#rsdiscussion — Public Fediverse posts

#WordWeavers 2026.08.19 — Which character has changed the most since your first draft?

I write stories and create characters iteratively, which is to say I write, discover stuff, go back and update what I wrote to foreshadow or make what I discovered had happened happen, then continue forward. (Look up "pantser.") For me, composition of a story becomes a continuous succession of first drafts and second drafts, etc., heading for a known ending for the story. I can honestly say, though I haven't completed the novel yet, all my characters have changed through successive "drafts." The one who changed the most is a supporting character, Shugh, short for Steamed Milk and Sugar. When I started writing, I didn't even know his name, let alone why he had it. He wasn't planned to be a trans woman. Going through the numbers of what I discovered gives away much of the plot, the dangers the MC faces, and how they resolve—so I won't. Shugh goes through more unplanned changes than any other character, including the MC, especially considering he was practically a McGuffin when I started writing. He certainly didn't exist in the precursor story or the follow-on sequel.

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

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#PennedPossibilities 1104: Where has your MC lived the longest? What kept them there for so long?

Bolt lived in a hot very humid place tentatively called Cloud City (because of condensing humidity). The locale is roughly like the rocky forested coast off of Oregon. Day angels make their homes there in natural seaside groves of Home trees, which very much resemble Ficus benjamina trees the size of city blocks, as well as in cave-like neighborhood grottos bored centuries ago into the cliffside rock. She lived there until almost 18, at which time she ran away having vandalized a guild office and rolled a van down a hill. She lived there 17 years because that's where she was born and where she grew up with her family (her mother, uncle, and baby brother). She has since lived in Home City, where the WIP starts with her about to turn 30 (actually a very insignificant number in a dodecimal numbering system). Which means she's been languishing in Home City a dozen years, which is a very significant number because it's a been dodecade since she got blackmailed and lost her freedom.

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2026.08.19 — How do you write characters with expertise outside your own?

I avoid making the expertise important beyond verisimilitude! When not writing in the voice of the narrator, I learn enough about the essentials that I can present the minimum to be convincing. When it's the narrator, they note what they're talking about is technical and point out they are simplifying. They may talk about quantum entanglement, but they ain't explaining it. Whenever possible, I bring in experts, like your car mechanic who never explains the theory of spark advance or fuel injection, but may mention having done the work and why. I keep in mind that fiction is not a textbook for a class in an expertise. I am not there to teach the reader a profession, or to convince them as an author of my depth. I always have a message, but I understand I'm primarily there to entertain the reader. Depending on the genre, how much I need to present may vary but, from personal experience, I'm into action or the feels (aka drama), not the lectures. I hope my reader is the same.

Example: In one story, an SC can create a quantum blackhole and uses in the narrative as a missile. I don't explain the theory, but I do show a pretty ionospheric blast aurora.

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

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#PennedPossibilities 1103: Have you ever had a plot idea that you were excited to write but had to scrap because it just didn’t work?

That I mulled around in my head and decided it didn't work? Yes.

That I didn't write down and subsequently lost? Yes. 😭

That I went ahead and pantsed a chapter or two before realizing it didn't work? Yes. Enough times to be traumatized.

That I didn't save and deleted the file? NO! I have a scraps folder for separate works and a scraps repository in each project for paragraphs and chapters that didn't work. 😁

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2026.08.18 — What are your limits for writing outside your lived experience? (race, nation, gender, etc.)

My limits? Can I do this and be believable? That is, not throw somebody from the story by my ignorance?

I don't write mainstream fiction or fiction that is set in our society. I'm not mainstream. I have not lived a mainstream life. Mainstream people bore me. This doesn't mean I have no lived experience; I bring it in bushels to my stories. I've worked. I've traveled to and lived in other countries. I studied non-western societies, their art, music, and theatre, as well as folklore and mythology. A trans man lived with us when I grew up. I have gay and lesbian relatives. My ultra-feminist mother was a bailbondswoman. Discovering the true patriarchal nature of society when I was old enough to understand shocked me. I disbelieved. I disbelieve; I have no religion, but I've studied it intensely. The mass fantasy fascinates me. Oh, the point about bailbonds? I grew knowing criminals. Called some uncle (an honorific a child uses.)

I don't write mystery, historical, or military for reasons of verisimilitude. I don't think I can write what most people consider normal society. I write SF and fantasy because, to use a reference that's outdated and dates me too boot, I control the horizontal, I control the vertical. Race I sidestep usually by never describing certain details and never making it part of the story, except when I do. Rather than nations, I'll cite language: I rarely use other than English, and then advisedly, consulting. Gender? I write about that all the time. I have gender and preferences though I never state them of myself, and other's conceptions of gender fascinate me. I wish they'd be more happy about theirs, and I write about that, too.

I have an SFF story based on my study of shamanism in Europe and the Americas. The woman is Native American and so far that's stifled me, but I'm thinking that she's also been assimilated, knows her roots from reading, soul travel from her mother, but was never raised in-culture, parents divorced. That I can write. With enough respect not to anger any but appropriationist trolls. Linked find a not very refined crack at a start for that story, a bit of a proof of concept, too concise needing fleshing out because I wrote it in 2023 to fit in a toot with 7 characters to spare!

https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/111359427361655491

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

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#WordWeavers 2026.08.17 — Which scene made you laugh while writing it?`

There are plenty of snide and droll things that my narrators have thought or said, which are funny or outrageous when I read them, and likely made me laugh writing them. Can't say I remember for sure. But if I'm allowed put on my essayist hat for a moment, I used the same part of my brain I'd use to write the devil-girl's thoughts to write this reply to one of my anti-AI posts. I definitely was laughing writing it. English is such a great language to write insult in. Enjoy!

I forgot to add that if you are an #AI writer using #genAI to create your drafts, you've ceased doing the fun part, creating fictional whimsical worlds and captivating people other people wish to know, or synthesizing original ideas and bringing your original world-changing thought to readers. You're forfeiting being admired for your mind or your argument, instead you're bringing to others random fossilized thought scrounged from average ideas thrown together in an insipid soup of meaningless tokens masquerading as words mimicking thought. You've fed your ego a sugary breakfast cereal that's really only sawdust. You are sad.

—https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/117117740491840657

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

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#WordWeavers 2026.08.16 — If one of your characters could ask you a question, what would they ask?

What's that three-eyed metallic orange slab you keep on taking out of your pocket to look at the glowy side?

How do you explain an iPhone to someone from an advanced culture that doesn't have or need electricity?

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

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#PennedPossibilities 1102: Do you have a strategy for how you approach worldbuilding in your WIP(s)?

I often start with only a vague idea of how the environment works, as predicated by what the prototyped character has to go through to achieve the ending of the story. I then start writing. As background, history, locale, science, characters, society, amusements, education, antagonists, and friends become obvious, I put in whatever is needed, then backfill it to substantiate their existence. After a while I get a world that feels very lived in. The Reluctance Series already had a cognate world defined. I'd accumulated details of the "magic" system I'd need to create, so that series has world-building by revision, also, but it started as a few givens as discussed above.

My world-building is substantially by living the lives of the characters and reporting what I find. I like adventuring.

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2026.08.16 — How do you keep a character from becoming unsympathetic?

I don't. I like my characters to fail and do things they realize they shouldn't have. Sets up a mini redemption arc under the scrutiny of the reader, lets characters earn the reader's sympathy. Makes them more like you or I, more real life.

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

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#PennedPossibilities 1101: What creature or monster would your MC or SC love to keep as an unconventional pet? Why is that?

The only monsters in the Reluctance Series are human. Cats, dogs, chickens, horses, &tc. exist, but so far we've only seen horses and they have tiny cute stegosaur plates on their backs, but are still ridden. Cats? Dogs? [shrugs] No monsters, or unconventional pets, though. The people in these stories don't keep human monsters as pets, either, and attempts at slavery have ended poorly for societies that embraced the idea.

Stepping back to the incomplete Inklings in my Wands Universe, there are "monsters." The Red Dragon looks more like a house sized bat with a very ugly face, but when Wintereyes befriends animals, she makes them more human. Not a pet. She'd never have a pet.

It's interesting to realize my characters don't do the pet thing let alone want one that's unconventional.

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

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#ScribesAndMakers #TTMD »2026.08.15 — Featured creator Stephen Cox @stephenwhq

How do you approach writing a mystery? Do you plot it out completely, knowing the entire story, before writing any of it? Do you write the murder scene and the solution scene first, then let the characters drive the story and pants it until the two scenes connect and form a story? Do you write backwards from the solution scene until you have a story? What's your process? What's most important?

I ask this because, whilst I'm not writing mystery stories, most of my stories incorporate a mystery or two to drive the plot. As a pantser, I do a lot of writing backward and backfilling of clues as I discover them.

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

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#PennedPossibilities 1100: Who is the most challenging opponent your MC has ever faced? What did they learn from them?

Almost anybody would be a challenging opponent for Bolt (a day angel courier for the mob). She doesn't fight, usually; when she's thinking straight, she flies away because she knows they do kill the messenger. Even Shugh, her newspaper reporter friend is a challenging opponent. Bolt is attracted to the trans woman, but if she gives in… she fears she'll ruin Shugh's other relationships—but now Shugh's interested in her. Or is it her hidden identity? She's sure it's both.

The story is a cozy mystery, however. Bolt is an interstitial character becoming an MC, who is subtly influencing everyone around her (main and supporting characters from other stories) as they face off dangers.

The exception as far as not interacting is Rainy Days. The woman ticks Bolt off when Bolt is flying with her friend and lover Blue. The two engage in flying aerial combat… No, scratch that. They fly super dangerous, madly skilled, stunts around poor confused Blue who has to fly as straight as an arrow so they don't crash. Rainy Days ends up conceding after Bolt's defeat that Bolt is persistent, at least.

What did Bolt learn? Yes, she learns Rainy Days is dangerous, skilled, has her eye on Bolt, and knows too much for about Bolt for Bolt's comfort considering that Bolt is a criminal and Rainy Days rules ten worlds. However, mostly Bolt is ticked that woman has ridden her best friend, Blue—and Blue didn't share the interesting news. Not jealousy, it's trust.

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

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#WordWeavers 2026.08.14 — Which fictional setting of yours would you most like to visit?

I would like to visit the "villa" described in Reluctant Accomplice. It was extravagantly constructed 20 to 30 years ago in the shape of an amanita mushroom using the same miraculous reluctant technology used to build structures in space, dipolar gravity. The amanita is a famous hallucinogenic poisonous mushroom that has a red top dotted with white warts, with white gills, stem, and skirt. The building is whimsical. Like from a fairy tale. Immense. At least a dozen stories high, reflective like a soap bubble, with moving prismatic soap swirls on its surface. Inside, down gravity conforms to the surfaces regardless of planetary down. The great room room at the top of the structure has the sky for the floor. When the abducted MC arrives, it late in the day. The gathering storm clouds are colored underneath by sunset and shadow; quiet, intriguing, otherworldly. Ought be spectacular in person. The ruler of ten worlds built it so she could disappear there occasionally with her exiled dragon lover. The chapter is titled Love Nest. Another of the villa's features is a hot spring in a gravity bubble, which is described in a short sample of my writing titled Ms George and the Dragon (https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/110603595653290409)

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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2026.08.14 — How often do you reread what you've written after it's 'done"?

"Done" is likely intentionally ambiguous in this question, so I'll answer comprehensively. I reread chapters that are "done" extensively and randomly when it's during composition of the work. After the first draft is done, I read primarily to edit. After edits are done from the editor, I reread again. After it's done been published, I usually reserve reading for the then current WIP. I occasionally reread published works I am not going to change, but will definitely reread something that's done if I might retcon the work.

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

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#ScribesAndMakers »2026.08.14 — Our next featured creator differentiates himself from his "name buddies" on his website. Do you share a name with anyone famous?

I chose RS as I think it'll be rather unique and gender agnostic. My writer friends use it. Not sure if a publisher will require me to add a last name or not. Do I share a name with anyone famous? Well, the omitted last name is probably that of a famous late 1800s early 1900s French politician that my grandparents took when arriving in Ellis island. Beyond that, nope.

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

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#PennedPossibilities 1099: SC POV: Describe the most beautiful sound you’ve ever heard.

[Steamed Milk and Sugar aka Shugh:]

I never thought about it, but there are plenty of times I've taken a break on the first floor. There are broad windows to the street where you can see the newspaper printing presses rolling. Now employed here, I can watch from the inside the press room so long as I stay behind the yellow lines. That thunderous rumble! It's amazing. Dynamic. Alive. Mixed with the shouts of the technician managing the paper and the daemons powering the steel beast. The energy defines my dream of becoming a journalist that's slowing coming true. I had thought, in the beginning, that the sounds of dozens of reporters at their typewriters banging away the next edition was it, but no. This is better. The whir for the paper through the rollers. The smell of the ink…

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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2026.08.13 — Do the arts appear often within the works you write? Which ones?

Often enough to say yes, depending on the work. Which ones? Examples? Oookay…

One series follows an amateur DJ from her late teens to her mid-twenties, as she grows into a singer, producer, and songwriter while, at the same time, she tries multiple times to save the world but only ends up anonymously saving thousands of lives—which ain't too shabby. The stories are full of music.

Another story has a teen using her knowledge of impressionist paintings and painters to deliver the "etchings" pickup line in reverse, as in, "Don't you want to invite me up to your apartment to see your…?" The man, who she describes as an uncle's age, wants to be her coach and isn't going to sleep with her for all her trying. It's all about them taunting each other, exchanging zingers, negotiating, at one time from his bed from which he tosses her out. She's an elite sophisticate, trained in the beaux arts and dance and other more deadly arts, who's run away, but the devil-girl is not letting on lest she be found and dragged back home. Her weird knowledge comes up all the time.

In the current WIP, whilst performing as a courier for the mob, Bolt is, or rather is rapidly becoming was, an amateur street photographer. With a life only encompassing what she is forced to do (fly messages) and what she can do in between assignments (take picture of people living a normal life), she's developed a Henri Cartier-Bresson eye for subjects. Using her professional camera (that fell off the back of a truck), she accidentally, and ultimately to her great distress, becomes a sensation, an up-and-coming in-demand professional, after some of her incidental photos of a disaster midcity are bought and become front page photos in a major national newspaper. Her art and unwonted celebrity (which confuses her greatly since she's a jock and no-way an artist) defines her character; it is a major complication in the novel.

[Author retains copyright (c)2026 R.S.]

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#WordWeavers 2026.08.13 — What's the most unexpected source of inspiration you've ever had?

For me, likely all the writing hashtag games (and response thereto). Social media, even Facebook which I rage force quit 3-4 years back, was never my thing, so what I found when a friend convinced me to try Mastodon was surprising. Not only do hashtag games keep me writing daily through dry as well as wet spells, one is responsible for me writing at all the novella Mars Needed Women, still in beta editing. Many are the times of the week that I discover something about characters or the world they live in by answering prompts, and recently I've been writing bits of chapters or tiny side stories.

Search from:sfwrtr #excerpt)

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#PennedPossibilities 1098: What is a relatively recent invention that dramatically changed the world in your WIP?

Oddly enough, it is a world with an economy based on human labor. They've had railroads and paved roads for centuries and air transport for longer than that. Now someone has invented the road locomotive and gotten it licensed for lading. It fills the same ecological niche as an 18-wheel tractor trailer, but has power wheels similar to the ones on a steam locomotive. Oh, yeah, it's steam powered and can be piloted by a single individual rather than requiring a dozen. A shiny brass-appointed example figures prominently in a devil-girl story that takes place 200 years after the moonshot. It is so controversial that transportation unions have called strikes where they have been introduced for freight carriage. The one the devil-girl rides on was converted into an RV bus. The urbanized modern world in the Reluctance series is quite unlike ours.

The tech doesn't show up in the current WIP.

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#ScribesAndMakers »2026.08.12 — How often do you take mental breaks from your creative work?

I sleep, often daily?

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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2026.08.12 — What's the last museum you went to? Did it inspire you?

San Diego Model Railroad Museum. They have recreations of important California railroads, including the famous Tehachapi Loop. Inspired? Yes, to enjoy other people's model railway hobby and to not advance beyond my small set that circles the Christmas tree.

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#WordWeavers 2026.08.12 — If your main character had a comfort food, what would it be?

Probably squid, but I haven't asked. Bolt grew up in a forest on a rocky coast with high cliffs and her mother used dried squid for teething. It was an inexpensive common seasonal food, so she ate it a lot. In the story, she does eat chopped squid grilled on a stick. The honey sesame tomato sauce brushed on becomes very gooey as it cooks, turns a deeply delicious ruddy brown chewy treat that is more savory than sweet.

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#PennedPossibilities 1097: Do you boost or share work from other creative individuals on Mastodon?

Take note: I boost author publication posts (not publisher posts) when I see them in my feed, as detailed in my introductory post. I boost interesting or masterful artwork and photo posts by the original artist or photographer (not their proxies) when I see them, usually but not always after favoriting them. Since I value my followers, I may choose not to boost if you are flooding the zone, posting nonsense, or posting something hurtful.

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#WordWeavers 2026.08.11 — Which shelved project are you itching to get back to?

Not scratching any itches, ignoring them best I can to concentrate on what's needful and necessary.

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#WritersCoffeeClub #WCC 2026.08.11 — When were you last a student?

Twenty years ago. I took two semesters of Japanese in 2006 in preparation for touring Japan before the 2007 WorldCon in Tokyo.

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#ScribesAndMakers »2026.08.11 — Do you feel like a different person when you're doing your creative work?

I'm an author, a prosaist, a literary shaman. When it is all working, I become the character, experience the sweat bead on their skin, see an alien world through their eyes, feel their head throb, breathe their air, speak their words, and narrate their hell and heaven as they live it. I channel spirits of the who-could-have-been. I gets lost in them. Can't become more of a different person than that!

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#PennedPossibilities 1096: MC POV: When was the last time you got lost?

Kinda hard when you have these babies since I can fly anywhere above the city. [Bolt flexes her blue-feathered wings, inadvertently knocking a box off a high shelf in her teeny-tiny aerie apartment.] Anyway… When? Probably taking the metro midcity where it's all underground, but I only take it when my companion can't fly cross town with me. When he gets lost… [Scratches the back of her neck, glancing away with a sheepish grin.]

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#EroticMusings 2026.08.10 —Week 63 (August 9-15) Setting: Do you create cultures, ethnicities, or even sentient species for your work? How do you go about it?

It shouldn't be surprising that I answer "yes" and "all of the above" since I write #sf and #sff stories. That they are spicy at times is important to the story, not an end in itself. That sex ends up being important is that, for most humans, it's important either personally or politically. I like making it a feature, with the above caveat, that readers will enjoy. That gives a clue as how I develop these things.

I generally want to point out gender inequities. In stories, as well as in photography, extremes in contrast often highlight specifics. I once created an alien species where the death of one gender was part of the natural life cycle, but humans marooned on the the planet quickly saw a technological solution, to save friends they'd met, unthinkable to the equally but differently technological sentients, disrupting every level of the alien and human societies. This singular detail let me address religious hypocrisy, morals, ethics, gender, overcomplicating sex, and violence against women. The story came together neatly, and it's another case where one of my stories inadvertently predicted something mostly below the radar at the time (1990s): artificial meat. Impossible Burger, anybody?

In a sense, what you want to show—act as a foil for what you want to say, or make possible to happen—gives clues to the culture or ethnicity you want to create. I wanted to depict a culture where patriarchy never existed. To a large extent, I made this work by making it impossible to inherit property, or power since it usually requires property. This implied family would be predicated primarily on who your mother is, and who her siblings were. In a pre-gene savvy world, it's a failsafe method that doesn't require one gender sequestering and oppressing the other. Doesn't create a utopia—humans don't work that way—but it does change perceptions, significance, and emotions tied up with gender, sex, and engaging in sex. Dramatically. Throws a monkey wrench into concepts tied to fidelity. Turns out culture and ethnicity write themselves when you posit something like this.

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#Writephant 2026.0810 — A4. For the Americans, aye or nay on s’mores? For international peeps, what outdoor treat do you like best?

I say YAY!

The photo was from Kings Canyon National Park in June. It's where I learned that starting and maintaining a campfire is relatively easy if you have the right kindling. Keeping it blazing (fiery not smoldery), however, takes constant vigilance and work. I appreciate my kitchen appliances that much more, now. Tasty s'more, btw.

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