weather nondescript

The day is rather nondescript. Shadows are louche. Fronds wave somewhat. Sky is mostly white with bits of blue here and there in ragged strips. I am not lured to sit outside. The ground is damp.

The plants just sort of sit there.

wraith anatomy and other things wraith

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how to write sci fi

Those of you who know me will also know that I am very sceptical towards How-to manuals of writing. I own half a shelf-ful of these, and I find myself drawn into reading online versions of advice to would-be novelists so it's not that I am immune or dismissive of them. Far from it! I tend to be all too diffident towards them, and this then intimidates me and hedges me in with rules and prevents me from writing with enjoyment and from posting!

So, I've decided that my attitude needs to be one of open-minded scepticism and of testing, not of believing. Some of the advice I will discard as outrightly misleading ('write what you know') or theoretically unsustainable ('show not tell') but other bits of advice may prove to be useful in that they spur me onto discovering something for myself. This can include discovering that a piece of advice serves useful purposes in certain situations, or that another piece of advice turns out to be useless (at least for me).

I am going to use these 'How-to' pages as a kind of laboratory for writing experiments!

So here are a few selected tidbits from a site called Being a Glossary of Terms Useful in Critiquing Science Fiction, by one David Smith.

( tidbits, for my own reference but also for the delectation of any other interested party, *g* )

So yay, I get to throw away the post-it wot i scribbled this on now! LJ as my personal decluttering out-tray.

may day writing exercises as gifts!

I've never done one of those 'the first five people to comment get a drabble' post but suddenly I feel moved to such a post! I am feeling grateful and generous, and I am also wanting to flex my writing muscles because, damnit, Cadman fic is good and wraith fic is fantastic but these are suddenly and scarily turning into real live fics, not writing experiments, and this means I am not posting. Also, I am not experimenting!

So, dear readers, I will give away some ficlet gifts. Not drabbles because I baulk at the constraint of 100-words-exactly (and disdain the misuse of the word 'drabble' to designate any short snippet of whatever length). But ficlettinos! Snippetlets! Yes!

The first five people to comment here will each get a snippetlet. Please provide the following:

• pairing with pics (can even be from a fandom I've never heard of; the pic will be my inspiration, *g* )

• style brief (that is, tell me something like: 'I want first person pov, present tense' or 'lyrical metaphorical' or 'Homer', or 'bad!fic', or whatever!)

:-)

snippet for severusslave

For severusslave who asked for this:
I'd like an overt narrator, auctorial point of view and the focus to be on Lorne. (F.K. Stanzel) // An heterodiegetic narrator with Lorne as focalizer (G. Genette).

( Let us fly down. )

gift snippet for fragilecat

For fragilecat who asked for this:
Radek and Rodney would be sooo nice
for style, i don't really care... but maybe Radek first person :)

I don't really know you, Fragilecat, and the stylistic prompt is kind of vague but here goes. *g* Having now written the snippet, I found that it lent itself to some meta-musings on personhood. :-)

( I am the first person of my universe. )

snippet ficlet for orlisbunny :-)

For dear orlisbunny who asked for this:
alright, i pick 'kyo kara moah,' which means 'king from now on. yuri and wolfram are engaged [it was an accident. regardless of frilly pink nightgown, wolfram is a boy, btw]: but! in a previous life, konrad was in love with the late julia, whose soul now resides in yuri. there are some loving looks exchanged between the two, which causes wolfram to spazz out: i would like an angsty konrad or wolfram pov please and thank you. i didn't expect you to know these people. but you said that was alright, so i thought it'll be fun to see what you make up! i will even forego the angst if you're laughing too hard. but first person pov past tense please and thank you.


I chose Konrad pov. And I tried to put a lot of angst in. :-) This was unexpectedly fun to write. I just let rip with the melodrama. *g* (Reminded me of writing Desert Prince!)

( The crow of hearts. )