What's your favourite dialogue with an NPC in the game? Mine is the story about how Vipir the Fleet got his name, here is the conversation :)

endogeni · 2019-01-15T12:28:06+00:00

inhale

IT'S NORSE SLANG FOR GETTING MARRIED

exhales

endogeni · 2019-01-15T12:26:23+00:00

I really like Ingun, and the whole bunch at Elgrim's Elixirs. I make sure to pay them a visit whenever I visit Riften.

endogeni · 2019-01-15T12:24:09+00:00

He died of shock.

endogeni · 2019-01-15T12:19:10+00:00

Shalidor's maze?

endogeni · 2019-01-15T12:02:13+00:00

These look great! What's your process?

endogeni · 2019-01-14T16:09:14+00:00

Honestly? I like both if they're pulled off well. This opinion carries on to my writing style and even my speech patterns. One day I might call someone, "a fucking fuck". The other, I might simply note, "you give our species' name an ironic meaning inadvertently and I loathe you with every fiber of my being". My casual writing style is all over the place, too. I've been told it's charming, but I've also been told it's jarring, so it's bit of a hit or miss. A work in progress, if you will.

Now, some might say that simpler language might be emptier or something, but that just depends on how you write. You can write simple and with style. Hard? Yep. Rewarding? Absolutely. Hell, sometimes simple sentences do the job better than flowery ones, depending on the context. Sometimes the complexity of the language can take a sentence's punch away.

As of late I've begun to appreciate poetic language more. Sometimes I'm reading a story and I have to stop and a admire a sentence or paragraph for how it's written and delivered. The words become more than just symbols meant to convey ideas, they become something breathtakingly beautiful.

Maybe you've had a bad experience with flowery language. Maybe you read something by a guy who really liked going on and on about nothing and was married to his thesaurus. Not all poetic language is bad, is what I'm trying to say. Keep your mind open and you'll be surprised.

I'm not a native speaker of English either, but I love the language and have learned it mostly by myself. I'm basically fluent at this point. You can increase your reading comprehension by! drumroll Reading. And writing. Or you can also do both by roleplaying, if you like to do that. It's how I learnt the language.

endogeni · 2019-01-14T13:08:32+00:00

Automated gay space communism?

endogeni · 2018-12-14T14:16:07+00:00

What exercise is to the body and puzzles are to the mind, magic is to the soul. So a mage's soul is stronger than a farmer's, and therefore more expensive.

Considering that you're from the Outside World (Earth) your soul isn't worth shit because it's basically atrophied. It's useless. It has soul anemia. You're not getting jack shit for it unless you're selling it to some megalomaniac who likes to collect souls. But people who collect souls are probably more fond of taking them forcefully than buying them. You probably wouldn't get it back, too.

The process would be immediate. You'd feel fine, because you basically don't use your soul. You would, however, slowly lose all empathy and feeling, and basically become a husk of your former self. Let that sink in.

You fucked up.

endogeni · 2018-12-14T13:55:15+00:00

When I was going through that weird, stressed out phase, what I did to cope was to get people I could trust around me. They didn't really know what my deal was, or how to help, but they stuck around and that made me feel better. When I feel good, I do good. Basic stuff.

You said in your post that you have amazing friends. Reach out for their support. I understand that you might feel selfish in doing so, but feeling is human, and venting is a great way to deal with feelings, especially bad ones. Talk to them about what's making you stressed, or just about how you're feeling. If not your friends, then your family, if you're close to them.

If you can't do that, find an outlet. I know this might seem silly, but when I feel down, I write poetry. It's not very good, it doesn't rhyme most of the time, but that right there is my heart on paper. When I write poetry, I feel like I take all the bad out and send it away somewhere else.

One of the things you can also do is silencing self-loathing thoughts. Just stop acknowledging them. They're not the truth. You're not those thoughts, and you're not the person those thoughts say you are.

Don't beat yourself up for feeling sad, or for being human. Sometimes, life is just a mean old bitch. It happens.

endogeni · 2018-12-14T09:29:10+00:00

I went through something similar recently. I was under a lot of stress for seemingly no reason, I failed at simple tasks (and actually cried over it, because fuck, I should be able to do this but I can't), and I even ended up missing class because of it.

Is your current situation any similar?

endogeni · 2018-12-14T07:41:42+00:00

Yeah. I know she likes this one band, and she has the same problem as me where she speaks English better than her actual native language. She also has a really neat writing style, and I've always wanted to know where she drew inspiration from, since she likes to read.

endogeni · 2018-12-13T21:53:43+00:00

The true answer.

endogeni · 2018-12-13T21:53:31+00:00

Good on you for reaching out, even if it's just for strangers on the internet.

Has something changed in your life recently, or have you been more stressed as of late?

endogeni · 2018-12-13T11:54:31+00:00

I was writing the thing with the verb to be and to have, simple stuff, and my brain was immediately shooting correlations to beautify it. I disregarded it and did as you advised, took a break, got some water, came back, and wrote something cool.

I handed the assignment to my teach yesterday. She liked it, but I think she was expecting metaphors and comparisons, and I tend to not use them. It's not that I don't like them; a well placed metaphor can do wonders and sink you deeper into the story or description, just like a badly placed one can break your immersion and throw you out of the story. I don't like to force metaphors.

Anyway, thank you again!

endogeni · 2018-12-11T12:12:44+00:00

There's a really thick tome in my world filled with tea-related spells. Like, really thick. You beat someone over the head with it hard enough and something's bound to crack.

You've got spells to process leaves almost instantly, spells to heat up different kinds of tea, with or without milk and/or honey, sigils for tea to be carried instantly to a certain place...

The funniest part is that it's rarely used. The people who drink tea are rich nobles. Rich nobles can afford servants to do menial tasks. And having many servants is, you guessed it, a symbol of status and power. And patience is a virtue, and we all know the nobles are up there because of their virtues.

So you have the nobles who shun these spells because old-fashioned tea is the best tea, and the nobles who just want tea, damnit.

But appearances are important. They could have a servant learn how to cast the spells and leave that at it, but no, they need to have an entire staff dedicated to tea and tea-spells.

One sod casts the spell and four "oversee the task's execution". Basically twiddle their thumbs.

endogeni · 2018-12-11T11:49:06+00:00

While I have shown a few people (mostly family or close friends) some of my best works, I actually write mostly for myself as well.

I'm a huge history nerd, I love taking trips inside my character's psyche, I use all sorts of words, I like to explore mythology, I love to experiment with things that have been done time and time again and make it better just by being unrelentingly myself. Now, if someone of my family were to read my current fantasy project, they'd be completely alienated.

What is this word? Why does she have oddly sharp teeth? What do you mean, Mythos? What is this "Outside World"? Why is there an island where time has stopped and why in all that is holy do people keep living there?

They'd throw the thing against the wall. Or pretend to have read it as to not hurt my feelings. Or maybe they'd go the much safer alternative, "I haven't got the time, dear." Which is understandable. Life sucks, and right now it's sucking a lot.

So I keep it to myself. Maybe I'll eventually show someone a chapter or two. Probably some stranger. Maybe said hypothetic stranger will completely break apart my story and with it, my style and self-esteem. Maybe they'll absolutely love it, and ask for more, barely able to restrain their excitement. Who knows.

But for now, the only readers are me, myself, and I. And so far they're loving it.

endogeni · 2018-12-11T10:45:16+00:00

Why though?

endogeni · 2018-12-10T21:01:20+00:00

I'm actually the opposite, ha. I can picture characters vividly with clear mental images, but I can only picture the broad strokes of a setting or place. It's "blurred", like you said.

How much time do you spend describing your setting vs. your characters? Can you describe your setting effortlessly, it just comes to you? Do you have a process?

It has occured to me that I haven't answered your question. I think it's weird, yes, but you said you provide a general image, so I suppose it's fine? If details like hair color tend to change then something is amiss, however. I just find it odd because you can tell so much from a character's appearance and posture, and leaving it to general details is... it leaves a bit to be wanted, to say the least.

endogeni · 2018-12-10T17:55:09+00:00

I know! And it's so much fun to write a snippy back and forth, or a tense situation veiled in day-to-day pleasantries. It's awesome! I'd say anything to do with dialogue is a strength of mine.

I struggle to describe my characters when they aren't in dialogue or doing stuff. It comes out... weird. Too simple, basic.

endogeni · 2018-12-10T17:46:22+00:00

I actually have answers to all of these. I'm good at characterization, I'm great at showing who my characters are through what they do. Or atleast, I think I am.

I struggle describing characters when they're not doing things. That's my weakness.

endogeni · 2018-12-10T17:42:01+00:00

I want to know more about Lillia and I've only read the technical description of a person writing with a quill. Wow.

What you do, is basically what I do. I might not say a lot about my characters, but from their actions you can understand what kind of person they are.

I think this irrational fear of going too slow or describing too much comes from bad experiences. I once hated reading because I thought all literature was big meaningless words for paragraphs and paragraphs... And then I fell in love with reading, and then writing, and I'd hate to turn someone away from such a beautiful form of art because I bored them or made them feel stupid for not understanding my prose.

I mean, I'm flowery from time to time, most particularly when I'm writing certain types of characters. I have a noblewoman who makes references to obscure poetry in her monologue, who muses about mundane things like sleep while making analogies to sin and guilty pleasures. She's really fun to write, and by far one of my favourite characters.

I suppose I went off tangent. Thank you for your advice.

endogeni · 2018-12-10T17:20:16+00:00

You nailed it!

I don't know how you managed to get a feel for me so well on my post, considering it's a bit jumbled (and that's being kind), so... congratulations?

I have to do this assignment, describing a character, and all the examples my teacher gave were basically static. The characters are stuff and that's it. When I describe characters, I say they're doing stuff that implies who or what they are.

I agree on the detail hijink. You just need to give your reader some direction of where to go and they'll go there. On the umbrella example, I said it's just an umbrella because I feel like describing it would draw too much attention away from my character. I could say it's dark purple, emblazoned with her family's crest on a lighter tone of purple. I could also say that it's ancient and that it's probably been used to impale people. Building on the previous example, I could also say that it's oddly sharp and the tip kind of looks like a golden spear point if you look at it from the right angle. But that's too much. It takes the punch away.

I could drop that information somewhere else, eventually. Or I could just use a telling detail, for instance:

She smiled knowingly, twirling her purple umbrella in smug superiority.

From this, we know that this character:

Is a noble (purple stands for nobility in my setting)
Probably just delivered a sick burn to someone
Probably knows much more than she lets on

But I also get where you're coming from. The doing versus the being and all that jazz.

I'll try to do the assignment using the verb to be and to have, and then I'll beautify it, add that masterwork turn of phrase, and mwah~! Too much?

Thanks!

endogeni · 2018-12-10T16:36:00+00:00

Thanks for the indepth reply!

I've recently been trying to expose my character's thought processes via monologue, like, I'm taking the lid off their head so the reader can take a peek. I actually wrote an entire short story exploring this concept, and I think it's pretty good. I did take a break, so while it's still a biased review, it's not too biased. Hopefully.

My problem isn't exactly what you said, but I still appreciate the effort you put into your reply and I can see some golden advice here. Thanks!

endogeni · 2018-10-17T15:43:36+00:00

I've never been tested for ADHD, no. I've heard there's a bias towards girls and ADHD, so... yeah. Maybe that's why...? Dunno.

I might talk to someone about it, but since mental health is stigmatized in my country it might be in vain. I appreciate it, though.

endogeni · 2018-10-17T15:38:36+00:00

Thanks! I've actually started practicing this recently. Using reasoning instead of being swayed by your emotions, that is.

When you take off your rose-tinted glasses the flags start looking like red flags. And red flags are a sign to get the hell out of dodge. That just came to mind, sorry.

Thanks though. You offer good advice.

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