Finished my short story but went over the limit by 366 words. I’m getting a few people to read through it to see if its any good and try and trim it down.
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There is some wonderful news regarding the Tumblr site I linked in this month’s original post!
Again, @Fiogan actually brought this to my attention today; 
For those who want a brief heads up: once the soft reopening is done the staff at the site will be reopen for new questions. They include a list of nationalities of the staff on hand that will attempt to answer questions right away!
There will also be a new web site, again with new procedures and rules designed for the modern writer to get help in their writing.
There is some really good news here folks!
Coincidence that this happens when I make this month’s thread? 
Maybe … lol
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I started being active again on October and I think it was a good month as I managed to write without burning out of ideas not overwhelming myself with too ambitious projects on any front of my life.
This month I hope to be a little more organized, and so my goals are to:
- Try and finally finish the introduction of my current WIP, I’ve been wanting to put the character creation somewhere and I just found the perfect place.
- Reach maybe the 50k total word count on my writing, I sure hope I can actually achieve that.
- Try and be more active on the forum as a whole. Some of the WIPs look really interesting and I’d love to give them a try. Still hopping that nothing happens to Raud on that one viking WIP. At least for a while.
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My project’s first chapter is
- Completed*
- Throwing no errors in testing.
I am delighted! Especially after starting over.
It’s a massive confidence boost, especially in terms of dedicating a full writing schedule to the project each day.
*I haven’t made an editing pass yet but honestly I feel like that can wait until I’m deeper into things as a whole.
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Finishing the copy is priority one for myself and other writers. Editing passes come after completion.
The caveat to that is if there is a fatal error or crash that halts progress towards completion.
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My November goals:
- Similar to the previous months, plus review Bare Bones Jam and Ectocomp. Enough said.
And yes, skin tones and hair may not apply to robots. That said, thanks for all the fish.
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When I look at my game, there’s a major amount of characters in it that I would describe as West Asian (two of the LIs, optionally MC, a lot of visitors of the bar MC works in) myself. It’s a very common sight to see a person with West Asian appearance in Russia, and I wanted to reflect that, given the fact my game takes huge inspiration from Russian urban fantasy and is, well, set in a fantasized version of it.
But apparently in English calling a person West Asian means people that are more from Middle East, not from places like Kalmykia or Mongolia. Central Asia. also doesn’t really work because it doesn’t include countries that still make up a portion of Russia’s asian population.
Since the current writing resource is about writing race, how would you resolve this conundrum? I don’t want to just call them asian without specifying: one of LIs is tatar, another is buryat, these are pretty different. Stating that they have appearance common to certain parts of Asia would serve as a useful appearance shorthand, but Asian regions seem to be sorted differently in English.
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I would start here and then use the “traditional” Western regions to form a connection with the lay reader:
-
Central Asia
Commonly understood as comprising: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. -
East Asia
Commonly understood as comprising: China, Hong Kong, Japan, Macau, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan. A common synonym for East Asia is Northeast Asia, although some geographers only include Japan, Korea, and Northeast China in this subregion. -
South Asia
Commonly understood as comprising: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, British Indian Ocean Territory, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. A common approximate synonym for South Asia is the Indian subcontinent which excludes Afghanistan. -
Southeast Asia
Commonly understood as comprising: Brunei, Cambodia, Christmas Island, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, East Timor, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. This subregion can be further subdivided into two smaller subregions: Mainland Southeast Asia (Indochinese Peninsula) and Maritime Southeast Asia (Malay Archipelago). -
West Asia
Commonly understood as comprising: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Cyprus, Georgia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the Sinai Peninsula (Egypt), Syria, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Common synonyms for West Asia are Southwest Asia and the Middle East. The Middle East generally includes Egypt, a transcontinental country between Africa and Asia. -
North Asia
Commonly understood as comprising: Asian Russia. A common synonym for North Asia is Siberia.
There is no uniformity in formal labeling, but these regions should be comprehendable by most.
As an example, you can say: “Name1 is a Tartar from Kazakhstan, in Central Asia.”
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It might be helpful to follow the lead of how people from those ethnicities talk about themselves (with the understanding that no culture is a monolith and there will be variety) and consider how the characters see themselves. If it would then make sense for a character to see themselves as West Asian, I don’t see a problem with the narrative referring to them as such. In general though I think the specificity is what will serve you best - “Tatar” for example gives more information than broader terms so will help build a more detailed picture of the character.
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Huh, Asian countries that are a part of Russia are commonly known as North Asia in English? It’s always been West / South Asia in my native tongue.
But thank you both for your assistance!
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“Siberia” is actually used more than North Asia in post 20th century media, I’d say, but schools still teach it as North Asia.
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Is your native language Russian? I’m thinking that maybe it’s because the western part of Russia is so far north of everywhere else in Asia that the majority of Asia could be considered “South Asia” 
If you’re writing about people from places like Buryatia, Kalmykia, or Mongolia, I think it would not properly convey your intention to most English readers if you refer to them as “South Asian” or “West Asian”. To most English readers, I think South Asia mostly refers to places like India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, etc., while West Asia mostly refers to Arab, Turkish, and Persian cultures.
Central Asia or North Asia could work for your purposes though!
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I hugely appreciate that 
New chapters can sometimes be a tricky transition and I ended up not doing a huge amount on the new chapter yesterday because of a bad night’s sleep and most of what I did was the tweaks on the earlier chapters… but I felt much better today, Chapter 6 has relatively sane code, and it’s been very nice to get back into it. I’m organising myself so that this month I do four days of Honor Bound and one day of outline so that more, so steadier progress can happen on the latter.
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If everyone remembers, one thing I did last month was to take a two week break from Patchwerks to write a Halloween Jam entry for the Jam run by @poison_mara .
I wasn’t the only person that submitted an entry … lots of talented folk took the time to do the same as I did.
I’ve read them all (minus the last entry, which I will be asap) and can say there are some interesting short stories in the bunch!
Now, I’ve voted and I would ask everyone that loves to support the writers here to head over and vote (for minimum 5 of the short games) before next Tuesday or share feedback to encourage the authors and organizer.
I think you’ll find an entry or two that you will really appreciate, I know I did.
. 
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Thank you for the mention. And yes, Reading the entries can be fun and If people after read wants to send feedback to the writers can be really helpful for them and cheer them on.
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With the short story done and waiting on feedback I’ve started the first chapter of A Familiar Magic mainly trying to settle on the stats and how magic and familiars work within this world.
For example the main stats will be…
- WELL - shows your capacity for magic.
- INSTINCT - shows how intuitive magic comes to you.
- TECHNIQUE - shows how ability to weave magic into spells.
- CASTING - shows how quickly you cast spells.
- HEXES - shows how talented you are with hexes. [Note: hexes in this world can be positive or negative]
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Ugh, it took me forever to get able to get to this! TAT And there’s already 36 posts on it, wow. Ya’ll are moving along. XD
Okay, so! November GOALS!
- Finish Chapter One of Phoenix Rising
- add another months worth of posts on Nascent Souls Tumblr
- get my sleep schedule the hell under control (I’m sleeping 4 hours a night right now. TAT)
- Get my honorifics system up and running, because dear god it is murdering me rn.
That’s where my game is set! Woo!!!
A FELLOW TUMBLRINA
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Would a kinda (low-level) steampunk/ magi-tech/ magical realism thing work with a traditional regency/early victorian romance novel setting?
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Yes, absolutely!
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We need more eclectic combos. Seriously. Some genres are really overused to the point where it is difficult to make your work unique.
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