#rsreluctancestory — Public Fediverse posts

#PennedPossibilities 1155: Do you enjoy musicals? If so, what’s your favorite one? Has it ever brought you inspiration for a story?

Not per se. I just watched The Sound of Magic, a musical mystery k-drama (👍🏼👍🏼), and I've seen productions of Cats, Wicked, and Phantom of the Opera, but I don't really understand the theatre form as a storytelling form. It seems vague and imprecise. Nor the musical form for that matter, as the storytelling aspect pressures the lyrics and the music in a way that can (but doesn't always) feel artificial.

I am a fan of a series that occasionally aired episodes where the characters broke out into song and dance, which worked sometimes and sometimes did not. Did it bring me inspiration for a story?

No.

However, the concept did gel into a scene I wrote in an otherwise hard-edged gritty drama thriller. (I know at least one follower will know to what I refer.) The POV character, after a hard day where nothing goes the way she wants, not only ends up walking home, she arrives late to her women-only boarding house only to find herself locked out since it is after curfew. Because of who she is, we know nobody can actually ever lock her out, but in a sequence that demonstrates her miserable mental state, she breaks out into song and dance on the lawn on the side of building, where the lyrics she sings address her internal struggle. Should she trust that she will work through her failures? Or should she give up the effort as prideful and meaningless, to take a dose of fuckitall. and simply running away—again. Her compulsion—singing and dancing mania is a real syndrome—makes her complete the song and dance choreography. She later after hopes nobody looked out their window or heard her. Whether it happened is up to the reader.

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

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#WordWeavers 2026.10.13 — What is something your MC would risk their life to protect but would struggle to explain why?

Risk her life? Pretty much not happening. Bolt works as a courier for the mob, but those are different risk vectors. She's is a catalyst character, never a hero, at least in this story. She tries to take a cheap shot at a pugnacious coworker who beat up her friend, fails to land the blow, and gets pummeled. She wasn't being a hero; it was revenge. Frankly, she struggles to explain her impulse to fight in this one instance. Her M.O. is to flee the moment violence erupts, and she forgot that in her anger and despair.

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

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#PennedPossibilities 1154: MC POV: Name a time you laughed the hardest. With who, and why?

[Bolt is a day angel. She has wings and they have feathers. –RS]

Laughing is not something I get to do often. Perhaps when I was always roughhousing with my string of ponies? All stallions, of course! Back when I captained the Track and Flight team, back when I was 17? I don't remember if I laughed as much as other things.

Recently, it was probably with Molt. A university student nearly a dodecade younger than me. Seriously, this guy was a nerdy nerd's nerd, quiet and stuttery shy, so completely unlike any guy I'd ever gone for, who I'd met because he never picked up his molts when using our shared bath space in the building. He'd turned out nice, talkative about his subjects, and while I didn't understand half the jargon-filled stuff he talked about, I enjoyed his voice and enthusiasm. Best, what he studied at university intimately had a lot to do with me! We could relate. We talked a lot, and I'd giggle as he showed me stuff in books, pointed out bizarre pictures, got flustered and determined explaining, measured me and inadvertently tickled, which I loved but didn't let on because I could get a blush now and again. We laughed and I spent lots of time in his aerie apartment, whenever we could, sometimes with me making excuses to visit, sometimes playing dumb so he'd repeat things I "didn't understand" until one thing led to another and laughter led to better fun.

It's no wonder I wanted to kill my coworker who chased my young nerd student away.

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

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#WordWeavers 2026.10.12 — Which relationship in your story changed the most from what you originally planned?

Some context: The WIP is prior novel instead experienced from the POV of an important supporting character. It must stick to plot. The lives of the prior MC and the current MC intersect occasionally, with totally different viewpoints on what's happening, including separate interactions with all three antagonists. I haven't yet written the planned ending (a climactic penultimate scene from the other storyline) and am pretty sure I can write it without giving that other novel's mystery away. This has been fun, both in fact and in the sarcastic sense. Definitely, it's been a challenge. The MCs are totally different. What interests them differs, as does their recollection of what happened and in what order—the eye-witness conundrum.

To answer the question: The three male supporting characters (also LIs), Steamed Milk and Sugar (Shugh), Arrow Flies True (Blue), and Flies Hard into the Dusk (Molt aka Hardboy Slim) as well as Shugh's female secondary characters, Night on Fire and Light Insight, don't exist in the original storyline at all. Each appeared as a whim or by plot necessity, and got fleshed out. A lot. They let Bolt tell her story as she pulls herself up from tragedy by making friends she supports and will support her. In a sense, Bolt's relationship with all of them have changed as none were originally planned. Of all of the new characters, I've placed Blue in the position of filling a major role in a sequel by making him related to an important series character whose origin I hadn't yet defined.

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

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#Writephant 2026.1012 — A4. Do your characters or stories get nostalgic? If not, what would your characters wax poetic about from their past or someone else's history?

Half my storytelling technique, in part because I write in 1st person, is the narrator recounting their past history, sometimes waxing poetic. Indeed, the MC even teases out threads of history from secondary characters, providing clues to their agendas and desires, fleshing out the central mystery. Backstory done my way is not always nostalgia. When Bolt recounts her string of self-inflicted prideful and naïve errors that ended with her blackmailed into working for the mob, it is anything but. When she discusses her life in high school as a varsity-lettered jock and captain of an otherwise all male flight and track team—she's a day angel, a human with wings—you wonder how much hyperbole and exaggeration there is when she talks about enjoying her string of ponies (all stallions). That… is nostalgia.

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

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