#WordWeavers 6. What writing-related challenges have you encountered recently?
That ol' wall-clock, me lad.
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Zachary J. Adam
@zadammac@wandering.shop
mastodon 4.7.3Writer, among other things. Author of _The Arcane Revolution Trilogy_, _The Game for Scribes_, and a laundry-list of unreleased-and-upcoming work. Heavy reader, professionally unprofessional, and an engineer - technically.
Living on the sunny, but often frozen, banks of the Wolastoq river, on unceded territory of the Wolastoqiyik people.
Corona onus grave est; noli eam gerere.
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Joined January 02, 2026
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#WritersCoffeeClub 5/6: "Talk about something you've written which you expected would (or expect will) divide readers."
Picking the True Main Character of Entangling Vines, which to a certain extent will involve missing key themes of the book if you think there *is* a True Main Character.
I'm pretty sure my decision to depict the orcs the way I'm depicting them will also be divisive, but that's what sensitivity readers have been for.
#WritersCoffeeClub May 5
> Have you taken inspiration from something that could have happened but didn't?
Yes. Sort of.
I have a lot of projects that at least touch the idea of alt histories. The worldbuilding experiment Lorica supposes a much worse Chornobyl disaster. Ecliptic Mariner's history starts diverging *noticeably* from ours when Apollo 1 doesn't kill its crew.
I like alt histories, they're just *a lot of work* to do well.
#WordWeavers 5/7 Does you antagonis have any redeeming qualities?
Vidcund is actually getting a redemption arc, of a lazy kind, in The Rise, in part enabled by me finally holding up Actually Evil next to his Morally Grey.
As for Sebastian, the personified antagonist in Entangling Vines (not all problems are people): If you look at him closely enough he's *just* Draven (one of the protagonists) with slightly different priors.
Replying to
@cstross@wandering.shop For what little it counts, Sam's video in a maker secret santa where he made a multiselector-based LED sign for ThisOldTony wound up being the accidental gateway to my (very middling) entry into modular synths.
He's a very capable musician, whatever else might be said abouy Eurovision.
RE: @patcharcana@furry.engineer
The real problem with those AI-detection applications - like the plagiarism detection algorithms before them - is that they very much measure the wrong thing.
Some time ago I created a hand-bound heavy water-colour paper journal for my solo #journaling #RPG, #TheGameForScribes. Life being life I don't get to sit down and play it as often as I want, but here's a spread I added a while ago for the first year of a new playthrough, starring some family called "House Selene".
For me, this is fun fuel for calligraphy practice.
You can buy the book here: https://legacy.drivethrurpg.com/product/498117/The-Game-For-Scribes
Aw hell this sounds like a great time!
I have fallen into the trap with my GFS journal: it feels too precious to play with.
It's literally a poorly-made notebook you'd think I'd be able to more or less doodle in it but NO it feels like every page needs to be a polished thing.
So I'm going to make sure to break it out today and mess it up on purpose.
#WordWeavers for February 2:
Do you enjoy writing good, bad, or morally gray characters more? Why?
I love the idea of trying to write true heroes, but I rarely actually do it. Even my "goodest" characters have their flaws. I don't think it's healthy to pretend that anyone is ever otherwise.
Replying to
@cstross@wandering.shop Yeah, to a very real degree my solution here is less "write more betterrer" and more "If the reader missed the point they probably weren't the target audience."
Or maybe that's arrogant, I really don't know. But it'd help me sleep better.
Replying to
@cstross@wandering.shop It's small beer by comparison to be sure, but I'm on the *fifth crack* at one of these novels because it keeps turning out to be that I'm watching the actions of the wrong cast.
I think this one's the charm, but who knows; I'll probably get 90,000 words into it again and realize I profoundly hate the knight errant again.