pigeonwrites

[pigeonwrites]

[pigeonwrites]

writing isnt even like a hobby to me anymore its just that theres images trapped in my head and if i dont get them out fast enough they start rotting in there and stinking up the place

[pigeonwrites]

🎃 Trick or Treat 🎃

Yes, you read that right! “Trick or Treat” is making its third comeback this year 🍬🗡️ Spread this post to get the word out. I’ll send an ask to everyone who reblogs this! 🎃

The Event

Let’s celebrate Halloween together with a fun game! During this event, we’ll knock on people’s ask boxes and send them a simple question: Trick or Treat? 🦇

The recipient decides if it’s to be a trick, or a treat, as the owner of the house.

🍬 Treat — If the recipient choses treat, they share something with us as a treat. This could be a snippet, a line, OC trivia, or what have you!

👻 Trick — Turning the question around, the asker now has to share something of their own! But, seeing as it’s a trick, they may leave something under a read more, or link to something, that may catch you off guard… 😱

The event is held* through 25th-27th of October.

(Examples of) What you can share:

A snippet

A scene

OC trivia

Worldbuilding fact

Picrew / Art / Zoi / etc

A song, or even a playlist

A moodboard

Poetry

Anything you think is a treat you want to share!

If you get “Trick 👻”, pulling a trick is up to you.

❗ Tricksters ❗ Keep to etiquette. A rick roll is fun, a spooky gif, a picrew of your character dressed up for Halloween, and other fun tricks are what I hope to see, should someone chose to pull a trick.

*I will be sending asks during these dates but you are welcome to start this event any time you. Remember writeblr etiquette and send an ask back to the one who sent one to you! (Excluding me 👻)

🧡 Enjoy 🧡

[pigeonwrites]

[pigeonwrites]

deeply obsessed with this

[pigeonwrites]

For months dedicated to community editing, beta reading, cover designing, etc, any suggestions?

Would you prefer it to be during Drabble December as an alternate / additional event, or would you prefer it in January, during the fresh New Year when its hopefully a little less hectic around the winter holidays?

[pigeonwrites]

WIP Intro: Plastic Fangs

Paranormal Literary Fiction / Drafting / Playlist / Pinterest

I finished writing the original “Plastic Fangs” short story early this year. I think in the wrap-up post I wrote about it that I said Marcellus and Abel are two of my favorite characters I’ve written for as of late, and I still completely agree with that. Specifically with Marcellus. He’s just a strange little guy who loves stealing diaries, eavesdropping on conversations, and watching “talkies” (because he was a kid when silent movies were still a thing). I definitely gave him my “weird little man” syndrome. 

My beta readers (Shini-san and my husband Trystan) both loved Marcellus as a character and lamented that the story was, well, a short story. Both straight-up told me that they would love if “Plastic Fangs” were novelized.

So here we are. Novelizing “Plastic Fangs” in time for spooky season!

WHAT

Plastic Fangs follows Marcellus, a sixty-something vampire living his best life in the eighties. Despite technically being a fledgling himself, he meets the fledgling vampire Abel and takes him beneath his wing to show him the ways of vampirism. 

While simple to boil down to an elevator pitch, I think what really shines here are the characters. I already mentioned that Marcellus is a little freak, but Abel matches his freak pretty well. Abel hasn’t had enough time to develop interests as deep or varied as normal as other vampires, considering he’s in his early twenties. Despite that, he’s still a deeply strange person.

The plan is to begin with a first chapter similar to the original short story, then build on from there. Marcellus and Abel go on a gay vampire road trip from state to state as Marcellus teaches Abel how to live as a creature of the night.

I’m expecting a lot of references to other vampire media. Dracula and Interview with the Vampire, because Marcellus loves vampire media and consumes it regularly. And of course, references to some of my favorite vampire stuff: My Chemical Romance, My Babysitter’s a Vampire, my own vampire work Night Bite, What We Do in the Shadows. That sort of vibe. I love vampires, so it’ll be easy for me to make silly references to them. 

THEMES

Plastic Fangs, like most other works of vampire fiction, has a large focus on themes of otherness, immortality, and yearning. So much yearning. 

CHARACTERS

(via ElenaA's Windswept OC Maker)

Marcellus

There isn’t much to say about Marcellus that I haven’t already said. If he were human, he would be in his mid-sixties. He’s a young enough vampire that he’s still technically a fledgling. (Vampires are considered fledglings until they reach a hundred years of vampirism.) 

Marcellus is passionate about “following the rules” as he was taught. There’s a certain etiquette to vampirism and feeding that Marcellus thinks is respectful. He’s determined to teach Abel these rules.

In the first draft of the short story, Marcellus was your typical broody vampire. He had a lot of angst about his transformation. However, I found it a lot more compelling if Marcellus enjoyed vampirism and had a funky fresh time with it. So Marcellus became the eccentric little freak he is now. 

Plastic Fangs (the novel) expands on Marcellus’ short story characterization. He’s just as delighted by the modern world (waxing poetic on how much he loves disco balls), just as nosy (frequent eavesdropping on people in motel rooms, “glass on the wall” style), and just as happy to be alive as he is in the short story; he just gets more time to enjoy it.

Abel

Abel is a fledgling vampire. He’s been a vampire for less than two years. The person who turned him did it on a whim and abandoned him. Until he met Marcellus, he hadn’t established a solid relationship with another vampire. He didn’t get to learn from a vampiric master like Marcellus did. He’s making up for lost time now.

I think Abel is just as fun of a character as Marcellus is. We aren’t as close to him, since Plastic Fangs is told from Marcellus’ point of view, but we do get to see a lot of Abel’s character in it. Abel fully enjoys indulging in nightlife. He does some fun things with makeup, in eighties punk fashion, and is wearing these obnoxiously long fake nails when we first meet him. 

Abel is a lot angstier about vampirism than Marcellus. He hasn’t had a lot of time to process his vampirism, and he didn’t get to choose it like Marcellus did. It’s pretty difficult for him. Abel is also a lot closer to everything that happened to him during his human life, so he has a lot more feelings to work through. 

THEATRE TROUPE

Marcellus’s introduction to vampirism was a theatre troupe that rolled through Provincetown. He went to see them perform for the first time and was so smitten he spent all his money returning every night. They welcomed him happily. It wasn’t until he’d been with them for a couple months when the members revealed that they were vampires.

The theatre troupe are often mentioned, but we don’t get to meet them face to face until we’re about halfway through the book. The troupe is composed of a rotating cast of characters. When we meet them, the group consists of: Julius (he/him), Cleopatra (she/her), Smythe (she/her), Mary (they/them), Calliope (she/they), and Ptolemy (it/its). We get mentions of other members offhandedly.

These vampires are all considered “elders” in the context of the story, though they are nowhere near considered elders in the counsels. The only ones who would be considered actual elders in the vampiric community are Ptolemy and Cleopatra, and even then, they don’t really follow the “old ways”. 

Julius

Julius is Marcellus’ former master/mentor. He isn’t an elder vampire by any means, but he’s old enough to have experienced the barbaric “old ways” of vampirism, and stands firmly against them. Julius is overdramatic, enthusiastic, and exactly Marcellus’ type. 

He doesn’t often create spawn, having only three (Marcellus included). Julius is close with all of his spawns, calling and sending mail. He has high standards for vampirism that he’s passed onto Marcellus. 

Their relationship is really sweet, honestly. I love how much they care about each other. From Marcellus’ perspective, Julius is his first love. Julius has great respect for how much Marcellus cares about other people and that Marcellus adopted his teachings. Meeting Abel thrills Julius; he’s overjoyed that one of his spawn is willing to take in a fledgling that isn’t theirs.

EXCERPT

“You don’t seem particularly sociable.” Abel weaves around a tree, glances back playfully. In the darkness, he looks more like a vampire than Marcellus. His long nails and contact lenses aren’t noticeable once the branches above block out the cloud-darkened sky. The swish of his hair and his cape speaks more to vampirism. He doesn’t seem to have problems speaking around the ridiculous plastic fangs.

TAGLIST

Ask to be added to the taglist, my spooky friends!

[pigeonwrites]

Re-sharing this post I found on Twitter for people looking for alternatives to NaNo. I haven't tried any of these sites but they might be worth looking into.

[pigeonwrites]

Character Writing Exercises

I was going to make this a tagging game & include my taglist, but it's pretty involved and I don't want anyone to feel pressured to do it if it's a chore/they don't want to/it's not helpful to them.

Below are some exercises I find really, really useful for pulling brand new characters out of my ass. Barring that, they're fun to do for existing characters as well!

Paint a picture of a character by describing their bedroom while they’re not in it.

Whip up a new one right now, fall back on a tried and true OC. Or a canon character; I’m not the boss of you.

Shuffle a playlist on your music player of choice. For whichever song plays, describe what you “see” with your imagination.

For those of you who struggle to “see” imagined things, just tell me what’s goin’ on in that beautiful noodle of yours. Also, please tell me the song so I can listen to it while I read this part!

Describe a character by turning out their pockets.

what has it got in its pocketses?

An abandoned and unlocked phone (or wallet, if you wanna go back a coupla decades) has been discovered in a ratty little diner bathroom. What’s in there? What does it tell us about its owner?

Think photos, payment methods, notes, messages, Internet searches, receipts, etc. If cell phones and Waffle Houses aren't things in your character's world, pretend they are.

If you do all or some of these, please tag me because I would be overjoyed to read them!

[pigeonwrites]

Have been seeing some issues with this around lately, so I thought I would make a post.  If you can tell “this character is the villain because they are deformed/scarred/etc” you need to rethink your character design process. Constantly associating disabled traits with villains is a real problem in today’s society and it’s not really cool.  

Villains can be disabled! I’m not saying that you can never ever make a disabled villain, let’s be clear about that.  What I am saying is that if you make a villain and automatically decide to make them look evil by making them deformed you need to examine why that is your first impulse. 

-Mod Kate

[pigeonwrites]

Petition to add more disabled magical creatures in fantasy

Like picture a mermaid. When they have to be on land their tail turns to legs, but because their body is used to lower gravity their joints tire easily and are chronically in pain.

Also depending on how deep in the ocean they live, it’s likely they have circulation problems because their body is used to the water pressure holding everything where it needs to be and now their blood is always fucking pooling in their legs and they have to wear compression socks everywhere.

Wheelchair user mermaids. Partially/fully blind mermaids because who needs to see when there’s no light at the bottom of the ocean?

Mermaids with sensory issues who have to wear headphones all the time because sound is so much louder up here on land and they are constantly overstimulated. And also the sun is simply Too Bright™.

Mermaids who have POTS because in the water postural changes make no difference and their bodies don’t know how to stabilize with so much gravity.

I’m really fixated on the mermaids rn but PLEASE feel more than welcome to add more!!!! I wanna hear about disabled dragons

[pigeonwrites]

Hello! I want to write a horror book with characters that are not human but were a long time ago and now are something changed. What I want to do is explore themes of body horror, but what I do not want to do is be offensive or stereotypical towards physically disabled people. I have been doing some research and making sure the horror I am writing doesn’t have real world people it is affecting. (for example, characters with multiple eyes or arms or who have bare skeletons on their limbs) Do you have any tips to be non-offensive in my writing?

P.S. thank you! Your blog has been so helpful to me 💛

Hello beautiful asker!

We have a post on body horror right there! I would just do your research very thoroughly (read Sasza's part, he worded it much better than me). Characters transforming into something non-human is such a cool concept and cool to explore. And while this isn't our area, I would also research stuff like identity, race, body dysphoria, dysmorphia, Ethnicity, queerness, on their intersectionality with body horror, outside of disability and such. It's really interesting and it all intersects in such a fascinating way!

~ Mod Virus 🌸

Hi!

I think that as long as you're making sure you're not passing off symptoms of disabilities as said body horror, you're fine. If there's no connection between the two, then it won't be offensive to physically/visibly disabled people :-)

With that said, there's an incredible number of conditions that can be disabling (literally thousands). So to avoid including any of them as "body horror" or "gore" or what have you, you will need to do research.

There are disabilities that involve extra fingers (polydactyly), extra limbs (polymelia), extra eyes (diprosopus), and other things that involve what's widely considered "body horror" by the genre. Yes, they're very rare (except for polydactyly maybe) but they're still very much real; the Witches movie tried to pretend that limb difference was just some magical scary thing rather than an actually existing disability and it was horrible.

That doesn't mean you can't do it, just don't mimic it 1:1. Put the eyes on their neck, or make their fingers come out of their mouth, whatever. Things that don't happen to visibly disabled people, including the ones that die from complications of their disabilities - I think it's incredibly cruel for the horror genre to treat many of them as some sort of "evil creature inspo" because of severe congenital conditions.

That's just my view on it, I hope it makes sense. Good luck with your writing.

mod Sasza

[pigeonwrites]

so I’m looking at short story publishers (fantasy)

Tor, cream of the crop. 25 cents a word. Stories can be read for free (YES). Slowish response time at ~3 months. Prefer under 12k, absolute maximum is 17.5k. Don’t bother if it’s not highly professional quality. SFWA qualifying.

Crossed Genres. 6 cents a word. Different theme each month (this month’s is “failure”). Submissions must combine either sci-fi or fantasy with the theme. Response time 1 month. 1k-6k, no exceptions. SFWA qualifying.

Long Hidden, anthology from CG. 6 cents a word. 2k-8k, no exceptions. Must take place before 1935. Protagonist(s) must be under 18 and marginalized in their time and place. Must be sci-fi/fantasy/horror. Deadline 30 April. Response by 1 October.

Queers Destroy Science Fiction. Sci-fi only right now, author must identify as queer (gay, lesbian, bi, ace, pan, trans, genderfluid, etc, just not cishet). 7.5k max. Deadline 15 February. Responses by 1 March. You can submit one flash fiction and one short story at the same time. (My network blocks the Lightspeed site for some reason, so I can’t get all the submission details. >_>) Probably SFWA qualifying?

Women in Practical Armor. 6 cents a word. 2k-5k. Must be about 1) a female warrior who 2) is already empowered and 3) wears sensible armour. Deadline 1 April. Response within three months.

Fiction Vortex. $10 per story, with $20 and $30 for editor’s and readers’ choice stories (hoping to improve). Speculative fiction only. Imaginative but non-florid stories. 7.5k maximum, preference for 5k and under. (I kind of want to support them on general principle.)

Urban Fantasy Magazine. 6 cents a word. 8k max, under 4k preferred. Must be urban fantasy (aka, the modern world, doesn’t need to be a literal city). 

Nightmare. 6 cents a word. 1.5-7.5k, preference for under 5k. Horror and dark fantasy. Response time up to two weeks. SFWA and HWA qualifying.

Apex Magazine. 6 cents a word. 7.5k max, no exceptions. Dark sci-fi/fantasy/horror. SFWA qualifying.

Asimov’s Science Fiction. 8-10 cents a word. 20k max, 1k minimum. Sci-fi; borderline fantasy is ok, but not S&S. Prefer character focused. Response time 5 weeks; query at 3 months. SFWA qualifying, ofc.

Buzzy Mag. 10 cents a word. 10k max. Should be acceptable for anyone 15+. Response time 6-8 weeks. SFWA qualifying.

Strange Horizons. 8 cents a word. Speculative fiction. 10k max, prefers under 5k. Response time 40 days. Particularly interested in diverse perspectives, nuanced approahces to political issues, and hypertexts. SFWA qualifying. 

Fantasy and Science Fiction. 7-12 cents a word. Speculative fiction, preference for character focus, would like more science-fiction or humour. 25k maximum. Prefers Courier. Response time 15 days.

Scigentasy. 3 cents a word. .5-5k. Science-fiction and fantasy, progressive/feminist emphasis. Fantastic Stories of the Imagination. 15 cents a word. 3k maximum. Any sci-fi/fantasy, they like a literary bent. (psst, steinbecks!) They also like to see both traditional and experimental approaches. Response time two weeks. 

Beneath Ceaseless Skies. 6 cents a word. 10k maximum. Fantasy in secondary worlds only (it can be Earth, but drastically different—alternate history or whatever). Character focus, prefer styles that are lush yet clear, limited first or third person narration. Response time usually 2-4 weeks, can be 5-7 weeks. SFWA qualifying.

Clarkesworld. 10 cents a word up to 4000, 7 afterwards. 1-8k, preferred is 4k. Science-fiction and fantasy. Needs to be well-written and convenient to read on-screen. Appreciates rigour. No talking cats. Response time 2 days. SFWA qualifying.

Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show. 6 cents a word. Any length. Science-fiction and fantasy (along with fantastic horror). Good world-building and characterization. Clear straightforward prose. Response time three months. Yes, OSC is editor-in-chief. SFWA qualifying.

Interzone. Sub-pro rates if anything (but highly respected). 10k max. Short cover letter. Science-fiction and fantasy.

[pigeonwrites]

i made a character sheet. free to use as you wish, feel free to change whatever you want XD open source ass thing. spent all of ~maybe an hour on it.

Credit: the text in the insert-image box comes from this video, and the text for the top three lines (intense, complex, fruity) comes from this post. The actual image was made with the free NBOS character sheet creator, which is a sort of dated but free and solid text-layout sheet maker intended for ttrpg style character sheet creation.

[pigeonwrites]

Holaa, description wise how do you make a regular person appear absolutely terrifying to the audience besides motivation?

What they do/say - the easiest way to build character and tension is through what characters do or say. Are they being threatening in any way? Do they have a weapon that would turn an otherwise unremarkable person suddenly into a threat? Why is this character scary? Why would people think that about them? I'm going to assume by 'regular person' that they don't look absolutely terrifying or intimidating in anyway.

Reputation - build up the stakes before we ever actually see them. This could be other character's talking about them/what they've done, or in-universe myth about them or whatever. This helps build tension, both by making us wait to meet this character and because we are only getting second-hand information for a while and so we can't be 100% sure what's true or not.

Similarly, what do we know about them? If we know someone is a terrifying serial killer (e.g. Hannibal Lecter) it doesn't matter if they are also currently being quite pleasant on the screen/page and seem otherwise currently regular. We might still think twice before coming over for dinner.

Contrast - are we seeing them next to a character who should be absolutely terrifying? But that terrifying character is responding to the regular person in a way that hints perhaps not all is at it seems.

Context - are we seeing them in a setting that's just off? E.g. if the regular, smiley human is being regular and smiley in the middle of a slaughter zone, it's going to start creeping us out. If people are behaving completely normal in otherwise abnormal scenarios it can make our instincts twinge.

Perspective. Whose perspective is the description coming from? A child might find a regular old lady terrifying in a way that an adult, who has more information about what is actually going on, would not.

[pigeonwrites]

if I ask nicely will you reblog this and give the name of one of your OCs in tags and a fun fact about them 🥺

[pigeonwrites]

guy who does a cost benefit analysis that concludes killing the ceo is the most profitable opinion