Zuri

Well, usually, it's "Who the fuck is Alice?" 😜 Max just spawned—nothing out of the ordinary 😅 I have finished Torchwood yesterday, but by the time of writing, I didn't know about Gwen's boyfriend or Gwen (except for her brief appearance in Doctor Who).

My attention span is truly excelling right now, it seems 😅 I'm not much of a gamer, but I was captivated by a Let's Play of another game of the developers: Tell Me Why.

I knew it! 😅🤦‍♂️ Yeah, Max is Rhys. He underwent a name change, and silly me must have missed one mention of his name. Your prize: 🍪

Uh, what game exactly …? 🤔😬😅

I mean, already Cyndi Lauper said "True colors are beautiful like a rainbow"—if that isn't fitting in this context, I don't know what is 😉 It actually reminded me of a never finished story by a good friend of mine in the German forum, where I read and posted my own stories. Too bad, you aren't that fond of German.

What if there are actually no werewolves and Grey is just neurodivergent? Or is that, what werewolves are? Well, they lived very secluded in the woods and only had their pack dynamic but not much beyond that, I suspect. The color thing actually sounds like Synesthesia. I mean, Dave hadn't figured out what his being different really meant, too. That would make quite a few people among us unknowingly werewolves ^^ Thinking this further, then Ivy from the movie "The Village" might be a werewolf shaman: She can see the color of a person's aura. If that doesn't mean something … 🤔 I gonna play the devil's advocate and say: You are not supposed to have sex. The connection, you are sensing, has a totally different purpose. Please don't jeopardize that 😜 I mean … And of course, as always: Thanks for making me laugh!

I'm a writer myself, remember? Nothing easily evades my eye 😉 Coldplay says in Fix you: "When you get what you want, but not what you need." This emphasizes two roles: Readers tell you, what they want, but writers have to give them, what they need, even though, they will inevitably complain. Sounds like belittling them, if people want to call it that, be my guest, but I think, it is missing the point. This is what I call "The Land of Cockaigne problem" or "fruit still life plot dead end". People will also complain when they get what they want—and rightfully so. Because getting everything you want and immediately is just not satisfactory. I wrote about that in one blog post (section "Love-hate relationships and hate-hate relationships") and another one (section "When you get what you want but not what you need").

If Grey didn't lie to Dave, it happened just the day before chapter one. Well, she seems to have a very distinct role in the werewolf society. At least, we can assume, that she—like the werewolves—is not entirely human 🤔 The colors of the sky mirroring the colors of his skin from last night, that would have faded by now, is probably just a coincidence, isn't it? I must say, I quite like the stark contrast to the "city" from the previous two chapters, and Beatrice sure is … interesting.

And you let Subconscious Mind overtake on the right? 😲

But will there be romance? We will never know 😜 That's why I love epilogues Btw: Damn, you read so fast. Can't keep up in terms of reading your story 😅

She's there. She came all the way. That's something. But what will be the result of them meeting again? And why did I include Shawn?

Funny thing is: Stella wasn't supposed to be in the story at all. But at some point, I asked myself: Was the whole resolution as genius as I thought it to be when I started writing? On the other hand, I'm not sure, making him some sort of hero in terms of transphobia, while he wasn't very accepting himself, was such a good move on my end.

Maybe, because Clara and Dave have trouble with lunatics? Oh, this needs to be in a fortune cookie! Wise, weird AND funny 👍 No, seriously: You've got great humor. I laughed a lot. So stopping reading is out of the question, and completely off the table now 😉 But she isn't a werewolf herself, is she? I mean, that Dave's scent throws him off course, sure has other reasons ^^ Did you say anything about Clara's skin tone before, and did I miss that? If not, this is quite a creative way of incorporating that. Not too subtle, not too on the nose. I hope you can see past the fact that there's romance here :v But people have already criticized me for people not getting it on fast enough. This might play in your favor Yay! 😅 I mean, why the rush? 😜

Thanks, nice to hear! 😊 I actually feel like I shouldn't have included her. It kinda feels similar to cultural appropriation. Even though I had a sensitivity reader for her scenes, I still don't feel entirely comfortable with her. I wrote a story together with that person after Subconscious Mind and within the bounds of that collaboration, it felt way better.

First of all, I don't like reading romance stories. My German forum was full of them (felt like ~ 90 %). BUT I think, I can fairly say, that I can clearly see when someone's got talent. It felt very authentic. And you got me hooked on finding more about Grey's problems and the progression of his character building. Looks like I have to read until then at least ^^ Lots of dialog, though, it didn't feel like too much.

I actually quite liked the basic concept of the show, I just disagree with J. J. Abrams, that the "mystery box" (making stuff up and hoping, it falls into place, when you need it to), is a successful concept. I'm even willing to look past some inconsistencies, but what finally threw me off was the time travelling. Actually, after the first half of the third season, they lost me. (If you like more of my thoughts, yesterday I had a discussion about this on Mastodon). I'd watch it again if they kept the beginning, but made four good seasons out of it and think stuff through beforehand.

I also had a conversation if you can and should tell a story that has already been told. While I would have intuitively said "No" back then, I feel slightly different today. A friend of mine wrote a story based on the general idea of "The Prince and the Pauper". Shouldn't he have written it? Was it boring because we've already seen it so many times? On the contrary. People tell stories for millennia. There are even cultures that told the same story without knowing, the other culture had a similar story. So the real challenge is, to tell it from a fresh perspective. Additionally, we have to make a distinction between theme, plot and storylines. Yes, the plot had the same foundation, but that's that. The story is so much more than its basis. And that's why it works. Quite good actually (definitely a reading recommendation 😉 way better than my own). Yeah, that's usually my problem 😅 That's the cause of my month-long lack of motivation to write currently. Being written in a language that is based to one third on German (well, actually Anglo-Saxon if we want to be nitpicky) ^^ I can't bring up the motivation to read something I already know inside out. And then, there's also organizational blindness. But yeah, my editor is sometimes not available, and I'd have a hard time finding somebody else for this. Actually, that's why I don't have an English-speaking editor. But with us, it just clicked. We work so perfectly together—I don't deserve this 😅 If it's better incorporated than what they did in Lost ^^

Yep, that's what I think, have most outlining methods in common: They are theoretical method for box ticking, but they don't tell you, how to do it. They are in a way reverse engineered, found in common in different completed works. But as they say: Hindsight is easier than foresight. Yesterday, I stumbled across the 27 Chapter Method (I might prefer "3³ method"). While this might be closer to what I write, it doesn't really solve the aforementioned problems. I haven't. At least, it is a drastically different approach from both the 27 chapter method and others like the hero's journey. They all seem too similar. But at the end of the day, this just tackles it from another angle: Instead of given you a list of checkboxes, it tells you how to organize your work in general. It still doesn't help you with the actual work on the details. But I still think, this could be a method that might be nice to try out for me 🤔 Same here ^^

Yeah, welcome to the club 😅 For me, it's like I feel, I know so much about writing after the twenty years of doing it, so I'm pretty confident when editing the stories of others (criticizing others is easier 😅), yet I can see, that my own stories are still mediocre at best. Another author's (now my editor and a good friend of mine) writing impressed me when I first read his story. It was one of the few that stood out in the German online community, I used to read stories and post my own. However, when he sent me another story, this time unedited, I was baffled. This story had nothing in common with the quality piece he posted. Nonetheless, he had edited the published story to get to this result. That baffled me the other way round, so to speak. And that's how we ended up editing each other's stories and enjoying it ever since. Yesterday, in an interview, I listened to, someone—I guess, it was Damon Lindelof (Creator of Lost)—called it "the story ether", and I kinda like it: I usually don't know where a story comes from; I only know, when it fits. That's more or less, what I talked about in my blog post (section "Plato’s doctrine of forms of literature"). You can't force it—can you? Stop slapping? I mean, after extensive slapping, holding a pen gets harder and harder 😉 Well, I'd ask myself what I need the dialog for: Can it be replaced by action (show, don't tell)? Can I let them speak more figuratively? Can I cut the scene (maybe, the dialog fits better in another scene?)? Do I need to break the dialog into multiple by intermitting action? By the way: Great chapter length. Someone once referred to that below one of my stories as "snacks", because this is a good one third shorter than most stories here on GA, but that's how I write, too, and prefer to read. So, maybe, I really check it out 🤔 Now, I'm curious: In what way does it differ from other werewolf stories?

This song has been soooo stuck in my head lately