WIP Intro: Atlas Jump

Space Station by Alexey Pyatov

GENRE: Science fiction; “slice of life” POV: Third person limited FORMAT: Short story anthology STATUS: Outlining, character work, Episode 1 underway SETTING: Atlas Space Station in orbit above Earth FEATURES & THEMES: LGBTQ+ cast, diverse cast(featuring characters of any and all ethnicities and genders as well as disabled characters), family, found family, exploration, relationships, friendships, environmentalism, PTSD, science, philosophy, romance

Synopsis:

 In the year 2370, humanity left a dying Earth on a mass exodus. Forced to flee their homeworld, the migrant fleet headed to settle an already terraformed Mars. 

In the year 2781, humanity is returning home. 

Project Atlas is the first fully fledged attempt to re-colonize Earth post-exodus. The massive Atlas space station in orbit above our former homeworld is built to accommodate teams of scientists and civilians who have volunteered to make the surface livable once again. 

The Atlas Crew and Residents have been chosen to carry on the Project’s objectives. They are to take what lessons were learned from humanity’s past to make a brighter future. 

Finn Russo, Marco Zozaya and Bria Hawkins are three teenage crew members of Project Atlas chosen for their skill and passion for the project. They will have to adjust to life on the space station and learn what it means to be part of humanity putting its best foot forward. 

Juggling life, work and the pursuit of happiness, Finn, Marco, Bria and the other people aboard Atlas Station will have to navigate the paths before them. Family, relationships, successes, failures and exploration await those who are invited on The Atlas Initiative. 

Welcome to Atlas Station

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I think I’ll do some character intros today

This sounds incredibly compelling! I’d love to be on the tag list <3

I thought of three (3) brand new story ideas after eight blissful months of working solely on my main wip so now I know what hell feels like

Writing a story truly is a "Choose your own adventure"

You must weigh options. You must think ten steps ahead in the plot. You must consider not only how your character would handle a situation, but what implications their choices imply.

But thank the good heavens for the backspace key...

The OBLIVION BOUND Series a wip introduction

GENRE: fanfiction; supernatural, lgbtq+ STATUS: in progress WORD COUNT: 30k+ POV: third person, present tense THEMES: love, good vs. evil, fighting destiny, change vs. tradition, found family, finding identity TRIGGERS: violence, blood, gore, death, trauma, sexual content

SERIES SYNOPSIS: In the heart of New York a young woman discovers a world within her own she never believed possible. To the south the supernatural underbelly of New Orleans threatens the life and identity of one young man. And a vampire searching for his past finds himself ensnared with two of the bloodiest killers in history and a love story spanning millennia.

FEATURES:

TAGS: SERIES TAG | CHARACTER INTROS | WORLDBUILDING | TAG LIST Find Everything & More on the SERIES PAGE!

(via Scene - Checklist - Writers Write)

beta reader(s) needed

hello everyone,

i’m about to finish another draft of my novel and i’m looking for a pair (or several) of fresh eyes to take a look at it.

long story short, Empire of Lies is an epic urban fantasy tale of (mostly) non-Western characters in a (mostly) non-Western setting, finding out that everything they’ve been taught in history classes was a big fat lie, and trying to figure out how to live with that and make amends (or “500 pages of queer people, politics, and a moderate amount of anguish”, as @logarithmicpanda puts it).

what you can expect is a really diverse cast and lots of mental health rep (most of it ownvoices). there are parallel worlds, there’s magic, there are djinn, there are complex and complicated relationships, characters, who are very much flawed and very much ancient yet still relatable to tired millennials who hate the governments, there’s me being salty about colonialism and Western supremacists, and an underlying murder mystery fueling the character development of my children.

if you’re interested in reading my manuscript and giving me some feedback on it, please message me!

I’d really appreciate it if you reblogged this post to help me reach more people 💕

Has this been done yet?

@livvywrites

other writeblrs posting about their work: so here you see a beautiful professionally made aesthetic of my wip and that‘s the well thought-out synopsis and here‘s the links to every introduction post i‘ve ever made about my ocs who have meaningful in-depth backstories and trauma beyond your comprehension and also they represent a wide variety of ethnicities. *tag list*

me posting about my work: so today i cried in the shower because my protagonist is So Gay i don‘t know anything else about her but she‘s Perfect and Gay

Road to Obsidia • moodboards

"A wolf, a bear, a mermaid, a witch and a human... to anyone looking, they didn't look like much. Just a group of teenagers being young and loud. Yes, to the untrained eye, they were nothing but ordinary people."

wip page

Writing an Ensemble Piece

What is an ensemble piece? It’s a work that follows multiple major characters of equal importance. While there may be a character or two with a bit more importance, everyone should be well-developed and have a decent amount of time devoted to them.

So let’s talk about writing an ensemble piece!

A diverse cast of characters should all bring something to the story.

Yes, this is an obvious one, but when juggling multiple POV characters it’s especially important. Not only do the cast of characters need to be unique and distinguishable from one another, but they should all make their own contributions to the story. In other words, you need to justify every POV character’s existence.

In Stranger Things, for example, we can split the major characters into three groups: 

These characters are all different and keep the story flowing. What’s important is how they keep the story flowing. The child characters, while arguably the real central characters, wouldn’t be able to accomplish the feats that the adult and teenage characters can, like Hopper’s investigations into Hawkins Lab for example. 

Likewise, the children are vital to the nostalgic atmosphere the show presents itself with and they bring their own plotlines and unique additions to the story. The children are great characters and the story would still be great if it only followed their journey, but it might be a little weaker. Adding the layers of the adults’ and teenagers’ investigations brings so much more intrigue to the story. And when the characters come together with their respective plots and the clues they’ve gathered, it brings the whole piece together wonderfully.

Speaking of which - come-together moments should be satisfying.

If there are multiple POV characters adding unique additions to the story, then of course they shouldn’t be in the same place at all times. Seeing the same events replayed from different POVs is boring and repetitive. Multiple characters should have their own subplots going on to keep themselves relevant.

So when characters come together and their storylines intersect, it should be to the story’s advantage, not to its detriment. This is something that tends to happen naturally if the characters have good chemistry and are interesting enough on their own. Interesting characters = interesting relationships. Reading about each one is interesting enough, but seeing them come together, especially if its at the climax, should be downright exciting.

The characters should be different, but they shouldn’t be a token gang.

When writing an ensemble piece, it can be easy to fall to classic character archetypes to keep the characters from seeming too similar. Certain traits can be lost or become exaggerated (the first Avengers film strips the characters down to their bare stereotypes for simplicity purposes).

The Breakfast Club is a pretty clear example of a token gang. Token gangs can work at times, but it’s usually best to avoid them. Characters can be archetypes without being pure tropes; they should still be unique characters and have something in common with each other, Making them all into tokens risks making them less identifiable, and if these characters are expected to interact throughout the story, they should have something in common.

I shouldn’t use Stranger Things as an example too many times but it just does this so well I can’t help it. The kids’ party have common interests that bring them together, but quite different personalities. This makes them clash at times and also makes their dynamic more enjoyable to watch. You believe these kids would be friends but they’re not all the same person.

Make (selective) use of dramatic irony.

Dramatic irony is when the audience/reader knows something that a character doesn’t. Ensemble pieces give you an opportunity to play with dramatic irony, though obviously too much is overkill and readers will get frustrated.

In A Game of Thrones (Book 1), a young Sansa Stark tells Cersei Lannister of her father’s plans to ship her and her sister home to Winterfell. Sansa doesn’t understand the implications of what she’s done; we see from her POV that she thinks Cersei is kind and wise and will fix everything. Cersei smiles and thanks her and Sansa interprets this as positive because she doesn’t know any better. The reader knows a little more, thanks to having access to other characters’ opinions and knowledge. 

And they just said, “Oh, noooooooo.”

Ensemble piece are fun! But you need to justify multiple major characters; they should all add something to the story. In a way ensemble pieces are tougher; instead making one protagonist, you have to make more and they all have to be interesting enough that the reader will be happy to read about each of them. 

i just had the weirdest moment, i was feeling my front teeth with my tongue because they’re the tiniest bit crooked, and then i had the thought “i’ll check if they’re also crooked in my other mouth” and then i realized to my shock and confusion that i have only one mouth, leading me to believe that in a past life i was a terrible monster with two mouths

A few months ago, I thought to myself “Mmm I’m so tired… how much longer in this one again?” and I knew instinctively what I meant by ‘this one’ was this body and this life. I then spend a few wide-eyed moments having an identity/existential crisis like how many times have I been on this earth to have such an instinctive response to being bone-weary to my soul? No one can really answer, especially not me.

In July 2017, one night I woke up around 2 a.m and blurted out in a quasi professorial voice “the Equinox Bird has infinite beaks, all in the wrong direction, and infinite eyes” and I don’t know what the fuck I was dreaming about but it still haunts me. It seemed like a very important information for a few seconds.

i really appreciate the last commenter giving us an exact date and time like that information needs to be preserved

One time I passed out on the couch after going a few days without sleep, and when I woke up mom said I had been speaking in German in my sleep, and it sounded like I was ordering people to build something

When I was like 5 my mom took me to the grave of her friend that died of cancer and I asked what happened and my mom explained that she died and i fucking said “I died once” and my mom asked me to explain and I went into pretty detailed explanation about how I died in a war because “I got stabbed by a gun with a knife at the end” (my exact words) and I met god and she (she’s a woman obvs) asked if I wanted to stay or go back to earth and I said I wanted to go back so I chose my mom cause she was struggling to have a baby (she had me through IVF) and lemme tell you that changed her like nothing will make you second guess your religious beliefs like a five year old explaining heaven and god to you

this post is a fucking ride and it reminded me of something i forgot

one time i was playing on my wii (like 5-ish years ago) and i thought to myself “i haven’t checked on rowan in a week, has he died from the plague? :(“ and i didn’t think anything of it for a bit until later when i had a “what the fuck” moment

I love this kind of shit because it happens to me all the goddamn time. Like:

-The other night I rolled over in the middle of the night to shake my partner awake, proceeded to tell him how I was glad that ‘this time round we would truly have the freedom to love each other properly’ and how his hands belonged to his last self, but his eyes had never changed in all the lives I’d known him. And he just laid there in the dark like wtf because I was asleep. Like I’d woken him to tell him that all in my sleep and then left him to have a crisis.

- Watching the history channel with my Pop on the couch, tender age of 7, and they’re talking about crucifixion. And my pop, ever the funny man, is like “that looks like it aughta hurt”. And I just turn to look at him and without hesitation reply “only at first”. And he’s like “what do you mean” and tiny me just shrugged and said “well there’s a place beyond the hurt where everything just stops” and he turned the telly off and left the room.

- night before Christmas 2012, dreamt I’d been stabbed in the lungs by an angel with the face of a falcon. He looked at me and told me he had to do it, so that ‘my next breath would come as a rebirth’. When he started to glow so brightly that it burned my eyes, I woke up to all the lights in my house on and a dark bruise beneath my rib cage. Will admit, that one freaked me out.

- walked past a graveyard with a friend back in middle school on the way to her house, and mid conversation I stopped talking and stood stock still, looked over at the walls,and quietly said “I have a friend in there”. Then picked up the conversation and continued strolling like nothing had happened. To be fair, I didn’t realise what I’d said. She still tells me I’m the reason she can’t walk past that graveyard anymore.

- a couple of years ago when I was in Wales I walked past an old stone house just outside of Aberystwyth, and just started to weep. I had the overwhelming thought that I needed to be in there to get dinner ready for the children, but in a different life so long ago and so impossible to reach, that thefeeling of loss was instant and overwhelming.

- was about to use a pedestrian crossing, when my whole body just sort of went hey don’t do that, and so I stopped and put my arm out to stop the woman who was crossing behind me, and 2 seconds later a car came skidding around the corner and crashed into the tree on the other side of the crossing, and I just whispered “ha, not this time” and didn’t really think about it until later when I realised I’d nearly died again. (Btw i waited for th ambulance to show up and the dude driving the car was fine, just hit his head and was drunk af at 10:30am on a Thursday).

- another dream I had just this week, I was sitting in an otherwise empty cinema with a tall, thin man. I can’t really recall what he looked like, except he was well dressed, impossibly pale, and he kind of blurred when you looked directly at him, so I mainly watched him out the corner of my eye and looked ahead at the blank movie screen. He was holding my hand, and he asked me if i enjoyed my life. I said yes and explained why. He then said, almost verbatim, “And how does this one weigh against the last? Can it tip the scales, or is it, at last, to be found lacking?” And I replied, almost verbatim “I weigh my lives against my joy, and each life I find there is more joy to be discovered.” He replied with a laugh, lifted my hand to a kiss and said “till next time then” and disappeared. I woke up in the dark with both my cats sitting on me, alert, and staring out my bedroom door.

So many more, but these are the first that come to mind.

When I was little, my mother, my sister and I would dream in unison so often that one time when my mother was having a rather dull dream about golf my tiny 3 year old self shook her awake and told her to stop because it was boring. She dreaded having nightmares because both of us would wake up shrieking. 

My sister and I have also been known to argue in our sleep. Witnesses assure us that whatever made the shouting start, we both knew what it was and were mad about it. We don’t need to be in the same room for this.

We also stayed in a haunted house for a while. An old lady had fallen in the chilly hallway just outside the warm kitchen, broken her hip, and couldn’t reach high enough to open the door, so she died of hypothermia a foot away from a telephone and warmth. Without fail, every person who stood in that spot and tried to open that door - the single most used door in the house, being between the kitchen and the bathroom and front door - felt cold and found themselves scrabbling frantically at the door handle, which was always strangely hard to open from that side. You got used to it to an extent, but it always hit strangers hard. 

Whaaaaaaaaaat the shit

@actualcandyforducks are u jesus

Asexual spectrum protagonists in science fiction and fantasy books!

If you’re looking for ace or aro fiction, I highly suggest checking out Claudie Arseneault’s awesome database. Link is here. 

A lot of the time people act like there’s no ace fiction, but that’s not true! A lot of these books are by ace-spec authors as well. We’re out here writing the stories we want to see ourselves in. :)

Other queer book PowerPoints:

I’m not transcribing all the text, but you can find the titles, authors, information on TW, etc beneath the cut.

When possible, I’m linking to my database of queer books. The page for each book includes the synopsis, content warnings under spoiler tags, and links to reviews from queer readers. If it’s not in the queer database at the time of posting (8/18/19), I’ll link to Goodreads instead. 

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I think I’ve fleshed out this project to the point of making an introduction, so…welcome to Midnight Salvage!

Raina Strider is the newly-promoted captain of the Minerva - the smallest nuclear-powered submarine in the fleet, assigned to research and recovery operations on the seafloor. Hers is a ship of rules and regulations, running off the codes and manuals - until, one day, those rules no longer apply.

For something waits in the shipwrecks, lost long ago and never expected to rise again. Something pulled from the mud and sand by an unsuspecting claw, brought into the harsh lights of Irene Wolf’s laboratory. And in the searchlights, in the glare of her instruments, it begins to wake…

Cast:

Raina Strider (she/her): Captain of the Minerva and dedicated to the rules - there’s no room to make mistakes in a submarine, not when one could send them all to the bottom of the ocean. (Also slightly insecure about her position as the captain, and so her strictness is a way of compensating, but don’t mention that)

Irene Wolf (she/her): Science officer, or what she would call a “glorified data-puncher” on the sub. She’s not particularly happy about her posting, nor is she shy about expressing that.  Constantly treading the line of what Strider will tolerate, because Wolf is good at what she does - but infuriating all the same.

Erin Herschel (they/them): The cheery pilot/navigator of the submarine, who responds to almost any situation - good or bad or catastrophic - with a sort of resigned acceptance. An attitude that will be put to the test…

Kallias Azia (he/him): Salvage claw operator and junior scientist, who most certainly does not share Wolf’s worldview but hangs on her every word, willing to do almost anything to find her favor.

Ryu Mäkinen (zie/zir): The enigma (and field engineer) of the submarine, whom no-one, not even those working with zir, know anything about besides zir job. Just that good at sidestepping personal questions, although zie’ll politely deny it if you ask.

Osvaldo “Ozzie” Setebos (he/him): Doctor, chef, and longest-serving member of the Minerva, he knows all the stories of the ship, although who knows if he’s telling the truth?

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@espelho-the-wayward-writer asked:  For your OC Thorn: What’s the one thing about your life that you never, ever want to change?

I ended up writing this like a WWE promo, whoops. But, anyway, here’s the answer! 

Wow, that’s amazing!