#Lessons in Creative Writing

[inkwell-chronicles]

How we fight our monsters mustn't be to create new ones.

We must be better than them.

[succulentsiren]

Advice I'd Give to My Younger Self.

Be unapologetic about your presence. Never enter a room with your head lowered. Hold your head up like you are proud to be who you are. Take up space. Be bold in your actions. Let your voice be heard.

You don't have to be perfect. Get over perfectionism and the fear of being embarrassed. Learn to own all your flaws and insecurities and continue to do what you love.

What other people say mean nothing. Never loose sleep over anyone’s opinion of you. They are not God and they don't define you.

Believe in yourself. You can be successful just like those people you look up to. You have what it takes. Hone your skills and be great too.

Appreciate your unique gifts and qualities. Stop comparing yourself to others and changing yourself to fit in. Always stay true to yourself.

[vasopv-blog]

Don't overuse your power,

or one day, it will turn against you.

[audreyandromedablog]

I've been trying to believe that you don't matter to me.. but that's just like pretending to live without actually living.

--- a fragment of my heart that belongs to you

[stygiansauce]

Hey gamers! I'm gonna give you an entire lesson on hyphens, Em dashes and En dashes via tumblr, right now.

Lets preface with this: Grammar has two modes of use.

Prescriptive: A set of rules that dictate how a language "should" be used.

Descriptive: How grammar/language is ACTUALLY used.

This is an important distinction for this lesson because I am going to start with a powerpoint that explains the rules/uses of hyphens and dashes. THEN after, we will talk about the rhetorical effects dashes have on readers and how authors can use them to their advantage. COOL lets begin.

The first thing you all need to know about hyphens and dashes is what they look like.

Please note how the EM dash is the longest, the EN is next, then the minus, and the hyphen. The sizing and name of these dashes was historically decided because Em dashes were the size of an M and an En was the size of an N.

This is wonky now considering typing and fonts and all that jazz, but the size still matters (haha).

These are how you type them! I am a google docs user, and the short cuts in docs are weird. You will want to go into Insert then go down to special characters. Type in the dash you need, and click it to insert.

Hyphens so these things! What is a modifier? It's a word that MODIFIES the noun. like a light rain, or a long drive. these are adjectives/adverbs (depending)

Hyphens can link two modifiers. They can also link compound nouns.

These are the things Em dashes do! If you take a gander through Margin of Error (Chapter 4 would be best because that's where I learned the special character function) you'll see all of these examples in action!

En dashes aren't as common as EM dashes or hyphens. These are used strictly in a prescriptive sense. From my knowledge there is no way to use these rhetorically. only for clarity and these are the three times you'll see them.

COOL! Now lets talk about how Em dashes are used rhetorically. What does an Em dash do to your writing? How does it effect a reader?

Emphasis Em dashes create pauses in speech. If I were talking to you and I wanted to pause-- or cut myself off, I could use either an elipses or an Em dash. Where an elipses is more of a trail off... the Em dash draws the readers eye. It makes the reader stop and look at what is around them.

THATS IT! Thats what it does! It's more emphasis than a comma or a parenthetical. You could in theory use a comma, but think of how much stress you want on something.

FOR EXAMPLE, in this line from Margin of Error.

With no Puncuation: “Ah well Grian and I weren’t really getting along at the time…” He trails off in a way that screams I’m done talking about this something he does a lot when talking about his family so Tango moves the conversation in a different direction.

With Commas: “Ah, well, Grian and I weren’t really getting along at the time…” He trails off in a way that screams I’m done talking about this, something he does a lot when talking about his family, so Tango moves the conversation in a different direction.

With Em dashes: “Ah—well, Grian and I weren’t really getting along at the time…” He trails off in a way that screams I’m done talking about this—something he does a lot when talking about his family—so Tango moves the conversation in a different direction.

Notice how it's different? The commas certainly do their job at making the reader pause. They help insert the phrase, but its not the same as the dashes. The dashes make the reader LOOK at what is between them. it becomes the focus of the sentence. We are no longer worries about what Jimmy's tone is, but that he uses it often when talkin about his family.

Look at this example with parenthesis too, and see how those change the effect.

With parenthesis: “Ah—well, Grian and I weren’t really getting along at the time…” He trails off in a way that screams I’m done talking about this (something he does a lot when talking about his family) so Tango moves the conversation in a different direction.

Seeeee? it makes a difference! The parenthesis make it more of a passive thought. Something for the reader to consider, but is overall not important to the story. This is why us authors sometimes hem and haw over grammar! I certainly think that Em dashes can be used based off vibes (I do this all the time) but now you know what its really doing for your reader! I want to look at one more example of this before we wrap up.

With no Puncuation: “Your eyes are pretty.” Jimmy says wistfully suddenly like he can’t hold it in any longer

With Commas: “Your eyes are pretty.” Jimmy says wistfully, suddenly, like he can’t hold it in any longer

With Em dashes: “Your eyes are pretty.” Jimmy says wistfully—suddenly—like he can’t hold it in any longer

With Parenthesis: “Your eyes are pretty.” Jimmy says wistfully (suddenly) like he can’t hold it in any longer.

TADA! You can now use hyphens, em dashes and en dashes!!! Thank you for coming to class. Your homework is to play around with these in your writing. I will accpet questions via the Ask box or the comments of this post. Happy writing nerds, go use your new toy.

xoxo Ms. Sauce

[thirdity]

Writing, like dancing, is one of the arts available to people who have nothing. “For ten and sixpence,” advises Virginia Woolf, “one can buy paper enough to write all the plays of Shakespeare.” The only absolutely necessary equipment in dance is your own body.

Zadie Smith, "Dance Lessons for Writers"

[wormchamp72]

Another foray in2 the world of graphic design...perhaps I have found my true calling?

[motojane]

[glitchedoutpxie]

Unpopular Take #9:

Make room for nuance.

You can protect your heart without hardening it. Strength doesn't come from turning people into villains, it comes from understanding that someone could have meant well and still made bad choices. You can leave and still hope they heal. You can miss them and still acknowledge you're doing better without them. Make room for softness. It won't make you weak.

[ghostinkpoetry]

"A Quiet Emergency"

It starts again— a fist clenched around my chest, not metaphor, not myth, but a pain sharp enough to name gods after. A dagger draped in silence, twisting between ribs as if searching for something it lost.

I say it hurts, and she replies you're just anxious, like that word is lighter, like it weighs less than the ache that leaves me breathless in the dark.

They all tell you: Speak up. Share. Don’t suffer in silence. But when I do, the world hands me soft denials wrapped in smiles— a phase, a feeling, a thought.

They say it's in my head as my heart plays percussion against the walls of my body, each beat a scream I’m not allowed to voice.

There is no ambulance for the kind of pain you cannot prove.

So I sit— a still life in a storm, my tears soundless, so I don’t disturb the peace of those who believe pain only matters when it draws blood they can see.

I break quietly, in rooms filled with light, while everyone tells me you look fine.

@ghostinkpoetry

[me-writes-prompts]

nervous/awkward couple prompts?

Yes! Hope you enjoy these :)

By @me-writes-prompts

“I…I wasn’t sure if you’d like this, so I just bought all the colors they had there.” 🥹🥹

“Can we please kiss?” “Yeah, I was about to ask you that.”

“Ummm, sorry to disturb you while you’re working, but I wanted to let you that dinner is ready.” “Oh, yeah. It’s fine, uh, I’ll finish it here. Be there in ten.” “Great.”

“That was really awkward there, wasn’t it?” “Yeah, I could not stand it a moment longer. Haha.” “Same. Hah.”

“We should…take this to the bedroom, yes?” “Yeah, got carried away a little. Oops.”

“That was my first time trying Indian food. Very spicy, but kind of good. I guess…” “Yeah, definitely. Uh huh.” *laughs awkwardly because that wasn’t the reaction that they had expected from them*

“Well, you guys seem close.” “Yeah, we’ve been friends for forever, so…that’s why I wanted you to know them!” “Oh, okay.”

“I did okay back there, right? Like I didn’t look stupid or anything?” “No, no. You didn’t. You could never look stupid, baby. You did awesome back there. I promise.”

“Umm, I got you something for our first anniversary.” “Omg, I-I’m sorry, I didn’t get you anything. I’m really sorry, my love. I was just so busy and forgot.” “Oh, it’s fine. Really.” “No, no, it’s not fine. I’ll get you one right now.” “No, really it’s fine.”

Accidentally bumping into each other on their way to fro the bathroom, and laughing awkwardly.

Going to kiss each other at the same time

^^Trying to escalate things in car but they can’t because they are just so uncomfortable, so they have to move to the back seat

Coincidentally buying each other the same thing

[originalferal]

[vasopv-blog]

GIFT

[audreyandromedablog]

Whenever I say goodbye to someone, there's always a part of me hoping we end up with each other in another timeline. It burns a hole in my heart to pass someone that had deeply cherished me only to find out that in this life, we are not meant to last.

[aroaceleovaldez]

i honestly wish rr would just write for something that has nothing to do with pjo not the same characters not the universe just go and write something new bc i really liked daughter of the deep and i think he's wrung everything out of the pjoverse yk? he's a good writer but he needs to go do something different

I agree - the problem with Rick's writing is he's heavily reliant on his writing being derivative. He struggles to write original stuff. PJO, HoO, ToA, etc are all derivative from Greco-Roman mythology/history. MCGA is Norse mythology/history, TKC is Egyptian mythology/history. Daughter of the Deep is Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea. And he's not terrible at it! The problem is that can't go on forever. He runs out of material to work from over time and suddenly the quality of the franchise tanks dramatically. Especially as he loses overarching connecting threads to tie the plots together, so it just becomes this soup of throwing references at the wall with no cohesion to see what sticks. And it's bad!

We started seeing it in HoO, also in part due to Rick trying to combine too many disparate inspirations to the main plot to begin with and didn't know how to make them mesh well (Seven Against Thebes, Gigantomachy, Argonauts, Odyssey). TKC and MCGA were okay because they're only three book series, so that's plenty of mythology to draw from with stuff left over, and the majority of their companion novel stuff is ghostwritten anyways. The shorter series span means less filler required so less mythology is used up and there ya go. In the longer series, Rick has to spend those five books filling in the gaps of that overarching plot and he runs out of material fast - that's why by the end of HoO it was just turning into blatant Marvel references. Now that we're getting into a fourth installment in the main series collection, even though it's only a three-book series, Rick has basically written himself into a corner because he doesn't write anything else. He ran out of places to go with the franchise like two series ago! So now he's just throwing literally anything he can think of at things (literally just plucking random mythological figures and pop culture references or tropes), or if he can't think of anything, apparently just blatantly lifting stuff from the community.

At this point the only possible Greco-Roman series I think he'd be able to do without it being total garbage would be a 3-book Roman series set during SoM-TLO/The Second Titan War. I don't think he should do that and I don't want him to, but based on everything that's probably just what would have the best likelihood of success. It just seems like the only place he can go. Anything else he'd have to do something actually original, and he's shown time and time again that he's not interested in doing that and isn't very good at it anymore.

[inkwell-chronicles]

In the midst of hell, keep going. Like a wave on the ocean, it will pass over in due time.