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  1. Hello my fellow writers of the 17th Shard! Do you find accountability helpful for your daily writing productivity? Maybe you find that a little friendly competition spurs you on? Or perhaps you simply enjoy a bit of camaraderie now and then? Well, starting Monday, September 6, Rasaar and I are going to be running regular writing sprints on the Shard Discord! We’ll go Monday-Friday, 2pm-5pm Central Time US. That is, for reference: 12pm-3pm Pacific Time (US) 3pm-6pm Eastern Time (US) 8pm-11pm London Time (UK) What the heck is a writing sprint? A writing sprint is a focused, timed period of writing designed to increase word count by dissuading distractions and, with multiple participants, add a little competition. NaNoWriMo calls them Word Wars, but the principle is the same: set a timer, WRITE, then report on your progress! We’ve also added a new bot to the Discord server to facilitate tracking sprints (more on that below). Why are you doing this? Well, for me specifically, I have ADHD, which comes with it executive dysfunction issues. Experience has taught me that I work best when I am accountable to some other human(s) in order to be at my best. I’ve had good luck with joining others’ writing sprints, but they aren’t always at the most convenient time for me, nor are they as consistent as I would prefer. As for Rasaar, she has expressed to me a similar desire for some structure with getting into the writing groove. We actually came up with the idea of running Shard writing sprints independently of each other, and by a stroke of luck, our preferred writing times line up very well despite being in wildly different time zones. How exactly are you going to structure three hours of sprinting? We’re planning to do multiple sprints per session in 30-minute blocks. We’ll probably do something along the lines of 25-minutes of writing to a 5-minute break. We can tweak the details as we figure out what works best. This is a great idea, but Crazy Unicorn Lady, these times don’t work for me! Worry not! The Discord bot we’re using for the sprints will be accessible to everyone, though will be limited to the #sprintspam channel, located near the bottom of the Discord channel list. If there are other times on any day that work for you and a few of your friends, you are more than welcome to hop onto Discord and utilize it! And while you may be familiar with Sprinto, we’ve renamed it to Cultivation to fit in with our snazzy little theme. We’ve also created a new voice channel -- Creative -- for the sake of all writing and arting discussion. You can verbally coordinate sprints there and, if you like, chat during the rest minutes between sprints. I’m in! But I can’t do it every weekday. Is it okay if I only join a couple days a week? Of course! Join when it works for you. Barring holidays, vacations, and emergencies, we plan to keep a regular schedule so you know when to expect us there. (Having two mods running the event together will help there!) Neat! I’m on the Discord now and I want to run my own sprints. How do I use Cultivation? Cultivation is a fairly simple bot that has been programmed with basic commands. She can start a sprint, keep track of time, and even track your word count during the sprint! Bear in mind, though, she doesn’t work in every channel. Mostly, we expect member-run sprints to happen in #writing. Moderator-run sprints can occur in #writing or #chat-for-voice. Per the first update comment: all sprints should take place on the #sprintspam channel. Bot Commands: **Starting the sprint:** _sprint 20 -- in 1 minute, start a 20-minute sprint _sprint 20 in 5 -- in 5 minutes, start a 20-minute sprint _sprint 20 now -- start a 20-minute sprint right now (The maximum sprint time is 60 minutes.) **Participating:** _join -- join the sprint with starting word count of 0 _join 100 -- join the sprint with starting word count of 100 _wc 200 -- set your word count to 200 (the bot will ask you to do this after the sprint ends) _= -- join the sprint with starting word count equal to the last word count you've given the bot **Stopping:** _forget -- you will not be pinged for the next sprint (otherwise, Cultivation will ping you for 3 sprints after the last you participated in) _cancel -- stops the sprint you started So, say you’ve got some people ready to write and you want to start a sprint. No problem! Simply go to the #writing channel in the 17th Shard Discord and start her up! Say you want to run a 15-minute sprint -- you’ll type “_sprint 15” into the chat, hit enter, and the bot will respond. If you don’t want the sprint to start immediately, that’s fine, too! You can instead type “_sprint 15 in 3” and a 15-minute sprint will begin in 3 minutes. Now, you and everyone else needs to officially join the sprint with your word count. Cultivation makes it easy to track based on your current document count - just tell her where you’re starting at the beginning of the sprint. You’ve already got 1,257 words written in your current Work in Progress, so you’ll type “_join 1257” to set the starting point. When the sprint is over, Cultivation will ping an alert and text marking the end of the sprint will appear on screen! Say now you’re document is up to 1,513 words - you’ll type “_wc 1513” into the chat. The bot will automatically calculate the number of words you’ve written and save the data. Once everyone has input their final word counts, Cultivation will send a message to the chat with a ranking of every participant and their final results. Cultivation’s command list will also be pinned to a message on the channel, so if you forget how to work her, the information will always be at your fingertips. Happy writing, and we hope to see you in writing sprints on the Discord!
  2. So I had the idea to work together and write a story, one sentence at a time. The only 2 objectives are to write a story, and try to keep it cohesive and as reasonable as possible. The genre is a utopian-ish fantasy, but it'll be very soft (meaning there are very few rules, think Studio Ghibli vibes). You can add magic if you want but keep it vague and Gandalf-y and avoid deus-ex-machina-y things. Try to keep to 1 or 2 sentences per post, but feel free to write more if they're reasonably short (or you are introducing something new). Also, try to use other characters/plotlines before starting your own. Here we go I guess! ~~~ Lylac lay facing the sky in a soft patch of grass, her bright purple eyes following a cloudship piercing the sky. Her focus shifted as a flock of starlings swooped overhead, rolling in the sky.
  3. okay i’ve been debating doing this for a while. so these are just some writingy stuffs that i made over the past month or so when i was in a funky headspace. i don’t know if they’re good or not, i just kind of wrote them, because writing can be such an amazing cathartic form of self-expression and i love it. oh also i should probably mention that the first one contains implicit references to suicide and they all reference general mental health struggles, so keep that in mind, i don’t want to trigger anyone by accident. um, enjoy i guess? If I Left Silent Snap Lost, Alone, Cold, Empty, Scared
  4. Here is the prologue: It should be noted that more content may be added. He was in control. Absorption held them like cards. He could play them at any time. He could kill them without a thought. His rule - so magnificent. He was in control. He walked into a room. No one ran. If you ran, you were already dead. He shot the wall. The screams ensued. He laughed. He was in control. The epic had already fled the place, but there was a point to be made. Those who defy his rule are dead. Each shot sank into flesh. He just shot the wall, but it was the wall that remained unharmed. The people all had bullets in their faces, a big gaping hole almost reminding of a third eye. A man tried to shoot him. A bullet ended up in the man's chest right as it hit Absorption. Absorption was unharmed. The epic would come back. The scene here was just a fraction of his power. A reminder of the true threat to the epic. After all, the bullets could've as easily been in the puny little epic's throat. He was, in theory, inevitable. He took his maniac laughter outside. There the people of the streets glanced at him with concern. They knew they could die at any moment. They were afraid. As they should be. After all, he was in control. ##### Chapter 1: The moment replayed itself in Recapture's pristine memory. The smirk on Absorption's face as he walked into the store. It was a surprisingly normal location for such a big incident. It was a walmart. It was also the secret liar of the Voidcaller, a minor epic with invisibility powers and Radiation powers. That's right. The tyrant of the century's weakness was radiation. Absorption - the closest thing to a god - was killed by this guy. Nothing moved. Recapture was in a frame. Nothing moved in a frame. It was captured. Caught in the act. The Voidcaller; the mastermind behind the kill, was a 62 year old man. By touching his past frame, he could glean every moment of his life. The voidcaller's life. not his. There was once a man named Arelythis. His dad died while fighting in the second world war. His mom fled germany to get a better life and met his father. They lived together for 4 years before having Arelythis. Their child, had been an academic master. Aced all his courses. But his parents would never be proud of him. He always failed to meet their expectations. His peers only laughed at him. He had beaten the systems of education, but never his parent's sky high expectations. After an argument in February 1989, Arelythis left his family for good. He purchased a one-way ticket to Sydney, Australia, and settled there. He got a job as a software engineer for public transport systems and lived a happy normal life. Until calamity rose. Arelythis then hid from the roaming epics in the remainder of australia, now called the wastelands. Then, three and a half years after Calamity started burdening the skies with it's hellish glow, Arelythis gained his powers as the voidcaller. He slowly made his way to Alensdale, California, leaving a trail of radioactive wasteland. Everywhere he went, he ridded the world of epics. He considered it a mercy. Recapture now knew what he needed to know about the Voidcaller. Not that his name was Arelythis. Not that he came from the wastelands. Recapture now knew why Arelythis considered it a mercy to kill Absorption. Not an act of kindness, or an act of displaying power, but an Act of mercy. The truth was disgusting. Recapture snapped back to reality. He told Aerie what the air manipulator needed to hear. "Down the street. Next to the pre-calamity barber. Greenish house with bricks on the right." Aerie would never know the truth. The disgusting horrible truth. Aerie would kill that epic. It was, after all, a mercy to kill an epic. Chapter 2: It was a very quiet room for a god slaying menace to be hiding in. Aerie was almost surprised to see Voidcaller as an old man, maybe in his 60’s or so. He was the only man in the room. Voidcaller had the power to go invisible. Right. Aerie reached out with tendrils of air, trying to feel everything in the room. Nothing, no one. He checked behind him. The door was still as he had left it. Aerie looked back to the old man squatting in the corner. Wait. Where was that old man? Aerie felt something disturb the air. He created a bubble of air around it and popped it. That would kill anything within it. Then his danger sense went off, and Aerie was almost forced – it was more like a guiding sense – to fly upwards, crushing the roof with a burst of air pressure. The area blew up with a purple explosion. A man lay in the crater. Alive. He was alive. The air was moving in and out of his lungs. He wanted Aerie to believe he was dead. Aerie walked right up to the coward. Most epics had a cool down on their powers, and couldn’t use them right after. And he grabbed the Voidcaller – a 62 year old man with a sense of age on his face – by the neck, and used air pressure to rip open his chest. It was painful for both of them. Aerie always hated blood and gore, but he had to make a public impression. Aerie smiled as he brushed off the pieces of the Voidcaller’s chest cavity. It felt good to kill. Sparks. It felt good. - - - - It wasn’t long before Recapture asked if the Voidcaller was truly dead. Which he was. Aerie was certain of it. He had scattered the pieces far enough that a healing epic couldn’t save him, and he heard no report of resurrecting old people roaming the streets. Recapture was a coward. A true coward. One that hid behind the greater epics. Epics like himself. Insolence was a blockade. Strength and Invincibility were Insolence’s powers. What either of those powers had to do with insolation was beyond Aerie’s imagination. But he was going to get in Aerie’s way. Insolence didn’t know any of Aerie’s plans, so he was not a high priority target. Aerie’s low target enemy was adamant about Absorption being alive. He believed that Absorption is faking is death, and when he returns, those loyal to him will prosper. That was, undoubtedly, false. “We should be recruiting all the epics. Telling them to stay in line or else –“ Insolence motioned a cutthroat with his fingers, “Absorption will deal with them.” Recapture was impartial to everything. Whether that scared Aerie or not was concerning, but that was not a problem. The three of them: Aerie, Recapture, and Insolence were the tools of Absorption’s rule. They didn’t really get a choice about working for him. The way it would work was that you would receive a letter. The letter that thousands of epics received. Only around half of them lived. You could hide, but you couldn’t run. Absorption could kill you from any distance. The letter had a message from Absorption. Aerie’s letter had the message: I do not care where you are. You must come to Alensdale in five days, or I will kill you. And you cannot hide. It still chilled Aerie. The words were so crude. Absorption didn’t need to care who you were. He won either way. He didn’t need to bother with persuasive language. He was in control. “Well, then. I’ll make sure that people fall into line then.” Aerie responded. He would make them all fall into line. All of them. Just like how Absorption did it. Everyone was following the rules. And the rules would be made by Aerie. He had waited a long time for this moment. And he would savor it. ##### BTW future chapters will be posted here. Maybe in spoiler boxes. Idk. Chapter 3: Chapter 4
  5. Heyo Humans! So, I have been debating about this for several days... and so I finally decided to make a Creative Corner - just in case! I did a sketch randomly and soo... yeah. Here it is! I can't draw hands, or people generally, so the proportions are probably a leetle bit off. Also, my phone has terrible picture quality, so sorry if it's a bit blurry! Vin sketch Hopefully, I'll also start posting some writing I've been doing - in this corner, I'll post sketches and art. I might make a writing corner soon (after exams) where I'll post concepts and short stories. Maybe. Have a wonderful day, Humans!
  6. This is a short story I wrote, hope you like it! One More Hit - Google Docs
  7. Hey you guys! Here is a short story I wrote! The storyline is supposed to be like: Its a wonderful life. Hope you like it! I would like your feedback! https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iDcNZu3YkNmVZdg01mlrUgRwaMQa0EKVtOMBLYokdsA/edit?usp=sharing Happy reading!
  8. So, recently I got a friend of mine into mistborn and he is amping up to run a game in era one. Personally while I love the capabilities of mistborn and full feruchemists I think the limitations of era 2 can create really fun characters. So I invite anyone who is willing to share their concepts to do so here I'd be delighted to hear. With your permission the base concepts may show up when I run an era 2 game of my own. In the interest of fairness I will share my first idea. A twinborn steel allomancer, and gold feruchemist. Initially grew up in a Terris enclave unaware of his noble blood. After getting into trouble with the law as a youth and subsequently getting kicked out of the village they ended up joining the constabulary years later and settling into a semi normal and happy life. As an open coinshot they hide their blood maker abilities often allowing someone to seemingly fatally shoot them. Only to fire up on them at close range with their allomancy or a gun. Look forward to hearing what great ideas people come up with and thank you in advance for sharing. P.S. I do hope I picked the right channel for this.
  9. Alrighty! In celebration of me reaching 1,000 posts, I'm kickstarting an idea some other Sharders and I came up with. We were originally going to do it in November, then moved it to December, but everyone forgot. So now, we're starting it here. For each day of January, there will be a writing prompt. This will be supplied by me on some days, though for others, I may let other Sharders come up with them later. This isn't very structured, you see... but I think it will be fun. Prompt for January 1 is as follows: The Cycle Resets You can write anything based on that prompt. Start your post with the date, and re-state the prompt, to avoid confusion. Keep your story relatively short, and spoiler it. Discussion is allowed and encouraged! Share compliments and positive critiques on other's writing. We also need to figure out who is making prompts for future days, or if we want to make a list. As new prompts are added, I can probably come back and add them to this OP. But for now, let's start with what we have! (And while I'm not doing this in the OP, feel free to tag people you think might be interested.)
  10. Context~ Sometimes in my mind/conversations/things I write I randomly come up savage or funny one liners. I wanted a virtual place to write these down rather that just my physical notebook. Kind of like a quote book but just the highlights. There will probably be no context provided for them. Sometimes there is no context.
  11. Context~ Sometimes in my mind/conversations/things I write I randomly come up savage or funny one liners. I wanted a virtual place to write these down rather that just my physical notebook. Kind of like a quote book but just the highlights.
  12. Thanks to the efforts of @InfiniteInsanity, I am attempting NaNoWriMo this year. I'm going to post the chapters as I write them, or at least as makes sense according to my schedule. I'm writing a fantasy novel (with a little bit of sci fi) that's based on an idea InfiniteInsanity helped me come up with. I've added a lot to it, and thrown together a rough outline, so that I may actually be able to finish a story this time, rather than what I usually do, which is just creating some cool worldbuilding without a real story to go with it. Normally, I'd give a long explanatory rant, but this time, I'm throwing you in so you can see what you think. You'll learn as you read. To start: The Prologue. I realized as I was writing this that I made it way too long. I put a whole lot of unnecessary stuff in here, so I'm going to edit it and trim it down later. (There will most likely be a rigorous editing process for the entire story, honestly. But that's once I'm finished.) So please keep in mind that I am currently unsatisfied with this prologue, and most of it is subject to change in the future. Even so, here it is.
  13. Some of you may know of this character, but now I wish to publicize him. Borio Singaldi is a character I randomly made up one day in school when the name popped into my head out of nowhere. I was just minding my own business when the name "Borio Singaldi and the Death of a Prospect" came out of the blue. I was so intrigued by this ridiculous thought that I had to write it down. Once I did, I shared this idea with my fellow Knights of the Cosmere and decided to do something about it. So we started a mini writing group about the character of Borio Singaldi, our stories about him often based on a variation of the title "Death of a Prospect" (such as Death of a Perspective, Death of a Prospector, Prospect of Death, Perspective of Death, Prospector of Death, etc). But they don't need to be limited to that. The story can be about anything, so long as one sticks to the character. So I guess you should all get a full description of the guy from which to base your thoughts on him. Character description: He is a large and portly man, overweight but not quite obese. He is often fashionably dressed in a sort of foppish way. He has brown eyes, black hair, and light tan skin. I'd almost say he's entirely white, but he has a bit of Greco-Italian blood in him. His strongest defining characteristics are his mustache and his cane. He has a long, elegent, twirling mustache that often seems to move on its own. It is very important to him that he maintain its appearance. His cane is made of a fancy and valuable type of wood (that I haven't fully decided yet) and has a diamond tip. It is extremely valuable to him and he never goes anywhere without it. As for his personality, he is not the brightest bulb in the box, but he's prone to bouts of cleverness and spontaneity sometimes (due to the writers having fun with him ). He is very blunt, not very witty, quite often annoying, and has a very domineering presence. He is never intentionally mean and he has a good heart to him, but he's just not good at understanding other people and their feelings, so he's insensitive but not rude. For some, he's extremely annoying, for others he's simply charming and maybe even amusing. What does he do with his life? Well, that's up to the people who write him. It's also been made canon that he lives in a fancy mansion in Des Moines, Iowa, with his butler Earnestwise Tomatopatch and maid Clemendine Tomatopatch (a running joke is that he's never been able to figure out how they are related; he thinks they are either siblings or spouses, but has never really known). He has a strange relationship with the supernatural entity that is Death, and he has gone on many fantastical misadventures. I usually come up with a story and then have to make characters for it, but this is a reversal in which I have made the character and try to write stories about him. Because of this, they are obviously very character-driven. My mentality with writing him calls to mind Chef Gustaeu's line from the Pixar movie Ratatouille: "Anyone can cook." Or in this case, "Anyone can write a Borio Storio." It can be about literally anything you want, so long as you stay true to the character. I now invite my fellow writers who have already contributed to the creation of these Storios in our private PM to now share them here. Or if you want, I can share them for you. Whichever you prefer. @AonEne@BitBitio@Sami@phoenix2563@Ink@Kidpen@Sherlock Holmes@Wyndlerunner@Stormblessed Dolphin Yes. We had a PM of our own prior to this in which we shared them. I want to share this character and his stories with the rest of the Shard, and eventually the rest of the world. But baby steps, Fire. Baby steps. I now invite you all to join in me in continuing to build a universe of ridiculous stories about this guy. They can be any genre and can be any length. Genres we've done so far include realistic fiction, light fantasy, and science fiction, all in a comedic aspect. The longest one so far has been maybe two pages long and the shortest one so far was just a couple paragraphs. Keep in mind that while all of the stories we've done so far are intentionally comedic (and laugh out loud hilarious if I do say so myself), you are NOT REQUIRED to do comedy when writing him. Comedic stories are generally expected and quite welcome, but I'd like to maybe see a serious or dramatic rendition of the character. But again: you can write the story about ANYTHING. Of course, I ask that you keep them clean and don't have inappropriate content (no foul language, no overt or discreet sexual content, violence is allowed to a degree). But please, my fellow Sharders... the most important thing I ask of you when writing these Storios is... HAVE FUN. Please have fun writing this, it's meant to bring out the weird and playful writing side of you. I started this Borio Writing Anthology so we could have fun. And now, I will share a few that I have written with all of you as examples of what they are typically like. Hopefully my current fellow writer will share theirs too. Borio Singaldi and the Borio Singaldi and the Death Borio Singaldi and the Death of a Prospector Borio Singaldi and the Seventeenth Shard Borio Singaldi and a Kind Act Borio Singaldi and Procrastination And here is a Borio Singaldi Mad Lib I made: http://www.projectlabyrinth.com/MadLibs/MadLib.php?mid=1794003279834 Enjoy, fellow writers.
  14. okay guys. I have seen a similar game to this on another thread but I thought we needed a new one. this game for those who don't know already is a game where each player writes a chapter. this is traditionally a pm game but I don't really want to just do it in pms. a player is selected to write a chapter, then by a specific deadline they submit the chapter and everyone reads it. this would go on for about a year or so per game. submitting chapters would go to the gm of the game, probably me, to share on this thread so others can play. specifics and rules still need to be set up, if anyone would like to help me with the rules I am open to suggestions. Now we need a book idea and a main plot line. we also need a genre, I would prefer fantasy with a bunch of other sub genres but you guys can collaborate and decide as long as you tell a proper gm. for now we only have 1 gm who is me @Thaidakar the Ghostblood.
  15. So I love to read and have always wanted to write a book. The problem is that I can't work up the motivation anymore. I don't want to take a break, because I'm worried that I will never get started again, so do any of you have any solutions, for my predicament?
  16. Hey folks, I've stumbled upon a new method for worldbuilding that has helped bypass the blocks in my mind and increase my overall output, so I thought I'd share it to see if others wanted to try it out. For context, I have always struggled with worldbuilding. I get bored and distracted too quickly, so I don't like sitting down and working out accurate timelines, historical events, lineages and things like that. I am far stronger with my character work and find it far easier to present information through the eyes of a character. Enter epistolary worldbuilding. I've found that I work far faster and have more fun by detailing such things in small fragments of text written in-world by various characters. These are usually only a sentence or two long, and I typically don't attribute them to anyone specific or assign a date to them. They're just fun little snippets of character voice witnessing or reflecting on events I'm imagining in my head but am struggling to detail accurately. Part of the fun for me is headhopping through a bunch of different viewpoints and trying to convey a strong sense of character and setting in just a few lines. On their own, each fragment doesn't mean a lot, but when you read a couple at a time you get a larger sense of what is going on in the world that I think feels much more human and character-driven than a dry description of events and dates. Obviously this leaves a deficit of any objective information, as each viewpoint is biased, but I think this is a more accurate representation of history within a world. It can even just help for the original genesis of a sequence of events and then it is simple enough to add dates and create objectivity as needed. But personally it has been a while since I've been worried about objective truths within my writing. So far I've only really used this for worldbuilding history, but I can highly recommend it to others that are more comfortable writing character than doing worldbuilding. I don't think such a process would work to figure out the metaphysics or magic system of a world, but I'm curious to see if it is effective in other contexts. Give it a try. Let me know what you think. We can share examples in this thread.
  17. I'm still reasonably new to the writing world when it comes to doing it myself using my own imagination. Sorry if this doesn't fit here its taken me a while to post something like this due to my anxiety but I want to be able to write so much. This is a small snippet of what I'm writing at the moment, I'm wondering if this is any good or if I'm just a shite writer like my anxiety makes me think. sorry if I misunderstood this part of the forum. The girl gets tossed over to the mother who whispers to the daughter “it's all going to be okay just stay quiet and let us adults talk this over”, the girl grasps her mother tightly ,afraid. The four people stand at the other side of the room muttering to each other out of earshot of the daughter and mother, the four turn around staring at the two. One of the women begins chuckling and says “ The girl is coming with us I'm afraid, since you have nothing worth the amount you owe us we will be taking your daughter as new inventory”. The mother, outraged, tries to escape her restraints but realizes she was tied down too well and just embraces her daughter for what might be the last time she can. One of the men yanks the daughter away from her mother with little difficulty, putting her over his shoulder as she kicks and screams, demanding to be put down. The group grab the sacks they came in with and leave together leaving the mother crying defeated in the corner still tied down to the chair. The group leave the house, closing the door behind them as if nothing happened. Although everyone nearby heard the commotion no-one came to help in any way, the inhabitants of Lumicon Rong watch as the group walk away with the young girl and possessions of the home they left. The young girl watches as no one helps or even speaks a word of displeasure to the abductors, she thinks to herself realizing “no one cares... do they?”. People hardly glance in their direction, no matter how loudly she shouts. They pass an assortment of buildings on their way to a location the young girl had never seen before, what looks like a small castle wall with a few tall buildings behind it in the corner of the mountain range Lumicon Rong resides in. Within the twenty or so minutes it took the party to get there, not one person spoke out or even crossed the path of the abductors. It was as if no one could see or hear them, or maybe they feared what might come out of any conflict created. As the group approaches the closed gate one of the women shouts loudly “oi swain, wake up”. The sound of a bottle being knocked over followed by a grunt comes from above the gate as an older gentleman's head appears. He acknowledges her with a nod and opens the gate, swiftly disappearing afterwards back behind the battlements of the wall. The young girl at this point has accepted what has happened to her and is awaiting whatever will come next, hoping for the best, expecting the worst.
  18. I was just doing a casual reread of OB and looking over Shallan's sketches of Urithiru while it was occupied by Re-Shephir and realized this sequence might've been intended to evoke a sense of dread in the reader. A lot of the Unmade would've been pretty terrifying: Re-Shephir, Moelach, Ashertmarn... but they don't really invoke any emotion in me aside from curiosity. Is Brandon just bad at invoking a sense of looming dread, that mash of horror and mystery? Because I feel like when there's a more human aspect to the dread, he does it well: the fountain executions in Mistborn. What do y'all think?
  19. I'm writing a thing! Specifically, a story called Chosen. It's like, a weird, trope-subverty thing. The premise of it is a classic "Chosen One" story, but told from the perspective of the mentor. It also does, like, other things with the plot, as you'll see as I write more of the story. I just have the rough draft of Chapter 1 written right now. Don't expect any more from me this week - I've got school crem to do - but I expect to be doing a lot of writing this summer. Constructive criticism would be very much appreciated. Chosen 1.
  20. The gay male protagonist. Bane of mainstream literature. But things are better now™. *sigh* LGBT literature is still very much- actually hold that thought. The existence of that term alone shows the problem: that LGBT literature is a separate thing from straight literature. We rarely have fantasy, mystery or sci-fi whose main character happens to be gay, we have gay fiction which happens to have a fantasy, mystery or sci-fi setting, rarely. Mostly it's just romance. Written by women. *sigh* It's mostly erotica, basically not even aimed at the same gender. There are gay authors: Adam Silvera, TJ Klune, Will Walton, Benjamin Alire Sáenz,... well-known LGBT authors. Special thanks to Richard Morgan who finally wrote a non-romance with a gay male character as the main protagonist. Also Robin Hobb. Gay characters are almost never the main protagonist in the mainstream literature. Gay literature is still a niche genre and generally not taken to be a part of mainstream literature. When gay characters do appear in the mainstream and they're not badly written, they're usually secondary characters or at most, the deuteragonist. These authors are then treated like the bastion of LGBT literature and everyone else would remember their example for the next ten years as completion of the required dosage of gayness they can handle on their reading list. They will then cite these books everytime some poor sod mentions we need more representation, "wasn't that one book from 5 years ago with that one gay character (who probably dies later on) enough?" And these authors too, even after all this time, are in the minority compared to those who simply ignore that gay people exist. These are the books most likely to have a lot of romantic subplots. Love triangles, ahoy! "But we need romance in our books!" "Why do we need to have a gay character?" "what does it add to the character?" Female gay characters are, of course, fine. I mean there's also less gay female characters because it's not as daring and "female lead" is still something that can be used to sort books but at least people aren't directly opposed to them. Gay male characters on the other hand are an insult and a threat to masculinity everywhere *long exhale* So we have Ranette and Drehy filling the quota of gay characters in the Cosmere and they're tertiary characters. So far, we have maybe-promises from the author regarding gay characters in the future. On a completely unrelated note, how many love triangles have we had in the Cosmere so far again? This post is my anger and this post is my logic: Also check out this comment by @The Awakened Salad which addresses the question of why a character would "need" to be gay:
  21. This is an article I wrote a couple of months back about foreshadowing in fantasy. It is one of my favorite topics to talk about, as evidenced by this, and how I immediately jumped to the chance of being on the Dusty Wheel's episode on foreshadowing. I'd love to discuss it with all of you, and hear your opinions on the topic. Copy_of_Foreshadowing.pdf
  22. Greetings pals. I'm kind of new to the forums, so if this post doesn't belongs here, please excuse me and erase or move it. I was wondering if any of you knows where (if possible) to find some of the outlines that Sanderson have wrote and used before witing a whole novel. You'll see, I'm a amateur writer and this would help me a huge lot to learn how to propperly outline a story (beacause i think my current outlining method doesn't quite works well). If any of you can point me in the right direction by telling where to find one of BS's outlines, or explaining how does he makes his outlines, it'll be a huge help to me. Thanks a lot!
  23. So I'm drafting a book. I'm only on the first draft, and not quite 20k words in, and I don't really have any previous writing experience. I'll post the introduction, which I think for once might be decent, and I'll try to be posting more content periodically. For now, just let me know what you think!
  24. Hello! Here is the prologue for the story I've been writing. I'm going to try to get a new chapter out every week or so, but don't hold me to it, I'm an extremely slow writer. I hope it's not too bad, and feel free to point out any typos. That is all, enjoy:
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