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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 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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#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 we 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.]

#BoostingIsSharing

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#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory