Mastodawn

#PennedPossibilities 1056 — Does your MC have any beliefs, and have they ever been challenged? What risks have they taken based on said beliefs?

Bolt believes in nothing. Nobody in her world believes in anything. Oops. Guess I'll have to explain.

The word belief doesn't exist in the language my MC speaks, nor does the concept exist in her society. The closest one can get to believing is becoming convinced or to have principles, but the semantic mechanism for locking in an idea that makes a meme irrefutable despite contradictory evidence, i.e. a belief, isn't conceptually possible with any workaround or mental convolution that wouldn't get a person tagged as mentally ill in her society. Attempts to control information and deceive fail eventually, and in some cases such practices are considered mind control—which is a capital offense. (This is addressed as a plot-point in Bolt's story.) As you can imagine, people become unconvinced all the time.

A lot of additional common words and concepts stem or derive from all the definitions and permutations—noun, verb, adjective, etc—of the word belief. Writing in the Reluctance Series is challenging. I can never imply belief, even peripherally or thru logic. It would be out of character. I have to pay attention to the multiple meanings of words all the time! I can't even use the words fortune or luck.

Strangely, Bolt's world doesn't seem all that alien. This isn't an exercise in wordplay. It's philosophy, an attempt to make the reader think about their own world and the distorted lens they view it through, as the prompt states, "have [their beliefs] ever been challenged?

#BoostingIsSharing

#gender #fiction #writer #author
#cozy #mystery #sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory

Diandra Linnemann 1h ago

#PennedPossibilities 1056 Does your MC have any beliefs, and have they ever been challenged? What risks have they taken based on said beliefs?

Bjarne believes he is a burden on his friends. He tries to give back in return. The story is, in part, about him learning that this is not true, so ... challenge accepted? ^^

Show thread

Flora Lindetak 1h ago

#PennedPossibilities 1056 Does your MC have any beliefs, and have they ever been challenged? What risks have they taken based on said beliefs?

I have to write a scene in which Cherie responds to being accused of leading a cult soon, so this can be a draft in a sense.

She and Valerie believe in love above all else, and value family (not necessarily by birth) first and romance second. They use meditation to train themselves in experiencing reality as directly as possible, and are teetotalers. They want to be without prejudice when listening to what their loved ones tell them, and they want to be without distracting thoughts so they can be ready to physically protect them. They reject the concept of compromise -- when they appear to tolerate something they disagree with, it means they've decided leading by example is more effective to change the other person than conflict is.

The main challenge: when they were teenagers, their parents neglected them because of a drug addiction. Their parents got clean, a dealer gave them drugs again, one of the twins murdered that person. They fled to Europe and only had each other to rely on for some years. The whole experience made the vague beliefs they already had extreme and uncompromising.

Naomi Heartbreak 2h ago

#PennedPossibilities 1056 Does your MC have any beliefs, and have they ever been challenged? What risks have they taken based on said beliefs?

Lucy believes that children ought to be learning critical thinking and creativity in school. She thinks they should understand the concepts they are learning and this understanding should build on their existing understanding. She also believes that every child is a valuable individual who should be able to develop independence and confidence. These beliefs are aggressively challenged by the higher-ups and Lucy takes the risk of standing by her convictions until she is utterly destroyed.

Vivian Schey 🏳️‍🌈 🇩🇪 <(FSM)<{4h ago

#PennedPossibilities 1056

Does your MC have any beliefs, and have they ever been challenged? What risks have they taken based on said beliefs?

Kessy isn't religious in any sense, she believes in science and truth. But she'll eventually find out that even science can hold truths that are too risky to hold on to.

Show thread

Quasi 4h ago

#PennedPossibilities 1048: A time you "buried the hatchet"?

CARRIE: My former best friend Julie did some pretty terrible things to me. But her mind had been screwed with pretty badly, so I like to think I've come to terms with that and don't blame her unduly. There's also my Dad, and his false hopes about my Mom. That got way too complicated, but again I hope I've been able to move on.

Show thread

Spooky Panda

7h ago

#PennedPossibilities 1056 — Does your MC have any beliefs, and have they ever been challenged? What risks have they taken based on said beliefs?

I could sit here and talk about religion if I wanted to, a belief in something intangible and idealist or a belief in something unproven and unknown. Immortals know better. There is no God, no Devil, no Heaven or Hell, etc. It simply doesn’t exist in this universe, and the immortals are all well aware of that fact. The mortals AKA humans are none the wiser. They’re all devout in their various different beliefs.

For Alistair there is something else entirely.

1. He’s of the opinion that life is complete and utter shit. Because of this, he’s grown careless and reckless over the years. It only really begins to present itself later in the first book, but Fenella will reveal that this is why she left him in the first place.
2. Has this belief ever been challenged for him? Yes, it has. Many times. By both Fenella *and* Hati. They absolutely hate his mindset. What is the point of immortality if you’re miserable?
3. What risks has he taken based on these beliefs? Every single kind imaginable. Fenella could list all the things that he’s done, the ways that he’s put his life in jeopardy (usually for very good reasons and to help others), but it wouldn’t be worth it. That, and there wouldn’t be enough time for it.

#WritingCommunity #WritersOfMastodon #WingsOfQuietLonging #ParanormalRomance #Fantasy #Gothic #Victorian #Vampires #Werewolves

Zuri (he/him) ❌️👑 | 🕐 CET 12h ago

#PennedPossibilities 1047: What can you tell us about the WIP conflict?

Ian is tasked with a risky task: To prove that he has grown beyond his former self and that what he did won't happen again, he has to relive the very months that let to what he did as close to the point as possible. He doesn't want to turn too early and risk being accused of playing it save, but getting this close, means, trauma will inevitably bubble up.

#amWriting #ZuriStories #Reencounter

Show thread

Quasi 13h ago

#PennedPossibilities 1047: What can you tell us about the WIP conflict?

On the face of it, someone else now has Carrie's time powers, and wants to eliminate her. Delve a bit deeper, and they want to *replace* her, which is necessitating surgical strikes. Delve deeper than that, and it's a temporal headache of spoilers.

There's also some conflicts within the core character group as they try to get along (but not TOO well, like in a romantic way).

WarmasterPalak 13h ago

#PennedPossibilities 1055. Does your MC consider themself to be a professional? Of what?

Palak is a Warmaster, military governor of the 5th Fleet Defensive Protection Zone, and prince Consort to the Crown Prince of the Eternal Empire. Yeah, he's a professional.

Dellyn is a dilettante. He's a celebrity who is working very hard to dismantle the cult of personality that he be erected around him in his honor that he never asked for and is traumatically afraid of.

Alec is dedicated to his work and his mate, unfortunately in that order. He's the very definition of professional, and in the intelligence world that means he does just about everything he would ask of any of his agents, including wetwork.

Jerodan is an angel. Literally. He cannot be anything other than what he is, and he will always, and has always, been such. He's also a force of chaos, a trickster god, and the most upsetting and upset mortal fox in the universe. He is the most unprofessional professional who never fails to get the job done. And no one is ever quite sure if he's the one who did anything. Exactly as intended.