Welcome to the weekly fiction WIP thread!
This is a weekly community journal for writers here on Daily Kos to showcase microfiction, ongoing serialized stories, and parts of larger works in progress. All DK fiction writers are welcome to post chapters and excerpts as comments in the Fictional works in progress Diaries.
Use the header formatting button at the top of these comments to highlight the title of the ongoing project your material comes from so readers can find it from week to week.
If you want feedback, be sure to indicate so in bold (the formatting button next to H). Readers, please make sure your feedback is constructive (that doesn’t mean it has to be all positive, but it should always be actionable and sincere advice; for example, compare “This protagonist is terrible” to “I didn’t feel a connection with your protagonist”) and limit it to authors who ask for it. Authors, please make sure you’re OK with receiving feedback and comments before asking for them in your post. Together, we can make this a positive place to share our work and progress and pursue our hobby.
A WORD OF WARNING
Many publishers and agents will not accept a manuscript that is publicly available online in whole or in part because they run the risk of being sued for copyright infringement because someone copies your work and passes it off as their own. So if you’re hoping to sell it professionally, you probably shouldn’t publish it in DK. If you plan to publish it yourself, that risk is only on you. If you don’t plan to publish it anywhere else, that’s probably not a problem at all.
Click on one of the Readers & Book Lovers tags at the end of each published diary in this series to go to our shared host group and read today’s Keep writing Series article.
Regular participating authors are encouraged to participate in the publication of these diaries.
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Everything that has a beginning also has an end.
Including our characters.
Normally.
In reality, mortality is a constant. In fantasy, it is sometimes negotiable. In both cases, it influences behavior.
How do your characters prepare for their inevitable end? Is there a formal and generally accepted method, such as writing and notarizing a will? Choosing a burial site? Obtaining a beautiful coffin, often years before it needs to be used (pre-modern China)? What do they do with the bodies? What kind of funeral ceremonies are considered appropriate? Who is in charge of them? Is there a set mourning period with special rules and restrictions?
Do people often or almost never think about their death? Do they have religious beliefs about posthumous reward or punishment? How do they react to the death of another? What is their attitude to dangers that threaten their own death? What do they think is worth dying for?
How do they react to their impending death when it seems inevitable in the near future due to their age or other factors? Do dying people usually accept their end or do they fight against it until their last breath?
Does the universal nature of mortality have social implications? Throughout history, one of the few sure consolations for the poor and oppressed has been that their superiors are as mortal as they are, Death, the leveller: “Sceptre and crown / must fall / and be levelled in the dust / with the poor crooked scythe and spade.”
Do the dead remain conscious? Do they have their own world or worlds? What happens there? Does your world allow intercourse between the living and the dead? If so, is this a legitimate art or is it considered immoral or heretical? Do the dead retain an interest in the world of the living? Are there ghosts or similar phenomena, and if so, how do people explain and respond to them? Are some or all of the dead reborn in the mortal world, and under what circumstances does this happen?
Are there people in your world who can defy death? Is permanent, temporary or conditional immortality possible, such as a “fountain of youth” in a distant and unlikely location? If so, is using it considered moral or immoral? What would a character be willing to do to prolong their life or become immortal?
What effect would immortality have on a character? What about characters who “time jump,” such as traveling at near-light speed or hibernating so that their natural lifespans span vast periods of time? How does a character whose life has lasted centuries interact with someone with a normal lifespan?
To give an example, my fanfiction “practice world” involves Dremora, a type of demonic entity that is effectively immortal. When a Dremora’s body is killed, its animus remains and soon reforms in another body, preserving continuity of memory and personality. But the Dremora are tormented by boredom; their endless existence means they’ve seen everything too many times and are burned out. They lack any curiosity about the future and are incapable of original thought. Since they’re immortal, they have no offspring and don’t have relatives or children to worry about, meaning they have no stake in the future. They risk nothing in the end, and so nothing means very much to them, while the mortals they compete with may have to stake their lives on the outcome of an action and so take it very seriously.
If you want to do an exercise, I would suggest that you imagine one of your characters gets sick and dies: a natural death, with no unusual drama. How do they and their family react? Or, of course, any other circumstances you like.
