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#pennedpossibilities

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@TimHayes@indieauthors.social · 1d ago
#PennedPossibilities 1001 — Is your MC confident or not? Tell us why. Nathan, my protagonist, was born confident. In some respects you could probably describe him as being a confident trickster rather than a confidence trickster. Vicky, his partner in crime, started off not believing in magic even though she knew her mother was a hereditary witch. When she opens up to the idea in the first book she lacks confidence in her skills and has a tendency to go at like a bull at a gate throwing fireballs around with gusto. As she begins to become more subtle in her use of magic, so her confidence grows but I’ve got a feeling she’s going to end up being over-confident and somewhere down the line it’s going to cause her problems. #bookstodon #WritersOfMastodon #Author #Novel
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@cstross@wandering.shop · 1d ago
#PennedPossibilities 1001 — Is your MC confident or not? Tell us why. Jum is a confidence trickster: you can't be a successful con man and *not* exude unshakable confidence whenever necessary. Tabitha ... works with Jum sometimes, but isn't primarily a con artist: on the other hand, she's led an organized crime family, and you can't *do* that unless you exude confidence—your business rivals will scent weakness and move in for the kill.
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@Firlefanz@writing.exchange · 1d ago
#PennedPossibilities 1000: Speaking of the changes since this project’s start, how do you think you’ve grown as a writer since this hashtag began? Have you published anything? Have your writing habits changed? First of all, thank you so much for these prompts, @floofpaldi@mindly.social . They are so helpful. In the last three years, I've published several books. I set up my own store through PayHip. I'm on track to finish the W&P series. I'm still firmly indie and love it. #WritingCommunity
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@cstross@wandering.shop · 6d ago
#PennedPossibilities 996 — Share some of your favourite lines from your WIP. "Praisebones was notorious for having his old bodies taxidermied and posed in the lobbies and boarding tubes of his ships, to welcome his passengers' mortal remains (and their mourners) aboard. And he had been absolutely livid when, two years earlier, someone had replaced eighteen of his crania with badly printed plastic replicas."
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@Inverse_Shadow@indieauthors.social · 6d ago
#PennedPossibilities 996 — Share some of your favourite lines from your WIP. "...the camera zoomed in on a large wooden statue of a beautiful woman, her gaze staring defiantly forward, her coiling hair seeming to blow back away from her, the woman proudly and defiantly pushing out her naked chest towards the sea. Below this, however, the carved statue's midriff gave way to a mass of long, coiling, surprisingly well-rendered tentacles that once clung artfully to the prow of the Kraken."
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@cstross@wandering.shop · Apr 20, 2026
#PennedPossibilities⁩ 991: Tell us about your WIP. What is the genre or genres? Very loosely, space opera. More specific: it's book 2 of an extended *Stainless Steel Rat* tribute, in which the Trickster King and the Murder Queen take up private investigations, as a life of crime now bores them (they stole a ton of money and retired). Weirding it up: it's taking the piss out of TESCREAL/singularitarians by examining the televangelist-adjacent grifts they succumb to in a far future setting.
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@anderlandbooks@bookstodon.com · Mar 27, 2026
#PennedPossibilities 672 — What’s the current word count for your WIP? #FridaOfHamelin has 75k, but that includes the author's note. It's a little less than the German version. It's also one of my shortest books.
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@klepsydra@wandering.shop · Apr 17, 2026
#PennedPossibilities 988: Tell us about your MC’s bravest moment. Three published novels, a fourth complete one, a fifth in progress, and I honestly can’t answer this prompt without spoiling one of them. Is anyone else finding this difficulty? Surely it must be common for an MC’s bravest moment to form (or at least appear as part of) the climax of their book?
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In reply to
@cstross@wandering.shop · Apr 17, 2026
@klepsydra@wandering.shop Yup, me too! Anyway, what kind of bravery are we talking about? Physical bravery against an assault? Bravery against a threat to self-image (eg. willingness to undergo surgery)? Willingness to speak truth to power? Willingness to face the possibility that one might have been wrong for a very long time? Bravery is a multivalent term, far too imprecise for this kind of question to be meaningful. #PennedPossibilities 988
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@cstross@wandering.shop · Apr 16, 2026
#PennedPossibilities Illustrative quote: "Tabitha walked her dog again. The subsequent funeral was very emphatically a closed coffin ceremony: contagious necrotizing osteosarcoma was nobody's idea of a fun way to end an exit interview ..."
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@cstross@wandering.shop · Apr 16, 2026
#PennedPossibilities 987: "Do any of your characters have an unusual or uncommon pet? What is it? How did they acquire it?" Current WIP: Tabitha has a highly illegal terrier: a cloned descendant of one she originally paid millions for, grown from a smuggled blastocyte with the DRM hacked. Possession of a rebaser hound is a very serious crime, roughly on a par with owning an H-bomb, because they're biological weapon factories. But Tabitha dotes on hers because, when all's said and done: dog.
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@cstross@wandering.shop · Apr 15, 2026
#PennedPossibilities 986: Check-In! How are you enjoying working on the WIP? Not much right now, I had eye surgery three weeks ago and need new prescription lenses so I can't read (or write on screen) clearly at present! Otherwise it'd be going swimmingly and I'm expecting rebound productivity in 3-4 weeks when my eye has settled down and my opthalmologist sees me and prescribes new varifocals.
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@tiefling@bardicperspiration.club · Apr 15, 2026
#PennedPossibilities Check-In time! How are you enjoying working on your WIP? I... am actually working again? And I've been enjoying it a lot. My prob is that instead of like, telling a short spicy story, I've kind of like... found more to it so now its a for real story with spicy parts. And I was hoping to finish soon but... there's so much to talk about. "What is it?" I mean just really basic overview? It's kind of about the not quite relationship between alt Dio and a classmate; how it happened, how it develops, and maybe also how it ends. It's polyamorous in the way I experience it, and I'm trying to make it as true to ppl as I can. I'm not writing smut, I'm writing... life. But since its an alt version of my life, there's some sex and smut involved too, ha ha. I'm not giving a "will be done" day but I've written like, a lot for it lately. And maybe it'll suck but it'll suck in a way that feels right for me. #writing #writers
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@EvanderLFragoso@universeodon.com · Apr 15, 2026
#PennedPossibilities Check-In time! How are you enjoying working on your WIP? I've been enjoying working on it, although it feels like a struggle, and some bits are frustrating me. It's the sequel to my last book, with the focus shifted to a character that I've been wanting to work on an ongoing series with for a long time. This was supposed to be one book, but it's being divided into long parts. I guess it'll have to take a collection of books to finish this monster up. 😅
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@Inverse_Shadow@indieauthors.social · Apr 15, 2026
#PennedPossibilities 985 — How long have you been writing or when did you start? I'm not sure. But I do remember writing some extremely cringe crap when I was a small child that I am deeply thankful will never see the light of day.
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@therivercrow@bardicperspiration.club · Apr 14, 2026
#PennedPossibilities 985 — How long have you been writing or when did you start? I started writing little stories as a small River (a rivulet, or stream perhaps) but then got all clogged up with life detritus and stopped. A few years ago, I met @tiefling@bardicperspiration.club who started sharing her (amazing) writing with me, which encouraged me to write more again too, some attempts at poems and short stories for my Baldur's Gate character, Tempest. Then the Dragon Age hyperfixation took hold of me! Between that, poems, and other stuffs, I'm probably writing more now in the past year or two than I have in a lifetime.
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In reply to
@tiefling@bardicperspiration.club · Apr 14, 2026

@therivercrow@bardicperspiration.club

    • Dio writing not guaranteed to be amazing

#PennedPossibilities

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@cstross@wandering.shop · Apr 14, 2026
#PennedPossibilities 985 How long have you been writing or when did you start? Around age 9/10, school english teacher set my class a term-long project: to write a story that filled an entire exercise book. (I was part of the 10% of my class who filled two.)
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@cstross@wandering.shop · Apr 13, 2026
#PennedPossibilities 984 — Where does your MC feel the safest? Is there a particular person or object that helps them feel safe? (Current duology): Jum feels the safest when he's robbing a bank, burgling a high noble's palace, or hijacking a starship. That's because these situations are dangerous, but predictably so: and he's a repeat offender. The only *person* who makes him feel safe is Tabitha. Mainly because she's in love with him and should come with a sign saying THIS END TOWARDS ENEMY.
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@tiggy@mastodonapp.uk · Apr 09, 2026
#PennedPossibilities 980 — Have you ever had your work plagiarized or stolen? Yes. And several times professional work was used without attribution. I don't know that my stories or poems have been but someone stole a picture of my cat that I used as an icon on FB to use as their icon. FB of course did nothing.
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