#rsstory — Public Fediverse posts

#ScribesAndMakers 2026.10.12 — <Do you ever talk to people in song lyrics?

May be misinterpreting. Maybe willfully so. But…

I once had a character break out into song and dance, singing plot-specific lyrics. The character later analyzed the incident using a Latinate word that translates to dancing and singing mania (which apparently is real). Embarrassing. She worried if anyone saw. She hadn't looked. Not saying if it actually happened, but she'd been under a lot of stress that day and pissed-off a tutor she'd really wanted to hire. Did it? Who knows? Not saying. But I wrote that scene.

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

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#WordWeavers 2026.10.11 — Share a passage from your WIP where the setting is doing as much storytelling as the characters.

I write 1st person narrative, which makes it almost impossible for me to find a setting that narrates for itself. This passage tells a story and is what I got in the time I was willing to spend. Incidentally, the woman is as black as night. The time is predawn and dark. The POV has wings and can fly.

Her stomach gurgled and she colored, fairly difficult considering her complexion. I sniffed, nose upward. Ah, grilled vegetables, fish. I looked as we walked. Day angels often populated the upper stories of city buildings and had a tradition of pop-up restaurants. I imagined red tents. Hidden orbiting sprites lit the roof with drifting golden, ruddy, and emeraline light, illuminating curdling flavored grey smoke that drifted north up to the sharp-edged building shadow. The smoke itself flickered with shadows cast by dozens of fluttering and milling patrons carrying plates and bowls, gesturing with wing or arm—a shadow play, a hungry drama cast toward the sky, an advertisement crying eat here. Actually, the food court extended to three adjacent buildings! We might be in an aerie neighborhood. My mouth watered. That meant choices.

"I'm hungry," I said, grabbing her and flying her up.

As always, posting compelled neurotic me to make revisions, which is a good thing, which I've copied back to the manuscript. Hashtags games have real world uses!

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

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#PennedPossibilities 1152: MC POV: A time you ran out of options was…

[Bolt, day angel woman, MC of Reluctant Courier (for the Mob):] I got suckered into picking up a flung-aside chef’s knife, smearing blood on my hands, and being photographed at a murder scene. That merited me a dozen years of no options working for the mob. Do I win???

As a consolation prize, I inherited the pricy pro camera with which I'd been photographed when the enforcer who'd owned it pissed off the wrong client. My blackmailer probably thought the irony amusing.

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

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#WordWeavers 2026.10.10 — What is one thing your antagonist genuinely admires about your MC?

Rainy Days immediately respected that not only did Bolt teach Arrow Flies True precision flying—by using flying tandem which was one of her tricks—but that when she challenged Bolt by stunt flying around her, Bolt was game and put her all into matching her stunt for crazy stunt. In the end, though Bolt lost, she admired that she kept eye contact. She decided then and there this one would become another of her students.

Bolt, of course, sees this whole exchange from an entirely more frighteningly deadly perspective.

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

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#PennedPossibilities 151: What is your MC’s relationship to what modern society considers the paranormal or supernatural?

[Not intentionally being spooky here, but if so? Enjoy! —RS]

"Impervious to it" might describe the relationship. Due to her culture and her language, you'd find it well-nigh impossible to communicate to her the concept of the paranormal or the supernatural. It's technically difficult to describe something in no dictionary. The words simply don't exist, and whilst you could construct phrases and compound words—like "unprovable-knowledge" or "acceptance without need of evidence" that posits said acceptance is admirable—the oxymorons and nonsense from her perspective would leave her laughing. Worse, she might consider you mentally ill. You don't want her to report you to Health Services as a crazy person. Someone, like you, who can understand the word faith, tainted with the ability to conceptualize the paranormal or supernatural, even with zero belief therein, is likely to disappear upon confronting the guardians of the health of their modern reality.

Question for reader: Can you imagine what living in that world feels like?

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

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#WordWeavers 2026.10.09 — Your MC finds a letter addressed to them that was never meant to be delivered. Who wrote it, and what does it say?

Despite having air mail and a postal service, and the MC being an air courier to boot, I can't imagine Bolt receiving a letter never meant delivered. In the spirit of questions developing new avenues of character, I guess the boarding house manager could find a note with Bolt's name on it after she cleans out an aerie apartment. The short-term SC LI left Home City in cozy tear jerker scene because he didn't feel safe. Whilst the guy was nerdy and nice and (as Bolt would put it in colloquial sexist language) "a good man" indeed, she failed to protect him from her coworkers in the mob. While I suspect he would not want it to come across as angrily as it would, he would unload on her for promising what she couldn't do and convincing him he could trust her. She'd feel guilty for trying to help him for ultimately selfish reasons.

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

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