Say What? NaNoWriMo again? (Austin)

So as I'm sure most of you know, it's that time of the year again. That's right: National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).

But psh, who needs to write 50,000 words of a novel to celebrate? Novels require planning...and new characters...and not being on the RMI Author Cafe while you're writing so we don't distract you.

Instead of being boring and writing a novel, we at RMI are challenging YOU to write more posts in this month of November. Take this opportunity to improve your characterisation, lengthen your posts, and have an awesome month of intense writing with your favourite people ever. Moreover, if you DO choose to accept this challenge and succeed, your accomplishment will be forever recorded in our up-and-coming trophy hall.

What exactly are the rules of this challenge? Well, here we go:

• To be eligible, Authors must save their posts in a word processing document that will count their words, and this document must be e-mailed to us (theheads at rmimagic dotcom) at the end of the month to confirm your wordcount.


• For each student character you have at RMI, you must write 10,000 words this month to meet our challenge. If you have more than 5 characters, you still only have to write 50,000 words; we'll take pity on you.


• All posts are eligible for consideration, but please don't spam one board with a gajillion posts just to meet word count. Threads are your friends!


• By the same token, ORMIs will count towards your word count...but don't be lame and have all of your words come from ORMIs.


• BUT - caveat - posts done for non-student characters (for example, a younger sibling or parent) will only count for HALF words.

Well what are you still doing here? Get posting...you only have thirty days to go!

Writing is like Cupcakes (Julia)

No really, it is.

Let's talk about cupcakes.

Everyone likes cupcakes. There's two different components to a cupcake. There's the cake part itself, and there's the frosting. Most people like the frosting better, and even people who don't like cupcakes like to look at pretty or cute ones, because the frosting makes them look better. Most people also feel that making and frosting twenty four cupcakes is a lot more approachable than making and frosting a cake. People also feel like they can come up with an idea for a new flavor of cupcake easily, and it is possible to learn how to make a pretty tasty or a pretty, tasty cupcake. Also, most people won't stand for eating a cupcake with a bad base, bad frosting, or bad frosting job. (Pro tip: Practice is key, and younger siblings are usually willing food tasters, especially if your cupcakes keep getting better.)

Now, let's talk about writing, even though I'm sure most people wouldn't mind having RMI be a site about cupcakes.

Not everyone likes writing. Now why is that? To me, it seems fairly similar to cupcakes. There's two main components to writing: the ideas and the language you use to communicate those ideas to your reader. Sure, there's stuff like punctuation and independent and dependent clauses, but those are like sprinkles, other garnishes, or the different ingredients in your frosting. Also like frosting, when people are told they need to revise their writing, they prefer to focus on their language instead of how their ideas work together or are laid out in their writing. (In our extended metaphor, this would be like figuring out a new garnish for a cupcake where there's something wrong with the batter recipe.) And sometimes, all they need to do is work on their frosting. It's a lot less intimidating than re-working an entire paper. Just like a good cupcake, a good piece of writing starts with a solid idea. A pumpkin cranberry cupcake may sound good, but with a little tweaking, that recipe will become a batch of spiced pumpkin chocolate cupcakes that will barely make it out of the kitchen before being devoured. So too, an essay about the Age of Exploration may take off when you find that you can talk about all the different foods that traveled across the Atlantic and how they impacted the cuisines of Europe and of the Americas instead of “In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue...”

And like learning how to bake, it is possible to learn how to write. However, people are much more likely to tolerate a bad piece of writing than they are a bad cupcake. Why is that? It might be that they are still in the process of learning how to write, a process which takes a lot longer than learning how to make cupcakes, so they think that what they can do is the best. They might think that writing is an ability that you are born with, which is a load of bosh. If we were born knowing how to write, we'd have pencils and pens for fingers and I'd be spending all of this blog post focusing on cupcakes instead of the writing center. It could even be that there aren't any Institutes of Writing that are well known in the public sphere like many culinary schools.

However, while there isn't Literature Polyverbal Institute, there is such a thing as a Writing Center. Many colleges have one. Austin works at her college's, the author of Marissa Toladaeri is also a writing tutor, and the culinary school I attend has a writing center at which I can and do work. These writing centers are extremely helpful, mostly because having someone else look at your writing helps to catch things that you didn't see, things that you won't see because you know what it's supposed to say and it makes sense to you. As a tutor, I am not a Legilimens. I can't read your mind. The only way I have to understand your ideas is by what you have written down on that piece of paper. If something doesn't make sense to me, I can ask my tutee during the tutoring session what it means, and usually their verbal explanation will make more sense than what they have written down. This is most of what I do as a writing tutor: ask questions and make suggestions.

However, most people don't have the luxury of being able to sit down with the writer and ask them what this phrasing means or what they're trying to say or where the writer is going with this idea. That means you, as the writer, need to make sure your writing is ace, as Austin is fond of saying, for the reader's sake. As writers, unless we're writing in a private journal, we write for someone. That someone has to be able to understand our ideas as we understand them. For essays, this means that all your ideas are clearly communicated. For RMI, this means that you have realistic characters and understandable language. And that's where the writing center comes in, to help you gain (or regain) your sea legs.

The RMI Writing Center has resources to help with the technical side of writing, with character development, and with an already-completed piece of writing. Coming soon are more grammar guides and writing worksheets, as well as resources to make sure your character is realistic. If you're stuck on a post because your character's voice gave out halfway through, if you're posting a lot but no one's responding to you, if you're not posting because you can't think of anything to post, we have ways to help you! We can even look at non-RMI-related writing such as essays for school and college applications. We're also taking suggestions for other helpful things you guys would like to see on the Writing Center.

The goal of the Writing Center is to help you develop into better writers, just like the goal of a baking class is to teach you how to make better cupcakes. And the Writing Center doesn't even have to rely cake mix.

Pax,

Julia

Medical Plots 101 (Marina)

You know what I love?

If your answer was “white hot chocolate”, you’re right, but that’s not really what I was getting at. I was going to say “medical plots”.

I’ve never actually checked, but I think I have the highest ratio of long-term medical plots to characters of any existing author. One-third of my six RMI characters have had ongoing medical issues; both characters are graduated now, but Tripp Lemont had acute lymphoblastic leukemia and Keith Blackburn has Type I Diabetes. Lia Harper hasn’t had ongoing medical issues, but she was in a car accident once and I had to invent magical medical stuff for that. I also wrote the medic for a few terms at another RPG site.

Personally, medical plots are my favorite. It’s definitely a break from family/relationship drama that constitutes usual character plots, and it doesn’t have to rely on other people unless you want it to- so your whole storyline doesn’t get messed up if an author vanishes. It also means that you have to do research, which can get really interesting and be useful. Thanks to Keith, I already knew a lot about endocrinology when I studied it in high school; thanks to Tripp, I knew a lot about the immune system.

The high number of medical issues in my characters makes a lot of sense when you consider that I’m a neuroscience major on a pre-med track. (In fact, Keith and I are- completely coincidentally, I assure you- studying the same thing.) It also means that with Julia writing the medic, Austin having a spectacular knowledge of chemistry, and myself having a good idea of physiology, we form a semi-authoritative trio on the limits of magical medicine.

Illnesses

• Wizards have a cure for the common cold. It’s called Pepperup Potion and it makes steam come out of your ears. Students at RMI can probably just get it from the medic, if not buy it themselves.
• Bacteria: This is pretty much the same as in the Muggle world. Potions (instead of drugs) can kill bacteria, unless the bacteria is in the brain/spinal cord (as it is with diseases like bacterial meningitis).
• Viruses: see Bacteria above.
• Disease prevention: Wizards probably have something a little less invasive than immunization shots. More likely, they’re going to be potions.
• Magical illnesses totally exist! You’re probably going to have to make up some of the symptoms/diseases/treatments, but that’s totally encouraged as long as you have a reason and don’t make it some random jungle virus. Just remember that if you’re going to send your character to the medic about it, hop on the Chatzy and let Julia know what you’re trying to do. Writing the medic really sucks if you don’t know what’s supposed to be wrong with the person you’re trying to treat.

Common Injuries

• Broken bones. Healers have a number of ways of dealing with these. Students are unlikely to know these spells until 5th year or so.
• Episkey sets and Heals minor broken bones.
• Resarcio heals cracks/fractures in bones.
• Skele-Gro grows bone that is missing (hence the name). I’ve also used it in the past as a means of mending bones that have been set properly. It is not instantaneous and is quite uncomfortable, so a regular Healer would not use it unless s/he had to.
• Bleeding. Students probably will not be able to perform these spells until third year or so.
• Amplio heals minor cuts/scrapes/bruises. If your character cuts himself while shaving or scraps her knee on the floor of the Rec Center, this is the kind of spell that’ll fix it.
• Tergeo siphons up liquids. Like blood. Don’t let your character’s nosebleed ruin his/her favorite shirt!
• Burns. Students will probably be able to pull off these spells around their fourth year.
• First-degree: the spell Redintegro Exuro.
• Second-degree: Redintegro Exuro or a burn-healing salve.
• Third-degree: Redintegro Exuro will help the skin heal over, but healing the burn will require some kind of potion or salve.

What about scars?
Unlikely. Dittany prevents scarring (see Half-Blood Prince, when Harry uses Sectumsempra on Draco), so the only reason you’re going to have a scar is if the wound was magical in nature (e.g. from a werewolf or, y’know, the Killing Curse). Magical wounds are also unlikely to happen, but I’ll give you an out- a chemical burn from a potion, which is more likely than random werewolf attacks, might cause scarring if it’s not treated properly/immediately, depending on what kind of potion it was.

What about uncommon injuries?
I can’t go through every unlikely event like your character accidentally swallowing a toothbrush! Wizards are pretty good at speeding up the healing process if there’s internal organ damage, though.

Cancer & Tumors
I think I’m the first person to use blood cancer as an issue for a wizard [citation needed], but I know that Kat Eagle’s author had a character with a brain tumor once. The general consensus we came to (since her character was not an invalid) was that magical medicine rocks at removing (noncancerous) tumors but is not so great at treating cancerous cells. Magical medicine is very good at managing the symptoms, but not the cancer itself. I’m pretty sure this makes sense in-character, because it would be kind of a jerk move for the entire wizarding world to not share “ability to destroy cancer” with Muggles. I’ve established that currently, the wizarding world is working on magical treatments for cancer, and that the best option for a wizard for the time being is Muggle medicine in conjunction with some of the experimental magical treatments.

Surgery?
Kind of. They do surgery and sometimes need to make incisions to access internal injuries/tumors/whatever, but it’s a little different than it is for Muggles. What they do once they’re in there is anyone’s guess- my thought is that it probably involves extremely complicated charms- but here are the things I can think of.

• Incision: Incidere creates an incision; renovo heals it.
• Anesthesia?: Yes. Facio torpeo is a spell for local anesthesia and torpeo is for general anesthesia.
• Transplants?: There’s a spell for that. Integro helps the body receive transplants.
• Recovery time: Since magic can Heal incisions (without even leaving scars), recovery time is a lot faster than it is for Muggles.

Eyesight
This isn’t really a huge medical issue, but I’ve noticed that there’s a dearth of people with glasses/contacts at RMI. However, if you’ll recall from the title character of the book having to wear glasses, wizards in Harry Potter apparently can’t do a thing to fix myopia (near-sightedness). It seems to me that if they could do something about it, Harry (the savior of the wizarding world) would be a good candidate for some magical laser-eye surgery. So it looks like there’s nothing wizards can do about that.

That said, other eye problems (like glaucoma) can be treated with spell/potion combinations. Invent these at your leisure, but remember that only a professional would be able to perform them.

Teeth
Teeth gross me out so I’m not spending a lot of time here. Wizards use magic instead of braces. See Goblet of Fire, Hermione’s teeth, for further explanation. My guess is that wisdom teeth removal would also be fairly easy for wizards. Root canals? I don’t know; this is the part where I start to get goosebumps. Let’s move on to something I know stuff about. Like...

Brain/Nerve Injuries
If I’ve learned anything so far as a neuroscience student, it’s “don’t get your brain all messed up, because that can kind of make catastrophes”. As far as has been established, magical medicine can’t do very much for brain injuries that time and Muggle remedies can’t do.

• Strokes.
• There are two kinds of stroke: hemorrhagic and ischemic. Hemorrhagic is when a blood vessel bursts and blood gets all over your brain. Ischemic is when a blood clot or vessel detachment prevents oxygen from getting to a part of your brain.
• Brain damage is really hard to fix, but we basically have established that magical medicine can help restore pre-damage physical functioning (speech and motion).
• Wizards can quickly treat the immediate cause of a stroke (by bursting the clot or repairing the damaged vessel), but any underlying cause of the stroke would need further treatment.
• For more information, ask Austin, who writes Rob Jacobs- a badass stroke victim who has the only wheelchair and the only dog in the school.
• Nerve Damage.
• Based on the assumption that wizards are not Dr. Frankenstein and cannot reanimate dead neurons, ability to Heal nerve damage is similar to that of Muggles.
• After long periods of time, Muggles can regain functions of damaged nerves. Potions can probably speed this recovery process but cannot entirely Heal nerves.

Genetic Disorders
This is especially a concern if you have purebloods, because of the whole inbreeding thing.

• Disorders that involve inheritance like hemophilia would be a likely result of inbreeding.
• Disorders that involve chromosome deletion/abnormality like Angelman Syndrome have the same likelihood as they do in the Muggle world.
• Therapies (physical or mental) in the wizarding world are likely on or above par with those of the Muggle world in terms of coping mechanisms and management by drug treatments.
• Magic does not get rid of chronic genetic disorders. Ever. Period. It can treat them or treat the symptoms, but every chromosome in the body doesn’t get magically fixed.

Pregnancy (please do not use this as a plot. This is just for background information. Teenage pregnancy is not rated PG and if you try to use this as a plot you’re not even allowed to post about it on the main site, which just plain sucks.)
I’ve assumed the existence of contraceptive charms and potions, as far as magical birth control goes. As far as detection, I generally assume that there’s a charm form of pregnancy test. I don’t think wizards have ultrasounds, but my assumption would be that there’s a charm that can detect the baby’s gender earlier than an ultrasound could.

According to Austin’s epic chemistry knowledge, due to the compounds involved, there aren’t a lot of painkillers a pregnant woman can take, magic or not.

Age
This isn’t 100% medical, but we don’t really know the lifespan of wizards (mostly because everyone who died in canon died of war-related injuries. We do know that Dumbledore lived to be over 150 years old. Since he was not a wrinkly, withered senior, we can also assume that wizards age more slowly than Muggles. They’re also presumably more likely to live longer and healthier lives, and only die due to accident or illness (i.e. Draco Malfoy’s grandfather died of dragonpox).

Diabetes
Okay, this is my favorite, so I just had to say something about it.

• Type I
• Type I Diabetes is caused by the body’s inability to produce insulin.
• Diabetes isn’t especially common in wizards, so the research is limited.
• A few attempts at a potion substitute for insulin shots have been made, but encounter the same problems that orally-administered insulin faces in the Muggle world.
• For more on this, talk to me. I think I may have cornered the market on wizarding Type I Diabetes [citation needed].
• Type II
• Type II Diabetes is caused by the body’s inability to absorb/process insulin.
• Because Type II diabetics are not insulin-dependent, wizards can manage Type II with a bi-yearly potion that enables their body to more easily process insulin.
• For more on this, talk to Milo Sarkes’ author, who writes a character with Type II Diabetes.

That just about wraps up the major categories that I came up with. If you have more questions, feel free to ask me in Chatzy or use our spiffy Contact the Heads! form, and maybe I’ll do another blog post to cover it.

Cheers!
Marina

Writing a Challenge (Ryan)

There should come a time in every RMI-ers time here that they realize they need or want to push themselves as an author. Mine came when I began to want to add a third character. I had my first character Jonas Finn, he was a reliable, well mannered boy. I also had Anders Bradbury,a surfer boy who defied the rules of what a pureblood was. Of course, I had my staff character, who was none other then Gaston Munro, who was a young, fun loving, retired Quidditch star.

I loved my group of guys but I began to realize something was missing; I had no girl characters. Even the ones I would write for Rosie Finn, and Carla Hudson were half women, caricatures
of women I loved and adored in my real life. So randomly in the Chatzy I asked, “Should I write a girl character?” Of course Bossman responded, with a wild “YES” fairly quickly and so I began to think of my character.

There was one thing that I had really wanted since coming to RMI and that was a special character. One with special abilities like a Vela, or a werewolf. So I began to ask the Bossman how I would go about this. I wanted the yet to be named girl to stand out from her fellow classmates. There was one thing I had yet to see written and that was a Parselmouth. So I researched and came up with the LeBeau clan.

Finding out where she was from helped me developed her character. I was so excited! I submitted Roxanne and she was accepted. I counted down the days till orientation was too start, ready to break out my new special girl! The day finally came I read the Orientation thread through, giddy. I had word opened to a fresh new page, I had headphones on to block out the TV. I was ready to write!

Yet, nothing came, I just watched the cursor flash again and again. Waiting for me to type something, anything. After a while it seemed like the thing was mocking me so I typed in Roxy’s name. Nothing came! I got annoyed. I knew nothing about being an eleven year old girl! I could fake a Parselmouth easily enough. There was google for that. They talked to snakes how cool was that. So I was stuck.

I decide to walk away from the computer, after all I couldn't google what an eleven year old girl was! So I took an hour to myself. During that time I thought about Roxy who she was and began to ask people, “hey do you think an eleven year old girl would do this/think this/wear this?” After a while I sat back down at my computer and wrote the first Roxy LeBeau post. It wasn’t very good but it was okay for my first try.


How have I been able to write a girl? I talk to girls. I talk to a lot of moms with girls that age. My buddies tell me stories of what their daughters do or did growing up. I research silly things that girls seem to like, sadly for me most of these things make me groan. One time I even had my sister play Justin Bieber for me. I watched Twilight with Layla. As creepy as it may seem I look at girls’ clothes and I ask myself ‘would Roxy wear that?”

Besides that I make Roxy realistic by watching how children act in movies and TV shows. Sure, sometimes they aren’t the best examples but it helps me write Roxy. In the end it comes down to how I think an eleven year old girl acts. Yes, it’s mostly me hoping that’s how my daughter is when she’s older.

Even now three terms into writing Roxy the Parselmouth, I have trouble writing her. She’s my favorite to write because it is such a challenge for me. Not only do I have to make her realistic in girl form, but also in Parselmouth form. When I sit down to write a post with Roxy, I struggle, get angry, get annoyed but every time I post her I feel that much stronger about my feelings for her.


Sure, Jonas is a nice guy, but I can’t stand him he bores me. Anders and I are buddies. Gaston and I are so much a like its scary but it’s Roxy I love to write and it’s because she’s a challenge. So I decided to challenge myself in little ways with each new character. Jonas’ younger brother Riley Finn is coming this term, and he’s a bit out there if you haven’t read his posts. I hope he becomes one of my favorites too. So my challenge to each of you is push yourself with each new character. Change up their genders, their sexual orientation, their background, the way they act etc etc. I am sure you will learn to adore those characters more then the ones it takes ten minutes to write a post for.

Welcome to the Sixties - or Term 12

And thusly does T12 begin. Just a few announcements:

• As some or all of you may know, the author of the Taylors, de Lenfents, and Ashtyn Tryphena-Phale has been deployed to Afghanistan for a year. She decided to pull her students instead of leaving them inactive, but intends to return to RMI as soon as she can with a fresh group of characters.
• On a similar note, we are now accepting applications for the position of Foretelling Arts.
• Although we have enough students to start term, we could still use more; although we don’t have anything left to bribe you with apart from virtual cookies and our eternal love, we’d really like it if you’d do some spreading of the RMI word for us.
• This year, we are piloting a pre-Auror programme. Watch out for more information later on in the year!
• If you haven’t yet filled out an Orientation Survey (for firsties) or a regular survey (for everyone else), it would make us smile if you do! Plus we give 10 points to the House of your choice.

Among cool looking boards (thanks to Julia), with appropriate links (Marina) and lots of new firsties, there’s something else new at RMI this year: the official RMI Writing Center.

The Writing Center is a place where our authors can find tools to help them improve their characterization and grammar, or submit posts for editing before they are posted. We invite you to request pages that you think would be helpful using the Contact Us form, and we absolutely encourage you to check out what we have! Our characterization sheets in particular have been exceptionally popular among a number of authors and come highly recommended.

As some of you may have noticed, our homepage indicates that we have instated a Writer of the Month. Each month, the Administrative Team will decide on one author who has demonstrated a significant dedication to the improvement of his or her work through the use of the Writing Center. Although Admin Team members are not eligible for this reward, staff members are, and we encourage each and every writer at RMI to take this chance to not only improve their work, but also be publically recognised for their commitment.

This month, we’d like to congratulate the author of Cara Carter as our Writer of the Month. Although Cara’s author has been writing here on and off since the very beginning, I have never seen her as much hard work and dedication into her characters as she has recently. This particular author was our ‘guinea pig’ for the character development sheets that are now available to everyone on RMI and has taken some really impressive leaps in her understanding of writing and characterization in the past half-term. After working with her and being able to see the change in her understanding of her characters and writing, I can honestly say that I’ve never been more impressed by the steps forward taken by an author. She is a truly deserving recipient of RMI’s first Writer of the Month award.

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