#PennedPossibilities 1101
What creature or monster would your MC or SC love to keep as an unconventional pet? Why is that?
Current WIP: Tabitha had to crack the DRM on her pet dog before she could clone her, but it was well worth the money: the dog's a self-propelled biological weapons factory and as Tabitha is a crime lord and arms dealer …
(Besides, who's a GOOD dog? You! Yes, you! /dies )
#PennedPossibilities 1088
Name something that is considered rare and valuable in your WIP? What is common and essential?
Rare and valuable: brain scanning (destructive) and memory imprinting (onto a 5-6 year old child, whose personality is overwritten): in The Permanence it's a capital offense for commoners to do it, but nearly universal among the nobility because lossy tech-mediated reincarnation is how the aristocracy maintains its grip on power.
Common and essential: conservative tyranny.
#PennedPossibilities 1103: Have you ever had a plot idea that you were excited to write but had to scrap because it just didn’t work?
This happens to me at least once a week.
(Ideas are cheap: execution is 99% of the job.)
#PennedPossibilities 1102: Do you have a strategy for how you approach worldbuilding in your WIP(s)?
Interrogate all stock elements mercilessly.
Refuse to over-simplify the structure of your setting.
When you look more closely the bland-looking foreground is turns out to be composed of stacked second-order consequences, piled so high they're collapsing under their own freight of history.
There's a time for 'show, don't tell', but there's *also* a time to go maximum infodump.
&c.
1/X thread 🧵
- Do not respond to this thread. -
Please mention me for further additions/corrections
List of clickable writing, reading & creative related prompts via their hashtags.
In English
In German
Unregular ones (in German)
Discontinued ones (in English)
___
#PennedPossibilities 1100: Most challenging opponent MC has ever faced?
I tend to go for overwhelmingly overpowered antagonists. In "Starter Pack" Jum and Tabitha are up against the Last Empress; in the Laundry Files Bob was confronted with the Black Pharaoh, Nyarlathotep: and so on.
#PennedPossibilities 1102: Do you have a strategy for how you approach worldbuilding in your WIP(s)?
When I'm doing world-building, I sometimes start by itemizing the prevailing clichés in the sub-genre I've chosen, just so I can interrogate and—where necessary—avoid them.
I'm currently working on a multi-book space opera setting. I began it in 2016, and this blog post summarizes my thoughts about common problems in space opera world-building:
https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/03/towards-a-taxonomy-of-cliches-.html
/1
#PennedPossibilities 1111: Do you respond to feedback, reviews, or comments? Why or why not?
I answer direct questions (if they're polite). But I NEVER argue with reviewers over an opinion they hold about my work because authors arguing with reviewers are radioactive:
"This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here.
"What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger."
#PennedPossibilities 1143: SC POV: Write a diary entry, dated 10 years in the future. (If you can.)
(This is strictly speaking part of a sequel in progress)
Dear Diary: I wish my fans would move the paparazzi spysat they've parked over our hot tub, I miss skinny-dipping. I'd pop an ASAT at it but that leads to lawsuits! (Being infamous has drawbacks.)
It's been months since I last robbed an art gallery: I'm getting withdrawal symptoms.
On the other hand, Fenris is jut about house-trained …
#PennedPossibilities 1130. If your MC could have a do-over and another life, one of their own choice this time, what would their profession be?
Current WIP: Jum and Tabitha *regularly* get do-overs and another life—reincarnation is A Thing they get to do—and if they got a choice of profession, they'd do it all over again (being career criminals is probably more work than going straight, but they do it because they *enjoy it*).
#PennedPossibilities 1133. Did your MC attend school? What sort of education did they have?
Current WIP:
As a lady of noble birth, Tabitha isn't allowed to go to school outside the palace. She has governesses. But she also has the free run of a noble house's library, and nobody's bothered to track the girl's reading habits ...
Jum, at 12, is sent to boarding school to be educated and socialized with the other lords of the Permanence. (Its tag in the outline was "Space Eton".)
#PennedPossibilities 1134: What type of clothing does your MC typically wear?
(WIP)
Jum and Tabitha exist in an oppressive Ruritanian-flavoured interstellar empire with sumptuary codes: as criminals targeting the aristocracy (over a very long span of time—they skip whole centuries) they dress to impress their marks. So, either as wealthy but unthreatening bourgeoisie, or as nobility themselves.
#PennedPossibilities 1102: Do you have a strategy for how you approach worldbuilding?
Yes and it's gnarly! Start by working out what kind of story the setting is a backdrop for, then examine ALL the stock clichés so that I can use them *if they work* and deep-six them if they're nonsense.
My current WIP, a space opera, got rolling right after I wrote this essay, which was just me setting my own ground rules *before* the world-building:
https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/03/towards-a-taxonomy-of-cliches-.html
#PennedPossibilities 1118
Name a catastrophic event that occurred in your world/universe.
In the Laundry Files, it's unambiguously CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN—that's the main plot driver for the last 7 books in the (main) 10 book series! (A positive feedback loop that makes magic easier, like anthropogenic climate change, nearly tears the universe apart before we stop adding to it.)
In the current WIP, the fictional universe is so vast that no plausible catastrophe is big enough to be non-local.
#PennedPossibilities 1120: Share something from your WIP pertaining to the word “entertainment.”
See screencap: full text in alt-text. It doesn't specifically use the word "entertainment" … but it might as well. Will fix later!
(The house party is so entertainingly memorable that it ends with a jewel robbery, a fox hunt, a nuclear explosion, then the inquisition turns up and crucifies all the survivors.)
#PennedPossibilities 1137 Do you have an FMC, MMC, other gender MC, or more than one MC?
It depends on the story.
Current WIP has an MMC and an FMC, currently stuck in a viciously stratified society with strict gender roles—but hints that in other times and places they've been less cisnormative.
Other novels differ. ("Glasshouse" for example is set in a universe with virtually frictionless body modification.)
#PennedPossibilities 1158. MC POV: Where is a place you never want to go, see, or visit again?
(Current WIP):
Jum and Tabitha (in unison): "The Permanence. I mean, *fuck* those guys, right?"
#PennedPossibilities 1139: Do you have a ritual before you sit down to write?
Yes; I have to get bored with everything else, catch up on email, read all my regular web stuff, and run out of cat hoovering (writing substitutes) … then I can *finally* force myself to work!
But I have to get everything done before that time in early evening when @Menhit wakes up and chooses violence (playfully), because cats don't take "I'm writing" for an answer.
#PennedPossibilities 1140 MC POV: When was a time you felt like a hero?
(Current WIP)
Jum: "A hero? Me? I think you've got me confused with someone else. Anyway, in this empire the only heroes are idiots, and shortly thereafter they're dead idiots."
Tabitha: "I'm Jum's hero, and if anyone says different I'll backstab them repeatedly until they stop."
#Writing #Writers #WritingCommunity #WritersOfMastodon #AmWriting #Scriberspace
#PennedPossibilities 1165: Can the dead truly return to the “land of the living” in your universe?
(Starter Pack): Aristocrats in the Permanence who have their brains scanned in an uploading pod then have their personality and memories imprinted on one of their descendants, overwriting a harmless six year old with a tyrannical nobleman. It's how the aristocracy retains its death-grip on power from beyond the grave.
Of course, this is a capital offence for commoners—like our protagonists …
#PennedPossibilities 1166: Would any of your characters actually survive a “zombie” apocalypse?
(Laundry Files): Bob Howard once threw a dance party for the dead in the biggest graveyard in England (Brookwood Cemetary). He occasionally punches out vampires. Mo O'Brien, meanwhile, experiments with zombies in the lab. They're both qualified to teach university level necromancy at this point …
#PennedPossibilities 1170 — Do any of your characters possess frightening or scary abilities?
Laundry Files: well, Bob's official job description is "Eater of Souls", and he works for the Prime Minister, who is a walking skinsuit for an Elder God straight out of Lovecraft. But that's not so scary, right?
Members of the Clan, in the Merchant Princes, can just nip across to the parallel universe next door and borrow things people have unwisely left unprotected. Like demolition nukes. Scared?
#PennedPossibilities 1171
What would your MC do if faced with a “demonic” presence?
In the Laundry Files, that's the entire premise of the series. (At first they fight back, then they fight a rear-guard action, then they come to the best compromise they can, and then—)
#PennedPossibilities 1141: Does your antagonist personally know your MC? Have they ever met?
This question makes the (often false) assumption that in a work of fiction, the antagonist is a person, rather than the natural world or a vast interlocking system of oppressive hierarchy with nobody in charge (like, say, capitalism).
You can punch a King but you can't punch Monarchism: that's the difference between escapist fantasy and philosophy.
(There's a place for both.)
#PennedPossibilities 1149 Your MC/MCs come across some spooky scarry skeletons... What's next?
(Curiously, that's the exact opening scene of the novel I'm currently rewriting.)
The skeletons were the royal family's servants. All executed by pistol shot to the head.
Our MCs, who are burgling the buried royal bunker 30 years after the revolution, come to a sticky end shortly thereafter (The bunker has become an accidental death trap).
200 years later they are very surprised to wake up again …
