𝒏𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕𝒄𝒂𝒍𝒍 — 𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐧𝐢𝐚𝐜 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫

In my case I start with a basic outline of the characters and focus more on the plot. As I write, I dive into their personalities more and learn more about them along their journey. Sometimes I even surprise myself with how they grow, haha. Other times they try to take control—and sometimes they succeed.

Oh, it was a huge jump. My current project will have a one-sided romance towards the end, and the trilogy as a whole will have more romance (the last book will even have a fade-to-black lovemaking scene) but this time it’s actually planned. My worry’s not the romance, but whether the protagonist, Edin, will remain a good boy or not. I can’t afford to have him turn evil because that will wreck the series :sweat_smile:

Oooh, an anthology. I’m guessing the book has an episodic kind of format? Hopefully Adrian will behave soon so you can update, haha. Time to bring him under control.

1 Like

Oh. My characters come to me and then the stories a lot of the time. It’s interesting your outlines come first and your characters change as the plot develops. I’m glad it surprises you. Characters can be unpredictable with control lol.

Planned lovemaking scenes are usually better because people appreciate that you put the effort in and didn’t just shove gratuitous smut in for reads.

Edin seems cool from what I know of him, but if you keep writing him you’ll find out sooner or later what direction his character is going and if you need to adjust the series to match it.

Yeah. It starts after Adrian has been disgraced and his lawyers license gets stripped for him starting an underground fight club, and he’s trying to get his life back together again through doing some questionable things. It will probably contain flashbacks as well, anecdotes too.

Yeah, Adrian needs to behave or he’s not getting warm milk, churros and a 24 inch pepperoni pizza. :slight_smile:

1 Like

Yup. My stories tend to be rather plot-heavy sometimes. Even more so with the stories I wrote for school, since we had to pants a short story in about an hour, so I end up thinking plot first and character later. I don’t actively create characters though. They just come to me naturally.

Haha, everything’s better when planned, usually. I’m not going to write smut (never have, never will, partly because of morals and religious reasons), so this fade-to-black is going to be the furthest I’ll ever go, haha. I will never show the act itself, but it’s gonna happen, and you’ll know it’s going to happen.

Thanks! I’m writing him so far and he comes off as innocent and inherently good. As of now I can’t see him turning evil. He can get misguided down the wrong path—which will happen in the second book—but I don’t think he’ll ever turn evil. A few people have been reading his diary here and I’ve managed to convince one of them to read the book he’s in, so yeah.

Now that I think about it, I might actually be posting an entire story to Wacky, as in the forum, because epistolary novels are a thing. His diary doesn’t cover all of Blood Will Tell (only Act II and the first three-fourths of Act III) but it does cover a huge chunk.

So basically lawyer starts underground fight club, gets license stripped, life sort of ruined, and tries to get everything back together by doing some potentially law-breaking stuff? Are the questionable things illegal or something because that’d be ironic :joy: former lawyer breaking the law, haha.

That sounds tasty not gonna lie :drooling_face:

I remember someone calling you Churro before, if I remember correctly. Is there a story behind the nickname? :eyes:

1 Like

Nothing wrong with that. Mine tend to be more character driven than plot focused but a good plot is hard to put down usually. Writing stories in an hour is good practice for pantsing lol. Yeah characters coming naturally is good. Specially when and if they end up fitting the plot well.

Of course. I’m glad that you know where you stand with sexual acts in your books. I respect the fade to black and think authors should use it more.

Sounds good. I like the idea of a character having good intentions but being misguided. You can work with that a lot, IMO. Bring him in different directions you know? Have some fun and growth. That sounds good that people are taken in by him. It’s a start.

Nice. That sounds good posting it here. Is this for an experiment or because you have wrote a lot?

Yeah and he also parts ways with his ex, Marvin and ends up staying in some apartment he does up in the weird side of town. Marvin continues the lawyering business alone.

Some of them are illegal lol. He meets some cool people and morons along the way. He has a business deal with another ex that leads him to something pretty cool.

Yummy!

My friend started calling me Churro as a nickname from Turturro or something and it kinda stuck to the point where it became commonplace and my writing world became known as the Churroverse lol.

1 Like

Yup. Writing with a time crunch has taught me how to write short stories well—even if they don’t always turn out right—although it’s a different story for longer works, haha. I couldn’t pants a longer work, hence why I had to take down an entire trilogy which I pantsed in the span of less than six months. It was just so bad I had to redo it. I’ve managed to rewrite the first two books. It took me six years of writing, rewriting, and editing to make the first book go from cringe material to Wattpad-featured, so yeah XD Agree. Idk but sometimes characters come off as forced into the story or in some cases, it feels like they’re just added for the sake of diversity points. Idk but as a non-Western person it comes off that way sometimes. I sometimes come up with characters when listening to songs or when dreaming.

Yeah, I wish authors didn’t feel the need to fill their books with smut. As someone who’s trying to avoid smut I think it’s getting harder to find YA books that don’t have sex scenes in them, and I find it frustrating. I mean, if you want to then by all means do whatever floats your boat, but I wonder if authors realize that some of us are fine without smut or sometimes don’t even want them. I guess it’s a thing in modern fiction now.

Thanks. The fact that he’s an amnesiac makes it easier for him to be misguided. The villain tells him things about his past which are technically true, but they’re not the full story, and after some events he ends up temporarily joining the villain because he feels betrayed (because he is betrayed by the good guys). It will all happen in the second book. That book’s also going to be mainly from his mentor’s point of view, though.

Well, it all started when I started daydreaming about him writing in his diary and writing his unsent love letters, because that’s one of the things he’ll do in the story (and it influences the story quite a bit). I decided to let him “take over my fingers” so he could send some stuff to my private chat. I was a bit surprised by what he wrote. His first love letter was intense, and his second love letter was rather sensual. I tried writing his diary entries and they were also interesting. I thought “hmmm, what if I make this a thread” :joy:

It’s also convenient since some parts of his diary will be explicitly revealed in the story, so I can copy-paste instead of having to write it from scratch.

Haha. YouTube has lock-picking lawyer, here we have law-breaking (ex) lawyer :joy:

Hmmm, considering how you’re almost strangling Adrian, how are ya gonna deal with the morons he’s going to face later on? Will you feel like strangling them more :joy:

That’s really cool! I thought it was because you loved churros a lot, lol. Man. Now I’m craving churros and chocolate.

1 Like

Behold, my final music project: a jazz-ish piano arrangement of Auld Lang Syne ft. The Lick:

@J.L.O I remember you were interested in my music project, so I managed to export the sheet music from MuseScore as an MP3. Here’s what it sounds like:

My music professor said that it’s not too jazzy. She didn’t have any problems so I think it means that she found it decent :sweat_smile:

I can’t play it well enough yet so I didn’t record myself playing it, but I can upload it next week if you’re interested.

EDIT: @FourcedowErsert here’s the unedited version of my final music project! I’ll release the final version on New Year’s, because Auld Lang Syne’s a New Year’s type of song. That’s not me playing, but the software.

Those midi files haven’t changed in 20 years: yeah, you did good and weren’t heavy on the Jazz flare, but these machines lack human warmth and the richness of a real piano, so it masks the full talent, a lot of times.

That and Jazz is improv. Once you get this down, you can start playing with it a bit more. It would be interesting to hear once you’re comfortable with it

1 Like

My piano skills are very rough so I don’t record me, like ever.

But I have a few things I’ve made, still lingering: almost a decade old, several years after college:

CotB is in 3/4. I did this in 4/4: so it was an exercise in changing the feel of the song:

And this was bringing the feel of Phatom of the Opera to a mideval tune:

Those were done on LMMS, and they still lack an organic feel.

1 Like

Oof, it’s been a bit quiet

Out of curiosity, how would you rate yourself as a pianist? What’s the hardest piece you can play? I’d say I’m beginner-intermediate.

it has, hasn’t it? :sweat_smile:

Thank you, by the way, for getting the thread unsunk. I didn’t even realise until I got the badge notification again. :sweat_smile: How’s life been?

1 Like

Haha, you’re welcome! :blush:

I’ve been doing okay-ish. I’ve just had my physics and mathematics finals on Monday, and my next (and last) final exam is on Friday. Other than stressing about finals and whether I’ll be flying home for the holidays or staying in the US, I’ve been doing well. You?

Good luck then! My trials finished last Wednesday, so we’ve all be unwinding. Not that the teachers like that.

Oh, what would you like? My year end holidays just started, so I’m back home and beginning to gain all that lost weight. :joy:

Welp, all’s quiet really. I mean, it’s back to studying, now that I’m home, but I’m actually enjoying it since there’s isn’t much to distract me. Did get into a huge fight, but I’m not really bothered by it. :woman_shrugging: Hoping to get back into writing as well.

1 Like

Nice! Oh, it must feel good to be done with that, not stressing over exams anymore. I miss having holidays start in early December.

Part of me wishes to stay in the US :joy: I’ve always wanted a white Christmas. I was supposed to experience a white Christmas when I visited Canada for the second time, many years ago, but it was too warm and it barely snowed. It only started snowing after Christmas, I think shortly before or after New Year’s >.> so I wanted to experience it this year. I might go back home, if my parents manage to secure a visa for me.

Yes, I have to get a visa to fly back to my home. It’s complicated being bi-national :sweat_smile:

I relate to the gaining weight. Usually I’d gain like three kilos during Christmas, because we’d just eat and eat but not do anything else :joy:

Wait, back to studying even though holidays have started?

The ones in US are for summer, right? At least those are long, if I remember right. Ours are only 3 weeks (and we have a whole week of seminars before going back, in that third week). Still stressing tho, I’ll be done with that in March :joy:

Well, maybe your family could come over, if it’s an option? :eyes: Or you could stay a while/come back early and enjoy the leftover days. Depends on where you’re staying, but there’s lots of lovely things to see and do during Christmas in the US, and the snow’s a plus point! I sound like some tour guide lol. :joy:

While I can’t relate, I totally understand. Hopefully the process isn’t too rough!

Gah, so true! I’m trying not to though, since we’ve got prom coming up after the exams and jeez do I want to feel good xD

1 Like

Oh yeah, those are crazy long. Starts early May and ends mid-August. But then we only get three weeks during Christmas. Back in primary school we had a month off during Christmas (early Dec to early Jan, or mid Dec to mid Jan) and a month and a half during the summer (early/mid June to mid July), plus we get a one-week break in the middle of each semester. I prefer my old schools’ system :joy:

Well it’s too expensive :joy: this whole me coming home for Christmas is actually super last-minute. The initial plan is to have me spend Christmas in Canada, but I wasn’t able to secure a visa in time (by the time they opened borders, it was too late for me to apply), and then I thought of staying in the US. Then my dad was like “you need to come back” and now we’re in this mess :joy:

:joy: I hope I’ll be able to spend Christmas in the US! I was supposed to last year, but thanks to corona I spent my first year online :smiling_face_with_tear: and last year it started snowing in November >.> I’ll also be spending ten days of quarantine if I fly back home, so I won’t even spend Christmas with my family :smiling_face_with_tear:

Oh don’t worry, you’ll lose that weight gain once the holidays are over XD oh, prom’s coming up? Are you in 10th or 12th grade by any chance? :eyes:

Having gone through both, I personally prefer the US system. :joy: I like the idea that after so many months of studying you get a really long vacation to enjoy. Plus, it doesn’t leave one wanting for more xD.

Oop — that sucks. Welp, hopefully it all works out! Any particular reason for Canada though, if you don’t mind me asking? :eyes:

Ouchhhh. Welp, the pandemic’s made a mess of everything so I guess it’s to be expected. Wonder why your father wants you to go back though, if you won’t even spend Christmas with them?

If I’m not mistaken, 12th grade is for 16/17 right? If so, then I’m in 12th. We call if Form over here xD, so I’m in Form 6 (17). Should be outta school this year actually, but Covid happened. :cry: Oh well. This is a highlight, so there’s that! <3

1 Like

Oh, I have relatives there. One of my uncles (dad’s bro) lives there, and I have a rather big extended family in Toronto. One of my cousins has recently become a Canadian citizen too. I also have relatives in a nearby city in the US (my college is in a small town) but one of them’s a nurse, so she’s working and won’t be around most of the time. The other is a distant cousin who’s married with three or four kids, and one of them’s pretty young, so probably no space for me :sweat_smile:

Well, we thought we’d still be able to spend Christmas together, but then the government bumped up the mandatory quarantine from three days to seven days, and then from seven to ten days because of omicron. My parents miss me a lot. They just want me back home XD I’ll still spend New Year’s with them, hopefully, if I fly back.

12th grade is for 17/18, which is also the last year. Wait, what system are you under? I was under the British-Singaporean system.

Oh, that sucks :cry: at least you’ll still get prom! Hope you’ll enjoy it when it arrives <3

We were supposed to have 2 proms: 10th grade and 12th grade, since those are our graduating years. We didn’t have the 12th grade one. The teachers asked if we’d like a virtual prom and we were all like “no” XD :smiling_face_with_tear:

I went solo for my prom and it was nice.

ah okay, I thought this I’ll admit

Oh yes, omicron’s another pain :weary: Enjoy your family time then!

Um … I have no idea xD. In Malaysia we have this form and standard system. So standard 1 - 6 is for 7 - 12. And then form 5 is 13 to 17. Typo up there, sorry. :sweat_smile: Form 6 is optional, for 18 year olds.

It’s literally the only thing I’m holding on for rn xD

I can’t even imagine how’d that go :joy:

We’re all pairing up with friends xD. Since it’s a fully girls school … I mean, the students + parents are organising it, but it’s only for the students so yeah. :joy:

1 Like

It is >.> and thanks! I know the first thing I’ll do if I get back is hurl insults towards my bro’s face :joy: we used to do that all the time.

Oh, I see. So if you’re in Form 5 then you’re in 11th, and Form 6 is 12th.

Malaysian? We’re neighbors! I’m Filipino-Indonesian. Legally the former, born and raised in the latter, hence why I now need a visa to fly back home :ragejoy:

(and yes that is my custom emoji. Sorry, can’t resist XD)

Oh, an all-girls school. Nice. Hope you have fun! :grin:

:joy: so relatable! Definitely a tradition xD

Ah okay, so I was correctly wrong xD

Hi! :joy: We’ve had a lot of exhange programs with Indonesia (my school I mean). I wonder if you’ve ever been there :eyes:

it’s okay, I like it! :ragejoy: :joy:

Thank you! The plans are laid out and it seems like it’s going to be fun, but we’ll see. :joy: My batch tends to fight a lot, so God knows what’s going to happen before prom.

1 Like