ronon-gallagher-writes

[ronon-gallagher-writes]

we will be returning soon! keep yourself posted on year two of pridewrite

Cast.

#boost #writing event

[ronon-gallagher-writes]

You know what? Create that new WIP, and don’t feel bad about it. Add to your tally, even if you already have a bunch of stories and scenes still to be written.

If you feel there's more worlds to explore, more characters to meet and lessons to teach, then there’s nothing stopping you... Go ahead. Write that story.

It doesn’t mean you’re neglecting a previous wip, it just means you want to write something else. And that’s okay. You don’t have to feel bad about being creative?

It's OK to work on multiple wips! You're a creative soul, so go wild, have some fun! There's no reason to hinder yourself.

#make writing a habit #positivity

[ronon-gallagher-writes]

I’m genuinely curious: what do you personally consider “staying up late”?

#staying up late? anytime after 4am #time i should be going to sleep? before 11:30pm #time i usually sleep? 3am #rip to me & my insomnia ig

[ronon-gallagher-writes]

You can’t defeat the demon but you can turn his summoning ritual into a viral internet challenge creating such a backlog that he won’t be getting around to you for a very long time.

#writing prompts #supernatural

[ronon-gallagher-writes]

As a linguistics nerd, I’d like to formally suggest “Nespring” as a nonbinary equivalent to niece/nephew and “Avaun” as a nonbinary equivalent to aunt/uncle

Nespring: literally meaning “the offspring of my sibling” from the old English roots “offspring” which is just ‘of spring’ and the Latin root “nepos” that both niece and nephew are derived from

Avaun: derived from the roots of both “aunt” and “uncle,” the anglo-French “aunte” and the Latin “avunculus”

@nonbinary-culture

#oh these are wonderful #writing nonbinary characters #language

[ronon-gallagher-writes]

Reblog if you're an artist or writer with too many ideas that you can't ever possibly complete and it's driving you mad and aaaaaah

[ronon-gallagher-writes]

okay so we all agree that scifi often draws parallels between space and the ocean, right? like, starships, and captains, and crew. right? well now consider:

tales of space leviathans - great glowing serpents and nebulaeic kraken and celestial whales, dismissed by most as the feverish hallucinations of those stricken by madness developed from months or even years of isolation in the void, but believed by others who conduct expeditions and send out probes fitted with recording equipment in the hopes of capturing a glimpse of conclusive evidence of these elusive beasts

ghost starships, populated by skeletal crews of men lost in one of the many legendary battles fought across space and time. sometimes a ship will report seeing a vessel that has been MIA for aeons, or run off-course into dangerous territory, drawn by a distress signal with no physical source; the echoes of the sins of the past.

space atlantis - legends of ‘lost’ planets and civilizations; some say they were destroyed, others that they were crushed under the weight of their own hubris, others still that they developed technology advanced enough to hide themselves and any signs of life from even the most sensitive ship’s scanners. they are the object of both scorn and fascination in the scientific community.

areas of intrigue and foreboding, where vessels sometimes enter and never return; the equivalent of our ocean’s bermuda triangle - treacherous asteroid belts whose dense gaseous fog rings make navigating them a suicide mission; uncharted planets and sectors whose inhabitants don’t take kindly to strangers they catch trespassing; areas where communication equipment fails and ships’ systems are affected in unpredictable ways, leading vessels to drop off the map and reappear, if they do at all, in unexpected locations via an unknown trajectory.

space pirates (being ‘tossed out of the airlock’ is equivalent to walking the plank)

space lighthouses - ancient stations built on uninhabited moons and asteroids, run by old, eccentric spacers too attached to their spacefaring ways to retire peacefully and consign themselves to solid ground and content themselves with looking up at the stars they once used to roam. some serve as rest points for crews on long voyages, while others are rumored to be haunted, or fallen into disrepair.

spaceship junkyards, floating in uninhabited areas or dumped on scarcely populated planets, stripped clean of any useful parts by scavengers looking to make some coin or repair and improve their own vehicles.

black holes = space whirlpools

#scifi #wip: return to avalon #space

[ronon-gallagher-writes]

Adult Writeblr Server!

Hello folks, it is that time again (finally) where my roommate and I have decided to break out a fresh writeblr server. For those who don’t know, Eran and I met in a writing server three years ago and have since made two cross country moves to live together! We’ve had an open to the public (minors excluded) writing server for a few years, but want to curate a new space for a more active community.

The key here is finding people we get along with and are comfortable around! We’re both queer adults in our mid-20s, and spend the majority of our time writing our personal projects and joint ones, while also yelling about our ocs and commissioning art when we can. 

If you’re interested in joining a new server for writers (specifically fantasy and/or scifi), like looking at pictures of people’s pets, and all around consider yourself a pretty chill person, then feel free to fill out the form below! We want everyone to be as comfortable as possible, and this google form is a practical way to do that.

✨ https://forms.gle/u5QYkGLHK7vnrMnT8 ✨ I also want to make a note that while there are mentions of whump and nsfw content in the form, entirely to gage your own level of comfort with the material, this server is by all means not centered around sexual material or darker content 24/7. That said, we do just want people to be comfortable with it regardless, and always implement nsfw channels in our servers to try to keep things cordoned off.  Hope to see you around!

#writeblr community #discord servers

[ronon-gallagher-writes]

Creating plots with the zigzag method

I’ve learned this method years ago and I’ve been using it ever since. The zigzag plot creator starts like this: 

An crescent zigzag. 

You can have as many up and downs as you want. I’ve drawn six to keep it simple. Alright, this zigzag is your storyline and every corner is an important event that will change everything:

Every down represents a bad thing happening to your main characters, taking them further away from their goal. Every up is a good event, taking them closer to their goal:

So, when the zigzag goes down, something bad must happen. When the zigzag goes up, something good must happen. The reason why we drew a crescent zigzag is because every down must be worse than the previous, and every up must be better than the previous. As the zigzag advances, events become more serious and relevant. 

Let’s apply the zigzag method. My storyline is a detective trying to catch a serial killer in a futuristic city. Minutes later, this is what I’ve got:

Start: Detective, our protagonist, is just promoted

Down #1: Mass suicide happens in town, detective gets the case, the whole town thinks it might have been a religious suicide act, but detective suspects that someone single-handed killed all those people

Up #1: Detective finds clue about a possible killer

Down #2: A bigger mass murder happens, a true massacre, it’s a definitely a murder

Up #2: Detective finds the killer’s trail

Down #3: Thinking he is ahead of time, close to catching the killer, detective ends up dead in another mass murder

Up #3: Because of his notes and discoveries, the police is able to find the killer before they leave town

From this point on you can play with zigzag as much as you want. For example, changing the orientation of the zigzag for a bad ending:

Lots of ups and downs:

Or just a few:

It’s up to you (see what I did there?).

You can plot any type of story with the zigzag method. It’s a visual and easy process for a very complex task.

#plotting #plotting methods

[ronon-gallagher-writes]

#writing prompts #noir #writing crime

[ronon-gallagher-writes]

Writing a novel when you imagine all you stories in film format is hard because there’s really no written equivalent of “lens flare” or “slow motion montage backed by Gregorian choir”

#writing advice #writing techniques

[ronon-gallagher-writes]

Story where a team of astronauts of different nationalities are on a mission, but halfway through the story it turns out that they are all clones specifically designed for this purpose, and planted with false memories of having a life before this mission.

The first clue to this is that they're all named their national stereotypical "placeholder names", Jan Kowalski, Maija Meikäläinen, Erika Mustermann, Juan Pérez, every country's version of John/Jane Doe. This piece of foreshadowing is due to - despite of being unethical/mad scientists - the orchestrators of this whole thing are still scientists, and scientists suck at naming things.

And people.

#lmao #writing prompts #scifi #space

[ronon-gallagher-writes]

Informal wip intro

TITLE: Sky of Shards 

GENRE: science fantasy, new adult, romance

SETTING: takes places on flying islands in the future 

TROPES AND THEMES: 

enemies to friends / magic / found family / hurt and comfort / tolerance and respect of differences / student life / worry about the future / courage to be oneself / power of imagination

STORY:

Six university students from very different magical fields get stranded on the famous flying island shards during an excursion and have to learn to cooperate to survive the wild dragons, natural dangers and untamed magic. 

THE CHARACTERS:

Skye Lennon - cultural scientist and collective dream designer - mind magic | passionate but withdrawn, talkative, airheaded | Lion Bird 

Adele Keenan - singer and artist mage - water magic | confident, calm, manipulative, mischievous | Lion Snake 

Martha Joyce - botanist and nature mage - earth magic | cheerful but pushy, tactile, bold | Badger Lion 

Vincent Anders  - rescuer and medical mage - blood magic | charming, haughty, judgemental but caring. | Authoritative Badger Snake

Zephyr Emery - bodyguard and martial mage - soulfire magic | laid-back, volatile, gruff but tender. | Snake Lion

Knox Paxton - engineer and technical mage - electricity magic | cold, impassive, loyal, snarky | Burned Badger Bird 

#yooo #this sounds awesome!! #i love dragons #i love magic #i love random characters being thrown together & having to get over their differences to survive #whats not to love?! #if you have a tag list pls add me #other people's writing #other people's wips #others wip: sky of shards

[ronon-gallagher-writes]

pls 😍

#writing prompts #lgbtq+ #fantasy #urban fantasy #romance prompts

[ronon-gallagher-writes]

Seven inadvisable genies for your Dungeons & Dragons campaign:

A genie who will grant a given wish only if they can be presented with a sound argument that it would be ethical to do so. They categorically reject arguments founded in utilitarianism, but are willing to entertain most other ethical frameworks, provided they’re internally consistent.

A genie who exclusively speaks a long-dead language, the surviving corpus of which is very small. They don’t deliberately try to warp the wisher’s intent, but they’re a bit unimaginative, and make no allowances whatsoever for the limits of a given speaker’s fluency or vocabulary

A genie who can grant an unlimited number of wishes, but will only grant any particular wish once. They’ve been around for a very long time, and all of the obvious wishes have long since been used up; lateral thinking may be required to get any useful results.

A genie who has a strange preoccupation with horses, and attempts to incorporate them into the granting of any wish in some fashion if it can even remotely be justified. Trying to explicitly specify that a wish should not involve horses leads to arguments and sulking.

A genie who possesses boundless endurance, total invulnerability and comprehensive mastery of every mortal skill, but no magical powers as such. Any wishes they grant must be carried out the long way around. They do not feel the need to advise prospective wishers of this.

A genie who’s aware of their kind’s reputation for maliciously twisting wishes, and is determined to overcome this stereotype by granting what the wisher meant, not what they said. Their insight into mortal psychology is unfortunately not quite as profound as they think it is.

A genie who can only grant wishes if the outcome would be funny. Exactly whose sense of humour this is measured against is not entirely clear, though the criteria seem to include a strong predilection for sight gags and slapstick and a notably limited appreciation of irony.

#lmao #fantasy #fantasy worldbuilding #supernatural

[ronon-gallagher-writes]

writing prompts: fantasy 🌙

all the world's best witches and wizards are gathered in the annual worldwide conference, which happens to land on the day the rising magical crime organization plans to attack.

first, there is black. then a dark figure swims into your vision. “Welcome to the Underworld,” it says. “You are the seventh to enter here. You are now the seventh deadly sin.”

you are an immortal faerie banished to the mortal world for sin. every few years you need to find a new city to live in, you need to weep at the feet of your new, dead loved ones. one day, you have an unexpected visitor. you open the door, struck with familiarity. you know them—and they are dead. they smile. “Remember me?” they laugh. “Peru, 1862.”

salt can repel or contain evil. but as large companies begin to drain the sea to sell salt as a novelty, they unknowingly release that which the seas were meant to contain.

on your 16th birthday, you gain the ability to travel into any book. you pick your favourite book, and discover you are the inter-dimensional evil they have been foreshadowing for the past series.

the students at the Academy are all trapped inside after the first day, and only the survivors graduate.

you've heard of the angels that roam the sky and can step on earth only during a full moon, and but you never expected to meet one who promised you to help you save the world.

it is hard enough being a child of the moon, but harder falling in love with one of the sun— glowing and perfect.

you‘re a secret-keeper— a guardian of words that others entrust in you to get off their minds— and have been told a plan to destroy the world. only, if you speak a word of the secret, your blood flows.

#ohh #this are fun #writing prompts #supernatural #fantasy #urban fantasy

[ronon-gallagher-writes]

The US Navy has a tradition that no submarine is ever considered lost at sea. Subs that don’t return are considered “still on patrol.” Every year, sailors manning communications hubs send holiday greetings to those listed as still on patrol. One of the subs, lost since WW2, just responded.

#writing prompts #alternate history #supernatural