Have you ever read a book that jumps into the perspective of an antagonist, and you start to see things from their perspective and start to agree with them?
And then remember how they fit into the bigger picture and realize you shouldn't be agreeing with them XD
But it's good if you know where an antagonist is coming from. It makes them far more believable.
A few months ago I finally decided to add two new species of dragons so I could balance out the elements.
In the midst of my overhaul, I started toying with another addition. See, three of the dragon species are called sun dragons, moon dragons, and dawn dragons. This was mostly because I didn't know what else to name them, so I named them around the dragon god, who is said to sleep in the sun. Except these names brought their own question along.
What about the dusk dragon?
A little while ago, an idea popped into my head. See, moon dragons are incredibly rare. They were almost driven to extinction during a big war, and they're having trouble recovering. What if something similar happened to dusk dragons? Except they actually went extinct.
So, now I need to design one last species of dragon. One that no longer exists. I only have a vague idea what it will look like. We'll see how it turns out. I might as well design the dusk dragon while I'm doing the stats for iron and zephyr dragons. Though this design didn't come as easy to me as the other two did.
If you write (or make any kind of story) you're supposed to have al elevator pitch. The idea is that if you meet someone who can get you published, you explain your idea to them in a descriptive and creative way that will get their attention. All within a couple minutes. It's a little like a query letter, I suppose. Short, to the point, and highlighting all of your skill.
I suck at that. Whenever I try to explain my stories, or any other stories for that matter, it's always a train wreck.
I think I wrote some elevator pitches for Katani. But I should try them for the more recent stories too.
I'm finally working on the query letter for Evva's story.
I scratched out a sloppy outline a while ago. Every now and then I go and tweak it. I just do little bites of it because query letters are crazy XD It's one of those things where I spend 20 minutes on a paragraph. Then later I come back and rewrite most of it.
I recently mentioned that I have a thing for owning replicas. Like the crystal pendant from Castle in the Sky.
But Sometimes I also like to use replicas to "fix" things from the movies.
For example, at the Ghibli Museum in Japan, I got a beautiful statue of the Barron. And maybe a year+ later I saw a matching statue of Louise on Amazon. It was more expensive than buying it in Japan, but they hadn't had her in Japan. So I bought her. I needed to bring them together!
They've since held a central location in my room.
I guess it makes sense. After all, I use Fern to interfere in other movies. So bringing Barron and Louise together it just another part of that.
It's exciting to work on Arith's story. Largely because I'm not really sure what's going to happen! Like... at all. I only have a vague idea. @_@
Though that's normal when I start a new story. The only difference here is that Arith was part of a complete story once. I'm just throwing it away and starting over.
It only occurred to me a couple day ago that I have no idea what any of the characters will be like, beyond three or four. And they're about to arrive at a place where there are a lot of people. I guess I'll just see what strange crew pops up when I get there.
I just started writing a new story! That's always exciting, considering it only happens every other year or so.
Well, I guess this is an old story. I'm rewriting Arith's story, which is from high school.
Whenever I start a new story, I always take a while to adjust to new names. I'll keep using the old names for new characters. I'm not sure if I've done it for Arith yet, but I'll probably end up calling him "Katani" a few times. But I also just realized a couple days ago... I recently finished Arrin's story. And now I'm working on Arith's story. Arrin and Arith. How the heck did I let two of my main characters get such similar names? I"m probably going to have to do something about that... Unless I just call Arrin "Rinn" all the time...
Bleh.
I just listened to an audio book. It's the first of a trilogy, and it's pretty good so far.
There was a race of people that were clearly based of the plains American Indians. And yet the reader of the audio book gave them a Scottish accent?
Yeah, that was bewildering.
Pink-backed pelican
I recently read a Jane Austin book called Northangar Abbey. The main character has a very active imagination. Sometimes it runs away with her, and she makes up wild stories about the people she encounters.
I also have a very active imagination. Writing helps me burn some of it off. And yet I don't make up wild stories about real people. It just feels disrespectful to make up fake scenarios and imagine what they'd do. Even if you're not necessarily thinking ill of them.
The most I ever do is try to imagine a complicated conversation I need to have, so I can think of what I want to say. And of course I'll worry about what people think about me. It's probably impossible to never imagine things about people, at least to a minor extent such as this. But if I'm going to make up stories, I save them for the fictional characters.
Red ruffed lemur, warming his belly in the sun
This is appropriate for April Fools, I think.
Every now and then I'll read something wrong. Here's a line from the story I just finished editing.
“Mr. Efriam’s going to eat with us!”
I must have been tired, because when I read it, I thought I'd written:
“Mr. Efriam’s going to eat us!”
Amazing the difference one word can make.
West African crowned crane
