[stmercy2020]

Thanks, airnel.  Glad you liked it!

Sylph is kind of my way of relaxing and unwinding after writing bits of Dicey's or Tris's stories, so I usually try and put together a little Sylph story whenever my shoulders get tense enough to break bricks over… ;D

[stmercy2020]

Oh, I like where this is going.  I can't wait to see what happens when you start introducing fully-fleshed out characters. 😀

[stmercy2020]

So she has either rescued the Golden Child or has awakened some unnatural capacity for regeneration.  ???

Mysteries abound.  8)

Heh.  I've been noticing this Whedonesque tendency to my writing, lately.  I just like writing about teenage superhero women…  I mean, Dicey is kind of like an homage to Buffy (only not funny), while I kind of see Tris as a cross between River/Sydney Bristow/Bob Lee Swagger.  I admit it- I'm bloody weird!

And, no, Tris has no regenerative ability of her own beyond what any fit, active young woman would have.  If I'd done that, I would've been stealing demented20's Jan Caufield from his Power and Fury series… 😉

[stmercy2020]

Feels like the all the three sentence backgrounds for fighting game characters except this time I'm emotionally invested in the main character's travails. "Raised in Special Forces Techniques by father to end up recruited into the hidden world of spies and saboteurs." is given a lot more punch with your deft wordplay.   

Good stuff and a lot of build up to all sorts of clandestine ass-kickery. I'm really digging the Mike Haggar vibe of Duncan as well. Makes sense for him to be paranoid enough about the outside world's intentions to give his wife and kid some self defense knowledge.

Thanks for sharing, I'll keep reading if you keep writing.

Wow!  Thanks, Cowprobe.  As you can see, I've posted the next chapter.  Hopefully y'all will forgive me for the evil things I'm doing to Trista.  I really do love her; I love most all of my fully-fleshed characters!  It's just she's got a long and difficult road to wander before I'm gonna be through with her…

[stmercy2020]

Very nice looking amazon (5'9" and built).

http://www.debrahaley.net/home.htm

Yowza!  You ain't kiddin'!

[stmercy2020]

Yeah, buff Buffy the buffinator.  ;D  Whedon might have gone for it- I have a suspicion that he might actually have enjoyed this sort of thing- but, sadly, I doubt he could have gotten it past his media sponsors.

[stmercy2020]

I dunno.  After watching the video, I would have to agree that Dara probably would have won if the contest was pure strength, but the thing is… Armwrestling has some tricks and some technique to it, as well.  Melissa's technique is pretty far from perfect- you saw how easily she got owned by Andrea- but it was better than Dara's.  She didn't allow Dara to turn her wrist and, in the end, I think Dara pretty much gave up because she didn't have a sense of how to maneuver her hand to take back the advantage.

[stmercy2020]

Next chapter is coming today.  I just have a few more things to clean up, and I'll get it going.

[stmercy2020]

It's funny, actually.  I've used most of the techniques previously described, kind of all depending on the story that I want to tell.

For me, generally, I start with a character concept.  I write that down, making notes about other people as they intersect with the character's life, describing their physical and emotional traits, any unusual skills or abilities they have, etc.

If the story is going to be episodic (one reasonably self-contained story in a post), then I pretty much just write from there.  That's kind of how One Shot happened, and how the early Sylph stories happened.

For serial stories, I generally try to have a very loose outline- usually the beginning is pretty detailed and the specifics of the end are pretty clear, but the events that get the character(s) to that point may be somewhat nebulous.  These stories also tend to have more characters pop up as I go along, thus necessitating more note-taking as I go.  Once I have a general outline, I start filling in the gaps, trying to figure out what things have to happen to get the characters to the various events in the correct emotional, intellectual, and physical state.

I also keep in mind something one of my all-time favorite authors, Lois McMaster Bujold, once said when talking about writing the Vorkosigan series: I imagine the worst thing I could do to a character, than I do it.  I don't always do this, of course (Sylph stories, anyone?), but it is a really effective technique to add emotional clarity and poignancy.

Oh yeah- one other thing- I research.  A lot.  If I don't know something, I look it up and I ask questions until I know enough to write about it confidently.

Just my meandering ramblings…

[stmercy2020]

Yipes!  and, um,  oops?

Fun story so far… looking forward to more!

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