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Farewell!

I’m going to stop using this blog.

To properly explain why, let me first talk about why I started it.

In 2016 I was part of a half-year writing workshop held by the Melbourne Library. This workshop was planned to culminate in a zine called “Open Roads”, a compilation of the participants’ works. I produced both a written & illustrated piece for this zine – the written piece being a short sample from Edgar’s story. The tutor there had encouraged me that I start to properly work on Edgar’s story and I was full of big baby hopes and dreams about how other people might enjoy it in print form.

This was not to be. The date of the zine’s publishing got pushed further and further back into March 2017 and I have since received no news.

This blog was created with the full intention to be used as a profile for the zine. The zine was meant to be publicly available and sold at the library – hence the need for a public profile. My main account wasn’t an option because I needed somewhere where I didn’t constantly act like a twat.

(Sorry if this begins to get messy, my cat is now sitting on my written draft)

Ultimately I’m not upset about being “cheated” out of effort – I wouldn’t have gotten monetary remuneration anyway, it was for a library – but I had formed grand hopes about what audience the zine would bring. Honestly, even if the zine had come out, they were too grand. I didn’t expect that many people to follow me here, but I expected that someone would care. That’s not how it works. You have to have people who love you or something bigger than 1000 words for people to care. I think there might have been people who liked it, it’s true, but would they have been involved enough for it to be worth the effort I had planned to put into this blog? I don’t think so.

In the end, this blog only ever took away from the time I should be spending focusing on writing Edgar’s story.

Here’s one final progress update.

Originally, I had big plans of finishing the first draft in three years. I don’t think this goal was unachievable, but I do think it was a bit naïve.

Even though I’d toned down my subject load with writing partly in mind, I had other issues. Things are going to go through a lot of change. I’m finishing university at the end of this year. I need to find another job. I have other hobbies, including drawing, which I find if I don’t do every so often I end up wanting to kill myself.

My mental state isn’t bad but it isn’t particularly stable, either. My personal circumstances are worse. Everything is broken and there is nowhere even approaching an acceptable work space. It’s impossible to find a proper routine that you need for a big goal like that. I’m not a middle-class white mum either so I don’t have the option of going out for a tax-deductible café brunch while I draft my magnum opus. I have take my time for now; I just have to accept that.

I’m not going to stop writing or working on Edgar’s story. Unlike this blog, Edgar has been a long-term obsession for me that I don’t think I could give up even if I wanted to. His horrible smarmy face is burned into my soul. I’m actually going to be doing a creative writing class at university this semester so I will be monetarily obligated to not stop writing!

Anyway, if the angels shine their light down from heaven and decree unto humankind that Open Roads must go ahead I might reopen the blog. Maybe.

Until that day I’ll just be posting everything on my main @chariflare​.

Thank you for your support,

Frida

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comic pages

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bg art collection (most recent - oldest)

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Surprise! I actually wrote something last night so you get an update after all. It’s a Christmas miracle.

This was written “typewriter style”, (mostly) in order and with no in-text notes. Why was this necessary? Well:

I’d mostly only been writing things for my own artistic fulfillment and found the above process really frustrating; you don’t end up with a finished piece of writing so it’s not satisfying to read over. So I started doing the “typewriter” thing. I’m not sure it’s that useful for writing the first draft of a novel, but it does help keep my [] habit in check.

The tone of this piece is overly dour which may be because I'm not in the best of moods. But it's finished (if unedited) so ENJOY IT.

(Background: This is the last part of the prologue, after Edgar & Pansy first - and unsuccessfully - attempt to kill Ryan.)

On top of an abandoned house in the woods, a garden set & steaming pot of tea materialised out of petals in the air.

A second set of petals swirled towards the roof, fluttering in the breeze. As they neared one of the white iron chairs, they dissipated as a man stepped out of them. He proceeded to dust off his suit.

“That went rather disappointingly, all things considered,” Edgar said, sitting himself down, “but one must expect the unexpected.”

Glancing down at the almost empty table, he frowned. With a flourish, a teacup appeared in his gloved hand.

As he began to pour himself a cup of tea, Pansy floated up from the canopy.

“I don’t know, Master,” it said uncertainly. It landed daintily on the table next to his hand. “To be honest, I’m still a bit worried about this.”

Edgar sipped his tea and smirked. “The fairy hunter? She’s only a child.” With a flick of the finger he materialised another, very small teacup into Pansy’s hands. “Barely a minor setback.”

Pansy made an unsatisfied noise. It was true that it was somewhat unhappy about Ebony having a much nicer sword than it had, and having had its arm chopped off, but it wasn’t just that. Something felt wrong.

Edgar, noticing its genuine unease, set down his cup.

“Dear Pansy, whatever is the matter?”

“I don’t know why that man would just tell us where the Source is,” it said, “This whole town thing just seems kind of weird.”

Edgar shook his head, smirking further. He gestured out over the oak trees and down at the human village below. Tens of little cottages sat quietly, unassumingly bathing in the light of the setting sun. From their position it appeared so tiny you could squash it between your fingers.

“This puny village -”

“I think it’s a township, actually,” Pansy interrupted anxiously.

“This township is the only thing standing between us and total world domination. Just two humans to kill – only as difficult as every other human we’ve faced – and the Source of All Magic will be ours!” he asserted smugly. “Just imagine. Infinite power! What’s more fun?”

“I suppose so,” Pansy said, slightly cheered.

Edgar grinned as he picked up his tea gain, satisfied his job was done.

“Don’t worry, Pansy.” He laughed. “We’ll be ruling Fairyland before morning. It’ll be as easy as taking candy from a baby.”

As was customary, they chortled evilly for a few solid minutes until it started to become old, finished the rest of their tea, chatted murder methods until nightfall, packed up the furniture, and flew off towards the Source, into the depths of the forest.

Nobody had ever told Edgar that not everything was going to be that easy.

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Heads up! No substantial post this month because I’m house-sitting my own house. I am too preoccupied with surviving the empty wastelands of a my-family-less Melbourne to be able to have ideas.

The original end of the year goal looks out of reach but I’m making solid progress. See you in the new year!

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Character playlists, because this is my blog, and you are all captives to my will.

I know that piece from a few months ago is still unfinished. It’ll stay that way for a while - I don't particularly want to spend time writing when I decided to be focused on planning. Anyway, next time I'll try to have some spoiler-free form of the stuff I'm currently working on.

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WELL, I HAVE BEEN UNSHACKLED FROM UNI FOR 2017

Now is a good of a time as it's going to be for an end of year retrospective!

Through the start of the year I had pretty good progress - mostly I was writing scenes from the beginning of the novel, but I tried to do some outlining as well. This didn’t go great. Around July, I had completely run out of scenes to write, due to having hit a brick wall with planning. In retrospect the planning troubles had began way back in November 2016, or even earlier. I was at a loss at what should come next.

Around August I started reading ~Story Genius~ (which I really do recommend). I mostly dropped writing to spend time reading it and I think it was worth it. It really helped with getting my head around a planning rationale. After I finished it, though, my capstone project being due led to progress completely slowing to a halt. 

That I'm not doing a full subject load, have no job, and am still only able to do this much is pretty shocking. What a great testament to my time-management skills! 

That being said, this year was still 20000 times better than every one before it in which I did nothing at all. I’m glad I kept writing all that time I had trouble planning, though! If I hadn’t kept on I think I would have just given up on really starting the project.

In the last few days I’ve just been getting ass-deep into planning. I'm still aiming to have it finished by the end of the year - I think it's achievable, but if it doesn't go well it's not too big of a deal. 

The future of this blog

I've been thinking more about the structure & content of the blog. Reading over my posts, my tone has been all over the place, and I'd like to replace that with simple straight honesty? I'd rather serious & unfunny to forced & embarrassing. Edgar can tell the damn jokes

Until next semester I'm going to go back to the bi-tri-weekly updates.

By the way I am NOT doing NaNoWriMo, because I think it's a productivity cult and even at max capacity I'm just not mentally capable of it. Enjoy yourselves if it’s your thing. 

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This month we have a special type of post called “Frida has two weeks to write 2000-3000 lines of code among many other soul-destroying things and is too busy to make anything”

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reference review - story genius

How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining And Write A Riveting Novel* [*Before You Waste Three Years Writing 327 Pages That Go Nowhere] – Lisa Cron

Something a little different for this almost-month; I happened to go to the library a little while ago. As you do I pottered around the reference section aimlessly poking around for things to take home and not read, and decided to impulse borrow this book. Then for once I actually read it. We’re all capable of the impossible

Rating: Helpful but Egregiously Patronising/10

You may have heard of the exTRORdinarily popular (I think) Snowflake Method, which boils down to, “get the basic plot of your novel and extrapolate all the bits in the middle of those bits (and then develop those bits into smaller bits)”. It’s essentially an exercise in “working backwards” from what you know to fill in the gaps in your planning. However, if you’ve tried to use it you may have found out that actually doing this is not as simple as it sounds. Either you end up with no ideas at all, or have too many, and not much reason for you to pick one idea over the other. The reason you need a planning method is that you don’t know what to do next, but Snowflake doesn’t give you very much guidance given on how you should fill in the gaps; you’re just told to do it in a certain order. So, unless you already have a lot of well-developed ideas it can be frustratingly difficult to use. It doesn’t really do anything to solve the underlying problem – why should I put anything here? What am I doing???? Help?????????

You’d have to work it out on your own and we all (read: I) just can’t be bothered honestly. I don’t want to think critically about how I should put the meat in my novel sandwich, I am a big baby and want somebody to do it for me.

If you sympathise with this, you may find this book helpful.

Cron’s approach in this book is that everything in a novel is centred around its “third rail” - the protagonist’s emotional journey. If it’s not related to their struggle (“what they learn”, ”the theme”, etc.), chuck it! Basically:

The internal struggle (emotional journey) is what they have to deal with internally in order to solve the external plot problem

The protagonist has a desire & misbelief; these conflict; it's very important to know WHY the protagonist has developed these

The plot events are created to force the internal change, not the other way around - what do the events MEAN to the protagonist?

Cause & effect - the plot should be (in some sense) karma, not “what goes around comes around” but “if you lie about graduating college, when you’re about to get your dream job, that lie is bound to surface”. (Dramatic, much? Very Hollywood when at its most extreme like this, but imo the point should stand at some level.)

The cause and effect should reveal the logic behind everything, both internally (what would my protagonist’s beliefs/ past experience cause them to do in this situation) and externally (how will the other characters and world react to what my protagonist will do).

Each scene has an external & internal change within it, which leads directly to what should be the next scene (“if this, therefore that” not “and then”). Each scene must have a single big purpose e.g. "this is the scene where she kidnaps the dog".

As for scene content, you can ask yourself a series of questions such as “is this necessary for the plot?” “Is this logical externally (logistically)?” “Is this logical internally (for the protagonist’s/character’s current states of mind)?”

Ask “Why” of everything, and don’t stop asking until you’ve reached the most story-specific, concrete, “close your eyes and you can see it unfold” origin and there are no “whys” left to ask.

Ask “And so?” of everything. “And so, why does my reader need to know this?” “And so, how does this move the story forward?” “And so, what will happen as a result?” I.e. WHAT IS THE POINT!

That’s about it. I saved you approximately ten hours. Despite its Hollywood-ness, I really like her approach. I think this is a really logical way to plan a novel!

Her process – which you carry out through the exercises, and if you don’t want to do that then don’t bother reading the book – is to develop a base of information for the cause-and-effect trajectory.  She leads you through developing the protagonist from the ground up (read: past-up, including their misbelief & desire), writing some beginning/starting scenes and the "ending" (the protagonist’s final big moment of realisation), then a sample of the rest of your planning experience, which will basically be simultaneously developing & writing the novel in chronological order. It’s expected that as you do stuff you’ll naturally think up more questions you’ll need to answer and have to go through and carry through changes (in writing & plan).

As for how to fill in the blanks in your novel, Cron’s idea is that the answer is in the content that you already have. Go through the story and search for the event, given who the characters are, that would logically happen next, or trigger the next thing you know will happen (or that needs to happen to get whatever you know happens at the end of the blank). Then think about what will happen next, etc., etc.! She emphasises that the solution to all types of missing content (character details, empty middle bits) is to ask “why” of your novel, or “and so?” - what logically should happen next. A lot more detailed than Mr Snowflake.

Compared to Mr Snowflake’s start-(middle stuff you’re supposed to just know I guess)-end to start- mid-steps – (middle stuff) – more mid-steps –end, Cron’s method makes a lot more sense to me. If you find that you haven’t figured out the middle you don’t have to just stop stuck, you just have to ask more questions. It really helps that (after you work out the “ending”) it’s chronologically ordered (start-end to start-logical post-start - end) as well. This planning method that she provides (also including a folder structure!) via her exercises I found incredibly helpful. Her writing style, however, not so much.

Cron’s language is liberally peppered with buzzwords, repeated information, and unnecessary references to other books. Points are repeated multiple times or rehashed into new metaphors so often that by the time you get to the end of the book you’ll have forgotten what the original words were supposed to mean. Instead of simply “the why of the story as per Chapter Four” it’s a constant barrage of “the why of your story, which you HAVE to touch on, ASK yourself about each time, YOU HAVENT FORGOTTEN YET ALREADY HAVE YOU I THINK YOU HAVE SURELY?”. It feels like I’m assumed to have the attention span of a child, and combined with the friendly tone, am being talked down to as if I’m one.

Having to constantly struggle to understand buzzwords of Cron’s own definition, or tell whether something is actually new information, makes the book confusing and frustrating to read. It felt sometimes like I was relying on the examples (also horridly written, but they do their job well) to be able to understand what I was supposed to do. These are not things that should be able to be said about an educational novel (surprise!).

Overall the tone doesn’t really serve the intended purpose, so to me it feels more like Cron is trying to self-aggrandisingly sell you on the methods of a book that you’ve already bought and half-consumed, than reassuring you that you’re doing well.

Buzzwords (which is, by the way, how you tell/rate a bad self-help book; thankfully she didn’t use any acronyms)

Minor Nit-Picks

If you want to write A Theme Book for Grown-Ups not a “Hollywood Movie”-esque story, or anything in a non-Western story structure, this probably isn’t for you. I don’t really like that she frames this as the only proper way to write a good story. You could probably replace the “everything has to link back to the third rail” with “the theme” or “the question” for a similar effect.

This book is (by its own admission) about how to write an entertaining novel, not a well-written or thematically complex one. Think an Agatha Christie or 50 Shades.

I feel like missing from the book is a "these methods may not work for you", and even if sensible adults should be able to understand this on their own, to me it feels a bit dishonest to leave it out, especially given the tone.

Brain science not from a brain scientist

In possibly one of the most annoying failures at gender equality Cron refers to “your protagonist” alternatively with “she” and “he” pronouns for the whole book instead of using singular “they” thus slapping you in the mental face each time she switches and sounding like a pedantic uneducated twat

I don’t really agree with the ideas of where, or with what, a novel should start; you might need more set-up for the world than starting at the “point of no return” for the protagonist;

Could’ve used chapter summaries considering the roundabout writing style

This isn’t a nitpick but the "what if" (primary-school writing prompts) segment is really insightful? Also her recommendation of writing the ending scene really helped to discover/iron out the kinks in my stuff and is super good to help you keep in mind where you’re going and please do it? I REFUSE to ruin my formatting just for the sake of a good thing she did

Overall I can only come down in favour of this book. If you’ve struggled with planning a novel or even wrapping your head around writing one but you want to, I won’t say it’s THE book for you, but it’s a book, and if you can get over Cron’s horrid writing then I really recommend it to you.

Personally I recommend that if you feel like there are ANY scenes in your novel that you can write, right now, that you try finishing one or two BEFORE going into this book. Mainly for your own motivation, but, it might also help you figure out whether or not Cron’s techniques are for you.

Finally, a quote:

"There is no firmly established next [...] writers very often stop writing after the first twenty pages because THEY have no idea what comes next either. The problem is that BECAUSE there are so many options, it's the same as having none."

Regardless of any of its other qualities or flaws, Story Genius solves that problem. It really helped me to plan MYYYY novel and they don’t teach you how to do that in school.

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(aug 2017) progress update

A more formal progress update this time! 

Currently I’m working through a novel planning book (“Story Genius”). I’m DESTITUTE and will have to return it to the library by a due date, so I won’t have the time to work on the second half of that piece for a little while. Rest in pieces.

So, anyway, at the moment my progress looks like this:

Planning: ???%

First Draft: ???%

Editing: ???%

THIS NOVEL IS LOOKING A BIT MYSTERIOUS ISN’T IT?!?!?

I aim to have all the planning done by the end of the year and I think with the guidance from the relatively patronising book I’ll be well on the way to completing that goal. After that point I should have a much clearer idea of how long it’s going to take me to finish the novel.

Basically, I’ve written some scenes at the start of the novel, and have done some very loose planning. I've settled into a schedule – although because of l͇͘i̦̕f̗e ̘̥̹̲c̼̠ͅi͔̫̮r̵̼͕̱͇̖̪c̘u͚͈̮͉̣͍m̸͕̞̻̯̫̩͉s͉͟ț̭̠a̸̠̼͍n̸͚̲̳̘̬̱c͕̯̗͕e̺͚̙s̨͓̟ I can’t spent as much time on art in general as I’d like – and have a good idea of what comes “next”. Things just aren’t very neat right now because they don’t teach you how to set up novel-planning documents at school. Also in my arsenal are a lot of ideas I’ve developed by letting everything just stew over five years. Don’t do that.

For this blog I’ve decided that if I don’t want to post or even make “finished writing” from Eggy (which is likely) I’m thinking of making pieces to enter into some writing competitions or something or writing drabble for my non-Eggy stories.

Also I’m going to update the theme on this blog it’s just awful and I am going blind.

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on finished writing

This is a semi-extension to the writing post I just made.

I don't think I will do pieces like this very often. Obviously, I need some amount of practice at finished writing if I want to write a finished novel, but if I put this level of polish into every before completing a very rough first draft, I would find it hard to edit. It would be already be a "solidified" novel, even if the writing isn’t very good, which to me defeats the point of the first draft.

Additionally it takes a very large amount of effort to write even this level of polish. You’ll notice in the comments I mentioned it wasn’t very considered with respect to particular elements such as flow and tone - ideally, I'd wait another two weeks, come back, and look over it with those in mind. Then I’d have a crisis over the lack of quality in my writing or how little I had planned it and its garbagacity but since I'm on a (self-appointed) schedule here, I kind of just wanted to post SOMETHING

After I've filled out the "main details" on the blog, I'll try and fit myself into some kind of more appropriate, easy schedule but until then I’m just in a hurry to get the basic stuff done. Expect things to become more update-based eventually.

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going home (1/2)

Surprise! A cow didn’t eat me! I’m here! With writing! The first of two parts. The end of this one will be re-edited a bit when I post the second, I got a bit tired today but it was a good place to finish off.

I’m going to dial back the updates to once every three weeks because uni this semester is going to be a little stressful. We’ll see how it goes.

(Background: Tempname Jamie is Ryan’s best friend, whom Edgar has had to put up with on his first day of school. It all went well and Edgar is feeling confident. Skip to the end for comments.)

The bell finally rang.

Edgar let himself blend in with the students shuffling out of their classrooms, letting gossip from Jamie be washed away underneath the chatter of his classmates eager to find respite at home, the wave of bodies carrying him towards Ryan’s locker.

Threading his way out of the crowd, he dragged out his bag – barely annoyed, at the moment, how heavy it was in his limp arms – and followed Jamie as he walked opposite to the way he had come in that morning, past the classrooms, out the building, out the gates, and out of school.

Jamie paused and turned back to look at him.

“You wanna come out to the chippy?”

He leaned against the wall nonchalantly. “No thank you. I’m fine.”

Jamie frowned, disappointed, but Edgar smirked and beckoned him over, pretending to look around for children listening in. When Jamie came up close, he leaned in with one shoulder. 

“I have to escort Ebony home,” he whispered. “You know how it is. Don’t tell a soul, remember?”

A look of understanding passed through Jamie’s eyes. He nodded. “Gotcha,” he whispered back, turning to leave.

“Alright then man, see you.”

As Edgar waved goodbye to Jamie, he felt his heart being filled with something approaching relief.

That was the end of his suffering for the day. No more excruciating hours spent sitting and listening to assorted drivel that he already knew. He had the feeling that there was more of school than this, but chose to ignore it. You had to take the little victories as they came.

Violet tiptoed up behind a tree and waved at him. He tipped his head, gesturing towards a gaggle of students, who were ambling towards the main street.

A metallic voice rang out in the air.

“You know, you can take the bus,” Titania said.

“I’d rather not,” he muttered into the air.

There was a rustle of fabric as he assumed she shrugged, the ringing fading away. “Well, if you’d rather.”

He pushed off the bricks and turned to leave for home, Violet following him.

Busy with the afterschool crowd (or what passed for busy in this little town), the main drag was lightly abuzz with students and their parents coming and going, cars parking and groceries and children being messily loaded in.

Violet lagged behind, surreptitiously, trying to pretend that it was trying to pretend it wasn’t following Ryan home, occasionally stopping & staring into a delicatessen display and trying to look interested in homemade jams.

A quaint village, to be sure, he thought, as they walked down the pavement. It had been a good decision to refuse Titania’s offer of taking the school bus. He really had felt like a stroll. But that wasn’t the only reason he’d had to walk home.

Some boys were loitering outside the second-hand bookshop ahead of him. He shrugged his backpack down off one shoulder as he passed, copying their mannerism.

Step one in any good evil plan was information. And if there was one thing he was lacking, that was what it had to be. Information on the path, the area, on blending in with the locals (he felt like he was doing a good job at that) – anything on his new locus operandi.

When he’d arrived here a few days ago to enact his previous evil plan, he hadn’t really bothered to look around. You couldn’t really blame him. His current situation hadn’t exactly been the expected outcome.

As he reached the corner and the end of the cute little shops, a few cars passed him by, a warm breeze blowing the straps of his bag. I could get used to watching peasants go about their business, he thought.

It was almost pleasant.

The shops were replaced by brick townhouses; the townhouses by sparsely placed cottages. As the red of brick was replaced by the green of the hedgerows and the pastels of the flowering fruit trees and faded stone of sparsely placed cottages, the people, too, petered out, until they were the only ones left walking the path. Violet jogged up to walk next to him.

They walked, Violet relaying the information it had gained. Edgar somewhat distractedly shared his misadventures in return (not much of a gift), more focused on trying to observe the winding of the lanes, obscured by the maze of hedgerows. They were trudging through the maze of hedgerows for the

Until the winding country lane suddenly turned and reached an old, towering hedge, behind which could just be seen a cute little cottage, that he recognised from last night as home.

Edgar arrived at the gap in the hedge, looked up at the house, and came to a stop.

Everything about it was old. Whoever had looked after it had obviously not enough time or money to replace any of the fittings, but it had been a grand enough house that a rusted gate or peeling white paint had trouble marring its splendour, and they had made up for it by putting a lot of effort and love into keeping it otherwise well-maintained. The windows were decked with baskets of flowers. Cosy.

Directly in front of them, between the gate and the house, lay a well-manicured garden, herbs, carrot tops and spring blooms poking out of the beds.  He didn’t think it wouldn’t be winning any awards, but he appreciated its serviceability.

Violet lingered behind him, arms crossed in thought, as he observed the house. He pushed his hand lightly against the top of the garden gate, testing its sturdiness, and it creaked.

“What do you think, Violet?”

He turned to look at it. It met his gaze, and nodded sagely.

“It looks cosy. I like it,” it said.

“Exactly,” he agreed proudly.

A bit quaint, but it would do. He could allow himself to appreciate the hard work of the peasantry, occasionally.

Edgar unhinged the gate and strolled inside.

“Hello dearie!”

He shrieked, dropping to the ground where he stood.

Ryan’s mother was standing, hidden behind the garden hedge, holding a rusted trowel. Her dark green overalls were coated, top to bottom, with dirt. An embroidered patch in the shape of a rabbit had been sewn across the chest. She waved a gloved hand at Ebony.

[TO BE CONTINUED]

Bonus Comments

Notes on this piece:

Jamie: Ryan's best friend. He's the sort of guy who walks around with his pants fallen half down and his undies hanging out (not particularly sophisticated, meant to be a lot of things that Edgar despises). Having said that, those sorts of guys tend to associate in packs, so it's kind of weird that someone like Ryan (wimpy and milquetoast-y) is friends with him. That's not some sort of foreshadowing by the way it's just a reflection

Names: Background characters are temporarily named after British TV personalities (I can’t keep them because they’re a little too on the nose). Nigel is in the running for Jamie’s actual name. I mean, it’s the same, but it’s a little less conspicuous so it makes me feel like I’m smart.

Edgar vs. Ryan: I’m not decided on when to refer to teenage-bodied Edgar & Violet by their actual names vs. their body names in the text (obviously speech/limited narration will be from that character’s POV & isn’t hard to decide).

CRITIQUE on this piece:

Jamie should show more character. I haven’t used very expressive language.

“Reached the corner”: Everything from here is “the end of the piece”, I sort of just wanted something that made sense. The event at the end of town here should be something that makes him feel “above” and separated from the townsfolk (”these quaint peasants, living out their quaint and simple little lives” - it’s a backhanded compliment that more serves to raise himself in relation to them), the breeze is more suited to “the wind of adventure” or a relaxing summer’s eve.

Edgar should be looking down on the house more; the point of this segment of the chapter is that he is confident and feels above the townspeople (including his new family).

The pre-home post-town segment was just the easiest way to condense my wanky walk montage rambling. It probably doesn't flow how I want it to because I didn't put much thought into the parts that I picked. In general, I haven’t put much thought into flow beyond what was immediately obvious in “feeling wrong”, I’ll make a separate post about my process.

I didn’t work in that Titania is meant to be giving directions -> breaking suspension of disbelief / plot inconsistency with Edgar not knowing much about the location.

The major joke doesn’t land well because the build-up isn’t strong enough; the timing and tone is wrong.

What is the narration style, even?! Did you know there are different types of 3rd-person narration?! I didn’t!?

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Art of Violet-as-Ebony from June with an unfixable face. 

Unfortunately, I have been spirited away to my dad’s farm to work as an indentured hay slave. If I don’t die from animal husbandry I’ll make an actual post after I get back.

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edgar & violet profiles

This update is some extended profiles for our protagonists (the actual ones).

Next time will probably be an actual piece of writing!? Wow!? I can’t believe it either!?

Edgar, Earl of Nightshade

A savagely evil faerie whose usual pastime is killing humans for fun and being excessively smug about it. He fancies himself a gentleman.

Bored with the goody-two-shoes hedonistic carefree lifestyle of the fairy realm, he came to the human world in search of power. Considering he then lead even more hedonistic carefree lifestyle, his problem was probably just with the distinct lack of murder.

His aim is to dethrone Titania and become King of Faerie. To this end, he had been searching for the source of all magic, and after a hundred or so years found news of its presence in the unassuming country town of Midsomer. Unsurprisingly, the idea of a murderer gaining PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWER upset some local heroic protagonist-y types. He didn’t actually have a plan for sword-wielding obstacles, but one single bounty hunter and a nothing child couldn’t possibly be a problem… Oh? Fate took care of it for him? Never mind?

Unfortunately, the world is not meant to have no heroes, and he was forced to take over the body and role of the teenage protagonist. But Edgar isn’t one to let minor setbacks - a cruel god, every other idiotic power-hungry villain-wannabe, or his new classmates, for example - get in the way of his plans world domination.

Gender: Male

Height: Tall

Species: Fairy (High Fairy)

Age: 300+

Likes: Being better than other people (particularly in terms of class, knowledge & appearance), fine art, looking nice, Violet

Dislikes: Insects, human teenagers, the unfashionable, the bad-mannered, most people who aren’t himself

Misc. Details:

Name Origin: Sounds good with “Earl”. Previously his name was Darrkh’niss (the magical creatures du jour had been demons); I gave it up because name puns didn’t match the tone and also, mainly, because I could never actually remember how to spell it

High fairies are like elves – tall, human-looking, and extremely powerful magical people. 

Edgar technically rules over a subset of the domain of flower fairies, but he’s never there (they have administrators so society runs smoothly nonetheless)

Violet

Cheerful and bubbly, Violet is a flower pixie and Edgar’s assistant/servant/best friend. A very nice faerie, but has a disturbing fondness for knives and a disturbing disinterest in human lives. No hard feelings though!

It joined Edgar a very long time ago and enjoys helping him in any way it can – which, given it’s 13cm tall and has a lack of magical powers to match, isn’t very many ways. Nevertheless, it enjoys living according to Edgar’s whimsy, so long as they’re both having fun.

It’s the smarter of the two, although that isn’t much of an achievement.

Gender: NB, it or they pronouns

Height: 13cm

Species: Fairy (Flower Pixie)

Age: 300+

Likes: Nice people, fashion, knives, Edgar, having a fun time

Dislikes: Mean people

Misc. Details:

Name Origin: A quaint little English cottage flower to match with Edgar’s floral theme. Also sounds like “violent”. For the record, by “violet” I mean a pansy, but that’s not a particularly good name (…?).

It’s really into fashion, especially lolita-kei. It likes anything poppy, pastel and not too serious.

Its (actual) body is a tiny person-shaped wood/plant-matter thing with wings and a flower (a violet! surprise!) for hair.

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synopsis

YES it took me almost two months to write a synopsis I was happy with. As penance, I’ve included brief character profiles as well.

The gentlemanly fairy, Lord Edgar, and his peppy right-hand pixie, Violet, had spent a few centuries murdering humans for pleasure, and it was beginning to get a little boring. There was only one logical next step: supervillainy/world domination!

The source of all magic, conveniently located in the boring country town of Midsomer, was just crying out to be taken. The only people standing in their way were two teenagers – the world’s most extraordinarily average boy, and a bounty hunter guided by Titania, the (former) fairy queen.

On the night of a full moon, they confronted each other in the forest on the outskirts of the town to fight for possession of the source. Tremendously overpowered by the heroes, the evil was slain, and justice prevailed once more!

Or, wait, they actually killed them? Oops?

As it turns out, you can’t just have no heroes, so Edgar & Violet find themselves forced to swapping bodies with the protagonists and carrying out the story in their stead.

Will they ever get their bodies back? Will Edgar stop the world from being taken over by someone who isn’t him? Can Violet survive being a normal high school student while resisting the urge to stab, slice, dice, eviscerate, or disembowel anyone?

Fantasy/comedy/high-school-based antics ensue!

Edgar

A gentleman (citation needed) and a fairy

Hates teenagers

Unbeknownst to himself, he’s a bit of an idiot

Violet

Edgar’s assistant/servant/best friend

A very nice pixie, but has a disturbing fondness for knives

Titania

The queen of the fairies, until she became trapped in a silver bracelet

Not a fan of Edgar and fairies like him, which is a great start for their new supervisor/supervised relationship

Disillusioned

Ebony (now Violet)

Sixteen-year old bounty hunter (the bounty, generally, being malevolent magical creatures)

Cold, indifferent to muggles, overly competent, and (supposedly) ~sssssmokin'~

Ryan (now Edgar)

Sixteen-year old normal human boy

Normal grades, normal hair, normal family, normal interests, normal friends, etc.

His only noteworthy point being his unnoteworthiness/lack of personality did not impede fate from making him the most important and romantically sought after personage in town

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I’ve had six projects due in the last two weeks at uni so once again I’ve been too dead on the inside/outside/everyside to have anything prepared. Here’s some art from two weeks ago.

Violet’s “large” character design isn’t particularly important but I did put some thought into its fashion sense - the form is based off some Alice and the Pirates clothing (my favourite lolita fashion brand).

[topfenstrudel]

I missed my biweekly post deadline because I’m sick.... Sick with Eurovision fever! (I’m actually just sick.)

Here’s some process pictures of the welcome image. The scanner problem made the whole thing take maybe two extra hours out of my day and half a year off my life?

you can see his left/back eye is wonky here; there’s some other stuff that’s not quite right (e.g. the uneven cake platter) but which i chose not to fix. i recommend not being an uber-perfectionist unless there’s a reason to be one

i don’t know whether you’ll bother finding the mistakes, so let me do it for you: violet’s wing pattern, the afterthought bunting on the right-hand-side, an inconsistent line weight style, and a very scratchy hand, especially on edgar’s hair

the scanned picture

fixed, featuring edgar’s actual hair colour. i decided any extra colour wasn’t worth it because it ruins the minimal colour scheme (i.e. if i wanted his hair to be coloured i should’ve just coloured everything). 

as it turns out, buying a set of copics which cannot possibly look bad together. violet’s hair is (obviously) meant to be purple, but I don’t have the right coloured markers (gonna have to change its name to peony, folks)