Channelknight Fadran

Ayia sighs, then casts her Line to the sky. She hops on it, skating upwards until she reached the end of the Line. Then, she hopped off, grabbing the Line and retracting it back into her sleeve as she soared through the air. She pulled out one of her metal rods, Stabalizing it before she hit the ground and spinning about to break her momentum. She dropped, landing right in front of Chrysler and Andante. @Condensation @Negative_Null

"Inconceivable!" Fadran threw a marshmallow at her.

"Yep! Them and Summer."

"Team Queedraolate? You need to be initiated first." Fadran drops a marshmallow on her head. "Alright. Now you can join."

Fadran started barraging the two as well. @Mist

Fadran jumped. "A kid just appeared out of nowhere!"

"T and Ember; we need to unite them if we want them to get together someday!"

"Herate! Daolan!" Fadran called. "Cover us; let's ally and take this battle!"

Fadran falls back, creating a small wall of earth in front of him and Queen. "We've got them at a bottleneck; they can't come through this door without getting splattered. Make sure to watch our six. Until then..." he grabbed some marshmallows, melting them with his fire Arcana, "fire!" He lobbed the goopy marshmallow into the house. @DramaQueen

That's for an RP. Think nothing of it. Probably a... 7? For that first thing: I guess you could switch 6 and 7. I'm not exactly the most qualified to rate levels of passion in a romance scene. I guess by saying 7 is "implied Pattern tried to tell you no" I mean "heavily implied Pattern tried to tell you no." As for that scene... I'd probably place it somewhere between a 5 and a 6. By "passionate physical contact" I'm speaking more among the lines of... you know what? I'd probably be better off not describing that, but the twirly-kiss-thing definitely drops down to a 4. I never said anything is better than anything. I created an arbitrary scale that, I'll admit, was a little rushed. Don't take anything I say in this thread at face value: these are just suggestions from my own expierence in writing, and my own experience in writing don't include spicy scenes.

"How's about we go, Enter? Herate's boyfriend isn't going to save himself." @Condensation

That's understandable. How do you feel about revolutions?

Oh, really? So you're like an extension of his soul, or something?

I feel like I should've mentioned how to best judge where you should keep your writing under this scale. I recommend reading through, and finding out at which point you start feeling uncomfortable. Then, go down by 2 and make that your baseline. Try to stay in or under that, only pulling up a notch of you feel like it'll help your scene. I start feeling pretty uncomfortable around 6, so I'm dropping to 4, and will probably avoid 5 where possible (I.E. everywhere; I'm the author, scud it, I can write whatever I want!)

Well hello, sword person! Who might you be?

Romance scenes! I've been debating on writing a lesson on these for awhile, and now that @Aspiring Writer seems all for it, I might as well! (I'm also interested in hearing what @Condensation has to say...) I think my original inspiration for this was when I was reading a book about how to write. It was pretty dang good, but their chapter on romance scenes seemed a little... skewed. I remember them specifically describing romance scenes as people having sex. I remember thinking, wait, what? Really? That's the official definition for a romance scene? Geeze, this world's more messed up than I thought it was. I just looked up the actual definition of a romance scene, and I don't know what that book was thinking, because while the definitions often included an option for highly passionate stuff (scud, that last word totally broke up the flow of that sentence), they also included things such as "a feeling of excitement and mystery associated with love." Obviously, there's a gradient scale here, and I intend to define it! Romance scenes are, in my own opinion, just any scenes used to build a supposed 'love arc,' whether that be Harry stealing glances at Cho Chang or Blushweaver being Blushweaver. I've decided to first create a Scale of Romance that you can rate your own romance writing on, then describe how to write... most of them (I've never tried and hope to never to try writing a straight-out sex scene). So without further ado... a scale! Whoo! Very low passion. Probably nothing more than someone stealing glances at their crush (Harry and Cho Chang). Admittance. Maybe they're flirting with somebody, or admitting to someone that they like someone (the early stages of Queedran). Physical contact. Hugging, hand-holding, maybe a peck on the cheek, etc (the current stage of Queedran) Kissing. Not to be confused with making out. There's a difference (Harry and Ginny). Making out. You wade into the pool of dangerous love scenes by doing this (Megan and that one guy in Steelheart). Passionate physical contact. I think I'll not describe this in detail (Straff Venture and Amortentia (that was her name, right?)). Implied/connotated reproduction event. That was the kindest word I could give it (Siri and Susebron) Hetsu. <-- this is a reference to a really naive character that, if you approach without wearing any armor in Breath of the Wild, will start shouting "you are nekked! I am nekked! We are united in exposure!" If that gives you guys the wrong impression of Breath of the Wild, then don't worry; one could argue it isn't even an innuendo in the first place, just Hetsu being Hetsu (David and Megan near the end of Firefight). Mating. If you describe the process in any way, then you've gotten yourself a 9. Graphic mating. You've gone into way too much detail and you've ought to rethink your life choices. Just a little side note; there's a bit of a gray area around 5 and up, where you've implied that someone has gone and disregarded Pattern's advice but you haven't explained exactly when, how, or with who. Most of Blushweaver can be found in this gray area. There's also a small gray area between 2 and 4 where you're sexually attracted to someone as opposed to just regularly attracted, I.E. looking a little lower than their eyes or imagining yourself making out with them or something. I'll be explaining 1-4 in detail, and possibly 5 in less detail. So without further ado... 1: Glance-stealing! This one isn't super hard to pull off. I find it easier to show a character staring at someone else from a different character's POV, but that doesn't mean that first-person crushes are difficult. The purpose of these scenes are to develop the fact that a character likes/is attracted to someone, not to give us a romantic payoff moment. That isn't to say it can't be romantic payoff; it's just be pretty darned difficult to develop that. Crush POV: Bob couldn't help but watch Mary as she bent over, hair falling in front of her face as she picked up the water bottle. "Did you drop this?" She asked, standing up and smiling. He was suddenly very aware of how sweaty his palms were. "Uh... yeah." Other POV: He rolled his eyes as Bob's eyes followed Mary. When she turned to look back at Bob, he blushed, and David had himself a good quiet chuckle. 2: I personally find it really funny to watch people awkwardly stumble their way through admitting they have a crush on someone--at least, in writing. These stages are important for people who aren't romantically adept (I.E. just about everybody), and help us segue into the comfort zone. "Hey, uh, Mary. I was, uh, wondering if, uh..." Bob was stumbling over his own words. Mary smiled at him. "Yes?" "I was, uh, wondering if, maybe you wanted to, uh... go to this, um... thing on Friday." She blushed a little. "Of course! What... thing? 3: Hugging! This is the beginning of the comfort zone. You could probably skip it and move right into kissing, but if you want to draw the romance out, then I wouldn't skip this step. Allow me to cite the Fellowship of the Thing... After a moment of indecision, Fadran quietly slides his hand into Queen's. Queen jolts slightly with surprise, then smiles, moves closer, and puts her head on Fadran's shoulder. 4: Kissing! I did help Connie write a Daolan/Herate kissing scene, and I was going to find the one where Jek and Vapor kissed, but I can't find it, so... I guess Bob and Mary will make a comeback. I also recommend dynamic lighting during kissing scenes (sunrise, lightning, explosions... etc) Bob realized that he was strangely comfortable with Mary sitting beside him; even if her hand was placed atop his. Her head rested on his shoulder for a moment, before she picked it back up again to gawk at a particularly bluish firework. She looked at him to see his expression, excitement turning to comfortable happiness as she looked into his eyes. "What?" He asked. "I just like seeing how much you've grown since ninth grade." "Two years. It's been two years. Two years today. I feel like we should do something special for it." A red beam streaked into the air. Everyone on the lawn seemed to hold their breath, knowing instinctively that it would be a big one. "I have something special." Bob cocked his head. "You do?" "Yep! It's this." The firework went off, illuminating everything in a bright, almost pink light, and Mary wrapped her arm around Bob's neck, pressing her lips to his. When she pulled away and the illumination had faded off, Bob blinked in surprise. "I--" "Happy anniversary." As for making out... what you're trying to do with that kind of thing is develop that someone's either sexually attracted to someone or isn't ashamed with getting a little passonate. I won't be describing how to write those scenes. I... can't believe I just wrote all that. Don't die! ~Fadran (And no, Bearer, I don't think I got that from Unwanteds).

"That sounds... safe."

Very well. To the RightingWrite thread!

"You dropped cesium into the ocean?"

Dear gosh, I haven't read those in awhile...

You don't have to change your own work just to work into the standards of somebody else. Then again... I'm less likely to be willing to peer-edit something with what I'd consider to be sexual. Maybe I could do a mini-lesson on romance in writing? Just to help people define where they stand on the large gradiant of passionate scenes?

"Alright, then. To the security room!"