How are my fellow night owls doing?
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Suh? I’m close to strangling Adrian, hbu? lol.
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Close to strangling Adrian? 
I have to admit I’ve felt that with some characters before.
I’ve just uploaded three chapters to my book over the past two days, and I might upload two more tonight or tomorrow. I didn’t update the book at all last month so I’m like “lemme post five chapters this month to compensate” XD
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Yeah, he’s being a smartass and weird again. Trying to use the whole “I’m a good boy” shtick again. Which I am not falling for. Sorry, Bud.
Tell him that I’m not falling for it again lol.
Nice one! At least you can post online and write enough to do so lol. Five ch a month isn’t too bad to be honest.
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Haha. Sorry Adrian, but Jihn’s not falling for it again!
When I feel like strangling my characters, it’s usually because they’re evil, annoying, or just hate-able, haha. One time I felt like seizing my main character and his crush by the shoulders and shaking them because they were steering the story in a more romantic direction >.>
Thanks! Well I’ve only managed to write this much because it turned out that some of the chapters I was drafting were going over 3000 words, so I moved small chunks of them into the next chapters to lower the word count. Those chunks also wouldn’t fit in with the words from the next chapters, so that’s how I ended up with five more chapters instead of three, haha. But my updates are quite sporadic. My sequel saw me updating only once a month and then three updates in three days at one point.
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Exactly xD He already tried it with his Dad too. I don’t hate Adrian or anything but he needs a bit of fixing up you know?
xD Not much of a romantic then? Or was it because they steered the overall plot arc too much off course?
That’s smart. Five smaller chapters are probably easier for the readers though, with the word limits you know? They probably think it’s great they’re getting more updates lol.
At least you can update, sporadically or not lol.
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Yeah, I know. Sometimes my characters feel like children to me. They’re not necessarily bad, but sometimes you got to whip them into shape because you care for them but also more for the plot.
Well it was going well. I knew that my main character and his crush would find out that they’ve been crushing on each other the whole time without either person knowing. My original plan was for them to meet in the park at the end of the book, just the two of them, and imply that they ended up getting together. I was even planning to have the girl reject him because she wasn’t ready for a relationship yet.
And then when I wrote the story, the two decided they just couldn’t stay away from each other and had to start dating two-thirds into the book. Oh, that wasn’t enough. They ended the story with a steamy make-out session on the main character’s bed >.>
I mean I don’t mind romance but this was a big jump from what I had planned
Haha, true. I remember reading somewhere how the best chapter length for Wattpad is like 1000–2000 words. I don’t think I’ll ever impose a max. 2000 chapter word count for any of my books, because it feels way too short for me XD (unless I’m writing a middle grade book, I guess). I have a rather wordy writing style.
Haha. Have you managed to update? Hope you can soon, if you haven’t!
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Yeah of course. You need them to grow but you still need to nurture and love them. And map out some sort of arc for them within the plot, depending on what the plot is and how much the characters already fit it.
Haha I like it when unexpected things like that happen and characters end up surprising you and having very good chemistry between themselves. That does sound like a big jump from a park to a make out session though lol.
Yeah but now that Wattpad has those ads, people will be looking to read longer chapters. If your style is wordy then it might be good for modern Wattpad if you get me? 
Nope haha. The story is in Adrian’s POV and it’s like an anthology. It moves about a lot. It has a theme and a sofa plot but I write it when Adrian’s ready ha.
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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 
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.
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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.
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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 former lawyer breaking the law, haha.
That sounds tasty not gonna lie 
I remember someone calling you Churro before, if I remember correctly. Is there a story behind the nickname? 
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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.
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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”
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
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
That’s really cool! I thought it was because you loved churros a lot, lol. Man. Now I’m craving churros and chocolate.
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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 
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
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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.
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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?
Thank you, by the way, for getting the thread unsunk. I didn’t even realise until I got the badge notification again. How’s life been?
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Haha, you’re welcome! 
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.
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. 
Hoping to get back into writing as well.
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