#wip: shaeva

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i wanna...... write a story about a world that used to brim with magic, but now it's just gone. healers can still heal you, just not with their bare hands. people still know what you're thinking without reading your mind. there's... a faint trace of the magic there once was, when your loved one dances through the hall smiling at you, when people gather to make music at the market, when poets recite their words to the public. but they're not magical. the magic that used to bind the living together is fading with every day.

until the people bring it back

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i started it in 2020 but i'm so excited about ashen embers, i might be able to finish it this year!! it's my favourite comfort wip. i also finally outlined the plot of shaeva properly, so now i'm ready to write more than the first few chapters without a clue where i'm headed kdjdkdkd

okay, writers!! tell me the thing you're most excited about writing in 2021! 🤓

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Find the Word Tag

thank you for tagging me!! @writingbyjillian

my words were: scream, soul, bright and cry. I took these excerpts from shaeva

scream

The cold pierced into my skin with every step like needles of ice, and the snow under my seemingly bare feet resembled a blanket of razor-sharp crystals enfolding me, robbing me of my senses. The winter numbed me, bit me with whetted teeth at the same time, until every cell of my body screamed in agony.

soul

These spirits, their cherry blossom forests, and the golden rivers were believed to be the only sources of magic in Shaéva. But Ymera was a lie. A fabrication of ancient legends. She was no goddess. If she truly did not exist, I had nothing to fear from the lost souls of these woods.

bright (I don’t have this one oops)

cry

Mavlen’s timorous countenance dropped at once. She raised her chin in defiance while the silk pouch disappeared behind her back, and I didn’t need to see her face to perceive the fire raging in her eyes. “For whom, if not for me?” she asked. “For you, for the spirits? For Ymera? Go on, cry for her. Tell her a foul, depraved girl stole the sacred cherries you guard all day long, or take my soul as retribution for my empty stomach.”

I’m tagging @thewritingace @zmlorenz @pens-swords-stuff @rhikasa, and anyone else who’d like to do it. your words are fire, crack, tingle and calm!!

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Last Line Tag

thank you for the tag!! @writingamongthecoloredroses

A chuckle resonated in my head like a strange echo, and the light of the stellar trio resembled the swell of an ocean in time to their words. That is the price you had to pay. But rest assured, Salaya: the answer will present itself.

I snorted. Such an ominous prophecy was hardly any help at all. “Well, great. Thank you very much.”

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i added a poem to the beginning of shaeva just because i can and it’s made me so happy

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oh dear i just realised talan is gonna have to officially meet aish some day and hear him being introduced as his twin's "boyfriend mentor friend" and while lay has forgotten she ever knew him, talan knows very well who aish is and oh boy........ that scene just got a lot more interesting

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i've decided to make talan a pov character because the story only works when told from at least two perspectives, but that means i have to create an entirely new arc for him and i am Struggling

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i've FINALLY found a morally grey character from whose pov i can actually write (it's talan), but his arc is so hard to figure out already and with morality coming into play it's just. he's got to walk on the edge of treason and heroism and never quite tip over until the very end and it's not like i'm any good at plotting the way it is either so this is a Challenge

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i love the way lay meets siva in the second chapter of shaeva. he's an assassin pretending to be some independent traveller, and he's from a country in the northwest with like major cultural differences, so every weird thing he does (which could be explained by the fact he's an ASSASSIN) she just nods along with, thinking to herself, "see he's from the west, the people there are just Like That" and idk i'm laughing way too much about this

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aruvan leaking confidential government information to the public that will set off a revolution is the power move of the century

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salaya has a gay twin brother called talan and i may or may not have just given him a nice little friends to lovers subplot...... with aruvan that precious angel

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salaya and aish are the main characters of my new wip and they are precious beans i'm telling you....... poc, disabled, lgbtq+ and Very Precious

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at the beginning i was a bit unsure, but i've been doing a whole lot of research and even more thinking and i'm now fairly certain that shaeva is gonna be a great book .... once i actually write it skdjksd

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Happy STS from writingamongthecoloredroses! What's the age order of your main cast?

thanks for the ask!! sorry for only gettig to it now dijdkd @writingamongthecoloredroses

for mahlyn (i should get used to calling it of fire and fox but i cannot) it's definitely tavena, nath, raeven, marea (tavena being the oldest) although age is a constant matter of debate and they don't know for sure. but i know. this is true

in ashen embers, miyo is the oldest (even among his immortal friends actually) followed by ralph, wyatt, adrian, kira, and lastly wren, although she's pretending to be between miyo and ralph

in shaeva it's sam, frevlali, aruvan, ashier, salaya, and talan (salaya's twin)

not all of these are actually part of the main cast but like, they're important and i like them so let's include minor characters too, for charity

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as much as i love talan and aruvan, a few sentences into the first chapter i’ve already decided to focus all my love and attention on talan’s horse, nijas, who almost swung tall muscular soldier talan through the air and to the ground in front of his crush just to get back at him

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For the ask meme: 37 and 44!

thank you for the ask!!

37. first sentence of your current wip

this is the first sentence of shaeva (translated from the original german)

I didn't know where to go.

highly original, right? it's followed by

A fire raged in my lungs as I gasped for air; there had to be a direction to take, a way out. How to find it, I didn't know.

44. how much research do you do?

probably not as much as others? i mean i do a lot of research but most of it isn't for my wips, it's just bc i get distracted easily. i had to do a lot of research for shaeva though, because there are so many worldbuilding elements i was unfamiliar with and wanted to get right. i researched all about matriarchy, revolutions, life in northern winters and stuff, just to know roughly what i was talking about and to categorise the politics in this wip