#rivener.wip

[kaatiba]

writing share tag

tagged by @chauceryfairytales, one of my favourite authors on writeblr! tagging: @philosophika, @zmwrites and @greenbriar-j, no pressure ofc! the snippet below has hardly changed from draft 1, which is fun! but i've made wren a lot more obviously a grumpy person, which is also fun! warnings: mild depiction of blood and injury

She’s tempted to just lie on the floor with him for an hour or two, but that’s just inviting a cold, which would be the last thing she needs. So she gets the fire going and strips off her wet, muddy, bloodied clothes, toweling dry and dressing again, keeping an eye on the shifter all the while. He doesn’t stir. The soft orange glow of the lamps and fire smooths out his rough edges, softens the scruff of his beard and his roughly shaved head. 

Makes him look…vulnerable.

Which he is. It shouldn’t unsettle her, and yet it does.

Boiling some water and mixing it with cool water from her rain barrel, she infuses birch leaf in it and begins to wipe the shifter down, clinically, thoroughly, but not ungently.  Doing this reveals a wound in his back, just under his shoulder blade—the source of all the blood.

general (ask to be +/-): @muddshadow, @lockejhaven, @tracle0, @anonymousfoz

rivener: open! ask to be added

[kaatiba]

an excerpt -> draft 2.0 | wip page

[[ cw: mild violence, implied slavery/dehumanization of fantastical people ]]

The fire was a monster.   It reared over the town like a great beast, roaring and lashing out, driving its prey—people and animals and shifters—before it in a blind panic. All around her was chaos as it advanced, eating up everything in its path, climbing the trees and the walls and the buildings, so hot that it was searing everything before its flames even got a chance to burn. Smoke had choked the sky and the air, turning it thick and pitch black and poisonous.  Wren knew she should run. Wren knew she should turn and run, run toward the river and the barges there that would sail her and everyone else to safety, so long as the wind didn't whip up and drive the fire over it. She couldn't. Even as her mind screamed in animal terror, her feet wouldn't move.  Between her and the fire was a kennel. The last one, abandoned because it was at the outskirts of the town, too close to the fire, too far to be worth evacuating. She could see, from where she stood, that the door was still barred. She couldn't hear the shifters inside screaming. The fire was too loud. The fire was too close. She was wheezing for breath behind the now dry scarf tied over her mouth and nose. Her heart was pounding fast as a rabbit’s in sight of a hound. Run, she told herself.

But the echo of another voice was louder, louder even than the fire. Please, please, he’d screamed. And she couldn’t stop hearing him, because he’d never asked anything of her or anyone before. He’d never begged or pleaded. Never broken like she had tried to force him to.

Not until the fire. Not until he'd seen that his kin were going to be sacrificed to it. Collateral damage.

He'd been dragged off, still howling his pleas, clawing at the ground even as his handlers dragged at his chain, and she had been left rooted to the spot as surely as though she'd been the one chained, unable to follow. 

Run, she urged.

And she did—towards the kennel.

She had moments, mere moments, and only because the area around the kennel was bare but for crushed, shorn yellow grass. But the fire was already streaking across it, its hungry fingers seeking more fuel, dragging itself forward along the ground, greedy for more more more. It had reached the back wall by the time she made it to the door.

Wren heaved at the bar, threw it aside, and shoved the door open so hard it slammed against the wall and rebounded before she caught it. 

She could hear them screaming now. Screaming and begging. The ones who weren't collared to the walls crowded against the doors of their cells, grasping for her through the bars, and she drew in a fortifying breath, choked on smoke, and willed every door to open, every collar to break.

Nothing happened. The shifters kept crying, begging, howling, barking, wailing to be saved.

Something creaked ominously. The smoke was so thick she could hardly see through her streaming eyes. Her skin felt tight, fit to burst in the heat. Wren screamed, a single furious sound that tore her throat raw, and felt power flood from her in a shattering wave.

The shifters burst free.

Wren had only enough time to realize she was in the way before they stampeded out. Someone slammed into her; she fell, knocking her head hard on the ground. Feet and paws tripped and then ran over her, the shifters heedless in their panic. Pain bludgeoned her legs, thighs, ribs, arms, hands, and then someone kicked her head, and the world burst into black stars and ringing pain that swallowed all sound.

She knew the fire was coming, knew it was already here, knew she would die if she didn't get up, get up, get up. But she could not make her body listen to her. Could hardly even draw breath. I don't want to die, she thought, and forced her eyes open with every ounce of will she possessed. She saw fire over her, fire all around her. She was in the belly of the beast, and soon she would burn.

I don't want to die.

With a roar, the fire reached for her.

And she reached back.

*

rivener taglist (ask to be added!):

general writing taglist (ask to be +/-): @muddshadow, @lockejhaven, @tracle0, @anonymousfoz

[kaatiba]

out of context tag

i was tagged by the ever fantastic @chauceryfairytales

tagging: @satohqbanana, @philosophika, @lasbrumas, @faeassassin, @glacialfield, and you, if you're reading this - no pressure, ofc

from the 2nd draft of rivener, which is coming along wonderfully:

She could kill him so, so easily, and she’d rather cut off her own hands than hurt him, but she could.

wren my beloved :}

general taglist (ask to be +/-): @muddshadow, @lockejhaven, @tracle0, @anonymousfoz

rivener taglist: open!

[kaatiba]

share a line(s) from every wip you have

aka a tag meme i just made up bc i need to work on SOMETHING & sharing is a great way to get me rejuvenated about my wips.

rules: it can be an old line! many lines! from a draft or wip you're not really working on anymore! something you write specifically for this! be free!

tagging: every person who sees this post. no pressure of course. but spread the game! like a benevolent virus! but also gently tagging: @philosophika, @malglories, @malimaywrite, @satohqbanana, @tabswrites,

@zmwrites, @faytelumos, @innocentlymacabre

lofm - in which halah has friends and is a moody nerd :3

Fool, fool, fool, she hisses at herself, blinking past the sudden burning in her eyes. She must not do a very good job of hiding her low mood, for there’s a pause and then Aliyah changes the subject, asking after her studies into the legends and histories of Mourra and how she is finding her tutelage under the Keeper of the Great Library of Qahtan. “The woman frightens me,” Aliya confesses. “She has such a forbidding expression all the time!” “Lalla Zuleikha is really very sweet,” Sirin argues, though her eyes are bright with laughter. “You’re the queen, dear Sirin,” Aliya says. “Everyone is sweet to you.” “I wouldn’t describe her as sweet,” Halah interrupts diplomatically. “Lalla Zuleikha is very different from Grandfather, but just as passionate about studying and preserving history, great and small. She almost trusts me alone with the older books now!”

rivener - in which wren is cavalier about death

By then, the rain has slowed and somewhere behind the clouds, the moon is high. It’s late and she’s exhausted. Eyeing Ark, who is a ball of brown fluff on his perch, she mutters, “If he kills me in my sleep, no more treats for you, hm?” Ark ruffles his feathers and runs his beak through them, the picture of unconcern.

oracle - in which you should never trust mirrors

you know you should be careful, but when you pick up the largest shard it immediately cuts you…and your blood disappears into the glass.

vote for the next choice 'you' make in this wip!

glitch - in which etienne causes problems first by accident, and then on purpose

He doesn’t plan to run away. But when the shimmer has faded from his system, when he’s plucked out the implant and let it drop to the ground, when he’s idly rolling his tongue back along the pinprick left behind, when he realizes that somehow, against all odds, he’s managed it… He decides not to be found.

reaper - in which someonething is hangry

She swallowed the tulips, she swallowed the vines, she swallowed the grass, she swallowed the light.  Reaper looked on impassively as the spirit ate and ate, bloating itself, desperate for life, sapping it from everything near the rift. This was what happened when a spirit lingered. They became a hole in reality, a black hole that took all it could to maintain itself, but always needed more. 

bo & eve - a wip i keep forgetting i have

"You're a cold thing, right down to the core," it drawls in its horrible voice, and that's when Eve realizes, belatedly, that it's standing where the old man was, but there is no more old man, and there never was.  But she's not afraid. Not then. She doesn't yet know that she should be, and nothing in the world scared Eve any longer, back then. She lifts her chin—it takes every scrap of will she possesses to do so—and meets its stare head-on.  "Cold, cruel, and vain," the being continues, "You don't care about anyone but yourself, do you? You live to sharpen your claws on everybody who has the misfortune of crossing paths with you." Eve doesn't answer. She couldn't even if she wanted to, tongue glued to the roof of her mouth. "You're practically inhuman." The being smiles, revealing sharp teeth. "I should know." It cocks its head—an awful sight, like it has too many joints in its spinal cord. 

[kaatiba]

wrote a new beginning to rivener! feat. a wildfire and suffering :]

i like it a lot, considering i dashed it out on my phone while bussing home from work. i think i might be ready to start draft 2.0? am planning on expanding my little novella into something a little more full-fledged and better developed (plot, worldbuilding, and character wise), but before that can overwhelm me, i will remind myself i am diving into it again to add more fun to it for myself, first and foremost.

i love my OCs and i'm excited to write about them again! i'm going to try and ignore the insidious whisper trying to make me doubt my choices for the story and characters. now is not the time! that will be for draft 4 or 5!

[kaatiba]

rivener | adventures in redrafting

rivener is my first completed long form work, a novella i am now working on expanding. it's set in a post-apocalyptic world featuring mutants and/or magical beings that emerged from hiding, post devastation.

it's the story of wren, a woman with a ruinous power, who comes across a wolf shifter named kai, who is on the run from slavers, and their adventures together towards freedom. it's heavily inspired by the chrysalids by john wyndham, which I read in high school and which impacted me deeply.

draft 2 developed over a lot of conversations with @tracle0 who i am forever indebted to for helping me grow it <3

differences so far between the first iteration and my current, expanding draft:

↪ kai is no longer (selectively) mute! i felt uncomfortable with taking away his voice when he's an enslaved person - i don't think it's inherently a problematic writing choice, but combined with other choices i'm making in this wip, i do think it's unnecessary and problematic in this instance. he also has more pov scenes/chapters for the same reason.

↪ wren and kai know each other prior to meeting for the first time in the opening of this wip. they have a complicated and dark history. she was his handler and complicit in his enslavement. this is tricky to write but i think i can do it well....though i am nervous about the snap judgement this might get from readers lol

↪ i am...unsure if wren & kai are going to have a romantic relationship. when i first came up with this wip, years before i ever wrote it down, i envisioned then in a romantic relationship. but...they're also in an 'you're everything to me' relationship, so 'romantic' feels like an understatement and also besides the point? it doesn't encapsulate the whole of it, i feel.

but on finishing (and publishing) the first iteration of rivener, two readers both told me they were a bit surprised by the ending, where i write kai giving wren a kiss in the epilogue. they hadn't read their relationship as romantic at all (but rather as 'you're my person', which was great).

i can see now why it came out of nowhere to my readers. i'm inclined to axe the kiss and keep it 'ambiguous' because. eh. it's not necessary? i just tend to default to romance when i write...hm, 'soulmates' has connotations, but i can't think of a better word to describe what wren & kai are to each other (out of choice. i can't overstate enough that they choose and keep choosing each other).

↪ wren is more autistically coded. which is a phrase that sounds odd to me, but what i'm trying to say is that i didn't write her with that intention, but readers said she definitely came across that way. in this redraft, i'm...leaning into that? not with the intention of representation, necessarily, but because i always imagined her to be a certain way and then i think i pulled back from committing to that. so now she's more herself as i wanted her to be, which turns out to be more autistically coded. whether that comes across to readers is something i'll found out lol.

↪ the whole climax will be changing. without spoiling anything, the point of this story is healing and freedom through choices. so while my angst loving heart absolutely yearns for a big blow-out climax...it's going to be much kinder and softer. and i am very excited about it.

↪ wren and kai have a proper destination in mind for escaping from the antagonists! this was something i always planned for and then totally forgot about until i was almost done the first iteration lol.

↪ way more worldbuilding! i am very excited about it! kai and his people get gods and myths they find comfort in, the concept of a rivener and why it's so feared (besides its inherent destruction) is explored, and i am still hoping to link this wip to glitch, which takes place hundreds (if not thousands) of years before rivener.

[kaatiba]

👀 and 👋 for the ask game :)

oh hey thanks for playing!

👀 Share a quote!

❝ Still, she hesitates on the threshold of the entrance hall when she sees Ilyas standing there, head craned back as he looks at the marble engravings of the ceiling, the lattice on the windows over the doors of the Library scattering a diamond patchwork of light upon him. He doesn’t seem as huge as he usually does, made proportionate against the grandness of the hall, but that quickly vanishes as she approaches and he once again looms over her. ❞ — from LofM

👋 - Would you choose to live in the world of your book, if you could?

Rapid fire through my wips: • LofM: yes, fantastical world modeled after my beliefs? 10/10 send me there asap • Oracle: if I'm a no-name character not involved in shenanigans? yes! also fantastical magical world! would be fun probably! 8/10 because shenanigans • Rivener: hell naw. postapocalyptic fantasy hellscape. 0/10 • Minotaur wip: well, depends where in the world i am but probably my tummy issues would kill me before various members of various pantheons could accidentally run me over doing their nonsense. 0/10 • Bo & Eve: idk I'm on eve's side here, being turned into a beast would be cool. love me an urban fantasy world too. 9/10 because the fae do like to cause problems and knowing me i'd get caught up in that somehow

send me writeblr related emoji asks!

[kaatiba]

🌦️ Overcast with LOFM and Rivener!

🌦️ Overcast: Which character do you think readers would love the most? Which character do you think they would dislike?

lofm: i hope halah will be most liked! god, i hope she is anyway. but also maybe ilyas, by virtue of being Huge and Very Sweet and devoted to halah and also, he has a giant cat as a pet companion.

most disliked will probably be raoul tbh. i am biased bc i projected [redacted experience] onto him so now, even though he's a good guy, i don't like him lol. which is tough bc he's not supposed to be unlikeable outside of halah's pov!

rivener: my gut is to say kai would be most liked, but that's because i am heavily biased and adore him. i think wren? maybe? i think she's very compelling and interesting and tragic and wonderful, though now i've given her a ~problematic~ backstory (and not merely a tragic one) so i'm not sure if people will actually like her. ...so i guess, final answer: kai. most disliked, if i play my cards right, will be cormac, the antagonist. evil bastard hat man. no redeeming qualities about him whatsoever. truly just A Villain. ....maybe i should give him more depth........

[kaatiba]

for the rainy day ask game: raindrop, rainbow, cloud, umbrella—and of course sun!

as a bonus, feel free to answer for each of your main WIPs 👀

hello would you like my hand in marriage <3333333

💧 Raindrop: Describe your antagonist/villain in 5 words.

rivener - 'enslaving warlord makes disorienting fog'

🌈 Rainbow: What is your favorite character dynamic to write? Give us an example from your WIP!

i love writing about devotion and its mirror image, obsession. in lofm, this gets so messy. you have nur who's obsessed with her brother mu'adh and determined to make it everyone's problem, and then she gets obsessed with halah. you have raoul devoted to sirin who is devoted to her kid to the exclusion of almost everything and everyone else. you have halah reluctantly obsessed with raoul until she finally learns to let go of him. you have ilyas devoted to halah and raoul and the conflict that puts him in. and kicking off all of this, you have haitham absolutely obsessed with nur's mom (also named nur, which is a whole other can of worms) even though she broke his heart...and is absolutely unaware of it. nur's mom is similarly obsessed with haitham, and makes it their daughter's problem, and then dies obsessed with him.

☁️ Cloud: Describe your MC’s arc during the main story. Is it positive or negative?

sage (the 'you' pov in oracle) is a disaster. he's got a negative character arc for sure, and i think it's the first time? i've written an MC with a negative arc??? anyway i'm excited to unravel him into his worst self <3 he will not get better <3

☂️ Umbrella: Share ten lines that best represent your MC (can be dialogue or prose).

this is from a very old draft of lofm and such, doesn't quite fit anymore. it does, however, represent raoul completely:

It would be a lie to say he didn’t think of her. He did—he can't escape the fact that he has a wife, much as he wishes he could. And he is, in the end, a strategist. He knows what loose ends he leaves behind him when he sneaks into the prison, when he kills the guard and steals his key, when he smuggles Sirin out of her cell.  “We must go back,” Sirin says, once she’s finished hugging him, once they've left the prison for the warren of the capital’s streets. “I will not leave my son—" “Ilyas and Nilam have him,” Raoul says, soothing and steady, though his nerves sing with flee, flee, flee. “We'll meet them outside the gates.” “And Halah?”   Raoul looks around the corner of an alley under the guise of checking if the way is clear, but really to give himself time to answer. Of course she’d ask after Halah. Sirin has a heart fit to hold the whole world, and she and Halah are friends. Of course she would ask. “There was no time—I—she doesn’t know. It’s safer for her that way.”

Sirin stops, jerks herself free of his grip. “Raoul,” she says, aghast, as he knew she would be. “You can’t leave her. It doesn’t matter if she doesn’t know, they’ll suspect she's in league with you—she’s your wife. How could you leave her?”

☀️ Sun: Show off your work! What’s your favorite thing you have written recently?

i have this thing about the inherent vulnerability and intimacy of seeing someone barefoot, which i know makes it sound like i have a foot fetish lmao but ah well. from rivener:

Her hair is longer, curling around her chin and ears instead of hacked close to her skull. She’s softer around the face, like she’s gained weight she’d never had before, though he remembers her eating well. Her feet are bare. It’s a small and pointless detail that shouldn’t throw him as much as it does, but there’s something—something so strange about it. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen her barefoot before.  She’s barefoot. She uncollared him. She’s alive.

[kaatiba]

Ok had a lil breakdown about LofM, slept, and now....I'm either obstinate as hell or persevering, but. Somehow I'll make it work. I think I drifted away from what I'd reimagined it to be in 2020 and fell into the prev decade plotting traps that, in 2020, I knew I couldn't make work. So. Back to the drawing board. :[

(Shout-out to @malimaywrite for sending kind words last night, I went to sleep before I could reply but I saw your message ❤️)

I don't think I'll be writing content for it this month, but I have other wips I can focus on. Namely, Rivener, which I wanted to self-publish in 2024 anyway.

[kaatiba]

Rivener is a dystopian fantasy feat. a former commando, a wolf-shifter, and the militia hunting them both.

I have no memory of making this, but since I'm working on a 2nd draft of Rivener, I thought it was timely to share (reshare?) this!

taglist (ask to be +/-): @muddshadow, @lockejhaven, @tracle0, @anonymousfoz, @hyba

[kaatiba]

last line tag

tagged by the incredible wordsmith @treesandwords, thank you!

lately i've been writing the 2nd draft of Rivener, my dystopian fantasy feat. a former commando, a wolf-shifter, and the militia hunting them both. here's the most recent line(s) of the new version!

There's a massive ferry because this is a trading town; some caravans come through wanting to cross the lake rather than take the weeks-long trek around it. Wren isn’t interested in it as an option for herself though—if it was just herself, she’d take the hike rather than be trapped on a ferry for days with so many people. But it’s not just her. Or wasn’t before this morning, at least. Now the ferry’s a risk because of all those eyes, all those memories, all those people Cormac could interrogate…

tagging (no pressure! | ask to be +/- to the taglist): @muddshadow, @lockejhaven, @tracle0, @anonymousfoz, @hyba

[kaatiba]

heads up seven up tag

i was tagged ages ago by @chauceryfairytales! this is from Rivener, which i'm rewriting and expanding, from a brand new pov chapter, and i am obsessed with it. this is not seven lines, but that's ok, because it's brilliant if i do say so myself. (i love this wip so much and i adore my characters, so i will be gushing about it unapologetically)

“You,” he manages, “You…took it off me?”

She nods.

“Why?”

Her face—usually an unreadable mask—twists, a muscle jumping in her jaw as she clenches it, lids flickering like she wants to look away from him but won’t let herself. Her scent, which he’d always relied on to understand her, to know her, is layered with notes of shame and anger. The anger is familiar. The shame is…new.

Slowly, almost reluctantly, she says, “Was hurting you.”

Kai stares at her, trying to understand and feeling more bewildered than ever. It hurt him, so she took it off. As if it’s that simple. As if she hasn’t done something so deeply against everything he thought she was. Everything he thought she believed, of him and herself both.

But then, she’s supposed to be dead. Maybe who he thought she was is gone. Maybe the fire killed it. Killed her. Maybe this new Wren, crouched in front of him and staring back, is a Wren that would uncollar him, and for no other reason than that it was hurting him.

tagging without pressure or expectation: @tracle0, @treesandwords, @privatemythologies, @daisywords, and you, dear reader, if you'd like to play!

[kaatiba]

Alone, failure and hide for the OC(s) of your choice?

~ @tabswrites

Thanks for asking! I'll answer these for Wren of Rivener!

alone: How does your OC deal with loneliness? Have they ever been completely alone before? How do they act when there's no one around to see them?

Wren is interesting to me, as a chronically lonely person (lol), in that she's not lonely and never has been. She misses people, sure, but that's because they're dead. But all other people are and have always been a threat and a risk to her for various spoilery reasons, and when she fakes her death and disappears into the woods, it's with huge relief. To be fair, she's not entirely alone. She has Ark, a melanistic raven she's befriended, who keeps her company. When there's no one around to see her, she is far more relaxed and easy-going.

failure: What's your OC's greatest failure? Have they been able to move past it? Does anyone else know about it?

I am really struggling with this question. Wren has failed to do a lot, but everything she failed to do was. Understandable. And she's so pragmatic that even when she feels guilty, she doesn't really think of it as a failure, but more of a circumstance she did her best with at the time. For someone who's main motivation most of her life has been survival, she can't consider anything too much of a failure when she's, you know, still alive. Hm, ok, time to create added depth to her backstory. Her greatest failure was, to her twelve-year-old mind, leaving her brother to look for food for them both, because by the time she came back, he'd overdosed on glimmer and she was too late to resuscitate him. She knows, as an adult, that it was only a matter of time before her brother OD'd and that she was never responsible, or capable, of keeping him alive, but as a kid she'd sworn to herself to keep what was left of her family safe, and she'd failed.

Nobody knows about how she feels about this. All Cormac (evil father figure) knows is that her brother had recently died when he found her.

hide: What does your OC hide? Why do they hide it?

Oooh fun spoiler territory! For those who were around when I was sharing Rivener's first draft on Wattpad, a couple years ago, you already know but: Wren is hiding a power she has that she is terrified of.

Wren is also hiding her fondness for Kai. Not very successfully lol. She hides it because it feels safer that way. No one can hurt her for her feelings, you know?

send me not-so-nice OC asks!

[kaatiba]

feeling down, didn't wanna write, but wanted to do something....and remembered I have a complete draft I can rework! Hello, Rivener, I missed you

[kaatiba]

#4 and 6 for the ask game?

~ @tabswrites

Hi, thanks for asking!

Princess: Urban fantasy or high fantasy?

Oooh I love writing both to be honest! My wip Legends of Mourra is high fantasy, while Oracle is portal-into-high-fantasy! Glitch and reVamped Vignettes are urban fantasy (though the former is also sci-fi), and my initial conceptions of Reaper and Bo & Eve was urban fantasy too! ....Looking at this list, it seems I don't write much high fantasy after all lol. It used to be all I wrote, back in the day.

Ship: How many pages of planning documents do you have, if any?

Oof. LofM is a wip I've been working on for more than a decade, and I've recently found several incomplete drafts of it. I have....16 documents of various lengths of these incomplete drafts, along with random ideas, disconnected scenes, and various plans. I have 7 planning documents for Rivener too, also of various lengths!

These are the only two wips that have like, proper planning for them!

...Sorry, I know I'm not answering the actual question, but I'm too lazy to open them all and do the maths lol.

send me fantasy writer asks!