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#ScribesAndMakers 2503.19 — At what age did you start creating?

Is as far back as I can remember an okay answer?

I can remember sitting in the front of the TV watching Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (look it up), playing imaginary games with my toys, making them walk, making them roll, making them fly, and sometimes tea was involved. The figurines talked and we gabbed and gossiped and discussed important life events! The vehicles made what I thought very authentic noises!! There were adventures galore!!! I remember being part and parcel to those adventures and conversations. They really happened, were I asked, and if friends were about, we all participated.

Now I am an author.

Pure coincidence.

Absolutely!

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

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#WordWeavers 2503.18 — Is there a connection between how you write (plotter vs pantser) and how your MCs deal with their goals?

Is there a connection between how I compose a story and how my MC's deal with their goals? Put another way, are my characters miniature personality fragments of their author?

Technically, I am a pantser. I discover plot and characters as I write the life of the MC as they live it. However, I know how the story ends before I start writing. Usually. I'm slightly plotter, in that sense. Moreover, as I proceed through the story, further events down the line become evident so I am actually building a mental outline going forward. (Didn't see that coming, if you been following my musing in their writer challenges, did ya?)

My main characters take after me in the sense that most are either very smart intellectually or very smart individually (great flyer, lots of common sense, etc). I can't say I run into the type a lot in real life. This does not mean the characters are good planners, or even want to plan. However, they aren't stupid, either. I don't do plot advancement by stupidity. To the degree they're capable, characters plan then execute.

  1. One ensign never given promotions is given the command a museum piece frigate ends in a super safe zone, but is called into service to save the capital city. She strategizes the whole operation because she's planned siege plans for her version of West Point since she's graduated. She knows how she'd invade the city, and prepares her crew, step by step, contingency by contingency. Plotter.
  2. One former prizefighter then bodyguard is always training. Taught to fight smart not cute, she studies her opponent ahead of time, or the route in detail with her team. Surprised, she fights tactically, and viciously, becoming more and more happy (and bloody). Surprises test her limits. Plotter improvisor.
  3. One woman who got herself blackmailed into being a mob messenger for a decade often dreamt big, but her complete lack of planning caused her to react, often emotionally. Without thinking through consequences of her actions, her life has been erratic. When her integrity earns her a new friend, and that new friend is attacked by an antagonist vastly superior to herself, she defends the friend... again, again, and again, adjusting each time until she nearly kills the attacker and aids in the attacker being incapacitated—that success redefines her entire life. Pantser. Describes the litter of half finished stories in my wake, and the dynamism of some of the other stories.

You judge.

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Replied to Orion (he/him)

@orionkidder

How do you, personally, make characters?

Do you design them to interact with each other?

Rarely. Design is a squishy word. Do they show up on stage for a purpose? Yes. Randy showed up for May Ri when she was required to marry someone. (It was in the contract she signed along with a one year time limit.) We soon learn he was supposed to marry May Ri's friend, but he agrees. Streak Carryingaton and Thorn Rose appeared together, from a reference in another novel to a pair of astronauts. I immediately decided they were a couple, because their very existence needed to disrupt an entire lost civilization. I guess that's "designing them to interact," huh? Not like I'm taking out a piece of paper and writing a character sketch or list...

Do you flesh out their backstory before you start writing?

Pretty much never. Backstory generates itself. As people interact, I end up asking myself why certain details matter. Why did Randy mean to marry Reina not May Ri. Why was he on Mars? Why was this guy especially nice? Turns out he was a woman's rights activist at a period in time, like now, when reactionary forces put the hammer down. Lots more came from that. That sorta thing. I've been caught showing such rich generated backstory that I've been called out to write that story. My first published novel was the backstory in another novel I never finished as a result.

Do you discover them as you go?

Yep. As above, I find characters when I need them to fill rolls that pop up.

Do you decide on race, gender, religion, sexuality, and all that ahead of time?

With Streak and Thorn, I knew I was writing a feminist parable of the 1960s moonshot years, detailing the prejudice and the sexism, but also poking religious fanaticism in the eye. Streak and Rose need to be different, so I made him a day angel and her a daemon. (Mind you, they're both entirely human and their "types" are inherited from other stories, so the angel x daemon thing is a serendipitous matchup.) Their people distrust each other in this time period; essentially (NOT physically,) he's black, she's white, and they're a couple. Defines their sexuality. The concept of religion doesn't apply. And that's the thought process I started with. The rest flowed from action in the story.

Sometimes sexuality is important. Cloud Dancer is gay because I wanted to have him talk with the main character about what that felt like, and to help flesh out the society they live in. Other characters made my gay-dar antennae twitch, which eventually led to me writing a gay romance side story for them. All discovery while writing.

Do you divide them between heroes and villains?

People show their true colors, but when certain people show up on stage, I know their purpose immediately. When one of the board of directors for EM Mars Corp shows up in May Ri's habitat, ordering the women congregate in one dome, stating they're redistributing women's labor to put them to better use, and names "being married" one criteria, it becomes obvious something's wrong. He becomes a recurring villainous antagonist and he's helping me now advance the plot. He's May Ri's nemesis. She regrets not letting him die the time she could have done that.

Do you "see" and "hear" them in your head?

I can't visualize people in my head as some people can. My type of shy often makes me not look at people, to avert my gaze, especially when I was kid and I suppose one learns this type of visualization. I can take a thing, like a plush toy and rotate it in my head to see all sides, so I think it is learn it or lose it. In any case, I can only tag people's attributes in my head.

I try not to describe people except vaguely, like eye color and height, so readers can relate to them better. Half way through Mars Needed Women, all we know about May Ri is her daughter has dark hair like she does, and that she's physically fit, and better than average height. That's it.

On the other hand, I assign characteristics when I think it will enhance other characteristics. The first person born on Mars has red hair and freckles, but asian eyes. Since she's treated as something of a big sister and a princess by all those born after her, I wanted pretty. The asian eyes got her the title Onēsanue (O - honorific, Nēsan - Big sister, ue - higher, special) and Japanese ancestry, which got her the surname Īto, which in turn helped describe her mother, one of the Directors, etc.

In another story, when it became important that a woman could sing, she got a soprano voice. The voice of the main character, who is the daughter of a famous opera singer who died, is only described as singing her mother's songs in the shower, and crying at the same time.

Lots of process here. Hope it helps!

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I've thrown this question out before, but there's always room for new thought on it:

How do you, personally, *make* characters?

Do you design them to interact with each other? Do you flesh out their backstory before you start writing? Do you discover them as you go? Do you decide on race, gender, religion, sexuality, and all that ahead of time? Do you divide them between heroes and villains? Do you "see" and "hear" them in your head?

#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2503.18 — Happy Awkward Moments Day! What’s the most awkward moment you’ve ever written?

Since I'm writing a 180° opposed norm society in Reluctant Moon, bear in mind a lot of the awkward is what I'm feeling writing it, so... learning experience, right?

The MCs are a couple. A committed relationship more than friendship isn't that common in these days, so their relationship is either special or selfish depending on who they encounter. They are also different chromatypes (translate to 2025-speak as he's black and she's white.) Their "teacher," Rainy Days the Director of Home, who just finished majorly disrupting their lives testing them—and starting a war with the dragons—has sent a letter with Streak (the guy) for the young woman (Thorn Rose). It announces she has accepted Streak at the same university Thorn is at! They open it in a packed restaurant, and out slips photos. Rather intimate ones of him and their "teacher..."

What happens next is not what you think.

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

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Continued thread

#WordWeavers Mar 18: Is there a connection between how you write (plotter vs pantser) and how your MCs deal with their goals?

Sure, it's that I know what kind of people they are and how they'll solve problems, but I don't set up their actual solutions until I'm in the moment of writing a scene. My climaxes are typically almost entirely improvised. My writing buddy pointed out that this is most definitely a result of a lifetime of playing D&D. :)

Continued thread

#WritersCoffeeClub Mar 18: Happy Awkward Moments Day! What's the most awkward moment you've ever written?

I'm not much for social awkwardness. I don't find it entertaining, one way or the other, but I do have a scene where one of my characters tries desperately to find somewhere else to sit in the cafeteria, realizes no one will have him, and then slumps back to the first friends he made and *kinda* tried to ditch.

Continued thread

#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2503.17 2/2— Does alcohol intake influence your writing?

A Pink Squirrel is actually a low alcohol drink. Lots of sugar, though. Spent a little over two hours revising on a super-difficult topic chapter† that I expected would take four, and wouldn't publish until morning.

Conclusion: No Effect! (I don't like feeling inebriated, in any case, so maybe not a fair experiment?)

I'll take the question another way. Does alcohol intake influence story plot lines?

Occasionally. It has its place, but other than a glass of wine at a state dinner or sipping an apricot cordial being courted by a gorgeous guy, usually not that much. The largest part alcohol played was a chapter in Reluctant Moon.

I've been watching Korean dramas recently, where drinking, drunk Koreans revealing secrets, and alcohol rituals play a significant role in almost every series. So... I thought, Why not? I wanted to make certain points with a gay older man SC and the soon to be college student male MC who is currently being tutored by him. This follows the man and his partner breaking up, making a scene at their campgrounds. He makes a point of wanting to get drunk, but the MC won't let him... Until the older man volunteers to teach him how to drink with a woman. Needless to say, much juicy dialogue and repartee follows, and things like holding the bottle to show the label, how to turn your face drinking the soju, and even how to do a "Love Shot." Later, the college student ends up with his twin sister, but that's another subject altogether.

—————
† Chapter 17, completed, is here: eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/11418190

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Eldritch CaféRS, Author, Novelist, Prosaist (@sfwrtr@eldritch.cafe)Content warning: #Writever 2503.18 17/ — Abortion CW: Abortion
Replied in thread

@Priyajsridhar

A2. The old cliche is that writers produce better art when they suffer. Writers today say that it’s the opposite, that we do better work when we’re happy. What do you think? #Writephant

I'll take that as emotional / spiritual / empathic / secular pain. In a sense, to write I have to experience something that drives me to that extreme that I can overcome my inner censor to cry out and yell. As a feminist writer, today more so than usual. I'm not only talking about the topic I'm about to write a chapter on and am procrastinating by writing this reply, but also the world we are living in. I don't think I'd be writing so fervently on my #RSMarsNeededWomen web-novel were feminism and tolerance, and the people who benefit, NOT under unmitigated attack. In a sense, I'm suffering, and that's driving me onward.

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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2503.16 — What word or phrase do you tend to overuse?

And. But. Was.

The first two because I don't always master the long sentence flow of Grammar B and and-but run-ons in Grammar A signal the need to moderate sentence rhythm.

Was? Active writing is better than passive writing, or rather, when when I actively use verbs to push a story along, passive writing suddenly stands out as slow and colorless.

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#PennedPossibilities 616 — Name a bizarre and hyper-specific detail that you know about one of your characters but is completely irrelevant to the story.

[The meeting of the two Reluctant Moon MCs is mentioned in the book, but the irrelevant detail is the prejudice he felt.—RS]

Streak had thought he'd heard his little sister cry out. He ran to find her. When he'd found the kids making fun of a girl in the neighborhood playground, some kicking mockingly at her, he almost joined in.

She was a daemon girl! Black as tar, with neither feathers nor wings. What was she doing invading a poor day angel neighborhood? To break things? Steal things? Had she come to demonstrate her daemonic superiority as his mother always claimed her type did? To rub their noses in it? Mother repeated it again and again: her kind were ugly in face and ugly in deed (though she employed one or two). She had the horns of a bull! Pointy, upturned. She cowered, and he believed she hid a cow face. He believed enough to stomp in, to help kick her out of the neighorhood.

But she cried.

(Just like a day angel would.)

And she was a girl.

(No wings, but she was slight and little and... Cute.)

You didn't do things like this to a girl!

(School taught that, and he believed everything his teachers taught about women and how men had to treat them, too.)

In the end, he yelled and screamed and flapped his wings (he was a big boy) and scared the other kids away. He scared the daemon, too, but she clung to him shivering, thanking him...

...and his life changed. She was named Thorn Rose.

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