scrawlingmouse

[scrawlingmouse]

i wish i could remember who made the recommendation to "make a list of all the different ways someone could feel about a topic in your fictional setting and then make each of them a character" because it is a great technique and is also extremely fun

[scrawlingmouse]

[scrawlingmouse]

Deepest Canyon is Out Now!

Sunny, a scrapper and her father’s daughter till the end, has held a secret in her teeth so long she’s worried her jaw might just snap. She’ll be alright if she can fulfill her father’s dying wish— that is, if she can make it that far.

Shui, yet another bandit out in the Wastes, has lived a kicked-dog life so long he can no longer see beyond the boot. Between an employer who only sees him as fodder and a boss that only sees him as trouble, the boot’s coming down one way or the other.

Xal, a wandering gunslinger, should be dead— but that ain’t nothing new.

It’s a fight for survival down in the derelict depths of an abandoned ‘Fore-Folk lab, between the horrid technology of the past, the pack of bandits pointing guns at Sunny and Xal, and the ghosts haunting the very environment they’re in— and if none of those do them in, the secrets held between them just might.

This is the sixth book in the 12 Months of Whump series. Each month in 2025, look out for a new standalone whumpy book!

Grab your copy here!

[scrawlingmouse]

Xal should be dead— but that ain’t nothing new.

The first chapter is available for preview! Go check it out!

[scrawlingmouse]

PREORDERS ARE LIVE! IF YOU WANNA READ ABOUT DUMB NONBINARY COWBOYS IN HORRIFIC SITUATIONS THIS IS THE BOOK FOR YOU!!

Deepest Canyon: A Starslinger Tale Cover Reveal

We are ecstatic to reveal the cover for Deepest Canyon: A Starslinger Tale by Kras Nebula aka @scrawlingmouse!

Sunny, a scrapper and her father’s daughter till the end, has held a secret in her teeth so long she’s worried her jaw might just snap. She’ll be alright if she can fulfill her father’s dying wish— that is, if she can make it that far. Shui, yet another bandit out in the Wastes, has lived a kicked-dog life so long he can no longer see beyond the boot. Between an employer who only sees him as fodder and a boss that only sees him as trouble, the boot’s coming down one way or the other. Xal, a wandering gunslinger, should be dead— but that ain’t nothing new. It’s a fight for survival down in the derelict depths of an abandoned ‘Fore-Folk lab, between the horrid technology of the past, the pack of bandits pointing guns at Sunny and Xal, and the ghosts haunting the very environment they’re in— and if none of those do them in, the secrets held between them just might. This is the sixth book in the 12 Months of Whump series. Each month in 2025, look out for a new standalone whumpy book!

Deepest Canyon is part of the Starslinger Tales, a collection of short stories and novellas taking place in a weird west post-apocalyptic setting, hundreds of years after a magical cataclysm destroyed the people who came before. These stories center around the folks who've been surviving since: farmers, mediums, doppelgangers, ghosts. Y'know, regular folk and the dinosaurs they ride, living in the shadows of the ruins the 'Fore Folks left behind.

Each story is written to be self contained, so Deepest Canyon is a great place to start!

Deepest Canyon releases on June 3, 2025. Preorder your copy here!

[scrawlingmouse]

Book Update:

*deep breath*

NEXT MONNTH NEXT MONTH NEXT MONTH NEXT MONTH NEXT MONTH NEXT MONTH NEXT MONTH NEXT MONTH!!!!!!!!

[scrawlingmouse]

Genuinely don't know what it's called but there's a particular way of violating reality that doesn't work. For example, I am willing to accept an omegaverse university AU of nearly any fandom you care to name (except, for some reason, Sherlock, because I have an inexplicable hatred for unilock). However, a lot of Star Wars university AUs specifically fail on this aspect: they make Anakin an engineering PhD student and Obi-Wan something like literature or classics, and then they make Anakin his TA or GA.

You can't do that. Absolutely not. Anakin is unqualified for that and a university would not do it in any case. A university would literally hire a junior or senior undergraduate workstudy student to do as much of that work as possible first. They would do NOTHING other than do that and make the prof do all his own grading.

Is there a name for "I will accept [wild fantasy premise] but not [ordinary wrong thing]?" Please tell me there's a name for this. Probably someone who studies lit will know? I'm a systems person I don't know from lit theory just like Anakin

[scrawlingmouse]

All your books look so good! I found the ebook bundle on your ko-fi, but I was wondering if there was any way to get a bundle with just everything you've published so far - novellas, anthologies, and all? No worries if not, I'll just have to buy them individually :)

Hello! I've updated our whumpy ebook bundle on our ko-fi so that it includes all books published by WPP from our founding in 2022 until the end of 2024. Books included in the bundle:

ABCs of Whump - Zine

Bloodbag - Novella

Cry of Fangs - Novel

Hurt and Comfort - Anthology

Once Upon a Blade - Anthology

The Whumpboratory - Anthology

For the 12 Months of Whump novellas and other novels, you can grab them from your preferred ebook retailer (though we recommend Smashwords!)

[scrawlingmouse]

Scott Pilgrim is, I think, the best example I can think of for establishing a setting's Nonsense Limit. The setting's Nonsense Limit isn't quite "How high-fantasy is this". It's mostly a question of presentation, to what degree does the audience feel that they know the rules the world operates by, such that they are primed to accept a random new element being introduced. A setting with a Nonsense Limit of 0 is, like, an everyday story. Something larger than life, but theoretically taking place in our world, like your standard spy thriller action movie has a limit of 1. Some sort of hidden world urban fantasy with wizards and stuff operating in secret has a nonsense limit around 3 or 4. A Superhero setting, presenting an alternate version of our world, is a 5 or 6. High fantasy comes in around a 7 or so, "Oh yeah, Wizards exist and they can do crazy stuff" is pretty commonly accepted. Scott Pilgrim comes in at a 10. If you read the Scott Pilgrim book, it starts off looking like a purely mundane slice of life. The first hint at the fantastical is Ramona appearing repeatedly in Scott's Dreams, and then later showing up in real life. When we finally get an explanation, it's this:

Apparently Subspace Highways are a thing? And they go through people's heads? And Ramona treats this like it's obscure, but not secret knowledge. Ramona doesn't think she's doing anything weird here. At this point, it's not clear if Scott is accepting Ramona's explanation or not, things kind of move on as mundane as ever until their Date, when Ramona takes Scott through subspace, and he doesn't act like his world was just blown open or anything, although I guess that could have been a metaphor. there's a couple other moments, but everything with Ramona could be a metaphor, or Scott not recognizing what's going on. Maybe Ramona is uniquely fantastical in this otherwise normal world. And then, this happens

Suddenly, a fantastical element (A shitty local indie band finishing their set with a song that knocks out most of the audience) is introduced unrelated to Ramona, and undeniably literal. We see the crowd knocked out by Crash and The Boys. but the story doesn't linger on the implications of that, the whole point of that sequence is to raise the Nonsense Level, such that you accept it when This happens

Matthew Patel comes flying down onto the stage, Scott, who until this point is presented as a terrible person and a loser, but otherwise is extremely ordinary, proceeds to flawlessly block and counter him before doing a 64-hit air juggle combo. Scott's friends treat this like Scott is showing off a mildly interesting party trick, like being really good at darts. The establish that Scott is the "Best Fighter in the Province", not only are street-fighter battles a thing, Scott is Very Good at it, but they're so unimportant that being the best fighter in the province doesn't make Scott NOT a loser. So when Matthew Patel shows off his magic powers and then explodes into a pile of coins, we've established "Oh, this is how silly the setting gets". It's not about establishing the RULES of the setting so much as it is about establishing a lack of rules. Scott's skill at street-fighter battles doesn't translate to any sort of social prestige. Ramona can access Subspace Highways and she uses it to do a basic delivery job. It doesn't make sense and it's clear that it's not supposed to. So later on, when Todd Ingram starts throwing around telekinesis, and the explanation we're given is "He's a Vegan" , you're already so primed by the mixture of weirdness and mundanity that rather than trying to incorporate this new knowledge into any sort of coherent setting ruleset, you just go "Ah, yeah, Vegans".

[scrawlingmouse]

oooh have you ever done a post about the ridiculous mandatory twist endings in old sci-fi and horror comics? Like when the guy at the end would be like "I saved the Earth from Martians because I am in fact a Vensuvian who has sworn to protect our sister planet!" with no build up whatsoever.

Yeah, that is a good question - why do some scifi twist endings fail?

As a teenager obsessed with Rod Serling and the Twilight Zone, I bought every single one of Rod Serling’s guides to writing. I wanted to know what he knew.

The reason that Rod Serling’s twist endings work is because they “answer the question” that the story raised in the first place. They are connected to the very clear reason to even tell the story at all. Rod’s story structures were all about starting off with a question, the way he did in his script for Planet of the Apes (yes, Rod Serling wrote the script for Planet of the Apes, which makes sense, since it feels like a Twilight Zone episode): “is mankind inherently violent and self-destructive?” The plot of Planet of the Apes argues the point back and forth, and finally, we get an answer to the question: the Planet of the Apes was earth, after we destroyed ourselves. The reason the ending has “oomph” is because it answers the question that the story asked. 

My friend and fellow Rod Serling fan Brian McDonald wrote an article about this where he explains everything beautifully. Check it out. His articles are all worth reading and he’s one of the most intelligent guys I’ve run into if you want to know how to be a better writer.

According to Rod Serling, every story has three parts: proposal, argument, and conclusion. Proposal is where you express the idea the story will go over, like, “are humans violent and self destructive?” Argument is where the characters go back and forth on this, and conclusion is where you answer the question the story raised in a definitive and clear fashion. 

The reason that a lot of twist endings like those of M. Night Shyamalan’s and a lot of the 1950s horror comics fail is that they’re just a thing that happens instead of being connected to the theme of the story. 

One of the most effective and memorable “final panels” in old scifi comics is EC Comics’ “Judgment Day,” where an astronaut from an enlightened earth visits a backward planet divided between orange and blue robots, where one group has more rights than the other. The point of the story is “is prejudice permanent, and will things ever get better?” And in the final panel, the astronaut from earth takes his helmet off and reveals he is a black man, answering the question the story raised. 

[scrawlingmouse]

[guy who keeps dying and coming back voice] Why does everyone look so upset lol

[scrawlingmouse]

do you ever not write for so long that you’re almost afraid to? like what if I’m dumb now

[scrawlingmouse]

“It is said that, during the fantasy book in the late eighties, publishers would maybe get a box containing two or three runic alphabets, four maps of the major areas covered by the sweep of the narrative, a pronunciation guide to the names of the main characters and, at the bottom of the box, the manuscript. Please… there is no need to go that far. There is a term that readers have been known to apply to fantasy that is sometimes an unquestioning echo of better work gone before, with a static society, conveniently ugly ‘bad’ races, magic that works like electricity and horses that work like cars. It’s EFP, or Extruded Fantasy Product. It can be recognized by the fact that you can’t tell it apart form all the other EFP. Do not write it, and try not to read it. Read widely outside the genre. Read about the Old West (a fantasy in itself) or Georgian London or how Nelson’s navy was victualled or the history of alchemy or clock-making or the mail coach system. Read with the mindset of a carpenter looking at trees. Apply logic in places where it wasn’t intended to exist. If assured that the Queen of the Fairies has a necklace made of broken promises, ask yourself what it looks like. If there is magic, where does it come from? Why isn’t everyone using it? What rules will you have to give it to allow some tension in your story? How does society operate? Where does the food come from? You need to know how your world works. I can’t stress that last point enough. Fantasy works best when you take it seriously (it can also become a lot funnier, but that’s another story). Taking it seriously means that there must be rules. If anything can happen, then there is no real suspense. You are allowed to make pigs fly, but you must take into account the depredations on the local bird life and the need for people in heavily over-flown areas to carry stout umbrellas at all times. Joking aside, that sort of thinking is the motor that has kept the Discworld series moving for twenty-two years.”

— “Notes from a Successful Fantasy Author: Keep It Real” (2007), Terry Pratchett. (via the-library-and-step-on-it)

[scrawlingmouse]

“Appeal to a wider audience” is corporate lingo for “strip more themes from a piece of media so it’s safer and more sanitized for investors”

[scrawlingmouse]

I always forget how much fun it is to write characters going insane with incorrectly processed grief, whether they're the villain or the protagonist. Love to watch a horrid little guy do truly reprehensible actions and go "fuck man I can't condone it but I dunno what I'd do in your situation either."

[scrawlingmouse]

anyways, the meeting point between desperation and determination is where the story is

[scrawlingmouse]

whats your writing process? i keep encountering slumps and am growing curious on what other authors are doing

mmh it's not really anything special... generally i just Have an idea, i'll write down the gist of the idea all the way through, and then just, like. do it. sometimes i'll conceptualize with art first, like, i'll draw some hot porn and go 'okay how would i make this happen in prose' and the story comes from that.

the actual Writing writing is just done while i'm in bed on my phone, usually between 6-9 am depending on how tired i am after my cat wakes me up. my goal is to hit 400 words per day but 250 is my acceptable fallback.

most of the time when i'm in a slump it's because i'm overwhelmed by how much work an idea could be, or i'm stuck between what i think people want to read, and what i want to write, and what i think i ought to write, and all that.

really you've got two major options in a slump. 1. keep writing through it and go back and edit it later. some progress is better than no progress. interrogate what's causing your slump. are you bored of the scene? why is it there if it's boring? are you losing sight of what you're trying to do? step back and examine your outline. have somebody else read it and get some feedback. talk about it. put it down and write something completely different. try to write something really short.

or 2. take a break and absorb other things instead. read books with a vibe similar to what you're trying to do. read something really bad so you're motivated to do better. watch older movies, like Older movies, back when they were taking inspiration from theater. do whatever you can to make yourself jazzed to create again.

you'll figure it out