We like to talk a lot about the development of our stories, it interests us greatly from a craft perspective and we have always been in love with "Dev diaries". We hope insight into our work is interesting!.
Hypothermia 18/01/26 Recently we've picked up an older story of ours: "Remember the Bittersweet Tomorrow", we were inspired by some fanfiction we read on Ao3 (as we so often are) and have decided to try develop the romance plot a lot more in hopes of making a breakthrough in continuing the story. A lot of our struggle comes from Lillith being a rather passive protagonist and Ava being severely underdeveloped despite being the "lead" of the pair. We are trying to remedy this by making Lillith a little more proactive and making decisions about Ava's character and locking it in so we can experiment better by feel as we write more. Bittersweet overall is probably our favourite story we've come up with. Don't get us wrong, Imagine is still our baby and we have a soft spot for District:0 but the atmosphere and themes of Bittersweet are our favourite. We've started writing short scenes out of order about Lillith and Ava to better get an idea of how their dynamic will evolve as the story progresses, it has been helpful for both figuring that out but also combatting art-block. Highly recommened writing scenes out of order if anyone is struggling to write a scene following the linear flow of their story. A tough challenge we've had while writing Bittersweet is if we can nail the darker themes of suicide in a respectful way. Maybe the way we approach it is fine, and the ideas we have about how these characters cope with the desire to not exist or desire to kill themselves are logical. But its a completely different ball-park when trying to get the correct words out to covey these emotions of extreme pain and self-hatred, or even the physical motions of attempting suicide. Anyway, thats what we've been up to lately. Happy late new year and all that business. Livid, signing off.
Effortless 14/01/26 A lot of time has recently been poured into the creation of District:0 which isn't a new story by any stretch of the imagination but it is the one that has changed the most. Paired with a main character who also holds the record for the most alterations/changes made to them; Leon. So far a lot of strife has been with what kind of story we want it to be, a series? a single book? a short story? We've been debating over it quite a lot as we've been struggling with other aspects of the plot, and have been hoping that solidifying District:0's story identity would give us some headway. So far we've settled on a single book, a shorter one that would be more suitable for our short story writing style. While District:0 was always planned on being shorter than Fall of Fate & Rise of Destiny, we've always wanted to make a book series similar to that of Skullduggery Pleasant (our favourite book series!). However with the way our stories are panning out so far, we think that none of our current stories we've come up with are suitable for a long form series. Maybe a duology or trilogy at maximum, but certainly not a series. District:0 could have easily been a short story which is honestly something we might try our hand at if we get stuck again, might help hash out the plot somewhat. In good news, we've been developing the main cast more and we are genuinely excited to see them grow as the story progresses. More updates on that soon! Our other story Imagine got past its inital draft which we are excited about, its taken years to get there so we are relieved to finally have something tangible to work with. Bittersweet has remained stagant as we struggle to write front and centre romance organically. So we will continue to pour our efforts into District:0. Livid, signing off.