nothing was more important to me than art. But even as a relatively privileged girl Vienne didn’t get to make that same decision. Still, she made it work as best she could. And while she was not a superhero able to be a perfect wife and perfect mother and a perfectly self-actualised human being making her art and fighting for her country, she never gave up the dream.

Hello Ashley! Returned to an old story of mine and trying to rebuild large parts of the plot that didn't satisfy me. I figure it's best to detail all the major story beats before I fill in all the icing around them. From chapter 1 to chapter 15 (so we're not considering spoilers!), what major story beats would you say you finalized first? Was it hard deciding which little bits needed to come up and when, even after you had scripted the major steps?

–You’re definitely on the right track, I also used that method. I had a beginning and an end point for the first book, then looked backwards from there, mapping the major beats in each chapter. It’s also personally important for me to know the WHY of everything. I need a Why for everything I write and do, I find it motivating.

So it’s been a while and my memory is foggy, but I believe the broad outline was like:> Duane & Sette have misadventures that help them understand each other. Why do they need to understand each other? Because they are lonely, broken people and the goal is to better them.> They make it to her cousin’s along with the macguffin, which results in a climax, but macguffin escapes. What is the why of the macguffin? The macguffin isn’t just an antagonist; it’s all antagonism. It is the ultimate macguffin, and is motivated by the misery and misdeeds in the story itself.> They chase the macguffin and wind up isolated in a situation that forces out the best of Sette and the worst of Duane, with disastrous consequences. Why is the worst of Duane important to see? Because if there’s hope for the worst of us, despair is only an excuse. Why is the best of Sette important to see? Because it’s not so very Best, and she needs to see all the room she has to get better.> They reunite with the macguffin for another battle.

Easy-peasy. But now let’s flesh out that first step and mark out the milestones:

engage and fight the wand’ring root, introducing their respective characters in very broad strokes

encounter the RBB, enter the crypt, still in-character, but each gradually starts to crack. Duane goes super violent, Sette shows fear

fight each other at the waystation, Duane’s veneer of civility is fully shattered by admitting he’s a closet cannibal with control issues, Sette’s veneer of roguishness is shattered by admitting she’s scared of failing her da

True selves semi-revealed, Sette has an adventure in town, starts trouble, leads to…

Duane battling Quigley, coming face to face with Alderode

Sette sneaks Duane over the border, enters his memories

By seeing who Duane truly was, Sette fully understands who he is now

During their fight the next day in the toyshop, Duane fully understands what Sette needs of him (he doesn’t fully understand who she is, he’s not as insightful as she is)

And bam, that’s how I outline. It’s a pretty simple structure when you lay it out like that, but then you start adding in B and C plots, two dozen secondary characters, and it becomes deceptively complex!

Otherwise yeah, figuring out where to move the plot forward, where to cut away to other storylines (and how much to devote to them), where to pause and meander for character building - that’s all the most difficult stuff. Most of us can sit around and write cute dialog or character studies all day - fanfiction is FULL of amateur writers who can do this marvellously - but the BEST and most successful writers are able to tell an engaging narrative with lots of moving parts and suspenseful story turns. Maybe they get panned because their prose isn’t elegant or maybe their characters are hackneyed - but they still sell mountains of books because they know how to keep readers turning pages by structuring a suspenseful story.

Good luck with that, ‘cause it’s the hardest part! And personally, I have particular considerations I have to make that you probably don’t have to in prose, particularly prose meant to be read all at once. I need to try and make each page at least mildly engaging and end on a hook wherever I can, since there’s no guarantee the reader is going to come back to progress the story in two days :D

This year’s election looks great.

I HAVEN’T PLAYED THIS GAME IN FOREVER BUT THIS IS AMAZING AND I HAVE SO MANY EMOTIONS ABOUT THIS AND I JUST

I mean don’t get me wrong I loved the game but that ending-?????

So yeah enjoy this crappily drawn infinite wall of text I DID WHAT I COULD WITH WHAT I HAD TO WORK WITH

(also please open in new tabs if you want to read anything goddang tumblr makes things tiny)

(p.s. I did another dumb thing as a sequel)

l krl_photo

SO HEY WHO WANTS TO HELP ME PRINT BOOKS if you would that would be really cool uh maybe have a look at this here thing! It’s the kickstarter for Volume 2 of The Property of Hate! Y’all wanted it, and Make That Thing are helping me to make… well, that thing.

We got badges and stickers and all kindsa stuff but most of all we gon’ get more delicious readable books! Oh, and if we get enough and then enough again? We get another print of the FIRST volume of TPoH with a new front cover to match this second one! Oh me oh my.

Also if you don’t know what the heck The Property of Hate is maybe go over here and read the whole thing for free? And then tell your grandma about it! Maybe your friends too, and your dog. I love dogs.

SO yeah it’s happen folks let’s make it go

the monster beyond the veil