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Sometimes, a character will come to you with her story in her hands. You know who she is, and what she wants, as soon as you know her name. These are the easy ones. Then, there are characters like my Amelia here, who kick around in your head for years before you can pin them down. I knew a few of the basics right away. She has always been an airplane-obsessed cat who lives in the middle of a modern city. But why? And what was she going to be doing? I don't know if I have all of the answers yet. Part of the joy of writing for a character is finding out all of her secrets. But I have enough, now, for a sort of an introduction, so here she is.
By the way, no, I don't know how real remote-controlled airplanes work. I didn't want to get too far into the technical side of things, because the actual plane is secondary, at best, to the story. But if I've made any glaring errors, I'd be glad of any help to correct them.
By the way, no, I don't know how real remote-controlled airplanes work. I didn't want to get too far into the technical side of things, because the actual plane is secondary, at best, to the story. But if I've made any glaring errors, I'd be glad of any help to correct them.
Category Story / General Furry Art
Species Housecat
Size 120 x 120px
File Size 42.6 kB
Oh, good. I've always kind of wanted to get into RC airplanes, but I've never really had the money, and I don't think I'd do so hot at assembling them. Models and machines are not my friends. So I decided that fiction would be the next best thing.
Thanks so much for taking a look, too!
Thanks so much for taking a look, too!
That was a really, really sweet story. I absolutely loved it. There are a few tiny things you might still want to work a bit on, such as referring in a paragraph to one girl, then starting the new paragraph with a spoken line by another girl without showing who was that one that spoke it, but that's just very minor things.
The build-up was absolutely great. You are giving a lot of information, but in small doses at a time so that it never becomes overwhelming, and you leave enough in the dark still to keep the reader guessing. There is a lot of potential here for a good number of following stories to bring all of the not yet told information out into the open, and I really beieve these characters can do that.
*giggles*
I love the interaction between Amelia and her sister Ruth, too. They're really cute together! All of them, Leslie as well, look like very lovely and interesting characters, with a lot of interesting facts about their personalities and their likes, dislikes, quirks and histories, some of which we already got to see here, some of which we didn't yet. I will definitely be looking forward to reading more about them!
The build-up was absolutely great. You are giving a lot of information, but in small doses at a time so that it never becomes overwhelming, and you leave enough in the dark still to keep the reader guessing. There is a lot of potential here for a good number of following stories to bring all of the not yet told information out into the open, and I really beieve these characters can do that.
*giggles*
I love the interaction between Amelia and her sister Ruth, too. They're really cute together! All of them, Leslie as well, look like very lovely and interesting characters, with a lot of interesting facts about their personalities and their likes, dislikes, quirks and histories, some of which we already got to see here, some of which we didn't yet. I will definitely be looking forward to reading more about them!
Aw, thanks, I'm really glad you liked it. I do hope that this story will be the springboard for a lot of other work, featuring all of these girls, plus the new ones I just adopted, when I can work them in. So I didn't want to give everything away, and I wanted to leave enough that it didn't feel like the story was finished yet. Which is not usually what you're supposed to do with short fiction, but this time I thought it worked well enough. I hope I can answer a lot of the questions this story brings up in the future, too.
Thanks so much for reading, and for all of your comments!
Thanks so much for reading, and for all of your comments!
Yes, I think you did really well at that. Way I see it, this story looks perfect as the introduction, a preliminary if you will, to a series that centers around these characters and the ones you adopted since they live in the same city. You wouldn't even need to follow a specific plotline, it can be just a row of random stories; if they stay in some kind of chronological order, you have yourself a very nice series that will allow your characters to grow and develop
You're so welcome! I will really be looking forward to seeing what else you will do with these girls! It would be great to see them feature in the Thursday Prompts, too
You're so welcome! I will really be looking forward to seeing what else you will do with these girls! It would be great to see them feature in the Thursday Prompts, too
Praise from 
velvetkittie is praise indeed! I've been following her work for some time now, and she has been kind enough to read and comment on a lot of my own work. She's a really talented storyteller, and one of the best I've found here on FA. As for my own work, I've been writing for a good twenty years now, and doing so seriously for at least ten. I've had a lot of help in that time, and it's the one thing in the world I care most about. It's great that it shows through in my work, and I hope that it reflects kindly on all those people who have been kind enough to help me. Thanks so much for passing the kind words along, and I'll be sure to take a look at your own work in turn.
velvetkittie is praise indeed! I've been following her work for some time now, and she has been kind enough to read and comment on a lot of my own work. She's a really talented storyteller, and one of the best I've found here on FA. As for my own work, I've been writing for a good twenty years now, and doing so seriously for at least ten. I've had a lot of help in that time, and it's the one thing in the world I care most about. It's great that it shows through in my work, and I hope that it reflects kindly on all those people who have been kind enough to help me. Thanks so much for passing the kind words along, and I'll be sure to take a look at your own work in turn. 
Thanks for looking at my humble excuse for a story in progress. Just one question...how do you manage to get what you know in yoru head as the story ...down on the paper ,or in this case computer, the same way you see it in your head? With me I can see the whole story play out like a movie in my head..but then I have a bit of a hard time getting it right when I try and write it...bah...guess it takes practice and looots of rewrites lol :) Thanks again!
Tanna you are not the only one that has a story come to them like that! That is exactly how my brain works and I have issues with getting what I see in my minds eye down in printed form so it's near what I saw... Then I have to fight with myself as to how much detail do I put into it... In my story Time and Space in the opening flying scene I wanted to get into a lot of details but I took a lot of it out because it didn't add much to the story.... If anything it took away from it and may have made it a little boring for some readers....
Femm
Femm
It can be really hard to get a story down just so. Even when the ideas flow freely, it takes a lot of time, and patience, to put a good story together. Revision really is your best friend, and it helps a lot if you're willing to let other people read your work, and give you solid, constructive criticism. What I would suggest, to get your story written, is first of all to just relax and enjoy it. The rough draft is where you can just let it all out. Write what you see in your head. Don't look back at what you've written until you're completely finished. Don't worry about things like whether it's going to be a short story, or a novel, or even what genre your story might fit into. There's a reason why writing a rough draft sometimes gets called the purge phase.
Then, let it sit for a while. With short stories, I like to let it sit for about a month before I look at what I've written. For novels, I've gone up to a year. You don't have to take so long, but let it rest. Revisions are best done when you can take a fresh look at things, and when you have a little distance between yourself, and the thoughts and feelings you had while writing. When you do start revising, keep the story you want to tell in mind. Don't be afraid to cut things out, or switch them around. I know your characters are important to you, and you want them to be important to your readers. But only keep what's relevant to the story. If we don't need to know who their mother is, or why they are afraid of the dark, then let it go. You can always tell another story later.
I hope some of this helps, and I haven't covered too much of what you already know. I have a bad habit of falling into Teacher mode at the drop of a hat. Most of all, good luck with your writing!
Then, let it sit for a while. With short stories, I like to let it sit for about a month before I look at what I've written. For novels, I've gone up to a year. You don't have to take so long, but let it rest. Revisions are best done when you can take a fresh look at things, and when you have a little distance between yourself, and the thoughts and feelings you had while writing. When you do start revising, keep the story you want to tell in mind. Don't be afraid to cut things out, or switch them around. I know your characters are important to you, and you want them to be important to your readers. But only keep what's relevant to the story. If we don't need to know who their mother is, or why they are afraid of the dark, then let it go. You can always tell another story later.
I hope some of this helps, and I haven't covered too much of what you already know. I have a bad habit of falling into Teacher mode at the drop of a hat. Most of all, good luck with your writing!
Wow that was honest;y some good advice :) i do have a problem with detail at times, adding way too much because I want my readers to see the things I do exactly the way I do. But you do have a point...and Femmpaws said it too..too much detail can be bad because it gets boring to read why this and that is in the story only to have it become irrelevant two pages later. I will have to work on that :)..Ohh perhaps I could put up my second story I am working on and see what people think about that one! I love hearing what people think, good or bad, as it makes me a better writer.
Very good, it had a nice flow to it and in a number of ways very touching....
I do happen to enjoy flying and aircraft and part of that is the RC planes as well. I think you did a good job of it seeing how if you get into the tech to much people get lost in it and it takes away from the story...
Very nice short read.
Femm
I do happen to enjoy flying and aircraft and part of that is the RC planes as well. I think you did a good job of it seeing how if you get into the tech to much people get lost in it and it takes away from the story...
Very nice short read.
Femm
Thanks so much! I'm glad you liked it! With the model planes, I wanted to make them important. Flying is Amelia's greatest passion, after all. But I try to avoid going into too much technical detail, even if I know it, unless it's necessary for the story. I much prefer to focus on the people, rather than the machines. At its heart, the story is about falling in love, not model airplanes.
Thanks again!
Thanks again!
I think I probably did take too long to mention what she was. I always have a bit of a problem trying to work species in initially. I don't know why, but it always kind of seems a bit hokey to start off with something like, "Amelia, a fluffy white cat..." But maybe I've been hanging around too many literary snobs. It's something I do need to work on. Though, as you say, who a character is matters more than her species.
I'm getting better at dialog, I think. I've learned quite a bit about how to handle it, and how to bounces words between my characters so it generally advances the plot, but still seems like regular conversation. Of course, I think I still have a long way to go, but I doubt anybody is ever really finished learning how to write. I'm really so glad you liked these characters, too. Needless to say, I'm rather fond of them, myself. Amelia has actually been someone I've had in mind for a very long time now.
I'm actually planning on doing more with these characters, by the way. This is just the first story with them, so I kind of left a few things a little vague, to give myself somewhere to go. Naturally, I hope that writing more will make them stronger, instead of simply wrecking the emotional impact of this story. After some thought, I've decided to keep these three girls as the characters I will write about for Fur Affinity. With my novels, and any other books I might write, I want to work more toward getting them traditionally published. Though, naturally, good friends like you will be given the chance to read them beforehand, if you want. But I don't want to ignore those people here who enjoy my work, so I thought that it would be nice to have a stable of characters who could still play on FA. I'm throwing my brand-new bunny girls into the mix, too. I've got a second story in the works, and they're blending in surprisingly well.
Where did this story come from? Actually, that's a good question. I've had the idea for Amelia for a long time now, though she was originally going to be a bit different. She was kind of born from my fascination with groups like the Women Airforce Service Pilots who served during the Second World War. They not only flew every kind of aircraft the US Air Force possessed, in every kind of mission save actual combat, but they trained male pilots as well. So Amelia's story was originally going to be set back in the 1940's, with her doing something along the lines of serving with the WASPs, or trying to get in. But the more I worked with her, the more I realized that first, a story like that would take an exhausting amount of research, and second, she's really not a military sort of kitty at all. The WASPs were actually a civilian force. Unlike other Women's groups that served at the time, they were never granted military status. But they still flew warplanes. That was something I didn't want my kitty to do. So I turned her interest to civilian aircraft instead.
The romance with Leslie kind of sprang up out of nowhere. I knew she was going to collapse in the park, but it wasn't until I turned the person who helped her into a potential romantic partner that the story took off. I guess I'm a tad predictable with some things, after all, but I've never been able to resist the idea of a sweet little romance here and there. *Grins* Long winded, and probably duller than dirt, but there you go.
Thanks so much for reading, and for all your comments. I'm really so glad you liked it!
I'm getting better at dialog, I think. I've learned quite a bit about how to handle it, and how to bounces words between my characters so it generally advances the plot, but still seems like regular conversation. Of course, I think I still have a long way to go, but I doubt anybody is ever really finished learning how to write. I'm really so glad you liked these characters, too. Needless to say, I'm rather fond of them, myself. Amelia has actually been someone I've had in mind for a very long time now.
I'm actually planning on doing more with these characters, by the way. This is just the first story with them, so I kind of left a few things a little vague, to give myself somewhere to go. Naturally, I hope that writing more will make them stronger, instead of simply wrecking the emotional impact of this story. After some thought, I've decided to keep these three girls as the characters I will write about for Fur Affinity. With my novels, and any other books I might write, I want to work more toward getting them traditionally published. Though, naturally, good friends like you will be given the chance to read them beforehand, if you want. But I don't want to ignore those people here who enjoy my work, so I thought that it would be nice to have a stable of characters who could still play on FA. I'm throwing my brand-new bunny girls into the mix, too. I've got a second story in the works, and they're blending in surprisingly well.
Where did this story come from? Actually, that's a good question. I've had the idea for Amelia for a long time now, though she was originally going to be a bit different. She was kind of born from my fascination with groups like the Women Airforce Service Pilots who served during the Second World War. They not only flew every kind of aircraft the US Air Force possessed, in every kind of mission save actual combat, but they trained male pilots as well. So Amelia's story was originally going to be set back in the 1940's, with her doing something along the lines of serving with the WASPs, or trying to get in. But the more I worked with her, the more I realized that first, a story like that would take an exhausting amount of research, and second, she's really not a military sort of kitty at all. The WASPs were actually a civilian force. Unlike other Women's groups that served at the time, they were never granted military status. But they still flew warplanes. That was something I didn't want my kitty to do. So I turned her interest to civilian aircraft instead.
The romance with Leslie kind of sprang up out of nowhere. I knew she was going to collapse in the park, but it wasn't until I turned the person who helped her into a potential romantic partner that the story took off. I guess I'm a tad predictable with some things, after all, but I've never been able to resist the idea of a sweet little romance here and there. *Grins* Long winded, and probably duller than dirt, but there you go.
Thanks so much for reading, and for all your comments. I'm really so glad you liked it!
Oh yes. I don't know if I could manage to get a novel out of these characters, but they've all got more stories to tell. I just started a second one last night, focusing on little sister Ruth and her two bunny friends. I'm only five pages in, but so far I'm enjoying it quite a bit. New characters are always so much fun to play with!
I'm not at all worried about when you'll get back to me on Jess, kitty. It's a big task, to get through an entire novel and to try to find something to say about it. It's not something I expected you to be able to get through in no time at all.
I'm glad you enjoyed reading about where the story came from. I do like talking about my characters, and I can go on for pages, if I'm given half a chance.
I'm not at all worried about when you'll get back to me on Jess, kitty. It's a big task, to get through an entire novel and to try to find something to say about it. It's not something I expected you to be able to get through in no time at all.
I'm glad you enjoyed reading about where the story came from. I do like talking about my characters, and I can go on for pages, if I'm given half a chance.
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