#WritersCoffeeClub 24-06-09 How do you select ideas from all the ones floating around?

For the most part, the ideas select me.

Some ideas buzz around my ears, some land on my shoulder to sing a song, and others quietly stutter crawl up my arm in search of their food buzzing around my ears.

My whole-cloth creations sometimes can be observed as inspired amalgamations of somethings that found me while peeping into another existence, or listening to someone at the #Tavernn tell me of their life.

#WritersCoffeeClub What's the minimum time you can work on your writing? Do you need a long, clear period?

My brain writes when it writes.

The only time I can sut down and /force/ myself to write is when someone from the #Tavernn is talking to me, telling me what they need to unburned themselves of.

One of the few things about myself that I genuinely find interesting is that the characters I write about aren't exactly /my characters/.

In my head, there is a #Tavernn. It's moderate in size, medium lighted, fairly quiet all things considered.

The characters I write about, are people I meet there by chance. I share a drink and a meal with them, and they tell me their stories...

When I write, it's not so much a story I plunked people into, rather it's me doing my best to articulate what these people have been through. Their loves, their losses, their existence.

I'll try to keep sharp about CW things. Some people have intense stories they share with me.

Parthia/Ta'regi was freaking out in the #Tavernn this morning while I was finishing up writing #TCotWS
She was having an anxiety attack that she'd disappear once I finished writing down her story.

She's still there...
She's calmed down a good bit.
I had to remind her I've only painted /one/ of her stories, and I would be dishonouring her if I only wrote about her trauma.
I want to celebrate the beauty of her and Pintac's love.
And I wouldn't let her fad away even if TCotWS was to be the only story I write down.

#TaRegi

#WroughtWorlds 2024 03-23 Cultures and People : Looks & Personality
This week is actually piggy backing off of the WordWeavers ‘tag “Which do you figure out first---MC's looks or personality? “ Originally I was going to touch more on City designs & structures, picking up from the other week talking about City Layouts + aesthetics, but my brain percolated on my succinct but admittedly cheeky answer to WordWeavers while I was at the thrift shop, so change of course 😀.


My autism has the flavour note of being fascinated with people. Sprinkle in some [redacted, trauma discussion] and my brain parses + reads people sort of like how Sherlock Holmes would parse details in a crime scene or by observing people.
I lack the mental machina to act on this information though when dealing with people in meat space.

But! Here is how it looks when writing


If I'm talking to someone in the #Tavernn , I see them, I understand them, and there's minor details I get/fill in from listening to them tell me their stories.

Whole-cloth characters on the other hand,
They precipitate from their cultures, so they are known 50% - 60% from the start, in both looks and personality. The other 40% - 50% is built from thinking about their minor stories that get summed up in a few sentence note. And those tend to go either direction of looks-personality or personality-looks but still happens nearly in the same instance.

e.g. "they wear finger-less leather gloves with Latigo reinforcement on the knuckles ever since the fight with Markkii when they were 13”

What most understand: They wear custom gloves.

What's actually there: They developed a paranoia that runs in the background of their mind, that they may need to defend themselves at any moment. The gloves reinforced for punching are an extension of this, and a subtle incorporation of a weapon/means of self defense that is always at the ready.

The looks and personality co-evolve as I think about where they started, where they’ve been, where they might be going.
It’s adjacent to how costume artists for movies use wardrobe design to shorthand certain traits/themes.
Except when writing it’s a two-way expression of personality and looks. They inform and shape each other. They evolve as the character evolves.

Tallia from Wytch-Fork:The Witch and the Wolf, frequently wears a hat during summer with an extra large brim. The hat is an amalgamation of the pointy-hat style we typically associate with stereotypical witches (such as the Wicked Witch of the West), and a farmer’s straw hat. The brim is a stiffened clothes that casts shade out to her shoulders, and above the hatband is a band of woven wicker in a honeycomb pattern before continuing into a short back swept peak that matches the brim.
The colour of the cloth parts are charcoal grey.

The points:
1. She has a certain aesthetic she likes ( “witchy” )
2. She values comfort. ( Large brim for shade/reduced sunburns, wicker part for stiffness and maximum ventilation
3. Charcoal grey is an easy to make dye, providing a deeper shade than the natural tan/tan-white of the cloth.

The takeaway:
Tallia prioritizes comfort and ease of maintenance, as a carry-over from the semi-agri centric culture she grew up in, and that feeds into the freedom of self expression she’s now able to exercise having escaped to Koruu-on-the-Bay.

Hopefully that illustrates the semi symbiosis of looks + personality that happens when I’m character building

#WritersCoffeeClub 24-03-21 Do you ever regret killing a character, or the manner of their death?

Me? No, not in any of /my/ stories.
Some of the people from the #Tavernn have expressed regret for killing certain people, or at least expressed mixed emotions for having killed someone.

#WordWeavers 24-03-13 What would the MC hate the most about our world?

I don't even need to step into the #Tavernn to ask her about this one. The poisoning of our planet, the industrial "revolution", slavery still existing w/various socially accepted reasonings + self delusions, and a good portion of the history from 1200CE onward.

"There's nothing civil about civilization." could have just as easily been said by her.

@strangeseawolf

Yeah.. I definitely fucked up asking Parthia this question considering how she answered yesterday's question.
She's angry at me, and justifiably.

I hadn't considered the ramifications, because when someone has asked me this type of question, the points I chose in my own life, stop traumatic events contained to just my life. The butterfly effects there of all erase negative events I caused... But would never leave me with 'terrible knowledge' that would taint life for me.

I'll have to leave her in peace for a while, and ask others in the #Tavernn or just take a break from prompts until she's cooled off, and maybe forgives me for my lack of thought 😔

#WritersCoffeeClub 24-02-05: Can you feel the emotions of your characters when you write them?

Yes, very much yes. I feel them even when in idle thoughts about them.
There's a reason why in my pinned post about The #Tavernn , I say I'm doing my best to articulate what these people go through. I feel what they feel in vivid intensity. Sometimes there are no words in any language to convey the nuance of what they feel. I feel what they feel to my detriment at times.

This is also why it is extremely rare that I will write anything from the perspective of the sociopathic, sadistic, & etc antagonists. That is a ride I do not like being trapped on.