Iris

Iris

Honestly, I constantly forget Iris exists but I was just writing a chapter with her and remembered she’s one of my favorite OCs.

Iris is a lady so she has a lot of power in the social system, but she’s very far down the line of succession. Unlike Daron, who is supposed to be the perfect image of a lady, Iris is very mischievous. She’s also lowkey a pirate, but we don’t learn that until much later.

Iris has one of my favorite designs, partially because she looks similar to me, but I also had a lot of fun with her look. She has dark brown skin and waist-length twists. She has orange eyes and red runes tattoed up her arms and across her chest.

Iris’ clan is very important to her character. The Arsonite Clan is the only clan that originated outside the mainland, so they have a different culture than the other clans. The Aquatic Clan stole their land, which started a war between all of the clans. After the war, the Arsonites were left with no land, money, or allies, and their language was on the cusp of death because they had to assimilate. Iris is very involved in her culture. She’s fluent in Arsonean and is experienced in their traditional dance.

The Arsonite Clan being left with nothing is how they ended up as pirates. They sink human ships despite the fact that humans and witches are not supposed to interact at all, and keep the spoils. When their betrayal is discovered, Iris shows absolutely no remorse. She stands by what they did to survive (as she should). I honestly want to write a spin-off of Iris’ pirate adventures when I’m done with the main story.

Iris has had a lot of development since the first draft. I didn’t know how to characterize her mischievousness, so she ended up coming off as tone-deaf and kind of annoying. In my second draft, there’s more of a balance between her causing chaos and her tenderness. I think it’s perfectly summarized when Daron asks her for a favor and Iris asks what Daron will do in return. Daron knows that Iris would help unconditionally and just wanted to stir the pot.

Fun fact: Iris was originally named Aralea after a classmate I had in second grade. Upon further thought, I realized that was too similar to Ariella—Aria’s full name—so I changed it to Iris, a goddess a learned about at a Ramses exhibit.

Spiritwalker taglist: @the-golden-comet @pixies-love-envy

Today was the first day of my last year of college! I found a club that makes a lit magazine for women. I think I might join

The way to write something good is to keep working on it! I’m not trying to be overly positive or sound like a teacher—I learned this from experience. The more I work on my WIP, the more I learn about the world and intricacies of the characters. Seriously. I invented this idea and am still constantly learning new things about it several years later. I also learned to improve my writing style by trial and error. I know it’s hard, but at least for me, once I got past the initial “I don’t want to do this” vibe a few chapters in, I couldn’t stop.

Please keep working on the stories you started. I promise they will be good.

I feel like I start so many WIPs because each one sucks and I want to write something good, you know?

When you have an outline for a wip but your brain doesn't know how to open/ start the first lines of the wip

Currently writing a sequel to my wip while simultaneously writing the second draft of my wip

My favorite oc is Aria from my wip, Spiritwalker! She’s so fun to write because 90% of her dialogue is sass.

Aria’s a short queen that can kill you with her bare hands. She has strong, animal-like senses and can also talk to animals.

She’s supposed to break the stereotype I often see in books that girls are either really feminine or reject all feminity so I gave her typically masculine qualities, like being very strong and enjoying sports, and more feminine ones, like enjoying fashion and sewing.

who wants to tell me about their favorite original character? what do they look like? what is their personality? you don't have to include the whole plot, just curious as to what they are like as people! i loveee characters.