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Ancient's Prewriting Journal



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Mon Sep 22, 2014 4:54 am
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Vervain says...



This is actually going to be for an idea that I've written some for, but I don't have everything planned to a degree I could have it planned to. (I usually get mired in planning if I don't start writing first.) Feel free to talk to me, ask me any questions you might have about the idea, and I'll answer them to the best of my ability.

So, the idea. The working title is Balance (the first chapter is posted on here, and I'm currently working on chapter 2), and there are going to be three main characters overall - Wen-li Xiaohuan, Tian-lo Jazai, and Atheera of the Southern Empire, Third Son of the Highest and Holiest, the Esteemed Prince Dasharaj (try to fit that on a business card).

A summary: Magic in the world is waning, and many magical creatures are being hunted to extinction for their value as reagents and decor; this is the time of the scavengers, people who can find anything for anyone, for a price, and if they can't find it, they'll fake it. A certain southern prince is looking for something quite simple: the very source of magic.

If Atheera can find this font and return it to his parents, he has a very large chance of being named the True Prince and the Face of the Triplicate, and inheriting the power of the Southern Empire - and keeping it out of his siblings' hands. In his quest (and a sort of self-enforced exile from the south after being sent to the north), he has employed the scavenger Jazai, one of the most effective in the northern capital of Sai Thi, with the hope that ce will be able to aid him. He has kept cer employed until he finds a window of opportunity to leave Sai Thi on a progression through the countryside, when he can tell cer what his quest truly is and how ce will be of use to him.

And vague vague vague trailing off because we don't want to spoil the whole thing at this point in time, now, do we? Also because I'm still finalizing later details of the plot and trying to figure out where the journey will lead.

(Answer to the inevitable question: no, Atheera is not the main viewpoint character. Reasons: One, he is insufferable. Two, he is insufferable and I doubt anyone would read past page one with his attitude. Three, he is insufferable and I don't think I could find a good way to open up with him as a viewpoint character.)

I do have quite a bit of planning done, but having it all in one place and having some kind of encouragement to actually do more planning and think things through might do me good, since it (hopefully) won't keep me from writing.

My hopes? To actually get something done through this thread. Let the procrastination begin.
Last edited by Vervain on Sat Sep 27, 2014 4:45 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Tue Sep 23, 2014 4:36 am
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Vervain says...



Character Profiles - spoilered so the page isn't like three miles long.

As far as names and suffixes go: for the Northern Empire:
The suffix “lo” denotes one being agender. The suffix “ta” would denote one being a woman, “li” a bigender person, or “za” a man. As a result of this, almost all names can be given to any gender. When addressing children, one would use the suffix “xi”, and when addressing gods, “shé”.

Atheera:
Spoiler! :
Name: Atheera, the Esteemed Prince of Dasharaj, Third Son of the Highest and Holiest. Called “Esteemed Dasharaja” or simply “Lord Dasharaja” by the nobility of the Northern Empire to irritate him, mostly in a teasing manner.

Age: 19.

Gender: Male.

Eye Color: A heavy, rich brown.

Hair Color: Deep black, sleek, and thick; his hair doesn’t like being pulled back and will slip out of almost any tie.

Skin Color: A lighter medium brown, smooth and even, that carries with it the idea that he spends most of his time indoors or in shaded areas. He often accentuates the color in his face by wearing perfumed oils with flecks of gold that catch the light.

Height: Above average height, but he isn’t lanky or towering. Somewhere around 5’8.

Weight: Around average weight for his height, a little soft around the edges; he dislikes eating at social events and usually leaves most of the food to other people, unless he’s very hungry or in front of his parents.

Memorable Features: He carries himself regally, and his posture makes him look slightly arrogant and above everyone else – which, of course, he is. He also tends to wear extravagant robes with fine embroidery in the style of the Northern Empire in the duration of his stay in Sai Thi, while he prefers simpler wrap jackets and trousers at home.

Race: Human.

Ethnicity: Akin to people from the Indian subcontinent. Of the Southern Empire, but especially of one of the heavily-populated western provinces, the home and birthplace of the Highest and Holiest; he is most definitively southern, having been raised in that culture, but is not heavily religious or superstitious. He ascribes to the triplicate religion of that western province, which is also the “official” religion – though certainly not the only one – of the Southern Empire, worshipping the Birth, the Death, and the Rebirth as three faces of the same deity.

Faults: He has a tendency to view people as a means to his end – he uses them to get whatever he wants, and he uses them in the most efficient manner he can find. He also comes across as largely emotionless, especially since he views his causes as the most important in a given situation.

Talents: Actually good at using people (more useful than respected as a skill); Atheera is determined, and he will get what he wants if he has to work towards it for years. He’s good at controlling outward displays of emotion, with few tells.

Source of Income: Aside from having a rather large pool of money for him to dig into, while he’s in Sai Thi, Atheera runs a sort of scavenging business. He acts as a negotiator between a scavenger – obviously of lower class – and higher-class clients who might not want to be seen interacting with “those people”. Of course, he has people trailing him who gossip about the strange southern prince who prances around with common trash, but it’s nothing his family didn’t already talk about.

Hobbies: He keeps a large bound book full of flowers pressed to pages, mostly flowers from the high gardens of home. His parents encouraged him to pour his heart into one thing, and to rely on that one thing to carry most of his emotional weight instead of interspersing true emotion into conversation and interaction with people. So, he started pressing flowers and has a rather impressive collection, and he’s been working on taking unusual buds from various gardens in Sai Thi.

Patience Breaking Point: Atheera’s anger doesn’t show much, so it can be difficult to know when he’s actually angry at someone. Mostly he becomes angry when someone insinuates that he’s useless, or that one of his siblings could do his job just as well – when he feels invalidated or like his purpose has been taken away from him. He usually brings the situation to a full stop in order to smooth over his anger, then continues, relying on proving the other person wrong. Some of his grudges last for a while, but most of them are resolved quickly.

Status in Society: Child of the Highest and Holiest, and the Esteemed Prince of Dasharaj – as such, he has a fair amount of power and status in society, but he’s limited by his parents and older siblings.

Family: He has two older siblings plus their spouses before him in the royal line and one younger sibling, soon to be married, which will leave him as the last unwed child in the line. His relationship with his older siblings is a little strained, since while they feel they love him and give him due attention, he feels like he’s always standing in their shadows and has never had his time in the light. He’s never felt a strong bond to his family, and views them as people who are using him in the same way he’s using them: to further their own power. He respects his parents and siblings, but the emotional connection ends there.

Childhood: Atheera was something of a toy for his older siblings growing up, and he has always been subject to such choice remarks on his rather effeminate name and how he would be more use to the family if he would just marry into one of the more distant provinces instead of chasing power he’ll never have. He was more of an antisocial child, and his parents said that if he showed no interest in people or marriage, they would take advantage of his place in the line of birth and give his service to the Temple of the Triplicate, but he quickly warmed up to society after this suggestion was laid out in front of him. His parents caught on to using him as a sort of familial ambassador, training him in the ways of courtesy and emotional control, to act as a liaison between the Highest and Holiest and other provincial lords and kings.

Biography: His parents sent him to the Northern Empire as a political piece, entrusting part of their bloodline in the hands of the Phoenix Emperor to keep peace between them in times of tension with the border states, and also hoping that he would perhaps find a profitable marriage among the nobility and royalty of the north. They blame themselves for his stubbornness and determination, saying that they indulged his fanciful ideas one time too many, and they sent him on this fool’s errand with the hopes that he’ll learn to settle down and stop treating life like a challenge to be defeated.

He’s spent the last year or so in Sai Thi, and the last eight months in particular acting as Jazai’s negotiator and – he hopes – getting cer to trust him just enough to not go running off the moment he mentions his larger quest. Of course, he also plans on mentioning a boatload of money at the same time.

As far as being a member of high society goes in Sai Thi, he gets along well with most of the northern nobility in the city, with a few exceptions. One notable exception is the Grand Lady Tianang, who owns half of the tea-houses in the upriver city and makes sure to give him a mild sense of discomfort whenever he visits one of hers.

Atheera is literate, as he is expected to be, but he doesn’t enjoy reading much. He also has trouble with the northern script and characters as opposed to the southern alphabet, and writing down northern dialects is beyond him.

Jazai: (work in progress)
Spoiler! :
Name: Tian-lo Jazai, mostly called Jazai. "Tian" is a locative surname taken from Sai Thi.

Age: 21 or 22-ish.

Gender: Agender. (ce/cer/cers/cerself)

Eye Color: Medium to dark grey – around the color of slate.

Hair Color: Dark brown to black, fades when ce spends time in the sun. Fine, but not so sleek, and when it grows too long, ce simply pulls it back.

Skin Color: Ce has warm-toned tawny skin, which darkens some as ce spends more time in sunlight.

Height: Around average height, approximately near 5’4 or 5’5.

Weight: Below average “healthy” weight for cer height, mostly stringy and wiry, more muscle than fat.

Memorable Features: Ce wears a large collection of charms around cer throat, mostly acting as stores of magic and enchanted cords. The charms themselves are for anything from painless childbirth to success in battle to Heavenly enlightenment, none of which ce supposes ce’ll ever need, but at this point, they’re more of a comfort object than anything else.

Race: Human.

Ethnicity: Akin to people from China. Ce was born and raised in the downriver slums, the red and grey squares of Sai Thi – known as such for the colors of their roof tiles, usually uniformly one color per area. Somewhat religious, ce worships the Eightfold Goddess and her faces, the most widespread religion across the Northern Empire. However, ce doesn’t celebrate many traditional holidays, mostly reserving cer money and energy for the few largest ceremonies.

Faults: Above all else, ce is a hypocrite – ce believes that magic in its unaltered state is pure, and that humanity has corrupted magic, yet ce feels free to use magic entrapped in cer charms. This also extends to some of cer other judgement of people, especially how ce views mages and people who have complete faith in mages, and ce may be called unfairly judgemental of other people who are just trying to get by the same as ce is.

Talents: Ce’s rather good at thinking on cer feet, even if ce overlooks some more obvious solutions, and of course ce’s developed a talent for scavenging in general. Ce’s learned how to disappear, too, and how to navigate the back alleys of Sai Thi in a more effective manner than most – considering most navigate them by getting horribly lost, that’s not too difficult.

Source of Income: Ce works as a scavenger in Sai Thi, and is good at what ce does. In the last eight months or so, Atheera has been cer negotiator, which has led to much larger – and riskier – business opportunities that lead to Jazai being able to live more comfortably between large jobs instead of hopping from one small task to another.

Hobbies: Ce doesn't have the time for hobbies - those are things for nobility to pass free time when they're not being prissy about their tea and councils. If anything, cer only real hobby would be finding more charms to add to cer collection, and that's more for cer emotional safety.

Patience Breaking Point: Ce can't stand being treated like ce's unimportant or like ce's lying when ce's telling the truth, but especially if it's coming from someone ce views as being on equal standing with cer.

Status in Society: A scavenger, normally looked down upon unless one needs cer services. Considered one of the lower, but not the lowest, forms of human life in Sai Thi.

Family: Jazai was one of the many children raised by a village - rather, by a slum town. Ce doesn't know who cer parents are or were, and ce's never really been bothered by it. Ce has enough family, counting the people who grew up with cer as cer siblings and the people who took care of cer as parents. There may be a few blood siblings out there, but ce doesn't hold much stock in blood ties; "family" hasn't done the nobility any good, and the people in the slums are a hundredfold more desperate.

Childhood: Growing up in the slums - more specifically, in the red squares where half the residents are prostitutes and the other half thieves - shaped cer life drastically. Ce learned not to trust more than absolutely necessary, but also made friends whose value ce would come to appreciate later in life, when cer job would do such things as get cer burned by a summoned demon. There was no emphasis on scholarly pursuits at all, and the most intellectual discussions were between apprentices and prostitutes who sat on the edges of the fountains and talked about whatever their masters were teaching them. Jazai listened to them all as they came and went, and ce learned to pickpocket on the side to get some kind of profit out of it. Ce also ran in one of the slum gangs, somewhere near the middle of the pack: not big enough or rough enough to draw the attention of the law, but not weak enough to be picked off by the stronger ones.

Biography:

Wen-li: (work in progress)
Spoiler! :
(previously a completely different character who was scrapped and replaced)
Last edited by Vervain on Sat Sep 27, 2014 4:45 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Wed Sep 24, 2014 10:41 pm
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Rosendorn says...



Hello.

Atheera (I nearly called him "princy" but I figured I might as well use his name...)

His ethnicity is very vague for me. India's demographics are really hugely varied so he could be anything from white skin, blond hair, blue eyed to brown skin, brown haired and brown eyed, and nearly everything in between. I'm assuming you mean somebody from the Southern provinces of India, which tend to be darker, but that still leaves room for eye colour variations. I also do like the mention paleness= nobility.

Faults and talents are two sides of the same coin yes that is how you do faults and talents.

Patience ending in anger feels a bit iffy to me because he doesn't seem like the type of guy who'd get particularly angry at things. My gut instinct is he'd lose patience in a different way, but that's me.

I do adore that a fairly huge fault of his— inability to write in the dialect of the area he's in— is in the biography, not fault list.

Jazai

I am interested in how two characters with the same "lose patience" button interact.

Those two seem really similar, which is interesting because it sets up a sort of foil relationship in my mind. Which is going to be a really, really cool dynamic to play off of.

I'm not feeling as strong a sense of cer, which could be because the biography is missing, or because there's not really a defined thread of motive and personality through cer. There's opportunism, pragmatism, and cautious loyalty, but nothing's really coming together for me. I'm sure it will.
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Tue Sep 30, 2014 9:54 pm
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Vervain says...



Thank you for the feedback! I will definitely take what you've said into consideration.

I'm having trouble focusing on one thing at present moment, especially with NaNo looming on the horizon a month away, so I'm going to expand this thread to focus on what I'm planning out for NaNo. This is a lot looser and less determined than Balance (and it has no title, not even a working one, really), but I do like the idea.

A nice little (long) blurb: Luz Mortena has been set up on a blind date by her friend Becca, on the promise that "you'll really like this girl". The girl in question happens to be Cori James—a young woman who always seems to be walking on sunshine, in part because she's the daughter of a sun goddess. What neither of them know is that Luz's contact with Cori will drag her into the ages-old conflict between the gods and the natural force of Chaos, which has been passed off to the demigods now that most of the gods are dormant.

It starts off small: a couple of strange people at the edge of her vision, headlights following her home without a car attached to them. All things that Luz could've passed off as being overtired. Then, in the middle of her second date with Cori, the two are attacked by a Chaos agent, a physical manifestation of Chaos that borrows pieces of the world around it and ends up a grotesque mix of animate and inanimate objects. She should have just stepped away there—she could have pretended it never happened and gone back to her everyday life—but her curiosity keeps her embroiled in this as it unfolds before her very eyes.

Cori pulls her into the anti-Chaos community, introducing her to other demigod hunters of Chaos in the interests of keeping her safe; at the same time as the protection around Luz is being increased threefold, though, something attacks her at work and follows her home, and the same thing goes for her father when she hides behind reinforced magic barriers. A black cloud is rolling in over the city, and no one seems to know what it means…

I'll be trying to do more of the plot-related challenges and such for this idea as well, to make sure I can actually get the thing plotted out. It's kind of urban fantasy paranormal romance.
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Fri Oct 03, 2014 5:41 am
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Vervain says...



Plot graph for NaNo 2014. All of it's subject to change, but it's a lot of mounting tension, mounting tension, mounting tension---end. (Also, I totally stole that plot graph Aley linked to, and it's totally not my fault if y'all can't read my handwriting. :P)

Click for full size:
Spoiler! :
Image
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Fri Oct 10, 2014 2:15 am
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Rosendorn says...



Lesbians!

Yes that is my contributing comment

My main thing with the blurb/plot graph is it seems a tad too linear, and a tad too focused on two/three people. I personally prefer slight drops and lulls, however small, to really get the tension maxed out when it spikes up. I also know blurbs like that tend to focus very heavily on the core characters, so that's probably an artifact of how you're describing it. I'd suggest to at least have some idea of outside life, if only for things to happen when you get stuck with NaNo and can cause chaos in another person's life, literally or figuratively.

Past that, I do like it. The concept looks like all sorts of fun. Just a bit too focused on two people right now. (Of course, I'm currently dealing with a bucketload of characters so seeing a small amount is very strange)
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo

Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
  





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Fri Oct 10, 2014 7:16 am
Vervain says...



Haha, it is verrrry linear as far as a plot goes right now, but I'm also the person who procrastinates figuring out subplots until I'm writing. I'm hoping to actually sit down and figure out some of that to intersperse into the main "tension, tension, tension", and I'm probably going to bring in quite a bit more of Luz's connection with her family and friends (especially considering people don't drop everything and isolate themselves when they get in a relationship).

Thank you for the feedback!
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Sat Oct 11, 2014 12:49 am
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Vervain says...



The tense challenge. I don't freewrite much—it's honestly kinda awkward for me—so I just did these two shorts. Overall, present tense isn't too difficult for me, but it definitely changes my style and the way I have to think about things. Did these both with Atheera because I seriously need to get further down into his voice, even though the first one is technically from his mother's point of view (when he was younger).

Present:
Spoiler! :
"Atheera."

"Mother." The young man pauses at the door to the family parlor and looks back to his mother, shoulders pulled back and a defiant glint in his eyes.

The older woman sighs and stands, setting her ledger down on the little table next to her chair. She strides quickly across the room and stares her son in the eye. "Atheera, go sit down." Her voice is laden with years of responsibility and regality, but she isn't wearing her elaborate crown—she's just another noblewoman without it.

Her son draws a deep breath and smiles. It almost looks natural. "I was retiring to my room, Mother."

"And I was in the middle of something. Go sit down with your sister. We still have matters to discuss." She pulls him back towards the circle of chairs, and he follows. Atheera has always been the obedient one to Jainder's stubbornness, Nithya's sly charm, Devi's childish arrogance; it's worked well in making him a favorite, even if he is slow to respond at times.

She still can't shake the feeling that he hates her. He takes his seat next to little Devi, though, and smiles at his younger sister as well. "What were we discussing?"

"The food shortage in the steppes. If this goes much longer, we'll have to send an ambassador with reassurances and trade resources." The woman laughs when her daughter answers in her voice, and the girl adds, "And you know what that means, 'Theera."

"We aren't even looking at that right now, though—we're trying to find what's causing the shortage." She knows that should any of her subjects hear her speaking less-than-perfectly, they're likely to die of shock, but it's too much trouble to keep up the façade in front of her children.

Atheera looks politely shocked, and his mother sighs. He's always been the obedient one, but he's always made it clear that he hates it. "It involves you, even if you think it doesn't," she says, twining her hands together in her lap. Without her husband next to her, she has no one else to hold on to, and the skin contact keeps her calm. "If we don't get the shortage settled by the new year, we may be dealing with a revolution."

"You say that about everything." He crosses his arms and raises an eyebrow. "I doubt that everything that goes on here could cause an all-out revolution. Besides, wouldn't they just be hungry field-workers?"

"You'd be surprised."


Past:

Spoiler! :
"Are you forgetting something, Lord Dasharaja?"

"Excuse me?" Atheera turned back to Lady Tianang, who flipped a sun coin between her fingers like it was made of wood and not gold.

She held the coin out with a cool smile. "I believe you came in here with this."

He looked down at the coin, then shook his head. "You have been so kind with your hospitality, you simply must have it," he said in a clear voice. "As it may be, I find myself tiring. Pardon me." He swept away from the table and out of the lady's smokey tea-house, into the sunny palatial row.

Lady Tianang was always watching him, always dropping her sly hints that she would like it much better if he would just leave and return to the Southern Empire. She was transparent, though. He never carried sun coins on him—and he would be a fool to fall for her trick, especially after growing up with Nithya.

Is this yours, 'Theera? He could still hear his older sister's voice, with that barest hint of taunting as she held out something she knew he wanted desperately. Her games were a lesson in refusal, and there was no better teacher of spotting tricks than the trickster princess herself.

He swept down the palatial row towards the castle, where the guards stood at attention at the pillars of the gate. They were at full attention, as they always were, and one stopped Atheera for a moment with an outstretched spear. The man recognized him quickly, however, and waved him in.

The castle was beautiful. Where the palace at home was spread through too many buildings and towers and temples to map out, this northern castle was simply a pair of tall, regal mansions with five floors each and a garden between them. It was to this middle garden that he went.

He could have stood a walk on the wide path around the castle, admiring all the different gardens that the Phoenix Emperor kept, but the children were out with their northwaste ponies and their western dogs the size of bears that always snapped and growled at him when he passed by, so he took his chances with the quiet.

Atheera missed home, but he knew that once he got home he would be missing elsewhere. As long as he stayed in the Northern Empire, he didn't have his older siblings chastising him or trying to get him in trouble; he didn't have to deal with Devi treating him like he was dirt beneath her foot; he didn't have to withstand the sharp looks his parents gave him whenever he said something ever-so-slightly wrong. He breathed deeply and paused on the little footbridge over the pond, staring down into the ripples of the water.
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