theredscreech

[theredscreech]

Olympic Archery isn’t the best style of archery! (Because the “best” style is a fluid thing and depends on what you enjoy and/or need)

Tutorials and more can be found here (it’s a link to my Patreon)

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Some improvised weapons are better than nothing. Others were so good that they became military issue across Europe for several centuries!

Anyway, here’s Patreon

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How did you go about getting your book published? Did you research the best place and they got that rolling? P.s I hope you and the team are doing well and that you know that your awesome!

I was very much in Passenger Princess mode for the publishing process! My amazing agent assembled a pitch doc containing the first chapter and some bonus material I provided, and then contacted several publishers to see if they wanted to give it a shot. In the second round of pitches, Andrews McMeel said they were interested and we did a little contract negotiation before agreeing! AMM has published several comics, including the Calvin and Hobbes collections, so I knew they were very good for what this book needed to be. Then they did Publishing Alchemy on the comic to get it shipshape, checked in with me every month or two to confirm or deny their edits and get them extra assets like the cover and back cover copy, and then voila! Book.

What I gathered from the process is you don't/can't set your sights on a single publisher and target them exclusively. You and the publisher are both working with several different options trying to find the best fit. It felt almost similar to the college app process - cast a wide net and don't take it personally, rejection isn't a metric of quality because it's tied in with so many completely unrelated factors.

The process of getting an agent is probably the most arcane bit of the situation that an aspiring author might not know how to do, so I can share the cliff's notes of how that happened and worked - and it DID start off a little unusually, since she initially reached out to us (the channel) to see if we had any interest in doing some sort of youtube-content-related book, but when we incidentally mentioned the comic she said "the what?" and then came back 24 hours later saying "ok forget that other stuff, I want to represent this."

She's paid by her agency and receives a cut of the published book's profits, so she's not working for free but I'm also not the one directly paying her, and if the book wasn't successfully pitched and published I wouldn't owe her anything, and as I understand it this is typical for the industry.

So if you want to get traditionally published, it seems like the best first step is to pitch it to agents and find one who likes your story enough to represent it. My agent is a big fan of manga and various webcomics so she really knew what I was going for - little anecdote, since I've been avoiding reviews she shared a couple highlights with me and one of the things she noted was "the parts of this review that are negative are complaining about pacing and storytelling conventions that are extremely typical for comics and webcomics so clearly they're just not familiar with the genre you're writing for" and that was extremely validating. A good agent will be a fan of what you're going for!

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Actually I keep complaining about operational worldbuilding, so here are some recommendations for it:

Ask yourself "what is this organization accomplishing" and "would this organization, as written, accomplish that thing?" For example, magic academies/schools/universities for adults: what are they training their students for? Is it more like a vocational school or a university? Are students being trained for specific jobs? Is it a training for government? Is it primarily a place to foist the idle rich off to to get them out of the way? For a military training, is the goal primarily training or a weeding out process? Is it basic training or specialized training? If someone fails out of the training, do they end up in the regular forces or do they fail out of the military entirely?

Ask yourself "how did this practice come to be?" For example, a trial or competition system: why was this system established? Do the requirements for the trial/competition match what the end result is (e.g., fighting competition to win a fighting position)? If not (e.g., scavenger heart to become the consort), why is that the competition that is used? Do the potential outcomes of the trial (e.g., death) merit the rewards for it?

Ask yourself "if this system is horrible, why do people put up with it?" For example, a school or organization where people are allowed to attack and/or kill each other: why is it allowed to continue? Why do people send their children or voluntarily join it? If it is mandatory, do people fight against it, and if not, why not?

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The Statues That Do Not Weather

For Sas, another story about helping.

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There is a statue on the cliffs overlooking the harbour, of a man shading his eyes with one hand and looking out over the sea.

They say that when invaders came, a man went up to the cliffs, and prayed to the gods. He offered them his own life to save his people. The gods accepted his sacrifice, and a great fire burned across the water, sinking all the ships. The man became stone, and ever since then he has stood on the cliffs, looking out at ships that sank long ago.

There is a statue that stands in the center of the town, of an old woman with both hands held up before her, palm out.

They say that when invaders came again, a woman stood in the middle of the square, and ordered them to halt. She reminded them of the great fire that sank the ships years before, and called on the gods to strike down any man who took one more step, though it cost her life. The gods accepted her sacrifice, and the invaders who stepped forward became water, running back down the hill towards the sea and soaking the boots of the men behind them. The survivors fled in fear, and the woman became stone, her feet set among the cobbles, her hands raised to stop invaders long gone.

There is a statue that stands by the road that runs past our village, of a young woman holding a basket.

They say that when brigands came upon the village in the teeth of a hard winter, starving and desperate, a woman saw them coming and offered them the food in her basket. They mocked her, saying that so little would not feed them for a day. She, too, called on the gods, and she, too, was answered. She made a bargain with their leader, that every man would turn back when he had all the food he could carry. From that one basket, she filled every bandit’s hands and sacks with food until he could carry no more. When she had filled even the leader’s hands, she bowed her head and became stone, her basket empty at last. The bandits kept to their bargain, and never troubled the village again.

We all know these stories. We all know why those people became stone, stone that does not weather.

Keep reading

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have you guys done that “what kind of reader are you” quiz and if so what did you get

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I am getting some strong The Shoveler vibes. Did anyone else see Mystery Men (1999)?

Continuing my recent trend of throwing household objects at fruit…

I think you’ll really Dig my patreon page

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I live.

Fudge nuggets, this year was brutal but I am determined to continue writing. A draft for Chapter 3 of Tomorrow Is Another Day is in AO3 right now. I will be responding to comments in the coming days and hopefully will post by the end of this week. (*crosses fingers and prays*)

A Brother Made of Stardust is also in the works but is much slower because...I need to watch the Umbara episodes for research purposes. (I reeeaally don't want to because it's just going to make me sad and this year really sucked for a lot of reasons. I know the basics but none of the details - can someone help me, please? *insert puppy eyes here*)

Wild Magic spin-off and Night-Bringer remain on-hold for a while yet, sorry.

Take care, everyone!

~ Red

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Okay, another little lesson for fic writers since I see it come up sometimes in fics: wine in restaurants.

When you buy a bottle of wine in a (nicer) restaurant, generally (please note my emphasis there, this is a generalization for most restaurants, but not all restaurants, especially non-US ones) you may see a waiter do a few things when they bring you the bottle.

The waiter presents the bottle to the person who ordered it

The waiter uncorks the bottle in order to serve it

The waiter hands the cork to the person who ordered the bottle

The waiter pours a small portion of the wine (barely a splash) and waits for the person who ordered it to taste it

The waiter then pours glasses for everyone else at the table, and then returns to fill up the initial taster's glass

Now, you might be thinking -- that's all pretty obvious, right? They're bringing you what you ordered, making sure you liked it, and then pouring it for the group. Wrong. It's actually a little bit more complicated than that.

The waiter presents the bottle to the person who ordered it so that they can inspect the label and vintage and make sure it's the bottle they actually ordered off the menu

The waiter uncorks the bottle so that the table can see it was unopened before this moment (i.e., not another wine they poured into an empty bottle) and well-sealed

The waiter hands the cork to the person who ordered the bottle so that they can inspect the label on the cork and determine if it matches up; they can also smell/feel the cork to see if there is any dergradation or mold that might impact the wine itself

The waiter pours a small portion for the person who ordered to taste NOT to see if they liked it -- that's a common misconception. Yes, sometimes when house wine is served by the glass, waiters will pour a portion for people to taste and agree to. But when you order a bottle, the taste isn't for approval -- you've already bought the bottle at this point! You don't get to refuse it if you don't like it. Rather, the tasting is to determine if the wine is "corked", a term that refers to when a wine is contaminated by TCA, a chemical compound that causes a specific taste/flavor. TCA can be caused by mold in corks, and is one of the only reasons you can (generally) refuse a bottle of wine you have already purchased. Most people can taste or smell TCA if they are trained for it; other people might drink the wine for a few minutes before noticing a damp, basement-like smell on the aftertaste. Once you've tasted it, you'll remember it. That first sip is your opportunity to take one for the table and save them from a possibly corked bottle of wine, which is absolutely no fun.

If you've sipped the wine (I generally smell it, I've found it's easier to smell than taste) and determined that it is safe, you then nod to your waiter. The waiter will then pour glasses for everyone else at the table. If the wine is corked, you would refuse the bottle and ask the waiter for a new bottle. If there is no new bottle, you'll either get a refund or they'll ask you to choose another option on their wine list. A good restaurant will understand that corked bottles happen randomly, and will leap at the opportunity to replace it; a bad restaurant or a restaurant with poor training will sometimes try to argue with you about whether or not it's corked. Again, it can be a subtle, subjective taste, so proceed carefully.

In restaurants, this process can happen very quickly! It's elegant and practiced. The waiter will generally uncork the bottle without setting the bottle down or bracing it against themselves. They will remove the cork without breaking it, and they will pour the wine without dripping it down the label or on the table.

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Princess finds a bedraggled knight wandering just outside the castle walls with no heraldry and a wilted plume (a common sign of emotional neglect in knights) and begs the queen to let her keep him. The queen warns about the dangers of adopting wild knight errants but the princess promises to take good care of him and make sure to keep him away from their domesticated knights until he’s properly adjusted. Queen finally relents once she sees his rusted kit, broken sword, and the saddest brown eyes known to man. Princess claps her hands excitedly and drags him off to the apothecary to make sure he doesn’t have worms.

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Respectfully, as someone who also writes, I think the notion that authors aren't the targets of any critiques to their work is a little misguided. Constructive critiques can do a lot in helping writers learn and improve. Obviously you can't, and shouldn't, go back and change things being critiques that are already published, but it gives you something to watch out for in the future and learn from.

For sure, but then the other factor is that I take criticism from people I know whose artistic perspective I have reason to believe are helpful for the art I'm trying to create. I don't take unprompted critique from people I didn't ask, and correspondingly, when I write unprompted critique of my own, I never direct it to the supposed betterment of the author's skills - I write it so I can unravel why a piece of art isn't working for me.

With all the love in my heart, I don't publish my art online looking for constructive criticism. I get my constructive criticism well before it ever goes online. The value of that post-publishing critique is entirely for other readers and artists looking to learn from my mistakes and unravel why what I made didn't work for them. A critique aimed to "help" me directly is wasted type. I won't act on it, I won't go back and "fix" my work to follow its advice, and I honestly won't think super kindly of anyone who thinks it's their solemn and sworn duty to fix me as an artist. I know how to learn from critique and improve my skills over time. The process does not at any point involve digesting the collective opinion of an internet comment section.

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A king who doesn't really want to and isn't able to run the kingdom properly catches wind of a noble woman who wants to kill him to take over and he realizes she is extremely competent so he decides to propose to her to save everyone the hassle and they have a surprisingly healthy relationship.

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Worldbuilding stuff:

If your story has an idle nobility class, their culture shouldn't just be different from the general population, it should be an over-the-top caricature of the common folks' culture. Whatever the population generally agrees is ideal, fair, admirable, or good, the nobility will take into stupid extremes.

Contrary to the beliefs of many, people are actually not at all happy when they're idle - a person with no assigned task or duty will go out of their way to come up with one. And all around the world, whenever there's been an upper class with nothing to do, they've started to compete with each other over stupid shit, but always stupid shit that the culture they live in considers positive qualities.

From the noblemen in Europe challenging each other to a possibly lethal duel over insulting someone's hat, to a Chinese noblewoman being moved to tears by the beauty of someone's calligraphy, bored elites everywhere have always wanted to outdo each other in their expressions of possessing all the noble traits that this culture in particular holds in value.

You can, and should, use this as a way to highlight what the actual values of this society is. In a setting where being religious is held as an admirable trait, there is nobility coming up with new ways to one-up each other in their expressions of worship. Society that values art and music will have them competing over who hires the most artists, and who employs the most talented musicians. Aggressive, war-like people will have fuels to the fucking death over a stupid hat.

Literally anything can be competed in, and bored people with far too much time and money in their hands will become competitive over the most ridiculous things. This isn't just an useful tool in worldbuilding, but also a fun one.

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We’ve been here before, but I have a new technique this time!!

Please support these videos on Patreon if you can!

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I’m writing scenes which are good, and I don’t know where they are going to fit in the book. But it’s what I call ‘The Valley Filled With Clouds’ technique. You’re at the edge of the valley, and there is a church steeple, and there is a tree, and there is a rocky outcrop, but the rest of it is mist. But you know that because they exist, there must be ways of getting from one to the other that you cannot see. And so you start the journey. And when I write, I write a draft entirely for myself, just to walk the valley and find out what the book is going to be all about.

-- Terry Pratchett - A Slip Of The Keyboard: Collected Non-fiction

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[Image description] A tweet by creepyholics: I hold the moon in high regard as it governs three of our most cherished entities: oceans, wolves, and women.

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@kreophagos posted: the hands that cradled your face and tilted it upwards to kiss your forehead are soaked in unfathomable quantities of blood.

A asked a question: But they cradled me, yes?

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this hit me like a truck