sowrotethegodless

[sowrotethegodless]

Possibly the greatest NPR exchange ever recorded

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September Prompts 🌻

Word prompts to use for doodling or writing

coffee smell

horizon

foggy mornings

juke box

lighthouse

bonfire

recipe book

windmill

gas station

wildflowers

bookmark

cave explorations

rosebushes

pine cones

nightlight

rocking chair

hitchhiking

lemon tree

vintage dress

bike ride

art museum

ghost town

blackberries

harvest moon

picture frames

dreamers

flower garland

ring bearer

color change

nightgown

[sowrotethegodless]

been thinking about fantasy/scifi rule systems and free will

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[becoming crazed] art should physically harm you

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Free writing advice while I've got my editing hat on: it is never a bad idea to add some sensory detail at the beginning of a new scene.

It doesn't have to be a full pause to describe the scene in excruciating detail, but a smell, a sight, a sound, a sensation, something will help to ground the scene and avoid having everything happen on an empty stage.

It is very easy to forget that the reader cannot see the inside of your head but if you make it a rule to put sensory details at the beginning of each new scene, let's say somewhere in the first two paragraphs, you will at least have given the reader something to latch onto and imagine along with you.

[sowrotethegodless]

My poem is live!! I'm officially a published writer!!!

Super excited for this poem to have been included as part of AZE Journal's issue on aspec resilience. It feels really special to me for this to be my first publication, and I'm really proud to have this be my first published piece, too.

Read my poem "frigid (bitch)" below:

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I once asked for a summer breeze, when you asked me what I wanted. A light one, that reminds my skin that it is flesh, not stone. I could ask for a breeze that lingers, a breeze that plays, a breeze that cradles my cheek and draws the lightest nails down my back so that I shiver, even in this heat.

But I will survive without. I know that if the sky stills, my breath will not cease-- I love someone who wants to know my heart--sitting in the summer sun, they tell me that a breeze would be sweet.

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"why do you write?" because it’s the only way to silence the characters pacing around my brain like victorian ghosts with unresolved issues that prevent them from moving on.

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Growing up, one of my dad's favorite quotes he'd say whenever he found me writing came from a movie called As good as it gets. In it, Jack Nicholson's character is asked how he writes women so well. He responds "I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability." My dad would later bastardize this quote to "I think of a man and then take away all logic."

rather than teaching me anything about writing, what this taught me was that my dad was never going to be able to understand a woman's point of view because he was proud he couldn't understand it. He thought of himself as "logical" and anything other as "illogical." I've met other people like my dad who won't read books with female main characters because it's "unrelatable." Growing up, most of the largest series in the world featured male characters with an occasional female side character. When an MC is a woman/nonbinary I hear "why do they have to be X?"

(and this is about ten times louder when a MC dares to be a non-amab person of color)

At the heart of writing there is storytelling. And, at the end of the day, there will be people who don't want to understand that story. Not because it's not well-written or important but because it doesn't fit their world view. they don't want to hear about a main character that's female, nonbinary, black, disabled, fat, queer, etc.

Write those stories anyway. Bang on their doors and plaster those words everywhere they can see. Get comfortable telling your stories and get even more comfortable making those people who cover their ears uncomfortable.

There is community in what we do and in the stories we tell. Don't let those people who are proud that they don't understand diminish the great things you're going to contribute to that community.

[sowrotethegodless]

August Prompts

not over yet

chapel

mosquito summer

star map

don't let them

scrying

demean

ferns and mosses

how far i'd go to see you

barely visible

foghorn

thrift shopping

lichen

broken down

tennis court

you don't care anymore

woodpecker

state of the nation

southwest

pictures without me

before violence

french

curry

attention-seeking

higher elevation

revolutionary war

airmail

saboteur

releasing tension

bad trip

new friend

[sowrotethegodless]

Tips for Fleshing Out Your D&D Character (and Other OCs)

If you are playing in a campaign that's heavily character-focused but tend to focus more on building characters mechanically and don't know where to start on their stories, here's some tips/questions for approaching building out their characterization more, so you can give them more depth! These are mostly written with D&D/TTRPG character creation in mind, but you should be able to apply at least a few of these to many other types of OCs as well.

Look at what you have, and then start asking questions as if you're trying to get to know someone. Where are they from? Do they have any particular interests or hobbies? What do they like to do for fun?

Do they have any ties to particular aspects or themes of the setting? Try to think of at least one or two ways they're related to things highlighted in the world and/or story.

Who has been formative to their life, and what were their relationships with those people like? Are there any key moments they had together? Most importantly, assuming those people aren't involved with your character's adventure now - what happened to separate them?

What are the character's closest tropes? What are the aspects of them that don't follow those stereotypes? Are there any ways that those tropes differ from their own self-perception? What are some traits that they might not recognize or realize about themselves?

What are some things you have in common with your character, and what are some major differences?

Are there any ways that their upbringing would inform their preferences? Does the region they come from inform things like their favorite foods, their approach to seasons/weather, religion, worldview, etc.?

Is there any object or symbol that would give them a strong emotional reaction if they suddenly came across it? Is there anything they're sentimental about? Or, especially if they're the "tragic backstory" type, do they have any triggers?

Not every campaign needs all this, of course! But, at least in my group, our DMs love to tailor their torment to our characters and are always eagerly requesting more backstory, and half our party doesn't really make characters that way. So, if you're anything like my friends and have DMs like ours, I hope this is helpful!

[sowrotethegodless]

The Dead Are the Dead Are the Dead Are the Dead

Written for this week's @flashfictionfridayofficial theme, "Lead the Way!"

Fiction type: Original story

Word count: 1,000

--

Her eyes flutter open like the butterflies that used to rest upon her grave, and she's blinded by light like she hasn't seen in fifteen months.

He's looking at her expectantly, crouched down like a servant at her feet, his hands holding hers upon her lap. They feel warm, even through the thickness of his gloves, and it sends a shiver through her where their palms meet.

"Lyssa," he breathes, with a widening, frenzied grin. "Welcome back, my love."

He leaps up, pulling her to her feet, and whirls her through the air like a doll. She's about as limp as one, too, her mind searching for its limbs as if it forgot where they were. She seems to have forgotten a lot of things — where she is, how she got here, what the strange pain in her chest is.

Her name is Lyssa, she supposes. His name is...

"Vasik?"

"You remember," he beams at her. He sets her gently back down on her feet without letting go, as if he knows she needs some time to recall how to stand first. Once she's steadied herself, he takes her hands again, eyes shining.

But the moment, and her balance, are abruptly broken by a fit of coughs.

He's quick to catch her, with a handkerchief at the ready.

"Take your time," he tells her gently. "Take all the time you need. We have plenty of it."

—

Vasik tours her around, clearly happy even as his words come out stilted, as if reciting a well-practiced spiel. She wonders if perhaps he's practicied in anticipation of showing her this place. She lets him lead the way; she doesn't quite recognize this house, even as other memories return to her.

The walking is slow, frustratingly slow. She remembers running and waltzing and twirling with abandon, but her legs feel so stiff beneath her. Her shoes aren't helping, either, and it's then that she realizes in fact how strangely she's dressed — delicate crystal-heeled slippers and a dozen layers of white lace tulle and silk, wrapped all together in some kind of erratically stitched gown. She thinks she wore a dress like this in another life, but the seams are in all the wrong places, haphazardly folded all over her form. There's too much of the dress, twice as much fabric as it feels like there should be.

He speaks of the house as their home. She does recall many a happy evening spent in his company, but not here, which puzzles her. It's beautiful, though, and feels almost familiar, like a fantasy she might have imagined once. There are clean white curtains fluttering on a dream-like breeze through white wood windows that open out to the clearest blue sea. And there's no smog — she remembers smog, but there's none in sight, only salt in the air and an infinite horizon of blue meeting blue.

He points out where her favorite book rests upon a shelf, though she does not remember the small stain of red at the corner of the cover. There's a portrait of her mother, which she remembers hanging over a different mantleplace, somewhere in her home that was not this one. She follows dutifully behind as he directs her attention to the kitchen, though he assures her that he of course does not expect her to cook in her condition. They have a maid to help with that, but she has been dismissed for the day — so as not to draw the girl's attention to her return, he says, though Lyssa is still not quite sure where she's returning from, exactly.

The cough won't quite go away, either. There's a bloodstain forming on the handkerchief he gave her, though he seems both unsurprised and unconcerned.

"It's the consumption — but the sea air, it does you good for that," he explains.

She remembers that. She remembers how her father used to send her away to the seaside in the summers too, as a child, though she recalls that place being colder than it is here. Here, it's her own hands that feel cold, and everything else which feels warm.

—

A few weeks pass by, peaceably enough. He guides her back and forth through the house, from bed to a fainting couch to a chair and back to bed. Everything seems perfectly positioned for her comfort, which is helpful, because the coughing fits are only worsening.

Vasik's smile stiffens, but he waits patiently for it to pass each time.

She gives him a weak smile, as more memories return to her — months of him fussing and worrying, back in the place she used to know as home, and the guilt she'd always felt over it. They'd had money troubles back then, but he doesn't seem to have any concerns about such matters now, despite this lovely house that they surely couldn't have afforded. In fact, his only concerns seem to surround her health, and even when he is working in another room, he rushes over at the first sign of a cough.

"I'm sorry to pull you away from your work again like this," she says with a bitter laugh, bedridden again. "You're always looking after me."

"I wouldn't do anything less, my love. I know I haven't always been so present for you, but I'll not make that mistake again, not ever again. I'll care for you until my dying day."

There's something dark in his eyes as he says it, something he's telling her without telling her. But the fatigue of her illness closes her eyes before she can ask about it. She sleeps.

—

She wakes upright in a chair, eyes fluttering open. He's kneeling at her feet, hands holding her hands in her lap.

There's a pain in her chest — what is that? And where is this place?

"Lyssa." He kisses her palm and looks up at her, eyes bright. "Welcome back, my love."

She searches her mind, trying to remember through a muggy fog. "...Vasik?"

"You remember," he beams.

[sowrotethegodless]

how do you usually get inspiration for your poetry? is there any particular thing you do when you are out of inspiration or getting warmed up to write a poem?

Hmmm. I read a lot of poetry, and that definitely helps. You know better what you want to create if you consume the art of other people!

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Fanny Howe

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August prompts! Go crazy, guys. As for me, I'm going to try to write more (per usual), but I'm also gearing up for more Shakespeare, so we'll see how it goes.

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non-writers will never understand the mental illness of writing an entire conversation in your head while doing dishes and then forgetting every word the second you open a blank doc