#GreenerWIP

[thescreamingtwenties]

First line tag!

I was tagged by @notwritinganyflufftoday! This paragraph won’t be my starting point for Greener indefinitely, I have something of a “presidential announcement” planned to follow before it, but for the time being this is the stand in set of first lines.

I remember the way that the leaves smelled after a heavy rain, the way they fell around me, constructing a crown of mother nature's bounty around my head. I remember how I layed there as the sun turned this perfect pink just on the edge of the horizon, how its warmth was so strong I swear it still lingers on my skin today. I remember laying there in my alcove made just for me as the stars blinked into view on the horizon just barely out of reach. They were so close to being born, fighting against the warmth of the sun for a chance at existence, and they were slowly winning the battle. I remember how beautiful it was, and I absolutely can't wait to forget it.

This was fun, thanks for tagging me! I tag @rho-nin @andiwriteunderthemoon @rainydaydarling @lord-fallen! I’d love to see them if y’all can/want to!

Also I guess a taglist because it’s writing stuff- @ettawritesnstudies @henrike-does-writing-sometimes

[thescreamingtwenties]

So I’ll need all the star facts, puns, and metaphors I can get my grubby little hands on for my book, so if anyone knows stuff about stars please feel free to rant about it in the comments! I’d love to hear it all! 😊

[thescreamingtwenties]

Happy STS! Tell me about a childhood story between Braelyn and her brother? (this is sybil-writes btw :) )

Ah, happy STS!

So, growing up in a society where twins are incredibly rare, Braelyn and Malyn were constantly the center of attention wherever they went and were almost always forced to be together. This lead to a very close relationship between the two them, but they’re also sick of the other to the point it’s a palpable annoyance. Therefore, most of their childhood was spent switching between “dude I’d help you hide a body if you ever needed me to” to “if you ever breathe in my direction again I will disembowel you” at the drop of a hat.

For a specific story, Braelyn can’t dance to save her life. Because she’s a lady of higher status, and is specially known for being graceful and agile in her day to day life the fact that she dances like she’s having a seizure was a problem™️ for her. Malyn, surprisingly, dances really well. So, when they were younger Malyn used to have Braelyn stand on his toes and he would waltz the two of them around their living room as he hummed out a melody. She was never able to absorb enough from their lessons to become a passable dancer, but it’s one of their favorite childhood memories. Even now if Braelyn is inconsolably sad he will pick her up and they’ll dance away the world.

[thescreamingtwenties]

Ah guys guys guys guys guys LOOK AT THIS! The lovely @abalonetea made such a stunning piece of Adelaide and Tamara and I’m absolutely smitten! So yeah, if I’m ever missing don’t worry I’m just too busy fawning over this work of art to do much of anything else. But honestly who could blame me when they just look so absolutely adorable?

[thescreamingtwenties]

So ~hypothetically~ I’ve been slowly chipping away at my WIP, Greener, for about 5 years now. My best friend has her own tumblr where she freaks out with other people about her own book (@ettawritesnstudies) and I’ve loved getting to watch that, so here I am trying to do something similar! My book is a hot mess with characters that are an even hotter mess but I hope people can enjoy the chaos with me.

So, to give a general plot overview: My book takes place after WW3 which saw the public murder all the world leaders because everyone was horribly corrupt and essentially bringing about our own capitalist doomsday. Obviously without any form of government chaos followed, anarchy bloomed and life generally sucks.

One society went “hell no” to anarchy, decided to pretend the war never happened, and go about life as normal. However, the leaders are terrified of the people rebelling, so corruption follows in an attempt to stop this. The government tries to control every aspect of the people’s lives, selecting who is allowed into higher education, who you are to marry, what you do with your life, what you eat, how you live, etc. Arguably, the most oppressive act is that the public (starting from 18 and older) must take medication that suppresses any and all strong personality traits and feelings. They aren’t gone completely, but it keeps people from feeling more than a standard deviation from a general contented happy, so that they are easily controlled and less likely to rebel like the citizens of the last war did.

My book follows a girl named Adelaide who was born to a group unaffiliated with the Society, but due to her own physical and mental health problems fell in love with their easy way of life and decided to sneak in. She is shoehorned in with the rest of the elite golden children and has to learn for herself if the grass is really greener on the other side.

[thescreamingtwenties]

Happy STS in return! Are there any of your ocs that you ship? Ones that aren’t together but you would love to see together? Could it become cannon someday?

Happy STS! Oh, that’s such a lovely question, even if you might regret opening Pandora’s box by asking it.

For the most part the couples I want to be together end up in a relationship at least briefly. The issue however, is that characters I want to see together often no longer work for one reason or another as they both grow and develop through the story. And so with a heavy heart I often have to pick between a relationship I’d like to see, and staying realistic and letting characters change and evolve. I absolutely wish I could keep certain characters together, or let certain characters get together, because I know that in a perfect world they would be happy and wonderful together. But the world they are in definitely isn’t perfect, and so often the characters relationships, both romantic and platonic, don’t make it out unaltered.

[thescreamingtwenties]

Storyteller Saturday! If your characters were to win an award for something, what would that award be for? Have any of them won awards before?

Happy STS! And Oooooo, awards, I like that a lot!

So my gaggle of distaters have all been hand picked by the government for higher education, so they are all intimately familiar with the standard prestigious academic awards that schools tend to dole out. Years of “perfect attancdence” and “national honors society president” and “valedictorian” awards have kind of numbed them to the newsness of these things.

However, they also have their own internal system of awards. It started off when Braelyn, thoroughly upset with her brother and filled to the brim with passive aggressive energy™️, stated giving him awards like the “hasn’t done the dishes in over 2 months” award or the “has the most garbage in his room” award. This devolved into all of the group giving each other custom made awards, normally written on paper or occasionally someone will hand out *shiny* golden star stickers, to each other all the time. Kade fell down a flight of stairs at school and his cast was signed the “finally learned he can’t fly award.” Tamara regularly makes them art collages and calls them the “being the best friend in the whole world” award. All in all they cherish the trinkets they get from each other, whether they are genuinely sweet or sarcastic as heck, and they mean more to them then any publicly recognized award.

This was a lot of fun, thank you!

[thescreamingtwenties]

Alright swiftly moving on from Theele, everyone here’s Kade! His name is actually Kadence, but you’ll only ever make the mistake of calling him that once because the glare he throws at you is bone chilling. He’s the second third of the danger duo (again the math checks out they promise) and he is an absolute chaotic child. To boil him down to a single sentence Kade is a self contained vine compilation- they honestly radiate the same energy. He is the self confident, overdramatic, theater child of the group. If Kade isn’t found in the middle of some sort of poorly thought out plan that’s turned into a disaster then that means he’s too busy running from the consequences of a previous one to be involved in high jinx at the moment. He is an absolutely lanky bean, with long arms and legs he doesn’t always *quite* know what to do with at all times. Kade is the palest child you’ll ever meet, giving him a constant pink glow from the wrath of the sun, and he has a birthmark on his face sort of in the shape of a heart that will never live it down, and one blue and one brown eye because genetics made him a beaut. Kade is a literal human magnet with an adoration for small children, so when he was chosen to be a teacher he didn’t complain in the slightest. Oh, and he’s an absolute bi bean

Here’s a Spotify list for Kade by the way, warning it’s definitely catered towards his party side. https://open.spotify.com/user/kelsomlk/playlist/6lGSw5FuVL4lUOQzMvxbkg?si=BQ2IXylRRnufBp_mBY77mQ

Speaking of vine compilations by the way, over a year ago I did a vine compilations for my Greener characters and now I’m realizing some of those would be great to add to character intros to help explain the vibe™️ of a character! So at the bottom there’s a Kade™️ vine. (Bonus the scared dog on the couch is Tamara)

Taglist: @ettawritesnstudies

[thescreamingtwenties]

Hello and Happy STS! What smells do your OCs associate with the idea of "home"?

Hi, happy STS! I like this question a lot! I probably won’t go through all of them, there’s a decently large cast, but here are some of the highlights-

Adelaide grew up in the wilds, and so for her no matter how hard she tries to forget it, the whiff on leaves after a dense rain or wildflowers dying in the last rays on an autumn sun will not only remind her of home but it send a sharp pang of loneliness to her stomach.

For Varion it’s the smell of freshly baked bread and his mother’s herbal ointments. He actually carries a tube of the stuff with him to spread on his hands when he gets really nervous so he can smell it and feel safe and protected.

Neither Braelyn nor Malyn would ever admit it but the smell of the other-Braelyns ever present vanilla perfume scent that always lightly peremates the air, and Malyns Cocconut shampoo and somehow a smell of bleach (he’s an absolute mess)- will calm the other down. They spend so much time together that it’s not exactly the smell that reminds them of home though, it’s when they can’t smell it anymore that they suddenly feel alone.

Theele’s would be the medicinal smell of a hospital. She doesn’t love it, and is constantly complaining about how the chemically smell makes her head hurt, but she loves what she does there. When she smells the saline and everything else she gets in a zone where she’s ready to *work* and nothing else matters to her. Her more relaxed home though is definitely with her gardens, so the smell of earth and freshly cut grass will calm her like nothing else will.

[thescreamingtwenties]

Happy STS! Do any of your OCs have pets? (i'm chauceryfairytales!)

Hi, happy STS!

So in the community they grew up in pets aren’t allowed, so sadly from the get go the concept of pets is foreign to everyone but Adelaide who is from the wilds. However, *spoiler* they do eventually take a romp in the outside world and Theele and Tamara try to love and adopt everything™️™️. Bear? “Perfect, he’s a cuddle bug!” Deer? “Wow what a wonderful horse I love him so much!” Absolutely feral raccoon? “Come here you perfect baby I would die for you!” They have no idea that pets are even a standard thing they just love everything around them. It gets so bad that Adelaide makes them empty their pockets after coming back to camp to avoid another... snake incident.

[thescreamingtwenties]

Happy STS! How has your writing process over the years changed as your main work grew? I mean... when you write, how has the process to make the Brain Juice Go changed?

Happy STS!

So this might sound really silly and counterintuitive, but I’ve learned that I talk better than I write. Which, at least for me, means that if I sit down to right every sentence is a battle, and I have to sit through 2-3 rewrites just to get it to a passable state. However, if I’m talking rather than typing the words come significantly more naturally, and the whole process of drafting is greatly expedited. So now, after years of denial, what I do is I’ll sit down to write a scene, free ball words out loud into my recording phone, and then I’ll play them back and type them out. This leaves me with a semi solid baseline that allows me to actually start editing rather than starting at a blank page for days because I simply didn’t know how to start.

I’m not sure that makes as much sense out loud as it does in my head, but that’s definitely the process I use for writing now, or at least for getting the ball rolling.

[thescreamingtwenties]

happy sts!! which character’s the most artistically talented?

Happy STS!

I’ve honestly never considered the artists capabilities of my characters. The world they live in really ramps up the emphasis on academics and in comparison the arts are really left by the wayside.

Out of all of them Theele would have the best objective skill in terms of drawing and painting, but she doesn’t have the same viceral passion for it as Tamara who may not be that great but makes up for it with constant sketches and doodles anywhere she can put them- paper, clothing, skin, she’s not picky. Kade is the singer of the group, and he and Malyn are always humming away some enterance music when they walk into a room to help ���set the scene.” And Adelaide is the writer. She’s meticulous in what she says and how she wants to express things, but her perfectionism often stops her from physically getting words onto the page.

This was a lot of fun to think about to write! Thank you! 😊

[thescreamingtwenties]

Alright and because you can’t talk about one twin without the other inexplicably working it’s way into the conversation, guys this is Braelyn!

The calmer and more socially acceptable of the two, Braelyn is the extroverted cinnamon roll looking sibling who could and would actually kill you. Standing in at a *very* menacing 5 feet tall, Braelyn is well known for her meticulously perfect looks, from her hair all the way down to her shoes- but all that means is that she’s going to look completely unfazed and poised right after kicking your ass. She’s objectively beautiful, and nothing pisses her off more because she doesn’t get the respect she feels she deserves and is constantly being overlooked and under credited because she’s just a “pretty girl”. Falling in love with martial arts and the idea of being able to effortlessly kick Malyns butt from a young age shes actually quite a force to be reckoned with and is a leader in the society’s junior enforcement squad— see she’s the girl you’re taken to if they want you to *talk*. Her personality often doesn’t match her looks, and while she looks like an absolutely poised lady of high society she’s loud, **sarcastic like there’s no tomorrow**, and so passive aggressive it actually flips the scale and comes off as actual aggression at points. When she’s comfortable her sarcasm and sass feels less like an attack and more like a comfortable conversational balm to people she’s around. In an attempt to prove she’s not a fair maiden waiting to be protected she’s often buried most of the traditionally feminine traits far under the surface and the only people to see them are the people closest to her on rare occasions. She’s got a love for engineering and creating things, and so being chosen for Mechanical engineering makes her heart swell more than she’s willing to admit. She loves her brother even if she won’t always admit it, and hell hath seen no fury like Braelyn when she’s been informed that he’s been hurt in any way. She would bring the world to its knees for him or anyone else she loves.

Here’s a Spotify playlist for Braelyn, and underneath her character portrait is a very Braelyn-esc vine. https://open.spotify.com/user/kelsomlk/playlist/1EYzbpCUlAemjSOkL5FH1s?si=7FjvnrP0TpmtdR7tsyDEbw

Taglist: @ettawritesnstudies

[thescreamingtwenties]

Ok, so in an attempt to go plow through character introductions here’s a condensed explanation of Theele! She’s one third of the danger duo, (don’t think too hard about it, they sure didn’t) and an absolute mess at all times. She’s really smart, but with a one track mind that often leads to her being completely and utterly oblivious to everyone and everything when she gets to work. This causes the odd scenario is which she essentially drops off the end of the earth for her friends, forget to wear shoes in the dead of winter, won’t sleep for 4 days at a time somehow managing to convince herself that her sleep deprived spasms have just always been there, exc. She is an insomniac of large proportions who *can not* and **will not** do anything without a cup of coffee. She was selected to be a doctor by the society, giving her better access to plants, medicinal and otherwise, that most people and *boy* does that make the little flower princess inside of her happier than anything else in the world. While normally not the instigator of the shenanigans she gets up too, she’s definitely a large contributor to why they get in as much trouble as they do, she’s essentially the gasoline you’d pour on a fire. Theele is a Hawaiian goddess of soaking up sun with large brown eyes, a perpetual smirk, and wavy hair that’s always just a bit too frizzy. Theele is a nature lover, from her mild (massive) obsession with plants to her love of animals and the world around her! She’s the sole vegan of the group, and also the sole self assigned single!

If anyone wants a Spotify playlist for Theele it’s right here by the way! https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2pPqwZCbgAqH2K1vFK3EvN?si=e24-lcAKT3ujQN2dtRVU_Q

At the bottom you’ll find a Theele™️-esc vine which gives off a similar energy to her!

Taglist: @ettawritesnstudies

[thescreamingtwenties]

I’m in a viney mood, so please enjoy Braelyn being minorly inconvenienced and becoming her final form- a stabby child, and Varion being a very concerned boyfriend/mom friend in return.

[thescreamingtwenties]

Merry STS ✨ here’s a fun oc focused question: what is something your Mc (or mc’s) wants to take to grave? Something about them they just don’t want anything to know or ask about

Happy STS! That’s such a deep question, and it’s perfect for my children who are all hiding various secrets.

So my book takes place inside of a dystopian society, but unlike the rest of the cast the main character, Adelaide, actually was born outside of this community. She snuck away from her own village in the wilds when she was 8 to join the society. Adelaide knew she was slowly dying of a disease that would cause her to die young if she stayed where she was, and she also knew that the community had medicine that would keep her alive, so she ran to save her life and keep the burden of a sick child off of her parents. Since adjusting to her meds and the new life around her she’s refused to talk about where she grew up or why she left to begin with. It’s an easy enough topic to avoid talking about, until a set of distaters lead the rest of her friend group to want to escape into the unregulated wilds where she was born, and she can’t-won’t tell them that to leave this suffocating place they call home would be a death sentence for her.