The Mer-Writers Thread

[deepblue]

I thought it might be nice to have a place where those of us who write about mers and/or other sea-beings can come together and talk about writing and the worlds we are creating. We could talk about the stories we're working on, copyright issues, our favorite websites for writers, inspiration, etc.

Anyone game?

[Mermaid Varshana]

Absolutely. I write mostly for catharsis and fun, but that doesn't mean the professionals can't play too

[Ashe]

Great idea! I write a lot of poetry, and some very small short stories. Can't wait to show off a bit! xD Jk, I'm not that amazing :P

[Alveric]

Certainly!

[deepblue]

Absolutely. I write mostly for catharsis and fun, but that doesn't mean the professionals can't play too

I write because when it's there, I have to. haha. I do love it, and I'd love to be published some day. I might self-publish. Not sure yet. I think I should finish what I'm writing first. heh.

Great idea! I write a lot of poetry, and some very small short stories. Can't wait to show off a bit! xD Jk, I'm not that amazing :P

I'm not amazing either... haha, I used to be pretty damn good, but it's been a long time and starting again is really not the same.

Certainly!

Yay!

Are any of you working on anything specific right now? Anyone have anything they can share?

[Alveric]

Just the same two projects I've been working on for the last year and a half:

The Girl With the Sea-Green Eyes The sequel to The Accidental Mermaid. I'm working on chapter sixteen, about two thirds done.

Spindrift A science-fiction, romance, adventure with Merfolk, Centaurs and space pirates (No ninjas...yet). I'm about three-quarters done.

[Mermaid Varshana]

I went for...goodness...six years before I started writing again? I realized I had a gift for erotica and romance. It's helped me deal with a lot stuff from growing up in repressive Sunday school. I usually write 100% original stuff, but I'm sort of working in the H2O universe right now, a generation later and kind of exploring what-ifs that the show could have run with but wasn't able to. It's more for 20-somethings in the way that Harry Potter grew up with its audience. Which is cool. Lots of established authors still do fanfiction.

[deepblue]

Just the same two projects I've been working on for the last year and a half:

The Girl With the Sea-Green Eyes The sequel to The Accidental Mermaid. I'm working on chapter sixteen, about two thirds done.

Spindrift A science-fiction, romance, adventure with Merfolk, Centaurs and space pirates (No ninjas...yet). I'm about three-quarters done.

I see your link in your sig- when I'm not popping back and forth between writing and mernetwork, I really need to check it out. I love the idea of Spindrift. You never know when it comes to Ninjas. They could be there already, you just don't know it.

I'm sort of working in the H2O universe right now, a generation later and kind of exploring what-ifs that the show could have run with but wasn't able to. It's more for 20-somethings in the way that Harry Potter grew up with its audience. Which is cool. Lots of established authors still do fanfiction.

I love that idea. I wish they'd do it for real and put it in Netflix. Even better, I hope you rock it and submit it and they make your words into a show.

I'm working on a story about a young woman from a small mer society who's executed for revealing herself to a human, however accidentally- but her life is saved at the last minute and she's found herself on land, in human form, and the person she accidentally revealed herself to is about to come into play. The last time she'd been on land was to mate and the man she was with that night and his uncle, who used to know a mermaid, are her allies. The story also involves her species being in danger from pollution and because man can go deeper into the sea than ever before, and will explore some of the myths of mermaids including the full moon effect, mermaids eating the men they mate with, and the idea that there are no mermen, and more.

In the end, I know where this story is going, but getting there is not as easy as it used to be. I stopped writing most of the time for about ten years, with only a little something here and there.

[Azurin Luna]

I'm writing two different stories at the moment. My story writing comes and goes so I'm not making alot of progress, but it's fun to do. One of the stories is about our world which is falling apart because to few people believe in magic. A few creatures from the other demention are trying to keep the world in one piece. The other story is about a girl who gets stranded on an island after a plane crash. She finds a boy there, who is more then just a boy, as she soon finds out that he is a merman.

[AniaR]

Well, I wrote my book, and I'm working on a follow up. But I've also been tinkering with a story/script for a while now. I'd really prefer to have it as a graphic novel, but I want to actually pay an artist to do it. I've also been reading and writing fanfiction since I was 12 and didn't even know fanfiction was a thing... HAHA. guilty pleasure. I take years off in between sorta deal, but I always end up coming back to it. Moreso because I get bored when my fav shows or authors go on hiatus. I go read the works of others and then I get inspired XD For anyone who doesn't know Amazing purchased the rights to several tv/book series, and are getting more, so people can publish their fanfiction and get paid for it! Crazy!

[deepblue]

Ha, I did the same thing when I was 13. Wrote Starman fanfic, and then years later saw the term for the first time. At that time, I did write a little - I found it a good way to keep the creative juices flowing, and I put a werewolf on the USS Voyager. I actually got nominated for some best of the web contest for ST:Voy fanfic... but there were pros in that contest, and one won. Which I don't think is fair, but that's another sibject. That was 13 years ago, and the last long thing I wrote til now. O.o

I hope... so far I have 30 pages and it feels pretty dang good.

I heard about the Amazon fanfic situation. I think I have mixed feelings about it, but it also makes sense this would happen. The amount of ff on the web is astounding.

How do you all help yourself get inspired? You know, there are the inspirations that just happen... and then, there are the things I know will get my writer's blood moving. I'll have a third of my screen playing Splash, or Man from Atlantis, or Aquaman, or something like those... and without even paying attention to it, I'm just inspired.

[Mermaid Momo]

I'm trying to write a script and story for a graphic novel I want to do, but I just can't seem to get anywhere! (I guess having too many projects at once will do that to you)

[Mermaid Varshana]

I love that idea. I wish they'd do it for real and put it in Netflix. Even better, I hope you rock it and submit it and they make your words into a show.

That would be nice, wouldn't it? There are actually two distinct eras I'm writing in. One is more child-oriented. I loved the idea of Cleo and Lewis having been friends since kindergarten, so I decided to go off on the what-if concept of a human child "Growing Up Mermaid" with a bunch of merlings as friends. A major event years earlier that gets referenced several times, which I'll eventually write down, caused the girls and their life partners to have to flee the Gold Coast for the sake of their families.

At first, I didn't think to use the girls' mermaid powers as heritable, but it makes sense if every cell in their body is affected by the transformation. "So wouldn't mermaids be common if they reproduced?" you ask. I say, "Dude. There were 5 mermaids walking and swimming around just on the Gold Coast within a few years." There's Cleo and Lewis' daughter, who is a few years older than the other merlings (I am SO, SO GLAD that the final episode fixed things between those two characters; you have no idea). I thought that having to live with a massive secret, the protective dad you know Lewis would be, and the temperamental mother that Cleo would be, would probably make any kid they'd have moody and ornery. So she's based both in personality and appearance on Naruto (yes, Cleo is very dark complected, but remember her sister is also a blonde). The human boy is this really quiet, sweet-tempered aspiring ballet dancer who uses his physical and academic achievements as ways to get his parents' attention, because they're old, have grandkids, and don't really have the time or the energy for him. So, this merfamily comes along when he is young and provides this magical distraction from "real life" for over 8 years. I'm working on a series of short stories that chronicles all their adventures.

The other era works on the other side of H2O, the adult side, which reunites the children after about 12 years of being forcibly separated. The boy, a man now, is a successful albeit unhappy lawyer, who is not sure anymore whether or not all those whimsical adventures of his childhood actually happened. This series of short stories is going to function more on overcoming the jadedness of adulthood and handling the responsibilities of such with grace and playfulness.

I feel that budget restrictions limited what the show could do. I WANT to see the majesty of the ocean. I WANT to see Blue Planet-like shit where they're caught in a massive bait ball and they're dodging sharks, dolphins, sailfish and a giant damn baleen whale. So we've got a show with mermaidsand magic? Congratulations, you just opened up a world where basically anything can exist, as long as you don't go off into Charmed and Buffy land where you have fairies, vampires and demons attacking your otherwise normal mermaids. The whole show is about balancing real life with fantasy.

I'm working on a story about a young woman from a small mer society who's executed for revealing herself to a human, however accidentally- but her life is saved at the last minute and she's found herself on land, in human form, and the person she accidentally revealed herself to is about to come into play. The last time she'd been on land was to mate and the man she was with that night and his uncle, who used to know a mermaid, are her allies.

I gotta say, that's a really cool concept. How do mermaids lose their fins in your world? Do they eat humans like sharks do?

[Mermaid Varshana]

I heard about the Amazon fanfic situation. I think I have mixed feelings about it, but it also makes sense this would happen. The amount of ff on the web is astounding.

It's a mixed bag right now, and fanfiction is still looked upon by many self-righteous writers as "writing with training wheels." We've been marketing fanfic for years. We just haven't been calling it that. Big Movies are dying, books are being self-published, and TV is becoming more fragmented and niche. Give it 5 years. Fanfiction will be a HUGE, out-of-the-closet market.

How do you all help yourself get inspired? You know, there are the inspirations that just happen... and then, there are the things I know will get my writer's blood moving. I'll have a third of my screen playing Splash, or Man from Atlantis, or Aquaman, or something like those... and without even paying attention to it, I'm just inspired.

I get a lot of inspiration from music. I have a whole soundtrack to go with every series I write in. I watch a lot of nature documentaries. A huge scene came to me in the tune of "Now is the Start" by A Fine Frenzy while watching the epic Blue Planet bait ball episode.

[Alveric]

My first experience with fan fiction was when I was 12 (that would be 1968). I sent the synopsis of a Star Trek script I'd written to Paramount. They didn't accept it but sent me a Star Trek writers' guide and a uniform badge. I sometimes dream what it would have been like if they'd taken it. Nerdvana!

[Mermaid Dottie]

Well, at least they didn't steal your idea!
My friend's mom sent a couple of Voyager ideas to them, and they used them without crediting her.
I still love them, though.

My first Fanfic was actually for a Manga series called DNAngel, and my second was for the Inheritance Cycle.
Both incompleted, like all of my other stories, including the unicorn book I started when I was 12, then lost when the computer died.

[Alveric]

I'm sure they turned it down because, having been written by a pre-teen boy, the special effects alone would have bankrupted the studio.

[deepblue]

I actually wish there was a show I'd love to write of right now. As much as I love the few shows I watch, I'm not inspired to write fanfic of them, but it was fun.

I feel that budget restrictions limited what the show could do. I WANT to see the majesty of the ocean. I WANT to see Blue Planet-like shit where they're caught in a massive bait ball and they're dodging sharks, dolphins, sailfish and a giant damn baleen whale. So we've got a show with mermaidsand magic? Congratulations, you just opened up a world where basically anything can exist, as long as you don't go off into Charmed and Buffy land where you have fairies, vampires and demons attacking your otherwise normal mermaids. The whole show is about balancing real life with fantasy.

Oh - I agree, they could really get amazing with it if they wanted. Which is what I love about writing fiction set in worlds where anything can happen, there are no fx restrictions.

I gotta say, that's a really cool concept. How do mermaids lose their fins in your world? Do they eat humans like sharks do?

Thanks. The way they lose their fins actually evolves in the tale, so I don't want to go into it here right now, until I have settled it in the story itself.

They ate their mates by drowning them, then taking them deep and eating them like anything in the sea would. My creatures don't call themselves mers, but humanity does, and when in that form, they have the teeth and the claws necessary to rip something to shreds.

They're not scary mermaids, they're just equipped for life in the deep sea. The eating of mates, is however, in their past and frowned upon by most, missed by others.

[Mermaid Momo]

Well, at least they didn't steal your idea!
My friend's mom sent a couple of Voyager ideas to them, and they used them without crediting her.
I still love them, though.

My first Fanfic was actually for a Manga series called DNAngel, and my second was for the Inheritance Cycle.
Both incompleted, like all of my other stories, including the unicorn book I started when I was 12, then lost when the computer died.

Woot! Dnangel! The first fanfic I ever wrote was last school year where we had to rewrite the great gatsby using different characters and I used the avengers.

[deepblue]

THAT is awesome.

My creative writing class in high school gave us the assigment to modernize a favorite classic tale, fairy tale or short story. I did The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, in which Braum Bones was a mechanic, Ichabod, a computer programmer, and Katrina, the daughter of a software mogul. The Headless Horseman was a Headless Race Car driver in a black muscle car. Those assignments are so fun.