@thewirelessblade There are four ways I can think of off the top of my head to do this.

1. Just getting to know the character. Every believable human has flaws. As you get to know them you get a feeling of what they are like. You explore the different directions of their personality, how they talk, what attitude they have towards the events of…[Read more]

@karthmin Cool! I hope the guild gets more active but November probably isn’t the best time to try and do stuff with a writer. ;P

@morreafirebird I will be praying!

Coincidently, my sister was diagnosed with an iron deficiency last month. She went to Urgent Care because of really bad stomach pains and they discovered she had about half the iron she was supposed to. (The stomach pain was a one-time thing that didn’t happen before and hasn’t happened after.) They never found…[Read more]

@kayla-skywriter I don’t think I understand the question. The brain is another body part. If you establish clearly how it is different than in our world then the readers will accept it. You could say, “Yeah, disembodied heads can still talk and be alive in this world even though there is no blood pumping through them and not lungs for breathing…[Read more]

@kayla-skywriter I think if you acknowledge that it isn’t the way it works in our world it will be fine. Like it the magic related to the four humors or whatever they were, and a character explained, “Yes, I am interacting with bile right now and it will have this effect.” and then it has that effect the reader would think, “Huh. That’s not the…[Read more]

@urwen-starial

If you want to figure out a rough time period that corresponds to the real world, think of what technologies you want in your story and don’t want in your story. For instance, if you know that you want guns to be invented, but no printing presses, a quick google reveals that to be the 1350s to 1450s. Then google “fashion of the…[Read more]

@karthmin @seekjustice @sageinthemeadow I’ve read Howl’s Moving Castle but not seen the movie. I thought it was a fairly average book.

@seekjustice Wow! This is a lot fancier than I thought it was going to be. I thought you would name a genre and I would just dump all my thoughts about it here until I said something that someone wanted to talk about.

I started reading the Lord of the Rings, something that will probably take several months to finish given that I read it on the…[Read more]

Psst @seekjustice. How’s it going?

@padawanpadme *laughs because of despair* Figuring out names is really hard. I usually do one of two things.

1) I go to google translate, stick whatever placeholder name I have been using so far in, (River city, tall people, magic trinket) and try and bunch of languages until I get a word I kind of like, then I mess around with the spelling a…[Read more]

@tinuviel Wow. It’s… interesting. In a good way. It feels like the prose I want to when I am at my most poetic, words bursting out of me, but then I try and it looks way worse actually on the screen, but yours is actually good. It technically is a story—It has a beginning middle, and end. There is conflict and a resolution. I just… *tilts h…[Read more]

@corine Jumping into this discussion, I think the most important thing to avoid potentially encouraging people to sin would be to make it unlike demonic “magic” in this world. Things like blood rituals, human/animal sacrifices, and appealing to a dark patron as the source of the powers. Or, if you have them, you should portray them as wrong.

In…[Read more]

@morreafirebird Thank you! I’d be up for brainstorming if you need more help!

I wrote about my frog-kisser character here if you want to check it out. I think I want to do something more with her, or at least the concept, at some point.

@seekjustice I love that idea! I’m on board!

@morreafirebird My first thought is healer. My second thought it “No, that’s cliche!”. And then my third thought is… “Actually off the top of my head I can only think of one book I’ve read where the MC was a healer. Like, an actual healer and not a she-was-a-healer-to-get-involved-in-the-plot-and-then-gets-in-a-more-action-based-role. And that…[Read more]

@seekjustice YES!!! That’s how I found Into the West! I’ve been listening to them so much!

@morreafirebird @karthmin I’m just gonna dump some LOTR and Narnia thoughts here.

LOTR

• SOMEONE GIVE FARAMIR A HUG.
• I would follow Aragorn to the ends of the earth seriously he is so awesome.
• I was watching Return of the King with a friend for English class and we were taking notes. I was going over hers later and one line just said,…

[Read more]

@tinuviel *whispers* I used to be the person who didn’t like Frodo. *slides down seat in shame* I think it was because he lost…? In the end? He gave in to evil. Heroes don’t give into evil. But *grabs past self and shakes shoulders* IT’S MORE COMPLICATED THAN THAT!!!!!!!!!

I love how in the Fellowship (movie), he is so bright-eyed and eager.…[Read more]

@karthmin

I think (hope?) that I write woman realistically, being one myself. I think there have only been a couple of times where I thought “A woman didn’t write this female character”.

The Bendel Test is a bit of a tricky question, because I’ve been writing a lot of short stories lately, and since there isn’t a lot of room for a lot of…[Read more]

@bree-dawn HELLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! I am Princess Foo, the Warmaster of Erekdale! (You can find more information about that sort of thing in the first post.) Welcome to Erekdale!