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[writingmoth]

how to go from daydream to draft:

begin by daydreaming as you normally do, or just after you've finished doing so. write down every thought you have. one after another. do not reread. do not stop for spelling mistakes. just dump out every thought. this is called stream of consciousness writing. you can do this for every scene you need a first draft for.

struggling to draft the scene? try to daydream about it. start thinking about how it would look, feel, what the characters would say, act it out in your head and then write out the stream of your thoughts as they arrive.

by now you have a few scene dumps. you may be tempted to go back and edit. do not do this expect for obvious spelling mistakes. do not read closely and start thinking "i need to rework this sentence." that is for later. now you're in the zone. draft more scenes. or work out what the next scene needs to be, scaffold it with a few comments. this will be the inspiration for your next deliberate thought stream that you will write out. repeat this process until you have the whole draft.

now that you have a draft or part of a draft you get to do this very fun thing called revise until you're happy. sweep through your draft with specific goals each time. one sweep to fix spelling/grammar. another for character voice. another for plot. repeat until you're happy with it.

leave it alone. just leave it for a bit. at least a few hours or days or even weeks. forget it exists. this will allow you come back with fresh eyes. then you can do your revisions with an eagle eye. now you may realize you need to add/remove scenes. you know how to get the first version down. close your eyes and daydream at your desk if that's what takes!

remember that fiction writing is persuasive writing. you are trying to persuade the reader to care about what happens next, the character's, the world, the feelings. as you're revising, consider whether you are persuaded. is the feeling/thoughts you wanted to provoke being felt by you when you read it? when working with beta readers, be sure to communicate what you're trying to convey so they can tell you if you've been successful or not.

this got a bit beyond getting the first draft done. hope you found it helpful.

bonus tip: check the spellings of names and places and other nouns that are not typically used, like the name of a magic tool!

[writingmoth]

For the not-so-nice asks!

Monster: Is your OC monstrous in any way? Is there something that makes them monstrous? Are they aware of their own monstrosity? Do they accept it or reject it?

Nightmare: What does your OC have nightmares about? How do they deal with their nightmares? Do they tell people, or keep it to themself?

i will answer these for rowan (from fantasy romance wip)

monster: honestly you'd have a hard time trying to find an oc of mine that isn't a bit monstrous, but rowan is a special case bc his monstrous side is an issue for him/the story. long story short, when a wild hunt happens humans should stay inside and seal their doors so the fey don't come for them. rowan fucked up when he was a kid and was outside when they came, so he was forfeit to them, basically. the god of the forest intervened and he was saved... but not without consequences. he's been a bit monstrous ever since, and has tried REALLY hard to not let anyone notice anything different about him... with a 100% success rate so far. not even his best friend is aware of the weird stuff he can hear/feel/sometimes do. mind, everyone is still wary of him (bc he was out during a wild hunt and has the scars to show for it) but as far as everyone is concerned that just means he's cursed, not that he's monstrous.

one of the themes of fantasy romance wip is being/not being monstrous, and what being monstrous even is, though. so rowan starts out the story definitely not accepting his monstrous side!!

nightmare: i think rowan had tons of nightmares about the wild hunt right after it happened and for some years after that, but they've mostly stopped/are rare now. his biggest issue is that he can't sleep that much - he's more susceptible to the first forest (said monstrous side!) when he's asleep so he avoids doing that as much as he is physically able to. but yeah, his nightmares are (when they happen) mostly about the wild hunt, the first forest and, sometimes, his parents/siblings.

thank you so much for the ask!!

[writingmoth]

oc asks: not-so-nice edition

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?

betrayal: Has your OC ever been betrayed by someone they thought they could trust? Has your OC ever betrayed someone who trusted them?

bound: Has your OC ever been imprisoned or captured? What happened? How did they get out? Did the experience leave any scars?

break: What would cause your OC to break down completely? What do they look like when that happens? Has anyone ever seen them at their lowest?

desire: What's one thing your OC wants more than anything in the world? Are they open with that desire? Why or why not? What would they do to fulfill it?

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

fear: What is your OC's greatest fear? What do they do when confronted with it? Are they open with their fear, or do they hide it away?

future: What's the worst possible future for your OC? Are they taking steps to avoid that outcome? Are they even aware it's a possibility?

ghost: Who or what haunts your OC? What happened? How do they live with their ghosts?

guilt: What is your OC guilty about? How do they handle their guilt? Do they try to avoid guilt, or do they accept it?

hate: What does your OC hate? Why? How do they act towards the object of their hatred?

heartbreak: Have they ever had a relationship that ended badly? Experienced some other kind of heartbreak? What happened?

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

hunt: Who or what is your OC hunted by? A person, a feeling, a past mistake? Is your OC able to let their guard down, or are they constantly alert?

mask: Does your OC wear a mask, literally or figuratively? What goes on beneath it? Is there anyone in their life who gets to see who they are under the mask?

midnight: What keeps your OC up at night? Do they have nightmares? Fears? Anxieties? What do they do in the small hours of the morning when they should be sleeping?

mistake: What's the worst mistake your OC ever made? What led to them making it? Have they been able to fix it? How have they moved on?

monster: Is your OC monstrous in any way? Is there something that makes them monstrous? Are they aware of their own monstrosity? Do they accept it or reject it?

nightmare: What does your OC have nightmares about? How do they deal with their nightmares? Do they tell people, or keep it to themself?

pain: What's the worst pain your OC has ever felt? Do they have a high pain tolerance?

secret: What's one secret your OC never wants anyone to know about them?

skin: How comfortable is your OC in their skin? Do they grapple with anything that lives inside them—a beast, a curse, a failure, a monster? How do they face the smallest, weakest, most horrible version of themself? Are they able to acknowledge it at all?

torture: Has your OC ever been tortured? Would your OC ever torture someone else?

wound: How does your OC handle being wounded? Are their wounds mostly physical? Mental? Emotional? What's the worst wound your OC has ever experienced?

[writingmoth]

Going insane about kicked dog with rabies type characters

[writingmoth]

i love characters who lie. i love when a character is established as a capital L Liar and then we as the audience can’t take anything they say at face value. i love liars fakers schemers deceivers. characters whose tongues are outright necrotic with the rot of their lies. characters to whom truth is a stranger. i am kissing them on the lips btw it tastes disgusting

[writingmoth]

i hate you "pair the spares"/"everyone must be paired" tropes, i hate you forced last minute romances, i hate you implication that a happy ending means a romantic partner, i hate you amatonormativity

[writingmoth]

"How can you write romance if you're asexual?" The same way I write fight scenes despite never having elbowed some dude in the small intestine: Really badly and I don't know what I'm talking about pls I'm sorry-

[writingmoth]

Zack Snyder really just had his characters sit down around the table the night before battle and go "all right now it's time for everyone to take turns having a brief exposition flashback to explain our trauma and motivations to the audience. That way they'll feel like they know us well enough to care what happens to us."

This man is so busy perfecting the art of playing with the camera and blowing shit up that he never worked out how to treat narrative, plot and dialogue as anything other a 'paint-by-number'.

[writingmoth]

Wait what did Freydis Moon do? :( I've read their books and really liked them, but I don't follow them anywhere online, so that last ask you got worried me

Freydis Moon has been exposed to be Taylor Barton, a white person from the state of Oregon, someone who had a history of faking their race, being racist, and general abusive behavior. You can read more here about this Taylor person here, and you can find an incredibly long thread here.

Freydis was a colleague of mine, and they took me under their wing when I entered the indie book scene. They presented themselves as a Latine, mystic, queer trans author — who was older than me, I should add — so I deeply admired them and confided in them. I don't think ABM would have ever gotten much attention if I hadn't received their guidance.

There had been some whispers that Freydis was really Taylor, but I'd seen Frey's seemingly darker-skinned hands and heard their real name, which was supposedly Daniela.

Two things I should say before the big reveal: Freydis briefly hired a publicist named Cordi, who was also an agent with their own agency, named The Lynne Agency. Cordi, very randomly, decided to leave the industry and left their clients, and Freydis, hanging. Someone else to mention is Saint Harlow, an author of gay, cannibal erotica. On twitter, Saint was known for peddling a lot of drama — sometimes, he was on the good side of things and sometimes the bad, but he tended to be a massive bully. Freydis allegedly comforted some of Saint's victims.

And the reveal:

Freydis is the race faker Taylor Barton. The evidence is substantial, but most notably, some of the files they shared with other authors, including me, had metadata with the names of Taylor Barton's other identities. I was able to check the files myself to confirm.

They were also Saint Harlow. Meaning Freydis was bullying people secretly on one account and comforting them on another. And the bullying was a lot more disgusting than you might think, but for the sake of the victim, I won't share details.

They were also the publicist/agent Cordi. Why did they pretend to be an agent at all? I'm not sure but they wasted a lot of authors' times, that's for sure. Were they just looking to plagiarize off manuscripts sent to them? Who knows. (A friend of mine who sent their manuscript to them fears so).

There were a lot of interactions between Taylor and I that are much much weirder in retrospect. They critiqued the industry use of #ownvoices, which I agreed about, but blew the issue out of proportion, like thinking #ownvoices gay-trans author book lists shouldn't exist because of potential outing, mlm books by mlm authors lists shouldn't exist because of potential outing, and that lists of books by people of color about people of color also shouldn't exist because... potential outing? Taylor was, to me, oddly sympathetic toward certain authors accused of racism and shot down my concerns of a certain book with what I felt to be pro-colonizer themes inconsistently — their response to racism seemed to depend on whether they already disliked a person or not.

I could say a lot more but as someone who spoke to Taylor in private at times, there were a lot of things I was unsure about even when I was on their side of things. To some people, apparently, Freydis had said they were part Mexican, but only ever told me they were Peruvian (they might've known I'd clock them as a faker). Regardless, when this all came to light, their response was shockingly dismissive.

This may be more info than you asked for but TLDR:

Freydis Moon faked their race and ethnicity, bullied and manipulated many readers and authors using various fake identities, took advantage of latine author resources, and so on.

[writingmoth]

best trope is the one where the character’s godlike power is also killing them btw. they don’t even lift a hand to kill the monster but now they’re delirious with fever. they save a friend’s life and said friend immediately finds them emergency medical care. they raze the enemy to nothing and it takes far too long to find their pulse with all the bruising. their friends just constantly having to patch them up and worrying over which feat will be their last. et cetera

[writingmoth]

[writingmoth]

“How’s your WIP going?”

"Have you made any progress?”

“How close are you to being done?”

[writingmoth]

I think more Hero-Villain teamups should end with the Hero betraying the Villain, because it defies expectations in an absolutely delicious way. We all expect villains to use underhanded tricks, to lie and cheat whenever it suits them. But we don’t expect a hero to use the same tactics, to use a villian as a means to an end with no regard to promises made. And we don’t expect villains to trust enough to be betrayed in the first place. 

[writingmoth]

we can never have an actual conversation about the bad parts of Booktok (racism, evil capitalist publishers, etc) because everyone is too busy throwing a fit over erotica, women liking things, and grieving the supposed Fall of books as a beacon of being intellectual. And gate-keeping reading for your, idk, dark academic aesthetic when the entire world is in a massive literacy crisis.

Half the "Booktok destroyed books" tweets I see are from non-readers, from random white supremacist accounts, from people that think the literary section of bookstores stopped existing ("i wish when books had meaning >:("), from non-romance readers who see trope maps as evil when tropes /are/ the story in most genre romance books.

I'm not an erotica or even a genre romance author so this has nothing to do with me but I'm really sick of thinly veiled misogyny and the virtrol that romance (even cringy and horny) books get. There are a billion issues in publishing and with book communities, but everyone is just looking for an easy target that they can bully

[writingmoth]

wip questionnaire

thanks @worldstogetlostin for the tag!!!

rules: answer as many (or as few) of the questions about your WIP as you can.

1. What was the first part of your wip that you created?

probably the concept of a god of the forest saving a villager from the wild hunt. i didnt have loifa or rowan created, mind, just the vague idea of a god interrupting mischievous fairies who were about to kill/kidnap/do gods know what to a village boy who made a very stupid mistake. the whole scene is now an interlude in fantasy romance wip.

2. If your story was a TV show, what would the theme song/intro be?

no clue, honestly. shout out to queen's deception from the destiny soundtrack though, it'd have a similar vibe.

3. Who are your favourite characters you've made? Why?

from fantasy romance wip? im risking being obvious here, but its between loifa and rowan. probably rowan, i think. the boy is just trying SO hard and loifa is just SO much to deal with. tbh he has older sister energy and i sympathize with that.

4. What other pieces of media do you think would share a fan base for your story?

that's a very interesting question. my wip is mostly inspired by the fifth season and ffxiv, but in very different ways, so it's hard for me to say that ppl who liked both would like it. bc you know... fantasy romance wip is a romance (allegedly!)... and the fifth season and ffxiv aren't...

(well, ffxiv is if you try hard enough but)

let's say i wouldnt be surprised if someone who liked nettle & bone and the cruel prince also liked fantasy romance wip. id expect that person to be aroace and/or queer in some way though, ngl.

5. What has been your biggest struggle with your wip?

the middle!!! and the length!! it's kinda bizarre just how much needs to happen and how i need to fit so much into a standalone and i still have no middle to speak of?? like how does that even happen

also, you know... the romance.... :(

6. Are there any animals in your story? Talk about them!

lots of animals!! or beasts in general. good honest folk (cows, horses, sheep just minding their business and being slaughtered for no good reason by Things) and the mischievous crowd (carnivorous deer, three eyed owls, said Things), etc. no little guys to speak of so far, though.

7. How do your characters get around? (ex: trains, horses, cars, dragons, etc.)

on foot. there are only like two horses left in the marrow (the village) and they are working horses, so they arent used for travel/getting around.

8. What part of your wip are you working on rn?

(through blood, sweat and tears) [the beginning of] the middle!!!!

9. What aspects (tropes, maybe?) of your wip do you think will draw people in?

weird magical forest + god/mortal relationship + tiny town/village energy + secrets + the aroace lens. basically.

10. What are your hopes for your wip?

id be very contented if i finished it honestly :(

tagging @i-can-even-burn-salad @treesandwords @duskforged @ anyone else who wants to try!!