Jabbering About a Retelling | Language of Worlds Linkup

So, I turned eighteen this month. NO I WASN’T READY THANK YOU FOR ASKING, LIFE. But anyway, I figured it’d be a nice birthday present to myself to allow me to jabber about my novel here for a bit! Because I don’t think I’ve actually done that much on this blog. I’m just sort of private about my writing, which explains why I made a whole blog to document my writing process. But talking about my writing sort of motivates me, and I need motivation, because I have not been writing in this summer heat. Or doing anything much, tbh. I cannot wait for summer to be over.

Anyway, I discovered a writing linkup called Language of Worlds that gives out several questions for you to answer about your novel every two months, and I figured this was the perfect opportunity to talk about it!

The story is an Arthurian retelling from Mordred’s point of view, and it’s sort of hard to write and I’m not very far in yet, but I love writing it. Mordred has a pretty strong voice, I understand most of the characters, and I enjoy writing politics even though I’ll probably inevitably butcher it. Pro tip: If you want to write court politics, don’t sleep through history class like I did.

1. How long have you been writing this story?

HA HA HA THE QUESTION OF SHAME. Ahem. I think like a year, but I’ve been working pretty intermittently. I’ve been mostly outlining because I’ll put off the actual writing process for as long as I can and YOU CAN’T STOP ME

2. Who’s your favorite character? Why?

No! Don’t make me pick favorites!

Kidding, it’s Mordred. This has could change as I keep writing of course, but I do love the character. Parental issues are so fun to write, and boy does Mordred deliver on parental issues. And he’s a bit paranoid, highly intuitive, and very quiet, and also I gave him bad social skills and an insane sleep schedule so I could relate to him. (Almost all of my main characters have a bad sleep schedule so I can relate to them. I actually made a bad sleep schedule part of my magic system this time around because overkill I guess)

3. Which character do you consider the “goodest of the good”?

Uhh…So, I don’t tend to have a lot of really nice characters in general. I used to feel guilty about having so many antiheroes, especially since I had such a big cast, but then I realized that the characters in Arthurian legend are usually antiheroes. But Lancelot seems pretty sweet so far in my writing. Hopefully he stays that way.

4. Which character is the “baddest of the bad”?

Because they’re all brooding antiheroes and antiheroines, this is also a hard question to answer–who am I kidding, it’s probably Morgause. Just let me live in denial and pretend I did not make the mom the villain (feminism yay). Although I do feel like she’s a likable character if you forget the stuff she did in the backstory? Maybe? Am I delusional? probably

She’s not the main villain at all. I’ve noticed it’s kind of a thing in my writing where I won’t have a clearcut main villain. I have no idea why that is.

5. If you were to have tea (or coffee!) with one character, which one would you pick? Why?

…Probably Guinevere. Or Gareth, or Lancelot, or…Basically, probably one of my chiller characters. Now, I wouldn’t call Guinevere actually chill, but she acts chill, at least.

6. Describe your storyworld.

England, a bit of a mix of time periods, but mostly 12th century because I loved Chretien de Troyes’ stories, Camelot, castles, lots of greenery I think.

7. You’ve fallen into your book! Which place would you be happiest at?

*intense panicking* Just anywhere away from the center of action, please, I do not want to die, but knowing me I always get pushed into the center of action. At least until I decide that I’m out and then lock myself in my room.

Somerset is lovely and I want to go to Somerset irl tho

8. Which place would you like to avoid at all costs? (Or, explore to know its secrets a little bit better?)

Eh, I don’t really care. There are some people I might want to avoid.

9. Share an aesthetic!

So, I don’t know the copyright laws about posting photos that aren’t yours, and I’m a smol moth who doesn’t want to fall afoul of copyright laws and is possibly overthinking this whole thing, but I have a Pinterest board so

10. Share a snippet!

So I have no idea what to put here. But how about this one:

It was just a bad dream. I swayed on my feet, the adrenaline dead and the exhaustion back full force. “I can’t…stand up,” I slurred. Father started toward me. For a moment I saw him like I saw him in my dreams, a bloody king with spear in hand. Bloody just like the house. But then he turned into Mother. “You were right,” I told her. “If I couldn’t stand up, I shouldn’t have tried to ride a horse.” She walked toward me slowly, her eyebrows knitted together in confusion. That was odd. I thought she lifted an eyebrow when she got confused or surprised.

Now I’m panicking and wondering if maybe that was the worst passage I could have possibly shared, but I know it’s not the worst passage I could have possibly shared because there is a LOT of bad writing in this baby draft and I love it.

For some context I…I feel like it’s sort of hard to give context on this, but that’s just because I’m bad at giving context. But basically Mordred a) tends to think he can do things when he’s sick or injured and it doesn’t always work out, and b) Mordred so far is spending most of this book out of it and seeing things. It’s fun (for me).

This is such an awful, awful book and I LOVE IT. I do want to start writing again. I love writing something stupid and trashy. I love this book. I think I am motivated. So mission = accomplished (it’s only really accomplished if I write, though, so we’ll see how it goes on that front).