| Writers' Abode |

[Vazchu]

Hiya Vaz!
Ahhhh map creation! I love seeing your maps! Is there a certain software or website you like to use?

I have such a love/hate relationship with map building. I'm just enough of a nerd that I want to take into account the science of it, like the tectonic plates, planet spin & tilt, geography-based climate, but I haven't found a good way to include all that with a software that actually lets me shape continents how I want. And I'm not enough of an artist to do it myself XD when I get to my PC later today I will edit to share some of my current map creations!

Hi Storm!
Truthfully those two I posted were stuff I made only using the chibipainter here on CS. ^^' I did try using photoshop on my old computer before it crashed (sadly I lost the map I was working with back then along with most of my other documents and photos, rip. I was so bad at having my things stored on more than one place back then), but I haven't done much art-stuff in photoshop for quite a few years now. Thus I too have yet to find a proper platform/program to work with maps and for now I feel satisfied with just the chibipainter and by making them traditionally. (:

Same! I did that quite in depth with the first map I showed here. It took forever and it's sort of sad that none of that work is left to be seen at the very end. The second one I did it somewhat, although I knew from the very start that I honestly wanted the map to be close to only one supercontinent and not having the tectonic plates moving too much. I think I've always resorted to making a supercontinent with Pangea in the back of my head, then scribbling out the tectonic plates and deciding which direction they should be moving and lastly I simply start moving them.
And I usually always make some directions for myself in regards of what climate ends up where across the map, with a few exceptions if magic is involved (which it mostly is in some way since I'm into such things, lol. So for the second map both "The fields of Ashes" along with "The flying forest" are places where magic/curses makes the climate differ slightly from how it should have been without them present).

I supposed that my once upon a time greatest interests when it came to the evolution of Earth's surface, dinosaurs and space has made me unable to overlook those aspects when creating my own worlds and it's stuck with me throughout my life. xD And since my goal is to always make a world that has a history of how it's come to be; I feel like it's very important to bring along a world's evolution as well when creating it.




And hi Troops, welcome to the thread! :D

[cswolf.]

what's your favorite aspect of world-building and/or character design?

Honestly, picking the character's theme song from my wide variety of different musical choices

[tenor]

preface: hi guys :3 i hope yall are all doing well !! <3 dont mind me being almost a whole month late to updating the QOTW, LOLLL - awkwardly dumps a new "question of the week" for us...... >.> -

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i'm new to the writers' abode!

you can call me: Troops, Hougetsu, any of my OCs' names if you don't mind, calling me by whoever is in my icon or signature is fair game as well! ^ ^
my pronouns are: They/It
here's a bit about me/ my writing journey: I started out with roleplaying then got into Object Show Community camps which encouraged me to begin writing. I want to expand out beyond my usual scope of characters and develop how various worlds work whenever they're building off canon or OC related worlds.
anything else? A lot of my worldbuilding and OCs have specific gimmicks to them. Mainly tentacles.

hi troops !!! :O its so awesome having you here in our abode !! i hope you settle in well ^-^

asdfhkljh im not super wellversed in object shows but i do enjoy a good one :3 your ocs you use around your profile always make me giggle when i see you in forum games Cx if you have any ideas you want to throw around, feel free to post here :3 its been a bit quiet lately around cs, but that's alright ^3^

thank you for joining, troops :3 feel free to post here or reach out to me personally if you need or want anything !! :3

I got some catching up to do now (life's messy and my snake is currently sick). Thus I apologize about the coming long post; but this is in order not to double-post. (:

First off, hi and welcome everyone who's joined in here since my last post! Nice to meet you all!




@ten; I'm completely the same! I feel so horrible towards some of my characters due to the mental health-issues I've caused them for the sake of the story's progress ... xD But I still love them and hope they can feel it anyway <3

Omg, I'm so happy to finally meet someone else who also uses dreams as a base for stories! People has always been quite negative towards me whenever I say that some of my stories are dreams that I've written down ... o: So this makes me so happy to know that I'm not all alone! In my opinion dreams can be such good inspiration sources for stories. (: And true, the vidid nightmares aren't that great. xD Strangely enough the stories that I've based off dreams has sometimes gone from very nightmare-like scenarios into lighter ones ... Or basically just been a nightmare all along but still being something I've enjoyed to the point of wanting to memorize. And how I enjoy a nightmare I still don't quite understand myself ... I guess it might not be scary enough for me to dislike it, or something xD

Thank you, hugs <3 I managed to send it it just in time and now it's the waiting while they're judging. (: Apparently they will announce the results in March.

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what's your favorite media trope?
Truth to be told, I do enjoy stories that has somewhat of an open ending that allows the reader to make their own decision of what would happen next based on the clues given by the author. Yet at the same time I hate them, lol. And I really like stories where the evil side wins; it's refreshing compared to the good side always winning. Yet I cannot seem to write such stories myself as of now.

And as for reading (although I cannot imagine myself ever writing such things) is manga where people reincarnate into games/stories and where usually the villain falls in love with the main character or the other way around. I've been reading so much of that since I ended up on sick leave from work due to my burn out. For some reason it's kind of relaxing to read that ... I don't have to use my brain too much and simply follow along. xD


what's your favorite aspect of world-building and/or character design?

World building: Oh I am one of those who truly love spending time in my imaginary worlds and honestly enjoy the entire process so much when playing god and making a world. The only thing I can say that I like the least is making proper maps. I've tried. But it's my number one weak point in my opinion and it takes forever.
I feel more connected to both my characters and my stories if I do take the time to work well enough on the world itself where they live and where the story in question occurs. I enjoy using the aspects of how our own world has come to be when working with my imaginary worlds and looking at our own history to come up with things I want to have where my characters live.

My only two finished attempts in making world maps for two of my imaginary worlds:



Character designs; I enjoy characters that has well-worked personalities and behaviours. That is what I also enjoy the most with developing for the characters I mainly only write about along with how they interact with their surroundings and the people they meet. I rarely focus too much on the outward looks of my characters that I write about and do struggle with describing their looks as I tend to get hung up on the tiniest detail (I tend to only point out eye colour, hair colour/hair length, some piece of clothing and colour of said clothing - but nothing deeper). Thus I always try to focus on trying to make them come across as a person both you and me could run into on the street. My goal whenever creating characters are to make them as realistic as possible. Even though I've met many of them in dreams I'm still somewhat scared of focus too much on their outward looks. Because of that I'm even more terrified of drawing them - even though I often want to draw them. And I still attempt doing it to challenge myself; so here's 37 out of 115 characters that I write stories about:



As for my characters that I either design for the purpose of drawing; or that actually are for stories that are meant to be drawn and not written. Or characters I've adopted from other people's species; I tend to have more of a focus on both their outward appearance as well as how they behave. Because as I said earlier; my goal is always to get them as close to feeling as they are a real-life individual even if they are nothing but a made-up person that doesn't exist in our world or have the strangest looks that never in this lifetime could exist on Earth.

But all in all, I truly do love character development and my main focus is always what's on the inside to make them feel like their own person. I use parts of my own experiences with others, feelings or even things I've been through in this life as inspiration to give them somewhat of a realistic aspect. At times I also use what others has told me or things I've read that other's been through as inspiration as well. And of course I'm using what happens in the story they belong to in order to help develop them as a person and have them grow and evolve along with the story.

HOLY MACARONI , first of all your characters and map skills are mind-blowing. ik this is a terribly short response but im staring at you rn like:

i dont have any patience at all with art, if i dont finish a piece in 3-4 hours i just drop it bc im tired of it or i rush the end :'( i really need to get together refs for all of my characters, or even a mass character sheet like you have :O thatd be SO USEFUL esp with my minor characters .... that i totally dont forget their basic characteristics...... <.<'''

if i don't answer in a timely manner, feel free to slide into my pm's or dm me on discord<3
discord: tento.beans

i'm so happy that there's been so many writers coming into our little abode :>
no worries if you don't wanna post too much, or at all!
this thread is primarily just here to randomly yap when we feel like it about our ideas :>

announcements will include general announcements, and our QOTW (Question of the Week)
if you have any suggestions, feel free to pm or post here and i might use one soon >:)

here's the current QOTW:

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if you're uncomfortable with me putting your answer on the front page, please say so in your post, and i'll respect your wishes!!
if i make a mistake, PLEASE don't be afraid to pm me!!

current prompt:

do you have any non-human characters? if so, what are some of your favorite and/or least favorite things about writing with non-human characters? if not, have you ever considered it? why or why not? :3
(feel free to answer just bits and pieces of this question if you don't want to include too much details!!)

Code: Select all

[b]do you have any non-human characters? [i]if so[/i], what are some of your favorite and/or least favorite things about writing with non-human characters? [i]if not[/i], have you ever considered it? why or why not? :3[/b]

(answer here)

if you'd like to answer more prompts, you can see some of our previous QOTW's in this post! feel free to answer them even if they're no longer the QOTW!! <3

do you have any non-human characters? if so, what are some of your favorite and/or least favorite things about writing with non-human characters? if not, have you ever considered it? why or why not? :3

hehe im gonna start because ive been thinking about this a lot lately. i mainly have human oc's, but i have a few who are hybrids (mostly human with anthro characteristics), and a few who are just feral pets with no dialogue or high importance. ive never been good at writing with feral characters, but earlier last year i experiments with my hybrids and i'm really in love with it. theyre some of my favorite characters ^^ being able to look at a species (most of them dog breeds) and their personalities, then incorporating those characteristics into the attitude and actions of the character aksjdhfkldsa , its so addicting :')

[Gloo Soda]

i'm new to the writers' abode!

you can call me: Gloo is fine (:
my pronouns are: he/they/she
here's a bit about me/ my writing journey:

While I've been writing stuff personally for a long time, CS is where I got my start in posting things in public for other people to read. I'm no artist, but I gained a lot of confidence in developing my writing skills, so I kept at it and eventually it got to the point where I was writing actual fanfiction and posting it for the first time. That was already fun to do, but I was surprised to see it get some positive reception!

As of late though I've been in a bit of a creative slump. But I haven't been active on CS for a while and decided I should come back and try to be active again since it might get the creative juices flowing again. (:

I have OCs as well and hope to be able to write some full-length novels someday!

anything else?

I tend to keep my fanfiction life separate from CS, but I like trying to get involved with species and ARPGs. That's probably what I'll be sharing here for the most part.

[Big Kitty]

do you have any non-human characters? if so, what are some of your favorite and/or least favorite things about writing with non-human characters? if not, have you ever considered it? why or why not? :3
Most of my characters are non-human, actually! Most are cats, some are other animals, and others are mythical "humans" like vampires or deities or simple mages.
My favorite parts of writing non-human characters? Non-human characters just feel more interesting to write than human characters. And I love fantasy books, especially ones revolving around animals, so...I guess I'm kind of writing stories for myself.

[TheCrazyGiraffeLady]

do you have any non-human characters? if so, what are some of your favorite and/or least favorite things about writing with non-human characters? if not, have you ever considered it? why or why not? :3

I have so many feral characters - I actually really struggle with humans, but have ease with ferals!
Writing about ferals just allows me to explore different views, literally! From giraffes and cats to dinosaurs and dragons - each character gives me an opportunity to learn new ways of expressing thoughts, movements and emotions.

It’s weird though - I struggle with humans, and yet my ferals are strangely human in their own ways 😅

I do have 1 humanoid - a demoness called Moon. She is perhaps my hardest character, for she is so closely based on me that it is difficult to write at times! A scientist who wants to be allowed to research all she wants without restrictions, and feels very much alone in the world - very much in tune with me and how I frequently feel.

[Little Trickster]

do you have any non-human characters? if so, what are some of your favorite and/or least favorite things about writing with non-human characters? if not, have you ever considered it? why or why not? :3

I've got a pretty even amount of human and non-human. Least favorite thing is trying to write from that creature's point of view. Sometimes I find it difficult to think "would a cat know what this is?" "oh birds would actually think that's really scary, time to change half the plot" etc.

I do really enjoy the creativity that comes with feral characters as well. You can create new species, mix species, whatever you want! And if its an animal that not many people know about or you made up, you have free reign to decide personality, what they would like, where they would live, etc.


Also I just came up with a great idea! What if we made some little Sig stamps for The Writers Abode? Like this
Granted, I have no idea how hard it is to make one so if that's to difficult then we can wait on that idea

[troops21]

do you have any non-human characters? if so, what are some of your favorite and/or least favorite things about writing with non-human characters? if not, have you ever considered it? why or why not? :3

I don't think I have any true human characters in terms of species. I have a lot of humanoids and the vast majority of my characters are of human intelligence and higher. I even have humans be a major influence in the worlds of specific characters despite them not existing. I also draw human designs for non-human characters as well.

My favourite stuff with non-human characters is how wild you can get with their features. I guess this is more of an art thing but in cases of writing, you get to mix in various animalistic traits to make them more interesting. You can describe their appearance in all kinds of detail and adjust how they deal with the world, especially with other non-human species.

A difficult part about non-human species are how their anatomy works. Trying to imagine them dancing or throwing objects gets a lot harder because they may lack hands. It also can be a bit difficult to imagine the world in their eyes due to our own biases. If they don't show emotion through human-like means, it's harder to empathise with them.

A cool thing I still notice amongst my non-human characters is that no matter how inhuman they are in appearance, they share emotions and experiences with us. I find that sweet.

[Vazchu]

@ten; Aw thank you! And I didn't realize until you pointed it out that I can use the chibis to remind myself of their basic looks. Because I too struggle sometime to remember how some of my minor characters that don't appear too often in the story look. o':
And I wish I was better with art every so often, I'm rather slow with painting and have over the past years realized I've so much that I didn't bother with learning when I first developed my interest in art. For one thing I'm horrible with normal colour pencils because I never bothered with learning how to use them properly in my youth. So I'm currently practice that every now and then when I feel like it. And I'm planning to try to be kinder to myself (I'm much too hard on myself and have too high demand on what I do) and allow myself to simply doodle more and not actually finishing stuff just to practice things that I know I struggle with (like human anatomy and making various expressions on many of my characters).



do you have any non-human characters? if so, what are some of your favorite and/or least favorite things about writing with non-human characters? if not, have you ever considered it? why or why not? :3
Most of my stories that I write have mainly human characters. But just about everyone of them has at least a few characters that are humanoid or non-human. I have a habit of mostly always have at least one dragon in every story and I seem to be drawn to demons and having loads of them in my stories. And quite a few personal made up species.

I'm going to sound crazy and weird. But I really do enjoy writing from a demon's perspective, it's something I do in two of my stories. For some reason it's quite relaxing and like drawing demons, I somehow feel at ease with it (and I think my writing style suits them best). Most demons I write about is written in third person. One of them I write about in second person, he's the most fun and I enjoy him the most (and I to this day still love the comment I got from a classmate: "I love how you're forcing me to be a demon and even though I don't want to be one ... I enjoy it" - which was fun to hear).

[scmarshtacky]

I'm going to sound crazy and weird. But I really do enjoy writing from a demon's perspective, it's something I do in two of my stories. For some reason it's quite relaxing and like drawing demons, I somehow feel at ease with it (and I think my writing style suits them best). Most demons I write about is written in third person. One of them I write about in second person, he's the most fun and I enjoy him the most (and I to this day still love the comment I got from a classmate: "I love how you're forcing me to be a demon and even though I don't want to be one ... I enjoy it" - which was fun to hear). [/color][/size][/center]

My main non-human character is a demon as well. More of the anime-esque style that I picked up from things like Inuyasha and Yu Yu Hakusho way back in the olden days. My guy is definitely, "You humans say that we demons are strange all you want, but from my perspective, it's you all who have a few screws loose." I always enjoy writing the dynamic between him and the others.