#frankensteinwip

[bootstrapparadoxed]

WIP intro: Offspring of (Un)happy Days

Genres: horror, sci-fi, M/M romance, dark academia

Age category: adult

Setting: modern-ish day, Kraków, Poland

Comps: C.E. McGill "Our Hideous Progeny", M. Nemerever "These Violent Delights", D. Tartt "Secret History", H. Ennes "Leech"

Status: 50k into first draft

Themes: academic fraud and ethics, co-dependent relationships, PTSD and cPTSD, fear of death, loneliness, disability/neurodivergency, trans/queer experience in Eastern Europe

Pitch: When two researchers discover a horrifying truth about consciousness and death, their obsessive devotion to each other pushes them to do the unthinkable.

First line: "In our labs, we are small gods, clumsy architects of nature."

blurb and excerpt under the read more. moodboard by @brantleywrites on twitter

Blurb:

Kristian is a PhD student at the end of his rope. His scholarship is running out, his supervisor won���t let him defend, and he’s stuck at a third-rate institute with no support. As a last resort, he applies for an assistant position in a newly funded project – and ends up being the only candidate.

A connection quickly develops between him and his new boss, Leith. The two bond over their shared interests, and shared trauma. Soon, the platonic affection transforms into hungry romance. Somewhere deep down, Kristian knows that their love is more of a sick coping mechanism, but is unable to stop himself.

The tension rises when they accidentally discover a gruesome truth about brains, consciousness, and death. Any other scientist would announce this to the world and step away. Kristian and Leith conduct their experiments in secret, pushing the boundaries of ethics to advance the research. And their unquestioning devotion to each other is about to lead them into much darker places.

Excerpt (from chapter 4):

In order to fully assess the effects of a treatment (drug, pollutant, living condition, induced mutation, etc.), a scientist often needs a sample of tissue that has been washed of all unnecessary materials. A clear cut of brain, liver or intestine is best viewed when it has been infused with a fixative before being placed under a microscope. One way to achieve this is transcardial perfusion. I have performed it many times, preparing tissue samples for pathology comparisons. The protocol runs as follows: the animal is anesthetized but kept alive, after which the body is restrained, chest cavity opened, and a major blood vessel is connected to a supply of fixative. The animal’s still beating heart then does the job for you, carrying it to every point, through every capillary, until finally there is no blood left and the heart ceases to beat.

I had never gotten used to it. I am not a squeamish person and the sight of blood, urine, feces, pus, or any other biological substances does not disturb me. Many biology students deal quite well with formaldehyde preserved specimens but falter at freshly sacrificed animals. One young man had described to me the acute drop in blood pressure he felt the first time a dead rat had been placed in front of him. It wasn’t the sight (fluids, viscera, the undigested contents of the rat’s stomach) but the realization of such recent death. The tiny body still warm, motionless. Perhaps the human mind begins searching at once for the causes, and fears the proximity of whatever had killed another animal (and may be searching for its next victim). Regardless, the ability to deal with this horror is what often sorts students into specialties. Luckily, there are plenty of areas in biology that don’t require you come in contact with living vertebrates at all.

What I always wondered is whether it was possible to do transcardial perfusion on a human. Could one take a person, still living, put them under and replace their blood with some sort of protective substance? Perhaps a solution that would allow them to be frozen, preserved in a box like a packet of fish sticks, waiting for a better time. Keep them on the verge between life and death for decades to then defrost them and pump four liters of blood back into their body. Would the brain survive such a process? Would the mind? Could someone do this to me at the shortest notice and keep me asleep until S. would retire (or die) and someone else would be placed on his cases, so that I could graduate at last?

[bootstrapparadoxed]

Thanks for the tag!

I haven't written for A While but here's the last bit I have from FrankensteinWIP:

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“We close down the lab upstairs,” he said, still hugging me, “and declare that we are now in the data analysis phase. I can even keep it going on the side, on the evenings, maybe. Keep going to seminars, keep appearances. And in the meantime, we plan a new experiment, and we carry it out here. Deal?”

I sighed again. Something was still not sitting right with me, but I ran out of ways to argue.

“Deal,” I said, almost a whisper.

He let go of me, a smile on his lips.

“I suggest we start with the experimental design,” he said. “We can come back to the apartment and start. Now.”

-

Tagging anyone who wants to do this because my brain is fried and I can't focus,,, (I need to make a list at some point)

Last Line Tag

Thanks to @space-writes for the tag!

This line is a taste from my piece for this week's Flash Fiction Friday prompt!

But their approaches maintained their rhythm. Swoop, slash, and soar. The fruits of their labour bloodied and bountiful, a blessing before departure.

While the group held victory in one set of talons, Claudia held feathers in the other.

Sending tags to @buffythevampirelover @bootstrapparadoxed @sodaliteskull @marrowwife @oh-no-another-idea @bardic-tales @motifenjoyer and an open tag for anyone to jump on :D

[casual-eumetazoa]

Happy STS! Did your OC ever have a favorite lullaby or bedtime story when they were a kid?

That's such a creative question!

For Up the Entropic Hill - knowing Amber, she was probably demanding her parents read her history textbooks from as early as she could speak. I think as a kid she would go for all the action-y and heroic stories, especially anything about space exploration. So if I could pick one for her, maybe it would be the stories of early space flights, like of the first humans to leave the Earth or of the moon landing. Alternatively - ancient mythology. She definitely had an ancient Egypt phase as a child.

For FrankensteinWIP - Kristian had a shitty childhood with not the most supportive parents (to put it mildly) so whatever favorite bedtime stories he could have, it was stuff he was reading on his own. I can imagine him with a book of Slavic fairytales, reading under the covers with a tiny lamp. Also maybe some old Soviet books for kids, whatever he would be able to get from a school library without asking his parents. But I think he would gravitate towards the moodier, scarier stuff, probably some books out of his age range as well, considering he is a horror fan as an adult. (I couldn't resist making a horror novel character be a horror fan,,,)

[bootstrapparadoxed]

The desire to go back and rewrite multiple chapters versus the desire to keep going and actually finish this draft FIGHT

[bootstrapparadoxed]

I've gotten to the end of the current draft of FrankensteinWIP and man... I just really don't like how anything in the part 2 is written. The prose is so boring and flat and the scenes feel like they add nothing to the story. The plot is progressing technically but I'm not engaged in it at all. It is so weird how the quality just drops dramatically between part 1 and part 2 but I'm not surprised at all because most of part 2 I wrote while recovering from severe autistic burnout. So yeah. I get why it's bad.

Now the good news is that I know how to fix the content, I already made a bunch of editing notes for myself. The bad news is that reading part 2 killed all the enthusiasm I've generated after reading part 1. I do not feel confident in my writing ability and any time I try to write anything new, I just get stuck because I expect it to be shit. It's like I've forgotten how to produce good prose. I hope it is a temporary thing, considering I can still feel the effects of burnout, but damn is it demotivating.

I don't know if to ignore the bad bits and keep drafting until the end or go back and re-write them now. I doubt I can edit them effectively without a rewrite because it would require fiddling with every single sentence basically and I feel like at that point it's just easier to do it from scratch. Worse than that, I have zero confidence in my ability to rewrite it in the way I will be happy with. I could just keep going, like I haven't lost the ability to produce text, it's just that what I am able to produce sucks. And I don't want to write out of some sort of obligation just to get it done or have the word count go up. I want to actually enjoy the writing and re-reading the bits I wrote.

So I'm stuck now. I know this novel has the potential to be amazing and I still like my outline/plot, but the actual text I am able to make is not up to my standards and I don't know what to do to fix that...

If anyone has any advice, please share, because I feel awful and I want to delete the whole document. I won't do it, but I want to.

[bootstrapparadoxed]

Thanks for the tag @diabolical-blue ! Here's my one word spoiler for FrankensteinWIP:

Head

No pressure tag: @saturnine-saturneight @queen-tashie @dyrewrites @albatris

Tag game: The one word test

Rules: Chose one word, and only one word, that spoils your entire wip but the audience will have to read the book to find out why

my word for memoriam:

Dragon

gently tagging: @seastarblue @theunboundwriter @writingamongther0ses @psycheandthistle @blurred-honey

[bootstrapparadoxed]

I'm up to page 75 out of 100 of the FrankensteinWIP draft and, well, I'm starting to see what my issue was with writing it. There is a sharp decline in the quality of the writing between part 1 and part 2 (there will be 3 parts in total). The prose just doesn't sparkle the way it did in the previous chapters. And the content seems kind of meaningless as well? Idk, technically it's still developing the romance, but it's a lot of scenes in which nothing much happens and inner monologue of the protagonist. And I don't like it.

I know I was just following my outline while writing the part 2 and I was happy with the outline but something is not working in there. I'm not enjoying the reading/editing and that's enough of a signal for me that there's a huge problem. Thing is, I don't know how to address it... I could try to edit it, or rewrite according to the outline, or just delete huge chunks and get to the parts I do enjoy. I'm kinda leaning towards deleting but I also don't want to erase many hours of work. So I am stuck.

Maybe I will just edit the stuff that absolutely needs editing (like fixing the timeline and filling out square brackets) and then have someone look at it and tell me if it is as bad and useless as I think it is. I'm glad I at least enjoyed the edit of part 1... now I just need to get the rest of the draft to that standard.

[bootstrapparadoxed]

I've now (lightly) edited 6 chapters of FrankensteinWIP and uhhh. Well. Good news about it: I no longer feel meh about the book, I love it again. Bad (?) news about it: I think I have written something that appeals specifically to me and no one else which, uh, that was the plan originally I guess? Like I wanted to write something entirely self-indulgent and personal, and I think I succeeded, but my question is - will anyone else want to read this? Cause I honestly cannot tell.

Almost exactly half of this book is a slow-burn queer romance in a dark academia setting and then the other half is going to be a creepy disturbing science/medical horror (plus the romance will go from slightly questionable to a co-dependent nightmare). I adore this, I feel like I am writing my own version of Secret History with overt queer text instead of subtext. However. Would anyone else read this lol

Anyway, I will edit the first half until I run out of stuff to edit and go back to drafting with renewed motivation. I still haven't decided if I want to share that first half already btw. But I do enjoy the edit so far. A lot. So at least there's that.

[bootstrapparadoxed]

Writing Share Tag

Thanks for tagging me @diabolical-blue !

Rules: Share some writing.

Below a bit of chapter six from FrankensteinWIP:

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"Years back, an undergrad, I had not yet given up on the aspiration of being normal. Letting go of the elaborate façade I’ve built since kindergarten terrified the living crap out of me. Fitting in is exhausting; it takes up emotional, cognitive, even physical energy. It leaves you unsure of who you actually are under all those layers of pretense. What was it all for? Frankly, I’m not sure it mattered either way. Only a select few of us are so adept at masking that they can seamlessly blend in. The rest end up burning themselves out for the privilege of falling to uncanny valley. Even when your whole attention is dedicated to appearing just like everybody else, the real everybody else continues to sense the ever so slightly off-ness of you. To them, you are some strange creature either way.

I remember one of my attempts at making friends in a second year physiology class. The hours trapped in the windowless basement class, linoleum peeling off the walls, were mostly spent performing experiments on each other - the school did not have an animal experimentation permit. Week after week, we pricked our fingers, licked microscope glass, and fitted each other into ancient medical equipment – EKGs, EEGs, pressure and oxygen monitors, all barely functional, held together by tape and sense of obligation. I was paired up with a shy-looking, long haired girl who displayed little passion for what we were studying. This cut off roughly ninety percent of my drive to socialize. Still, I had to make an effort. We had reports to write in groups after every single class.

Sensing my inhibition, she tried to engage me in gossip. Repeatedly she brought up rumours about various students and teachers: so an so are sleeping with each other, turning up to morning lectures hangover, engaging in any number of social sins. I could not maintain any of those conversations; I did not understand what emotions or opinions I was supposed to have in response. Perplexed, the girl would continue to iterate her prompts, until something inside her snapped.

“You really don’t care for people, do you?” I shrugged. “Not really, no.”

She paused, chewing on the lock of her perfect, shiny hair. Then, she asked a question that, to me, seemed utterly sincere. “If you don’t like gossip, what do you even talk about with your friends?”

-

I recently followed a whole bunch of cool people and I am a bit overwhelmed with it / don't have energy to tag every single person, so I will tag a few and leave an open tag so any mutuals/followers who see this, please feel free to do this and say I tagged you!

@zillanovikov @dearunreliablenarrator @saturnine-saturneight @theverumproject and anyone else who wants to share some writing!

[bootstrapparadoxed]

"I awoke in a pitch-black room to the sound of heavy breathing next to my ear."

every time I see this prompt I want to reblog and every time I start with some boring ass sentence that I don't want anyone to see lol. well today I'm reblogging despite it to motivate myself to keep writing

post the first sentence you write in your WIP today (and every day)

As Miss Khani was well-known to the house staff, she saw no reason they should depart in the manner that Duchess Procella had entered i.e. over the garden wall.

[bootstrapparadoxed]

First challenge of editing the first half of FrankensteinWIP - trying to get the timeline to make sense,,, I was not paying attention at all when I was drafting it to how the seasons change, what days of the week I am mentioning, etc etc - so it's a mess. Idk if I will fix it all now but it's definitely something I will need to tackle in later edits.

[bootstrapparadoxed]

So, I'm in a writing slump. Recently whenever I open the document to write, I can only manage one or two sentences, and that's it. I have broken the streak of writing 500 words a day a while ago and I don't know if I can catch up. I feel like this is because I've lost the enthusiasm for FrankensteinWIP - it just doesn't spark joy the way it used to. I am now more or less in the middle of it (around 50K) and I have it outlined until the end, but it's not moving at all right now.

I am now thinking of going back to the beginning, editing it a bit (not a major edit, just get rid of all the square brackets and misspelled words and so on), and getting some beta-readers to cheer me on. But I've never done this before (as in, got beta-readers for a first draft) and I'm kind of scared of it. I'm not used to showing raw work to people. Also, I really want to finish this draft until the end of the year, though it is becoming less and less likely.

Any thoughts on what I should do?

Any and all feedback is highly appreciated!

[bootstrapparadoxed]

Happy STS! What part of your story has been your favourite to write, or what part are you looking forward to most? (feel free to share a snippet 👀) - @trixierosewrites

I'm gonna answer for FrankensteinWIP because I think I answered a similar question about Up the Entropic Hill at some point (but I am to lazy to find that ask,,, maybe I'll do it later).

So far my favorite part to write was a long conversation that Kristian and Leith have at one point in the story because it is basically the moment Kristian falls in love. He doesn't know that in the scene, and he probably wouldn't be able to point to that conversation as that moment in retrospect either, but that is how I see it. And the scene has some fantastic dialogue in it, in my opinion at least. I'll include a small bit at the end.

And the part I'm looking forward to writing the most is the actual horror! There's going to be some very disturbing and unsettling scenes in this book and I want to get to them so bad. The story takes a while to get there because I am spending thousands of words to set up the relationship properly but I hope it will be worth it in the end.

Snippet under the cut:

By the time we were both too sore to keep walking up and down the shore, the streets were rapidly emptying of visitors. I glanced at the lock screen of my phone; it was fairly close to midnight.

“Don’t you need to go home?” I asked, once we picked a bench to rest on. “Get some sleep?”

“This is my normal routine,” he responded. “I don’t sleep much.”

“You’re a night owl, too?”

He did not confirm nor deny that, gaze drifting away into the distance. I decided not to push it further.

My leg bounced on the ground while my eyes passively scanned my surroundings: the air after-rain fresh, the sky cloudy and starless. Occasionally some drunken British tourists would pass by our bench, their booming voices carried an impressive distance. Apart from us, the only living soul around was a lone figure of a fisherman, stood knee deep in water a hundred or so meters away. Having concluded most of our discussion threads, we landed in a silent interlude. The conversation, though exhilarating, wasn’t exactly easy. Leith and I agreed on very little, and constantly changed our minds when presented with compelling arguments. Increasingly, I felt like my head was full of warm scrambled eggs.

“So yes.” Leith said, after a solid few minutes of utter silence.

“Yeah,” I agreed. We both shared a moment of laughter. “That was… yeah.” Suddenly, I blushed. I felt like we had just hooked up in the supply closet at the institute and were hurriedly dressing each other, afraid of being busted by a cleaner or a curious undergrad.

“You don’t have much people to talk to,” he told me – a statement, not a question. “And you are so, so bored. Even in this program, even surrounded by scientists. You’re so bored, it must be excruciating.”

“I think I am lonely more than I am bored,” I suddenly confessed. Up until a few minutes ago, I did not know this about myself. Feelings were a rare occurrence, and it usually took me days if not weeks to identify them. “All my classmates graduated and moved, and I don’t get along with younger PhD students. I don’t… connect to people particularly well.”

“What about your family?” Leith leaned back in the bench, looking away from my face.

“I haven’t spoken to anyone in years,” I responded calmly. “They did not take well to me being queer.”

“Ah.”

“Not that I got along with them much before coming out. My dad is a recovering alcoholic who did not get his shit together until most of his family stopped associating with him. He’s yet to gain back their trust. My mother did not want to have me, I think; I spent my childhood listening to her lament on how terribly my basic needs interfered with her work. And my grandparents, who basically raised me, thought it would be kind to bully me for my weirdness before my classmates did. Being disowned felt almost like being released from the obligation to like them. Still, that was my entire financial safety net I lost.”

“Did you know that living alone has comparable health effects to smoking?” he asked, in a very matter-of-fact voice. “They say the same about breathing the air in Krakow, so I must be at death’s door by now. Even now that I quit the actual smoking.”

I blinked, unsure of how to react. The remark felt like a dagger to the back.

“Unfortunately I can’t quit either Krakow or being alone,” I muttered.

“Oh,” his voice changed in a split second, “I didn’t mean to say you made yourself lonely on purpose. Really. The opposite. Actually,” he gave a nervous chuckle, “it was a, well, an attempt of a…” he made brief eye contact with me, and I could have sworn he seemed almost panicked. “Never mind,” he waved his hand, dismissing the topic. “Let’s just pretend I did not say that.”

[bootstrapparadoxed]

Happy STS! For your FrankensteinWIP, what is your favorite thing about the main characters' relationship? What gets you the most excited about writing them?

Oh boy, where do I even start lol

So basically the whole book is focused on just two people, the protagonist and his love interest (for lack of a better term - the novel is not a traditional romance in any way, but I'll use the romance terminology for this) - Kristian and Leith. There are other characters obviously but I'd say around 70-80% of the scenes in the book are just these two.

And the main thing I love about the two of them is how obsessed with each other they get. I wanted to write a story where two people's love for each other just progressively makes both of them worse and this is exactly what I'm doing in this book. I want to explore love as an affliction, as a bottomless void that just sucks you in and makes you disregard your previous interests, traits, moral principles, what have you. Love that is so blindly passionate, that it genuinely makes you ignore whatever terrible things the other person is doing.

I'm excited about trying to get this progression just right - from two people clinging to each other because they are lonely and isolated and desperate for human contact, and to a couple that is so lost in their mutual devotion that they are willing to enable each other in whatever impulse they get. And I hope I will get it right because this is one of my favorite tropes in fictional relationships. I wanna write a relationship that is so unhealthy that it will get its own fandom,,,

[bootstrapparadoxed]

Happy STS! What would a road trip with your characters look like? Where are they going, who’s driving, what music do they play, who’s in charge of snacks, etc

Sorry for being late!!

So for Up the Entropic Hill, it's pretty straightforward to describe because the main plot of the book is a space hitchhike, so it's basically a road trip (on spaceships...) already. Translating it into a road trip on Earth: Amber would demand to be the driver even though she would be terrible at it, and she would kill anyone who would try to put on any music (because it would stop her from being able to drive at all). I imagine if she would commit to driving for a long time, it would need to be for a very good reason, probably to do with her history obsession (see a famous historical site, maybe? or visit a far away archive to find some information) - and then she would get carried away and make a billion extra stops and side quests. Also, she would probably come unprepared and need to buy everything she needs later on at some gas station. She would realize she needs food only after multiple hours without any meals and get grumpy as hell before finally stopping for some snacks.

Lullaby would be the best passenger ever. They would have no issues using a map and giving directions and they'd go along with whatever Amber says. And maybe, eventually, they would persuade her to have the radio on, and find some bizarre show to listen to and maybe even call the radio to take part in a quiz or a competition. I doubt Lullaby would fit into a normal car though, considering they are a 3 meters tall humanoid-ish insect... so we're talking a truck of some sort, I guess.

Now for FrankensteinWIP... that's more tricky. Considering both Kristian (the protagonist) and Leith (the love interest) are academics stuck in their research institute basically 7 days a week, probably the only thing that would get them to go on a road trip is a conference of some sort. Problem is, Leith will not get into a car under any circumstances (because of PTSD) so the only road trip they could have is on a train, I guess.

I think the two of them might enjoy it though. Leith would probably be the one to organize everything (like plan the trip, buy the tickets, make sure they switch trains at the right time, etc). Kristian would be anxious as hell about every little detail and Leith would tell him to calm down and enjoy the view. Then they would leave the actual conference in the middle of the day (Kristian would protest but Leith would persuade him) and go out to explore whatever city they were in... and then end up having another passionate philosophy discussion and ignore everything else as usual. And then they would miss their train home and have to stay the night in some airbnb on the outskirts and Kristian would probably find that strangely romantic.

And now I'm just imagining fanfiction of my own novel so I'm going to stop,,,

[bootstrapparadoxed]

Final decision (for now) on FrankensteinWIP - I am going to go back to the beginning, lightly edit the text I have so far, and then decide whether to show it to anyone or not. I hope this will at least persuade my brain that the book does not suck and give me motivation to keep working on it. I will be posting updates here as I will work on the edits.

Also, a person on twitter made me a new moodboard for the project and I am tempted to rewrite my WIP intro to post it with the new image,,, might even do it today, who knows. I'm in the mood for posting stuff and I have time.