I'm really looking forward to writing a story in ancient Greece but I think there's already a lot written about it. Lots of myths between gods and heroes and creatures too, besides Percy Jackson!

What do you think are the underexplored aspects of Greek mythology and what would be a fun adventure to read based in Greece?

What do you think? Is a story about ancient Greek seers and fantasy a good idea? How do you think I should approach that topic to make it sound fun and engaging?

In my opinion, the idea of the seers is very tempting but I would like to know your opinion, thank you very much! Help me! I have tried to write something but the ideas are a bit reluctant to cooperate.

(i originally posted this to the astrology subreddit without realizing it fell under the 'personal post' category, which you aren't supposed to post, so i'm posting this here to see if i can get an answer here)

hello, i enjoy making fantasy characters not of this world for a thing my friends and i are writing, and i wondered if it was possible to somehow reverse engineer a star chart for my characters? the idea is that they still have the same exact planets as we do, and the world they live on is basically earth with a different name and completely different landforms. is it at all possible to assign them different placements to make them individual charts, just as we have them?

for example, one of my characters is named aj, and i have a birthday already set for her, which is december 30, 1998 (we just use our years for their world, even tho they are by no means living in our time), which would make her a capricorn. i feel as if judging by her personality, she would be a capricorn sun, virgo moon, and aries rising. would it be possible to make her an entire chart? i've tried entering that birthday info into a zodiac chart website, but didn't know what time to give her, and it's heavily location-based, so i didn't know exactly how to go from there.

i don't necessarily know how i would go about it without any real-world locations, so i was gonna ask if anyone else has tried this, and done it the reverse way instead of entering info into a calculator. any advice or questions are greatly appreciated! :)

Ok so I’m going to start by saying I can’t figure out where I originally found this, which is why I wanted to share this idea with you all to see if it still holds up, because if it does it would be very thematically awesome for the stories I have planned as a whole.

So I am planning to write a number of different book series over time. Each one takes place on a different world new characters magic etc, but they all take place in the same universe. In all of the different storylines there is this theme of cycles repeating (there’s basically an inevitable Ragnarok coming), and with the magic and prophetic related stuff things that are divisible by four are significant.

I was pondering how I would go about writing these stories and had the thought of what if I made them all four book long stories? That would play into the number four thing that would be present in all of them, and I could make sure to always pitch the first book as more self contained before setting off on the next three.

I liked this idea and wondered what a four book story would be called. There’s the term tetrology, but I also saw somewhere that they could also be called sagas and cycles…

(This is where I wanted to ask you all. Because I no longer can find where it was that said that)

I got really excited at this idea because calling them storylines sagas sounded awesome, and calling them cycles would be thematically poetic. And what’s more, I wanted the “final” storyline I would write in this timeline that all of the stories take place in to therefore be five books. Because in that storyline they break the cycle and fix the one thing that no one else could.

This is why I wanted to run this idea by you all. Because I’m not sure if the idea holds up but I’m PRAYING that it at least does well enough to work for what i was thinking because if it did it would be literally poetic.

So I had written this for my character long back and while I was going back to edit it, I thought "why not add this in the back of the book?" Would it work? Does it give you, the reader an idea of my story and generate any sort of intrigue or is it all too cryptic for you to give a hoot?

Just share any thoughts you had while reading it too.

Blurb Below

Book Name: The Second Sons

They call me the Vil of the Vajra—the one destined to inherit the throne of Devendra, king of the Heavens. Since childhood, this has been my purpose, my burden. I've sacrificed friendships, forsaken love, and caused pain in pursuit of this goal. Now, the world sees my ascension as inevitable. No longer am I dismissed as an unworthy bastard.

Every man who fights for a dream pursues something tangible—power, titles, women, land. Even happiness is a pursuit one can be certain exists. But what I fight for, even if I attain it, seems destined to remain ethereal.

What is this throne of Devendra? Where is Svarga, this heaven we serve? To glimpse it, we must drown ourselves in the intoxicating drink called Soma, dulling our senses and inviting visions of another world populated by otherworldly beings.

We heed the commands of these creatures, calling them our gods, our superiors. We act upon their calling until we wake, left to wonder if any of it were real. I once asked my rival and former best friend if he and I saw the same world, heard the same voices, received the same commands. It always seemed similar, yet there were subtle differences—in what we heard, how we interpreted it, what they wanted us to do.

It's challenging to admit we might be slaves to these visions. We invite their world into our dreams, seek their guidance, and celebrate their rewards. Yet when we mourn those who have fallen on this path, we never blame the beings who set us on such a perilous road. Why do we return to that potent drink, basking in the illusion of their gilded halls and sumptuous banquets?

Is the blinding light of their divinity merely a lure for our mortal desires? How long will I serve as a soldier to a nation with no land, no people—only voices in my head?

But there is hope. I will inherit the throne. I will be named Indra, becoming the voice in the heads of all who follow this enigmatic society. Perhaps then I'll know if this is real, or if we're all madmen, following the will of one simple plant ground to paste, mixed with milk, and swallowed in a moment of blind faith.

Hey guys. This post is a little bit unusual but I thought I should share it and ask you guys for help. So I've worked on a trilogy of short (around a 100k words each), music themed, assassin fantasy set in a world I have been building since 2020 for about three years now. I've only finished the first book (the first draft) while I've already finished outlining and planning the other two books. I have always struggled with titles, even back in my fanfiction days, but I somehow managed to come up with the perfect name for all three which I am very reluctant to let go of. They are-

A Choir Of Knives

The Anthem Of Phantoms

Symphony Of A Dying Star

But the problem is that Scott Lynch, the author of the Gentlemen Bastards sequence announced that he would be publishing three novellas, of which one of them is called The Choir Of Knives. I know it is just an unfortunate coincidence but would it be a good idea to change the name of my book? While the chances of it ever getting published is very low, I like to think there is still a chance. And I personally hate it when two books share a name. But at the same time, I really love the name of my book.

I have observed a pattern in many big fantasy epic’s major conflict. By this I am referring to events like such as:

• Sauron in Lord of the Rings
• The Dark One in the Wheel of Time
• Odium in the Stormlight Archive
• Voldemort from Harry Potter
• The Dragons from The Priory of the Orange Tree
• The Others in A Song of Ice and Fire*
• The Crippled God in the Malazan Series*

*I have not read these two books personally, but from what I have heard about them, they seem to follow the pattern I am describing. I could be mistaken.

In all of these cases, the major, epic conflict has been a threat before, often from the deep past, and are coming back. In each case, there is at least some advanced knowledge and understanding of these threats, even if the information is fragmented. In many cases, this repeating cycle is an underlying, basic feature of the world.

Why is it so popular to see the “return of the ancient evil”? Why do we not see “surprise” or unprecedented threats of Epic proportions more often?

Or do I have this wrong? Are there any counter examples to this that I’m not thinking of?

What might be some examples of one of these unprecedented threats on humanity or the world as we know it?

NOTE: This is not an attempt to criticize the trope. The bibliography above proves that it clearly works really well. I’m merely interested in exploring why and ways we could potentially invert it moving forward.

I've been exploring this topic for some time, but I didn't know how to approach it, so I'm making this post. I have a lesbian character who married a woman and founded a dynasty. They couldn't have biological children together because they were women and they chose one of them to have the children. The problem comes in the part where the girls are queens and I don't know how to get them pregnant. I thought about getting someone I trust to use the seed and so far everything seems normal. But how can I approach this? (This story takes place in the past)

I like "The Handmaid's Tale" - I've seen a few episodes - but I'd like something like surrogacy.

How can I implement "surrogacy" into my story, especially considering it would primarily be used by royalty and nobility? (It would be used for people who cannot have children, infertile, single, etc.). Would the surrogate be treated as a special employee or as “part of the family”? (This part takes place in the future).

So, in brief, the story is about a man who encounters a woman that is a ghost. Over the course of the story, he falls in love with the woman and wants her to be a part of his life.

I am looking for a way that is not "science-fictiony" in which I can have her, at some point, become alive or at least corporeal. While she is in the house, she is sort of corporeal in that she can interact with things that are part of the house, but I am kind of stuck as to how to make her into a living person again.

Think of "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" in reverse. Instead of him dying to be with her, some power allows her to come back to be with him.

Things I have drafted and then tossed out:

* She takes over another person's body - I got rid of this because I would like her to look the same as the way he sees her.

* I considered a "Magic" solution but could not find a convincing way in the story.

* I wrote a test draft where they found her body and were going to do something that way, but I thought I would lose readers with that and quit.

* I keep coming to the idea of some kind of portal between the afterlife and his world, but I am not sure how that would gel with the readers.

Note:

I am not asking anyone to write the piece for me; I just need something to stimulate my own thoughts on the matter. Where better than to ask a bunch of other writers?

Thanks in advance for any ideas, thoughts, comments.

I have tried to imagine--

Your characters from the modern first world go to another world, willingly or not. They do their thing, and find the people who you've bonded with, helped and the main plot until the sequel is resolved, and it's peaceful.

Prompt-- Come up with reasons your friends don't want to or cannot send you home. Come up with a reason for agreeing with their new friends and making a new life or persuading/forcing/trying to escape back to their original world?

Examples--

1. Adoption-- You're characters are underage and some of their new friends want to/have already adopted you. You want to stay because you've gone half-native already, love your new parents back, and they sense their birth parents are more interested in making reddit posts/watching netflix than being good parents. On the other hand, characters may miss your old home, and your potential parents are selfish assholes adopting you for prestige reasons rather than love.
2. Characters Are Now Plague Carriers-- You've caught a deadly disease that they can treat but not cure, and if you go home, the new disease will spread and kill millions or billions. You either believe them or you think the danger is minimal.
3. The gate is powered by atrocity-- It takes ten fresh, still beating hearts freshly removed from the bodies to power the gate, and your friends are the good guys who frown on human sacrifice. You are also a good person and totally agree with this. Or you believe the gate can be converted to run on an alternative source such as solar, dragon farts, or cow hearts can be substituted so everything is good and you should be able to go home.

Im working on a story with some greek myth based aspects. I have 2 rough drafts of the prologue written. It’s supposed to end up being an adventure/fantasy novel, and i’d like to know if i gave a proper prologue or if it sounds terrible.

I feel like i should specify, i did not use Ai to write any of this. I did use a spell check and grammar check, i dont know if that counts, but i’d assume it doesnt since the ai didnt write any of the story, nor did it provide any idea. A good few of the names are latin, other names have meanings that give a good bit of understanding to their character.

Im unsure if i used the right tag, but this one says Critique.

Draft #1: roughly 1300 words

https://docs.google.com/document/d/105KfTlWqxje7HHAPnGQG8SQcJLUPMMBUbjrx3M3wS9E/edit

This one is the longer and more descriptive version, aswell as the 1st draft i made of this.

Draft #2: Roughly 1000 words

This is the shorter version, aswell as grammar checked version and spell checked.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-rS7o1pO1nKv7jlU1hjYjkECe3RiO5CC7v5R1uiTz0E/edit

Hello all, I'm new to the page and super happy to connect with other fantasy writers. I'm in the process of writing a romance fantasy. I've created an entire world, creatures, people, kingdoms and what I feel, is strong plot. I want the novel to be romance but I've also fallen in love with the world I've made. So I'm wondering, from a different perspective, how soon is too soon to introduce romance between characters? I want the romance to flow nicely along side the story, as it is a main focal point of the plot, but I also don't want to come off too strong. What do you all think?

Side note: I'm already 11 chapters in and have hinted at a romance but not written anything confirming it. How do you find balance without making it too early or too late?

I've never really used ChatGPT much, but curiosity got the better of me today and I loaded in my first chapter, asking it to try and find out what the main characters secret was.

I got a full three paragraph analyses of my character's inner turmoil, the mistakes they made in the past and how it affects them, why they hate a certain thing...

It really made me stop for a moment and is giving me mixed signals. On the hand it's kind of... liberating to see that what I wrote can be interpreted as such. But then again this is ChatGPT we're talking about, it could probably find plot points in a pancake recipe.

Does this mean I'm giving too much away so that human readers can discover an important plot in the first chapter? Can ChatGPT be a good check for stuff like this or is it 'too' smart and shouldn't be compared to human readers?

I'm aware ChatGPT is not something writers like to see all that much, but it's presence cannot be denied and it makes me wonder how it could be used.

Has anyone else ever done this? And if yes, what was your experience?

Not sure if this belongs here or on a mental health sub, but a problem I have been having recently (this is just the latest in a long line of intrusive thoughts that won't go out of my head thanks to my stupid mental health issues) is that up until like a week ago I had zero issue suspending disbelief for stories. That is, until a read some random Reddit comment where one guy said he doesn't read any sort of speculative fiction because he can't suspend disbelief. For whatever reason, it caused me to start to have the same issue. The problem is that I love both of these genres and am an aspiring fantasy author, but this caused me be unable to just let go and read the story. I am finding myself being like "that's not how the laws of physics work! That's impossible in our world!" It is really miserable for me, because it gets in the way of stories I love and makes it hard to read or write them, and I am terrified of losing my imagination, because it's what makes me who I am. It's sort of a centipede's dilemma kind of thing, because I have no issue suspending disbelief unless I am actively thinking about how to suspend disbelief and how something doesn't exist in real life.

Does anyone else relate to this? How do I overcome this?

This is the first thing I’ve ever written that hasn’t been for school, and I’m not sure if I’m doing this post right. (There’s no sexual content in the story, but it is explicit, so I felt that marking it as NSFW was still valid.)

When I was imagining this world, I was inspired by Warhammer 40K and The Witcher, so I’d like to think the world in my head is a grimdark high fantasy setting. That said, this chapter doesn’t really showcase many of the high fantasy or grimdark aspects yet.

A little synopsis: The story begins with our adventurers finding a place to camp after completing a job. They’re taking a moment to rest and plan their next move.

I’m looking for any feedback, but I also just want to put it out there.

Thank you for your time.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1--ZMuSz2hY6Pfje2y4HB18REGbVHQtI68strW4XA7ZI/edit

I'm in the process of naming all the characters and they are from very different cultures. I have a character with Italian-Norwegian inspirations and her name has been a bit difficult to come up with. She is a princess and names are important because it shows who you are in your house or clan. Basically, so far she has her given name, a matronymic name, a middle name and two surnames. Is this too much?

I thought about also giving her a feminine diminutive variation of her father's name to show that she is different from her siblings because she is the oldest, and therefore will inherit the Crown.

Her name won't be mentioned often, but names are quite important to the universe itself.

Am I overthinking?

Hello all!

I have recently been fleshing out a plot for the romance fantasy novel that I am attempting to write. I would absolutely love some feedback on the plot so far and what else you believe I need to think about.

Please note that this is just an initial plot and that all advice and ideas are more than welcomed.

The plot is based around the journey that Vulparia and her companion's take in order to save her from a curse.

Whilst the realm was in ruins from an ongoing war, Vulparia put her own life before those around her and trapped a group of people in a burning building and leaving them to die. Once the war was over, Vulparia tried her hardest to put her actions behind her and believed that she simply did what she needed in order to survive.

The King won the war, leaving those that he was fighting against either imprisoned, dead or exiled out of the Kingdom. The leader of one of these opposing was planning on creating his own army in order to once again try to take the throne forcibly. The leader then set out to curse those who had done ruthless actions, this curse slowly drained that person of their humanity. Everything that made that person them, was slowly stripped away from them leaving them nothing more than a ruthless soldier for him.

Once finding out Vulparia was cursed, she set out on the journey with her childhood friend Calix in order to find a cure to the curse. They gain people on the journey, some that are cursed and other's who want to assist Vulparia in her journey. As the journey progresses and they face different hardships, Vulparia's humanity is dwindling. She begins losing her remorse, her guilt, her empathy. The only consistent is Calix who is her only tie to her past self and the person giving her the strength to keep searching.

They then find themselves in a lost situation. They weren't going to make it out of there alive and Vulparia knew it. She resigned herself to her curse, allowing Calix to escape. Calix and the other companions then continue on their search to find a cure in the hope that it can still save Vulparia's life.

This is the extremely brief overview of the plot and I apologise if it is not articulated well or if it's not easy to understand. If there are any questions or advice, I am happy to answer them and to listen to them. Thank you!

I’m working on a story idea that kinda just popped into my head one day and I’m just writing random stuff down. Currently it’s looking good to me but I have some issues.. The main character is going to be a Knight, the story starts right after a big battle and I’m trying to figure out the ranks and hierarchy between the generals, captains, knights and foot-soldiers. But I have very limited knowledge on medieval times and especially with war, battles and knighthood. Most of it is from popular fantasy stories but I’m coming up short when writing dialog between leaders, battle plans, etc. I have tried looking up some stuff but most of what I find is either real history or fantasy and they bleed together when I’m going website to website.

Tips are welcome but I would love it anyone has any websites, movies, documentaries or books where I can learn more about this. Even though I’m big on romance and drama personally, I want this story to also have a solid amount of action and dialog about being a knight and fighting without having to make up all ranks, titles, customs or strategies.

If you yourself have a lot of knowledge on this topic and would like to teach me some stuff yourself, come with ideas, beta read or similar, my DMs are open to that as well.

Here is an excerpt from my epic fantasy novel, The Whispering (tentative title). It's taken from midway through the novel, as I'm still sculpting the opening pages. However, I think this section is a good indication of my voice and the overall mood/tone of the story. 

I'm looking for critiques about my writing style, voice, and anything else that may jump out at you. I’ve not shared much of my writing before, so I’m eager for any feedback. 

Here’s the link to the Google Doc. I believe the commenting is on. I’ll also insert a couple of paragraphs below.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1s7OuexGw3sMmyyov_bFfxTYdMhhJyNl60Qe6JCQ2hxU/edit?usp=sharing

Thanks for your feedback!

Ari sat slumped against the damp stone wall, the cold seeping through his clothes, into his bones. The single torch outside the cell flickered weakly, casting jagged shadows on the ceiling. Time had lost meaning here—days blurred into nights, marked only by the occasional rattle of chains or the scrape of a bowl of gruel being shoved through the bars. The silence was heavy, broken only by the dripping of water somewhere deep within the dungeon, like a clock ticking toward something he couldn’t yet see.

His ribs ached with every breath, and the stale air seemed to grow thicker with every hour. The once-vivid anger at the king’s betrayal had dulled into a numbing bitterness. He had replayed the moment in the throne room a hundred times, searching for something he could have said or done to change the outcome. But there was nothing. The truth, it seemed, had no power here.

Ari had started scraping small lines into the wall to notate each meal. He got three a day, so three scratches made one whole day. By his guess, seven days had passed here, and still, no word had come. No explanations, no visits, not even a taunt from the guards.

My MC reunites with a parent after a long separation. The timing is poor, as urgent matters demand his attention, but the interaction holds the potential to reveal truths for the audience, possibly explored through the parent's perspective.

I'm intending for the scene to continue in the parent's POV, post parting, but I thought: why wait? Of course, obviously, this chance encounter would be just as important to the MC's perspective, but there's only so much I can inform the audience of in such a way.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this subject, and if you did anything similar, how did you go about it?

I am currently writing a story in which two humans with magic, fire and ice, are fighting each other. During the fight, Fire girl stabs Ice girl in the stomach with a dagger.

What would happen if Fire activated her powers to try and burn ice from the inside out? Would it just cauterize the wound, or would it cause worse damage on the inside from the heated metal?

To give some more information, these characters are able to summon their powers at will. (assuming that fire has air to do so) Fire wouldn't 'cancel' out ice, but would just melt it down to water, and eventually evaporate into steam, but their bodies are that of normal humans (ie, she wouldn't melt the ice girl down instantly, if that makes sense)

I have tried asking over on r/writeresearch, but was redirected here since this wasn't a question that could be answered through real world means, (my fault, honestly) and I tried to think about how other fictional media attempt to deal with it (flaming swords, lightsabers) but those seem to mainly be external wounds that don't mention the internal aspect.

Thank you so much, Aspiring Author

Edit 14:16 CST

Thanks everyone for the comments. It's given me a lot to think about. I think I've got a good idea for how things are going to play out between the two now.

In my story, mages can make "contracts" with magical creatures. Think Pokémon, but with a major twist. The "pokeballs" are made by the mages and contain pieces of the creature in question (fur, nails, scales, feathers, etc), and turned into jewelry pendants. From there, the mage can call on their creature anytime and anywhere, with the pendant acting as the "contract" between them. Mages must first bond with the creatures (even if just a little) before being able to create these pendants.

I've got all kinds of creatures thus far, many of which are hybrids made using two or more animals or mythical creatures from our universe (ex, dogs, cats, hellhounds, dragons, unicorns, kelpie, etc). I've got two MC for the story so far, a pair of half siblings that don't yet know they're siblings. He saved her from a snowstorm, and I know I want him to have draconic and/or canid creatures for his affinity.

FL (Female Lead, the sister in the duo), I have no clue what her first creature is going to be. I have two creatures picked out for her right now - a Xiezhi (Chinese mythology) and a Foxolotl (Fox-Axolotl hybrid). i tried writing all kinds of scenarios where these two were her first creatures, but it felt all wrong. FL's never had a pet before, and has almost no clue how to work with or raise creatures. What's a good pet or creature for her to start working with?

Oh and she's sixteen years old, while her half-brother is twenty-six. He's got a Pegawolf (winged wolf; arctic variety) and is currently in an icy climate. I can move them to a new climate easily if I need to, since he outright says "we're currently in my clan's winter retreat".

So, in my story, everyone has two magics granted to them by their goddess (except for those who have major-umbrella powers that are made of a ton more, like super speed or beast-human hybrids).

Anyways, the MC has been cursed so that she can't use any magical artifacts. This is a major issue for her, since A) she has a lot of them, B) she's reliant on those artifacts for protection and/or threat detection, and C) she has no magical abilities that she can defend herself with. She can copy abilities but only store six inside herself, which is why she seals most of the replicated magics into coins (yes, she labels them).

The plot of the book is that she has to travel a new world (there's five inhabited by humans in my story's universe) and gets a new ability while doing so. The ability she copies on World 2 is basically a mirror of being a Pokémon trainer, only they make "contracts" with the creatures and make jewelry charms to house the creatures inside magically instead of using pokeballs. Plus, I want her to journey to gather creatures she can trust and rely on for protection, while also searching for a way to break the curse.

My questions are these:

1: Which villain should cast the curse? I've got three options that I've tried (and really struggled) to choose from:

1. Entitled Brat: she tried to kill MC and now is angry after MC pressed charges for the attempted murder
2. EBM: EB's mom, who's mad that MC is pressing charges against EB despite EB nearly killing (and permanently disfiguring!) MC.
3. AG: Abusive Guardian, this is MC's former foster guardian who did nothing whenever EB almost killed MC. However, when she was punished for her neglect and borderline abuse towards MC, she gets mad and blames MC for all her problems.

Question 2: how should the curse be broken?

I've tried selfless acts of MC & her blood family, but they're all used to doing those anyways, so it feels too easy to go this route. To me, having MC go through some growth and trying to learn how to defend herself might work, but I don't know how to go about that while also having her break the curse AND relearn how to use the magics that she was "severed" from.

Other things I've tried are: prayer/some kind of ritual (both are too easy for one thing, and I did that already in another story), having MC learn something she wouldn't have otherwise (but what would she learn?! She's already working on standing up for herself...), and killing the one who cursed her (not an option - she's not a killer, and wants to avoid the three enemies listed above at all costs).

Any other ideas would be greatly appreciated!

I am trying to think of animals connected to the power of my world. I have 7 main character's to link to them. Life, death, reality, void, time, space, and magic.

Something to note is these character's are there names. Not mere gods or holders of power. They are the things themselves, above human understanding.

Reality is interdimensional. Space deals with matter and scientific forces. Reality is what keeps universes and timelines apart. If you want to hop between worlds it's reality

Void is everything that is not. Things that could be but weren't allowed. Creatures, ideas, places, and powers.

Finally magic is imagination in all it's forms. Whether is casting fireballs or painting a picture. Magic is who you tap into.

The others are self explanatory. Life is life in all it's forms, nice and dark. Death is passing and the afterlife. Etc.

So I'm trying to think of fun ways for them to have favorite animals to gift a tiny fraction of their power. Like a wolf who can leap through universes or a cat who can heal from damage 9 times.

I've been retooling this story for a few months now and have taken a radically different approach than when I started. I'm interested if the tone is working for you and if this would entice you to read on or if the stakes need to be higher in this initial excerpt. Thank you in advance for your feedback. As always, willing to swap work for crits!

Gdoc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MuDvq9xEB4QkiI0ckUalPU7PJPM2rwnTpAlJZ3vXxbo/edit?usp=sharing

Background:

Ten years after surviving her father's attempt to cut out her heart, Renna has built a quiet life as a healer at a mountain abbey. But when a nobleman's arrival coincides with brutal attacks from a mysterious creature, she's pulled into a dangerous quest that leads back to the royal court she fled. Now she must navigate political intrigue, conceal her true identity, and face the violent past she thought she'd left behind.

---

The breeze was fresh and stinging. Mother’s name day always fell the week before spring festival, when winter’s last bite clung to the current. Though my hands were still warm from Myra’s birthing room, the chill sent a tremor through my shoulders. For a moment, I could almost smell the ginger of Mama's favorite cookies on the air. The servants would have arisen well before dawn today to begin final preparations for the celebration, starting with breads and cookies, as they always did. I used to sneak them when I was younger, creeping down from the main house to the kitchens, racing the rising sun—whether the maids indulged me by way of affection or fear, well…I liked to think it was affection.

In the lake’s surface, I saw her. In the way the skin sagged off my laugh lines or the way my hair billowed out around my sharp, birdlike frame. In how I laughed when I didn’t really mean it. In my taste in literature. In music.

Would she think on me today?

I willed the wind in my direction, urging it to break the image up into ripples. Instead, I flicked the flat little stone clutched in my hand and imagined the ripples were my thoughts skipping across the water.

The sky had turned soft purple, a sign of the approaching dawn. By now, my sisters would be stirring, readying themselves for the first hour. My night had been more fitful. With years between our village and the last bout of pestilence, mostly I tended fevers and the bloody flux this time of year. Dim rooms. Low voices. The air heavy with putrid sweat and sick and fervent prayer.

I could still see the goodwife Myra Franke’s smile, wide and triumphant where a ghastly howl had been only moments earlier. When she kissed the wailing thing’s pimple-ridden forehead, my stomach lurched. A mother’s love was all consuming. Enough to last through the pain and come out the other end with a smile for the culprit. How long, after pushing it out like a melon in a stocking, did it take for the milk to sour?

If my mother could see me now: blood caked under my fingernails, hands tacky with birthgrease. If she had thought dirt under one’s fingernails offensive enough for the birch, well one look at my beet red callouses would send her into a fit of hysteria.

The water was frigid on my hands as I scrubbed the night away. With a stone perch at my back and lulled by the lapping waves, I nearly fell asleep right there at the lake’s edge. But a soft rustling at my back and a tug at my elbow jolted me upright. Bundled up in her fur-lined hood, Eiren hovered at my side. Her round nose shone pink in the cold.

“What?”

“Coming up the hill from the gates. Look!”

I could hardly see him through the morning mist. A young man, no older than thirty, bobbing along the winding path to the abbey’s gates. His red curls blazed through the plum light of dawn. On his hip, a dirk glinted.

“Gods save us.”

The sisters would be insufferable. For his sake, I hoped he’d find lodging at the inn. Perhaps it was more for my sake than for his.

“I am going to have him.”

I snorted. “You and about forty others.”

“Well, I found him first. Father met him last night at the inn. The young Thane Pennell,” Eiren hissed, the gossip tumbled out of her mouth breathlessly. Knowing everything about everyone was her vocation. Eiren never met a secret that wasn’t ripe for sharing. Except her own. And maybe some of mine, too.

“I believe you’re about to have fierce competition.”

“We’ll see.”

“What are you doing out here? It’s not even first bell.”

“Knew I’d find you here. We all hardly slept for Myra’s caterwauling.”

“Aye. She’s got a set of lungs on her.”

“Have you slept at all?” No. And would I find time before Hecatia needed me in the infirmary? Likely no.

Eiren waggled her eyebrows at me.

“What?” I asked, wary.

“Well…you’re here…”

“As far as I can tell.”

“And I’m here. And like you said, we’ve still time before lauds...” She nodded her head towards the dark woods near the lake.

“No—Eiren, I’m more tired than the dead. Can’t we go another time?”

“You’ll never find another free moment. The Thane will stay for the festival. It is the perfect time! Oh please, Renna? Please, please, please!”

Eiren was the alderman’s only living child. His encouragement of her whims was as fast as his hand was slow to correct. I craved the solitude of the forest after the night I’d had. Eiren’s eyes shone with an infectious excitement. She’d heard from a cousin that a drop or two of nightshade in the eye would make one irresistible to men. As for myself, well, I’d read in some long dead sister’s journal that it could be brewed into a tincture that set you outside yourself. I figured firenight was the prime opportunity to test her theory.

As tempting as her pleas were, I leaned back when Eiren thrust her clasped hands into my face. She needed my eye to find her elicit treasure. And her botanical skills ended slightly shy of mixing the appropriate ratio for a nightshade tincture. If she wanted my help, she’d have to offer enough to make up for my growing list of chores.

“I’ll do your mending for a week!”

I've come across a conundrum in my low sci fi novel outlining and would love to crowdsource some ideas on how to solve it:

Setup: There are people on an exomoon, relatively low tech, the result of thousands of years passing following a crash landing of a Generation Ship and subsequent loss of much of the technological prowess. They are essentially a bronze or at best iron age society, yet they retain much of the information that their more advanced predecessors did, just filtered through a long time.

Conundrum: I need there to be some debris from the ancient space ship passing close to and eventually crashing into an exomoon. The people on the moon (or really a certain religious subset) need to be able to foretell the coming impact based on deviations due to the proximity of the debris on the complex tidal forces affecting the many-mooned system. The complications are that while big, the impact cannot create any cataclysmic events (it can be big but not world-ending) on the surface, and as a result, the relatively small size the debris would have to be is not very compatible with the size it would need to be to create detectable tidal forces.

I've thought about shattered Dyson rings that could have a noticeable gravity, and about warp drives of exotic materials that have an inordinate gravitational pull. I've tried some of the calculations about how big something would have to be and how fine the instrumentation would have to be to detect it, but I can't shake that I'm missing something.

So, what are some possible answers to how I could do this? I'd really like this to be pretty grounded in real physics, but it is sci fi, so some out there things are okay. But, I intend to keep this somewhat not sci fi (if that makes sense) based on the lived experience of the characters, who are way far removed from understanding and super crazy far-fetched stuff.

So I need feedback on the first act arc for two of my main characters. Basic world: the main nations for this story are two kingdoms and a series of city states all descended from four original magical siblings.

One character, A, is from the alchemy nation but her mother was from an animal tribe, and so she can also shapeshift when given the genetic code of another being via drinking their blood. The alchemists can drink silver potions to slow their aging. She is a diplomat and an assassin, and about 150 years old.

The other character, C, is a girl from a war camp on the edge of the city-states and a neighboring empire. She is mixed race as well, with her mother being a native (plant magic) and her father being from the neighboring empire (mind magic). She can see the future in some vague way by reading tea leaves and while she can’t fully read minds, she can read emotions with some good level of nuance. She makes a living in the war camp by reading people’s fortunes and has recently taken up prostitution where her only client is the general of the war camp, but he pays her well. She is only 17 years old.

The first act for these two characters is basically this: The war camp where C resides is chosen as a location for a peace summit, where representatives from the nations/city-states will come to discuss whether or not they should propose a treaty with the neighboring empire for peace. The general of the war camp is very invested in the peace talks succeeding. A is the diplomat for the alchemy nation at this summit, but she is really there to assassinate the general because the king of the alchemy nation wants the peace talks to fail, and for war to resume. His reason is because war would push the city-states to unite into an empire and he could rule it. So, A shapeshifts into the form of C to assassinate the general, because C is mixed race with the neighboring empire, so she is both close to the general and would be tied to this other empire. C is arrested for murder and the peace talks fall apart. However, A feels guilty about letting an innocent girl go down for this, and so she breaks C out before her trial (which has the added benefit of making it seem like a larger force was helping C to begin with, and that the neighboring empire really did have a hand in the assassination of the general), but she can’t release C because C would know that the lead diplomat for the alchemy kingdom is really an assassin. So, C becomes her apprentice instead.

However, I am not entirely satisfied with all of the character motivations here. Namely:

1. I want the assassination to generally be considered “necessary” as well as more morally grey or even positive than evil. To this end I made the general a not-nice guy (the reason he is C’s only client is because he fetishizes young girls and virginity; he abuses her physically, financially, and verbally), but that doesn’t seem good enough. Additionally, “uniting the city-states” for the king’s motivation seems kinda flimsy. Do you have any ideas for extra angles that could be added to this situation to make it more compelling?
2. I want C to come around to being an assassin/diplomat apprentice sooner rather than later, but surely being framed for an assassination would make her unlikely to do this. Is it believable that the fact the general was abusive to her would ease her anger towards A for the situation enough to become a willing apprentice?

Am I overthinking it, or are the connections between these things flimsy? Any suggestions?

Hello! New (very new) writer here looking for some guidance or tips. I’ve got multiple story ideas lodged in my head that I really want to actually start writing but every time I think about it I just blank out completely and It’s been frustrating me for years because I’ve been saying FOR YEARS that I was working on a story. You see, in my head I’ve been day dreaming about characters, events, plots, scenes etc, but it was never really in chronological order or in any structure, I could tell you all about a character but give no comic panel or line of dialogue to really show them off.

My two biggest issues right now are

1. Adding the in between for events that I day dreamed about, like if I’ve been thinking about a war arc, I’m not sure how to build it up or how to fill in the quiet relaxed moments where people are just talking things out

2. Starting. I’m not sure how to start at all, not even the first word, I’m not even sure how I want to introduce my story

If there’s any guidance I can get, any tips, I would appreciate it a thousandfold, I may not be able to reply to every answer I get cause it’s been pretty busy in my life, but trust I’ll give the effort to read all of them, thanks in advance!

Hello, everyone! I have a question that I’ve been mulling over, and I’d love your input! I’m writing a book series, and each book focuses on a different couple’s storyline. In the first book, the MMC is a rebel leader, and his best friend is a mischievous, flirtatious, rogue-like pirate who provides aid to the rebellion but lives by his own rules. The second book will explore this pirate character as the main male lead alongside the second FMC.

When I first envisioned the pirate character, he was a blonde, blue-eyed rogue, but as the story evolved, I realized I already have several blondes, and I felt the FMC’s personality and vibe would be better suited to someone with a tall, dark, and handsome aesthetic. After exploring various ideas, I came up with an aesthetic l really like but here is where my two main concerns come in:

1. As a Caucasian author, I want to make sure I write characters from different ethnicities and backgrounds respectfully and authentically. I don’t want to lean on stereotypes or get anything wrong.
2. I’m also worried that having my rogue pirate character be Black when many of the other characters are white might unintentionally send the wrong message, even though that’s not my intention.

I have researched this topic and have found mixed opinions. Some state caucasian authors should not attempt to write black characters. There are also opinions that say authors need to be cautious making characters of color the “pirate”, “thief”, “assassin”, etc. I really want to create a diverse cast and honor the individuality of my characters, but I’m also second-guessing myself. I’d love any insights, recommendations, or resources you could share. Thank you so much for your insight!

Hi all! I finished my first draft of a fantasy short story a few rounds of self-revision based on feedback from my circle of friends, but I'd definitely like some objective, anonymous critiques on top of that. I've provided a synopsis and a link to the entire story if you'd like to have a look; I'd be open to critique swapping as well! If you're interested go ahead and DM me or comment below.

Title: Tainted Blood

Genre: High Fantasy, Surreal Fantasy, Adventure Fantasy

Word Count: 15k

Synopsis: Set in a time of widespread societal decay, violence, and suffering following a deadly plague, our story follows earnest young Holsted, a knight of the Brothers and Sisters: a knightly order dedicated to the rescue and foster of ashlings, young folk made orphans by the violence and deprivation of the age. Whilst searching for several dozen ashlings near the town of Raven's Roost he becomes caught in the midst of a battle between dark sorcerers practicing accursed blood magic and the fanatic knights that hunt them.

Content Warnings: Violence, blood, trauma

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PJZ-reEY4fVRWdy7ATFNz3sxPhKmdvHK3qR5ktQJIyI/edit?usp=sharing