Leaderboard

Ok, i know some people have been noticing i have not been in game for a while. It is not for losing interest, but rather a series of unfortunate events (Yes i know i used a book title). for those who have been curious here is the breakdown of everything happening. Starting in August 13, 2019 i was homeless for approximately 2 weeks, Thank you to all who donated to help Emily and i get a place. On August 28, 2019 my dad passed away. My mother and sister had him cremated and the funeral was scheduled to be September 21st. I had made arrangements to go to the memorial. On September 3rd a close friend and co-worker of mine lost her fight with cancer. After dealing with all this i was getting ready to visit my family and attend my dad's memorial. I was at the bus station on September 20th when greyhound messed up the bus trip and in doing so caused my mother to call me and tell me to not come. She said "You are not welcome here anymore." this was out of the blue and a huge shock. On top of which greyhound refused to give me a refund even though they did not give me the trip. Needless to say it has been a very bad several weeks. I am back now and should be back to normal now. Just so you know the only reason i am writing this is because it allows me to let those who are curious what happened, and it also lets me let go of some of the stress all this has caused. I really would like to thank the patience and support of everyone here at RoH Thank you, Kitty

Hi everyone! I wanted to share some of my favorite writing resources that I use when I'm writing! Also, feel free to share your own so they can be added to the list! Resources OneLook Reverse Dictionary : a resource that lets you type in a word or phrase to search for words! Tip of My Tongue : a site that lets you search for words based on parts of a word (great for finding words when you can't remember how to spell things or the entire word) Fantasy Name Generator : you can generate names for pretty much everything here! Facial Expressions Masterlist : facial expression descriptions for every part of the face! Color Masterlist : all the pretty colors! Power Thesaurus : a great thesaurus! Body Language Dictionary : a great resource for showing emotion instead of telling! How to Fight Write : literally everything you need to write realistic fight scenes! Grammarly : an awesome resource to check spelling and grammar! Tools Planning Tools and Worksheets : some tools to help plan your next writing project! Scrivener : a great writing program to help write, organize, and brainstorm your writing all in one place! (also comes with a 30-day free trial! $40.00 after trial) (NANOWRIMO UPDATE: If you participate in Nano, you will receive a 20% discount on Scrivener! And if you win Nano with 50k+ words, you will receive a 50% discount on Scrivener!) Dramatica Pro : also a great writing program for writing and developing your story! (full version is $129.00) Writeway Pro : a free writing program for writers on a budget! OmmWriter : a simple writing program that blocks out distractions! also includes background images, music, and typing sounds! (required minimum payment of $5.00) draw.io : a Google Drive addon that lets you make flow charts and other graphic maps! yWriter6 : a free and totally awesome writing software! E. A. Deverell : technically she is a writer, but she has AMAZING worksheets, articles, and courses on developing writing projects of all kinds! most of her stuff is free too! Fantasy Name Generators : a site with name generators for everything you can possibly think of! Sites/Blogs Nanowrimo : they host writing events throughout the year for writers of all kinds to enjoy! (the most famous being November's Nanowrimo event!) The Writers Helpers : a great advice a blog for writers of any skill level! wordsnstuff : lots of awesome lists and tips! Writing Questions Answered : you can find tons of writing-related questions here! if not, feel free to ask them! StoryOrigin : a place to build email lists, boost sales, and find reviewers! Authors/Writers Alexa Donne : she has a super helpful Youtube channel where she talks writing, publishing, and tricks of the trade! D.N. Bryn : they have a helpful website, as well as a tumblr blog filled with writing tips HERE! Abbie Emmons : she takes a more organized and logical approach to storytelling and is great at explaining the psychology of storytelling! (She also has a blog HERE) Kate Cavanaugh : she does awesome writing vlogs, write-ins, and experiments where she tries writing like popular authors! Jenna Moreci : she makes hilarious videos on writing tropes and has great advice when it comes to story and characters!

I use draw.io (a google doc/drive addon) for flow charts and other graphic maps. Some examples: I'm just scratching the surface with the addon though.

Thank you for sharing @RhemaTom! Added it to the list!

What are all of you awesome writers currently working on? Tell us about your current work(s)-in-progress in this thread!

Congrats on finishing your second novel @Jae Onasi! That's a major achievement! I also know the feeling of starting a fanfic and realizing it is a waaaay bigger project that you first expected! I have an ongoing Harry Potter fanfic that I write for some of my closest friends and it is currently just over 100k words! Also, you should totally start a writing group at your local library! Mine is currently getting renovated (a huge project that is supposed to take almost a year to finish), but once the building is back I'm hoping to start one at my library too!

A good run! The first boss wasn't much trouble at all and we definitely have the upstairs mechanic down, as well as the tank mechanic with the shades... we got really close, with our best attempt being 27%! Once we manage the extra centurion adds, I think we're golden... and then we only have three more bosses! Should be a snap, right? Immediately noticeable improvements over last run: We got the first boss down on our third pull. Last run we burned them on our sixth. More consistently nailing the upstairs mechanic and the shade mechanic, which led to... ...our best attempt was 27%! Last run... 78%. That's amazing! Log: https://www.esologs.com/reports/4XhTczVg9vjynrbB (Jermz subbed in for Arcadian for the last few runs as she had some real life stuff to attend to)

I feel your pain! After losing a major project on a dead laptop, I've always emailed myself copies of major works. Now I save them on a portable hard drive as well as either Google Docs or my email, because I'm just that paranoid about losing something as big as a novel. I just finished my second novel, "The Gryffoniers." My first novel was accidental. It was a KOTOR fanfic that was supposed to be only 30-ish pages long. Around page 50, I realized I'd only gotten about a third of the way through my plot. The story ended up about 200 pages long. It's complete newbie writer trash, and I learned a lot and loved every minute of writing it. I made every mistake possible. I'm ok with that. The second novel is written much better, especially after having the first 2/3rds or so workshopped in a writing group. Sadly, since I moved, I haven't found another writer group close enough to me to join. I might start one myself at the local library.

Name generator for just about everything you could want--names (real and fantasy), places, pop culture, magic items, vehicles, diseases, even meteors. https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/ Master list of facial expressions for when you need something besides "S/he looked at...." https://www.bryndonovan.com/2015/04/05/master-list-of-facial-expressions/ I like some of the other master lists (especially colors and physical descriptions), too. Huge color list: https://kathysteinemann.com/Musings/colors/ Power thesaurus is my new go-to thesaurus besides my huge paperback one sitting on my desk. I like it because it can sort by parts of speech and links antonyms, definitions and examples as well. https://www.powerthesaurus.org/ Non-verbal body language http://bodylanguageproject.com/nonverbal-dictionary/ It gives you the body language and then the emotion, so that if your character crosses her legs, for instance, you can take a look at the entry for "leg crossing" and see what kind of leg cross and even the direction of the feet you want your character to take in order to convey the emotion better. It might take a little bit of reading on the Body Language Project site to learn some of the terminology. Some free worksheets and other useful items: https://allfreelancewriting.com/novel-planning-tools-and-worksheets/ Software: Dramatica Pro--I picked this up after Nanowrimo a few years ago. http://www.write-bros.com/dramatica-pro.html It's more of a theorycrafting approach to story telling, and since I discovered it midway through writing my novel, it didn't have as much utility for me as it might have if I'd used it from the beginning. However, the idea spinner has gotten me out of some spots where I was just stuck and didn't know where to go next. There's also a screen-writing version. I use Scrivener for word processing and organizing my novel. There's often a special during and right after Nanowrimo. https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener/overview If you want a free software package and don't mind that the program isn't being updated anymore, the owner is now giving away the license key and maintaining the site. http://www.writewaypro.com/ I used this one in the past and enjoyed it, but Scrivener offers some more options that I wanted. Writeway is easier to learn, but if you can game, you can handle the tech on either program just fine. *Looks in bookmarks, realizes there are a bazillion more interesting sites....* This is a good start.

I've been feeling the call with all the expansion news, and even before... but RL has dragged me away the past couple of months. I am certainly in agreement that it would be nice to have some like-minded people to game with though. Glad to hear you are making progress on such an epic undertaking! Good luck, and I hope it turns out well! I don't blame you for not wanting to get sucked into an MMO. I think I've been feeling the 'obligation' to play, which actually turns me away from it. I just want to enjoy lotro and experience a lot of the content I haven't done, like the more advanced LI systems, Rohan, Gondor, Morder, etc. But I don't want to feel pressured into it, I just want to log in, relax, and enjoy middle earth. I hear ya. But please don't think I intended to ask for any sort of commitments or anything from anyone. This is just a discussion to measure interest. I didn't want to make a recruitment post without talking to everyone else first. If we go through with this attempt at building a small lotro group that includes non Remnants, don't feel pressured to participate a lot. We'd love to have you whenever you feel like it, but if you have other interests, then you should pursue those! I am in the same boat. I would love more group content just for the experience, not necessarily because I want to 'master' it. Heck, I've still never faced the Balrog at level 50! Thanks for the discussion so far guys. I appreciate the input. Maybe its worth seeing if some people in the Lotro world could use a casual home that is styled/feels like a casual RoH. At the worst, it doesn't work and we don't lose anything but a little time from posting/chatting.

Had a blast running fractals tonight! Glad the snake didn't get me. Thanks to Frag and Princess for instructing!

Oh no! That is every writer's nightmare @Helios! Hopefully that never happens to you ever again! NaNoWriMo is indeed approaching! I'm excited to do lots of extra writing come November!

Both of those sound like awesome ideas @KalianVan! I also totally understand the feeling of having a dozen or so works-in-progress at once! Congrats on starting your 7th novel @RhemaTom! A story about a bounty hunter sounds really fun to write! While I have a handful of projects in the works, my main is a novel about a witch who travels back in time to rescue an old man who committed suicide about 20 years prior and could have saved the world from the plague it is currently facing. However, she ends up going waaaaaay too far back in time, and meets the "old man" when he's about her age. Shenanigans ensue.

I've been using a great resource for authors to share and promote each other's works, called StoryOrigin. It's been a great tool for building up my mailing list. Here is the link: https://storyoriginapp.com/

Christ i can never seem to stop doing new ones is my problem once i hit a block i just move onto the other dozen i have on my pc might need to do a purge soon right now am working on two at the moment the first is a cross between The Convenant in Halo where Humanity is one of the many races under the thrall of the Seers and kinda goes Rise of Atriox in the Halo's War universe only Human and the other is an Anthem/Magic blend where the MC instead of developing the five basic elements specialize in controlling Shadows due to an early trauma so yeah madness!

I've been out of writing practice for a very very long time now... I used to write a lot of poetry as a teen, I might try my hand at some of that again. And with NaNoWriMo coming up, I've been thinking I might also give that another go. I've completed it once before, but unfortunately my computer died and I only had a few scattered chapters of it saved on a USB, which killed my drive to attempt it ever again