#WritingWonders Day 16
What does your main character find fun?
Esor likes spending time with other people. He likes sunlight, running, climbing in trees, and shoving his friends into very cold ponds. He's all about rough housing--an overgrown boy-child, really, which is unbecoming of any A'lvar. But hanging out with his friends is the only time he isn't wound tighter than lyre strings, honestly.
Late entry into #WritingWonders, a meme going around for writers to talk about the projects they're working on.
There is a lot of text in the attached graphic, and I am overwhelmed trying to put it in the alt-text. Instead I will post each prompt from the image as I go along.
Day One: Introduce yourself and your WIP with a theme song
Hello, I am Sara. I've taken three years away from my urban fantasy universe to write a book that's like Anarchist Anne Rice rewriting The Lord of the Rings. #AtopTheTreesBeneathTheMountains is about Esor an Amen, a tutor hired to teach a sickly young elf at a distant uberwald, where he is drawn into the mysteries of an ancient family by falling in love with enigmatic Lord Corvin.
A good theme song for this would be, oh gosh, I suppose anything from Evanescence, but you should listen to it while wearing elf ears.
Trying not to repeat myself when describing characters, actions, beats, etc in a manuscript that will reach 300k words is a new challenge. I've written this much about characters before, but only across series, when it makes sense to do callbacks to similar descriptors as a method of characterization across books. It's different in a single title!
Editing this book, I suspect, will involve deleting a lot of "visual" repetition.
#AtopTheTreesBeneathTheMountains #writing #amWriting
#WritingWonders day 3: What is something you're knowledgeable about that you include in your stories?
I have spent my entire life as an Author, primarily, having finished my first novel when I was 12 (and I already had piles of stories before that), and I spent my 20s producing books like *crazy*. I'm now almost 35. I have written many millions of words. Certainly over 10 million words by now.
So truly what I know best is the act of writing. I humbly submit I have an unusual degree of understanding of the craft of fiction and story structure, thanks to simply having spent a LOT of time doing a LOT of writing. I learn about writing from multiple angles, genres, and mediums so I can have the biggest toolbox possible as an artist. I have done so much research. Read so many books about it. Taught others about it. etc.
I also have an urban fantasy universe with like 70-80 novels in it (for reals) and this gave me a rather cool understanding of worldbuilding. Most folks don't have the privilege of writing that much in a single universe, much less have the motivation to seek out as many interesting niche corners to develop different parts of worldbuilding as I have.
And I watch *so* much by way of tv and movies. I'm a bit of a robot in terms of story. Input comes in, gets processed, books come out.
If you know me, I am pretty frank about my numerous flaws, so I hope when I say the above y'all know it's not hubristic. What I'm putting into this book is very, very deliberately crafted with a level of familiarity and skill you don't really get to see very much. It does happen because, well, there's a gazillion writers, and I am simply one of them, but even so. I have put a lot into this wip.
I'm a little embarrassed writing this toot but whatever, I'm allowed to think I'm uncommonly great at ONE thing in my darn life. Haha. I am really bad at parallel parking tho.
#AmWriting #WritingCommunity #AtopTheTreesBeneathTheMountains
#WritingWonders day 2: If you could live in your fictional world, would you? Why or why not?
My fictional world is dying, so no. I'm basically already in that world.
One of the major themes of the book is the impact of endlessly expansionist empire upon the climate. The Elves have been abusing their world, which is literally a goddess (hence why the series is called Upon Her Divine Body), and it is manifesting in a dramatic fantasy-styled collapse of forests in something called Creep, farms to Blight, and lives to Wasting. All different manifestations of the same illness: empire.
The environmental message is partially in homage to Tolkien, but I draw inspiration heavily from Princess Mononoke in terms of vibe.
#WritingWonders day 1: Introduce the WIP or book you'll be sharing this month.
#AtopTheTreesBeneathTheMountains is a romantic fantasy novel. Think Kushiel's Dart meets Tim Curry's Legend meets JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.
Esor an Amen is a young Low Elf hired to work as tutor by a mysterious Lord Mayor in an uberwald distant from his small town home. Arriving in S'elasdur, Esor finds himself drawn into the sordid, deadly secrets of embattled Great House Kovemisi' - and falling under the sensual spell of Lord Mayor Corvinde.
This is a hefty book in length and world building. It's a passion project I've been writing for three years now!
I'm going to start on #WritingWonders a bit late. I confess I've fallen into a Fortnite hole and randomly become hyperfixated on this kids' f2p game, which is why my posting in general has been sparser. I'm writing a lot! But then I jump from my writing into the game and do nothing else. Like shower. Anyway.
All answers will be coming from #AtopTheTreesBeneathTheMountains.
Today's #microPrompt hosted by @crtaxon is GRAVITY
The scene in my wip where it shows up is only 300 words long, so I pasted the whole thing here.
***
Ralen’s hospital had large, open windows for the purposes of permitting air to flow into patient rooms. This also served the function of permitting Doka’lvar of the sinsos to see inside, even when they remained respectfully just off the grounds. The Interim Magistrate and his Lord Consort were said to be visiting, and the gravity of rumors had drawn half the sinsos to that hospital at the base of the xilcadis. It was incorporated into the roots of the world tree’s sturdiest offshoot. There was enough diameter for a most everyone to have an excellent view when a carriage finally arrived with their famous visitors.
“Will we know him when we see him?” wondered an onlooker aloud.
“The barkeep last Night said the Consort fell in love with dwarves. Esoramen even looks like one of the dwarves.” This came spitting from the lips of a dirty old mudraker, leaning hard on a cane. “He’s short and stout.”
Everyone close enough to hear laughed with disbelief at such an idea.
When the husband of the Interim Magistrate emerged from the carriage, the onlookers witnessed an ethereally pretty buck with open features and a quick smile. He was just as quick to dart up the stairs into the hospital, vanishing through the doors to become one more shadowy figure through the windows.
Nobody was entirely sure they had seen Lord Esoramen until he was followed at a more leisurely pace by the recognizable silhouette of Lord Corvinde, Marked by Tosvodos as he was. The Interim Magistrate wore somber colors and offered only the gravest nods of acknowledgment to the crowd.
Everyone was quiet for a time after those two disappeared into the hospital.
“Well,” said the old mudraker, spitting onto the street and lumbering away without another word.
Where a hundred rumors were silenced, a hundred new ones grew.
#amWriting #fantasy #writingFantasy #queerFantasy #AtopTheTreesBeneathTheMountains #excerpt
#microPrompt hosted by @crtaxon
The word is FASCINATE
***
“You’ve been invited to luncheon at every House in the city. You can acquaint yourself with Low and High alike,” said Corvindë. “You’ve promptly befriended the unbonded Dokàlvar of Śelasdur, the wives of the àlvēldere are fascinated by you, and I see you hold brew well enough to coax them with drink. Get them to talk. Tell me who lacks in loyalty.”
“What happens when I highlight someone? Are they arrested?”
“Does it matter?” asked Corvindë.
“I am at your service in any way, as we both well know, but I can only disappoint you in matters of espionage.” Esor took another drink from his goblet. “I am a teacher, Lord Mayor. That’s for good reason. My mother failed to teach me weaving. My father despaired at how poorly I took to the manners of a steward. I’m useless outside of books.”
“We’ve sent soldiers to war with less training,” said Corvindë.
#amWriting #WritingCommunity #WritingPrompt #AtopTheTreesBeneathTheMountains
It took me 250,000 words to get characters openly discussing the actual thesis of my romantic fantasy book, #AtopTheTreesBeneathTheMountains, which is that the eternal growth mindset of capitalist empire is going to kill everything. But they say it in a fancy fantasy way. "eternally feasting wolves" etc etc
I'm using wolves as a metaphor for evil. I always have mixed feelings about this.
In history and myth, wolves are regarded as BAD. Humans are DEEPLY scared of wolves. I'm using a lot of North American mammal analogues in this series, and wolves would fit well.
But actual wolves are no threat and don't deserve the bad rap.
It is more consistent with my values to represent wolves subversively: that is to say, acknowledge the myth of wolves as evil, but engage with and deconstruct the idea. Not just to avoid reduce myth perpetuation, but as a metaphor for acceptance of other things that scare humans irrationally. Humans are easily scared by disfigurement, for instance; that's a reason we often see disfigurement as a visual shorthand for villains in movies even though it is absolutely meaningless in terms of real-life personality.
I do have long-term plans for the deconstruction of the myth in this series, but even with an ultimate word count around 300,000 for the current project, I'm not actually getting to that point in the story in THIS book. Like, deconstructing the evil wolf metaphor is sequel material.
(a sequel, oh my god)
Regardless. I've been trying to think of this book as a standalone as much as possible to be sure I'm very clear in my messages without needing context from future books. It could be a long time, if I ever write another. I want to make sure I'm saying what I mean, precisely.
I may need something besides wolves. I'll keep noodling.
#Writing #AmWriting #WorldBuilding #Fantasy #WritingFantasy #SFF #LGBTQwriters
Sara Marie Reine
Sara Reine