Novel Word Count So Far: 8,707
Today was a tough day at the office but a great day for writing. I needed a couple of days to mull over the plot in order to make the changes necessary to make it good.
I’ve been building up the dangers of a certain creature I have created for this novel series, namely the whiptail.
The description I wrote for them is as such:
It can blend and camouflage itself like a chameleon, has the intelligence level of an ape, is communal, and hunt in packs of ten or fifteen. There are massive plasteel walls around Ontocca City, the Wharf, and all mine sites. It has been clocked at speeds of over 70mph, can leap over fifty feet in the air, and has an acidic bite that can gnaw through most lesser materials. It is assumed by naturalists that the Whiptail communicates with other Whiptails using a complex pheromonal and bioluminescent pattern that is only understood by their species. No one is brave enough or foolish enough to study them, as some have tried, but have never been able to get close enough. Their tail is tipped with a poison barb that can impale most prey. The barb’s poison is a necrotizing agent that rots flesh in a matter of days, making healing from a Whiptail barb something of an impossibility. The Whiptail has a second set of arms on its torso equipped with six fingers with opposable thumbs that they use to weave intricate patterns in their nests. Whiptail nests are immaculately clean as they go far away from the nest to defecate or urinate, and they use their acidic saliva to clean the nest which is made from various metallic objects that they scavenge.
So today, I introduced these creatures in a way that was terrifying, but at the same time there is a twist to their actual purpose that is completely unexpected and interesting, I feel. You’ll have to read the novel to find out what that is, but I’m pretty satisfied with the result.
I look forward to writing some more about them tomorrow. It is so fun to create a horrifying creature, to build them up as something that will haunt people’s nightmares, but in actuality they are not so bad…and probably could be an ally for the hero.
Writing Is Hard Work 