#wordweavers — Public Fediverse posts

#WordWeavers 7. Share a line of dialogue that tells us everything we need to know about a character's personality.

Many of my characters have assumed names as a way of getting around the vulnerability of some antagonist learning your true name and magically using against you.

There’s one Hound, an enforcer for the Council, the body governing the magical community, who goes by the name of Ripley who always introduces himself by saying, ‘Name’s Ripley, believe it or not.'

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#WordWeavers 09 Your MC finds a letter addressed to them that was never meant to be delivered. Who wrote it, and what does it say?

His sister keeps on writing to him, after she believes him dead. She could always tell her brother everything, and continuing doing that helps her deal with the loss. Though over the years it becomes more of a transient diary, as she burns the letters after writing. Maybe she forgot one.

Planning to have some of those as part of the story. So I won't speak to content.

#WordWeavers 10 Oct: What is one thing your antagonist genuinely admires about your MC?

He's smart, he's kind and his understanding of runework is admirable. If he wasn't what he is, ne might even have considered him as nir successor.
If only nir grandson would listen to nir, he would still be able to carve out a good life for himself. But ne is the last person he will listen too, and protection can only go so far.

#WordWeavers 11/10: Share a passage from your WIP where the setting is doing as much storytelling as the characters.

Dinah said Grace reminded her of Minty. I know where Dinah's house is just as well as anyone else, and I haven't been round to check up on her either, so there's something to do while I'm waiting for Grace to come back.

Dinah's house is a tiny cottage with a green door, tucked back from the road so you might not notice it, clinging to the side of the larger cottage next door and part hidden behind a sprawling tree full of withered red apples. I open the gate and walk up the path, stooping somewhat under unruly branches and trying to avoid stepping on windfalls. It's kind of creepy. The smell of fermenting fruit, like decay, seems to have taken all the air.

I knock but there is no answer. I peer through the tiny glass panes set into the door, and lift the letterbox flap. There are letters piled up on the mat, as if the owner of the house has gone away.

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11th Oct 2026. Share a passage from your WIP where the setting is doing as much storytelling as the characters.

We were siblings on the hillside of our youth, standing tall together with our kin and reaching for the sun. We are siblings still, sisters now on this shore below the forest, my build nearly complete and yours about to begin.

#WordWeavers 11/10: Share a passage from your WIP where the setting is doing as much storytelling as the characters.
Can’t do that within a 500-character limit, so image + alt-text. Here’s Torvyn at the Velya Lakes, after parting from Wandell.
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#WordWeavers 11. Share a passage from your WIP where the setting is doing as much storytelling as the characters.

In a way, the floating isle is my fantasy metaphor for a bigoted small country town. Fairy outgrows the beliefs he was raised with, and there's no going back.

#WordWeavers 10 Oct: What is one thing your antagonist genuinely admires about your MC?

"Admires" is maybe going too far. One thing that frustrates the antagonist mightily is how alive the MC keeps being.

#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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#WordWeavers Oct 10: What is one thing your antagonist genuinely admires about your MC?

Carl admires Melissa for her looks. Her other qualities he never really thinks about until she's gone.

But I'm realizing now that Donna Kuang, Adrian Hardesty, and Derrick Devereaux *all* take note of and appreciate Angel's fashion sense. (Oddly, the only one of the villains who doesn't is Van Martinez, who was Angel's mentor. She thinks they're putting on airs.) 2/2

#WordWeavers

#WordWeavers Oct 10: What is one thing your antagonist genuinely admires about your MC?

I know I've said in some previous prompt (possibly on a different hashtag) that some antagonist (undoubtedly Travis Winter, I don't even need to find it to be sure of that) admires Angel Castillo's dress sense. After all, they *are* a sharp dresser, and Travis appreciates that. 1/2

#WordWeavers 10 Oct
What is one thing your antagonist genuinely admires about your MC?

He's rather good looking, like the author.

And, humble.

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#WordWeavers 10. What is one thing your antagonist genuinely admires about your MC?

The fact that he is able to solve the killings at all.

#WordWeavers 10 Oct
What is one thing your antagonist genuinely admires about your MC?

I more often do "slantagonists" : characters with different rather than opposing goals, who may help, obstruct or betray as it serves them.

In disOrder, Wim the head of security admires Calnor's honesty and good intentions, while trying to nudge him out of his naiveté so he gets on with what Wim assumes he's there to do. It's a pity Calnor has no idea what that is.

#WordWeavers Oct 10
What is one thing your antagonist genuinely admires about your MC?

The majority of antagonists fear Maggie's power rather than admire her. They respect that enough to be very careful. However, a few do admire her commitment to her people.

#WordWeavers 10. What is one thing your antagonist genuinely admires about your MC?

Kenjen genuinely admires the entire adventuring party's tenacity and loathes them for how they practice it. Why couldn't they have shown the same stubbornness and conviction back when they were working for him, not against him? What do you mean it's because he was a shitty boss?

10. What is one thing your antagonist genuinely admires about your MC?

The queen is the MC's mother. Admire is too strong a word. Do parents admire things about their children? Is pride in them and appreciation the same as admiration? But anyway, the queen isn't proud of her daughter either. And any bit of affection she might once have had, has turned into disappointment by now.

The closest would be recognition. She does recognize how stubborn and determined her daughter is, how hard she works when she wants something. For this she sometimes gives praise.

#WordWeavers

#WordWeavers 10/10: What is one thing your antagonist genuinely admires about your MC?

The question assumes there is an antagonist that can admire anything, when in reality an antagonist can be anything that works against the protagonist's main objective.

If the MC wants to sunbathe, the thunderstorm will be the antagonist.

In the Mansion, the characters themselves are often their own antagonists, by just being themselves.

#WordWeavers 2026-10-10. What is one thing your antagonist genuinely admires about your MC?

Not a bloody thing.

There is not much more than a mutual disdain and a hostile-respect betwixt the two.

Trinity takes umbrage with Medb's indifference to her station and power, and fucking LOATHES that Medb can casually stir up the feral aspect of being a werewolf that Trinity thought she had completely mastered and buried.

Trinity respects Medb in the same way you pause and back up out of the striking range of a rattlesnake.

Medb, counter point, understands Trinity plays a function within the /ecosystem/ of The Dream. Medb would rather kill Trinity for using the control parasite on her, & generally being a stark anathema to Medb, BUT that would be akin to taking a sledge hammer to the keystone of a structural arch.

————
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#WordWeavers 10/10: What is one thing your antagonist genuinely admires about your MC?
Well… since the demise of Perriad there’s been no one in the series who could really be called an ‘antagonist’. In the current WIP you could label Wandell as such, but his position is really too ambiguous, and mostly he’s trying to do the right thing if he can just figure out what that is.
‘Goodies and baddies’ were fine when I was seven, but too simplistic now.
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#WordWeavers 10/10: What is one thing your antagonist genuinely admires about your MC?

I suppose the CIA admires in Solo that he's a sophisticated killing machine and tool for social control; because that's what they designed him to be.

#WordWeavers 10/10: What is one thing your antagonist genuinely admires about your MC?

I don't write stories with antagonists. Lots of writers don't have antagonists. I'm currently on an Ann Tyler binge. No antagonists to be founds in any of her books, so I'm in good company!

#WordWeavers OC 10: What is one thing your antagonist genuinely admires about your MC?

The antagonist has been watching Sara and Charlotte grow up exploring the world unsupervised. It recognized they were a particular kind of girls, and they are precious to it.

I'm not sure it's capable of admiring a person. If it is, then maybe for their independence.

#FLPrompts

#WordWeavers 10. What is one thing your antagonist genuinely admires about your MC?

That's like asking "what is one thing the staff of this large organization genuinely admires about the guy who drives the FedEx truck"?

From the 3 Important People who are instigators (1 highborn noble, 1 senior military officer, 1 "Scholar"), through their various flunkies and minions and acolytes, the ones who notice Coenraad exists at all assume that he Does. Not. Matter.

They notice Fourteen even less.

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

Antagonist: society in general.
MC: person with a mental illness, i.e. depression.

Society admires nothing about mentally ill people, and treats them with scorn and contempt, while denying them the means to reach a better mental condition. This is one of many reasons why society in general is the antagonist in all of my books.

#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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Belated post.
#WordWeavers 10/9: Share a description from your WIP that establishes atmosphere without explicitly naming the emotion.

Emrys tentatively stepped onto the ledge running along the brink of the abyss and began shuffling his way towards safety.

At just about the same time as he reached what he reckoned to be the halfway point, he heard the impossible, a voice in his ear coming from behind.

‘Don’t look down, don’t look down, look at your friends, look at you friends. You might yet live another day if you don’t look down but look at your friends instead.’

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#WordWeavers 9. Your MC finds a letter addressed to them that was never meant to be delivered. Who wrote it, and what does it say?

Not something I’ve thought about, it does have possibilities though.

How's about Nathan coming across a missive from the enigmatic Noone, someone who’s believed to follow the dark arts and may, or may not, be the antagonist of the story.

What dark secrets will it reveal?

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#WordWeavers 2026.10.08 — Which character is most likely to make a terrible decision for a very good reason?

Two characters in the story have a history of making terrible decisions for very good reasons. One has done this repeatedly with plenty of terrible consequences, a few of which were on planetary and interstellar scales. Why? Beat the alternative!

The other character doesn't know it, but she is the first character's most favored student—both the student part and the most favored part being news, and would be terrible news, to her. Without giving away the story, let's just say to prevent murdering someone (even as self-defense), this character nearly dies to save a third character (okay, the LI, but still.) Those who know her are convinced she has a death wish.

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

#BoostingIsSharing

#gender #fiction #writer #author
#sf #sff #sciencefiction
#writing #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon #writers
#RSdiscussion
#RSstory #RSReluctanceStory