#Literary Digest

[derangedrhythms]

Margaret McKenny, Literary Digest: Volume 68; Ice

[tomoleary]

Norman Rockwell (1894-1978) “The Night Before Christmas (Santa Peering over Chair at Sleeping Child)” Literary Digest magazine cover (December 22, 1923) Source

[ivynightshade]

fatima aamer bilal, excerpt from moony moonless sky.

[text id: i can’t be loved, swallowed or digested. must i make myself smaller?]

[the-gnoblin]

Dracula Daily Digest: May 3

The way my dear sweet boy really and truly just gets really autistic about paprika hendl. He is just like me fr

This day is actually a really artful setup of this first "act" of the story. Not only does it effectively establish Jonathan as a curious but somewhat naive character with little moments such as his paprika passion or his detailed descriptions of the local people, but it also really artfully established the tone of dread in the reader while still maintaining Jonathan's innocence. For example, him describing the dream with the wolves or the specific detail of it being on "the dark side of twilight." These are facts of Jonathan's world and are accurate to how he experienced them, but currently he lacks the additional context or genre awareness that the readers have that makes this entry simmer with underlying dread

Hey, Mr. Stoker, you ending this entry with "your friend, DRACULA" is a stone cold power move and I respect it

Seriously that letter at the end is glossed over in the fandom. That is a really really effective piece of storytelling

An excellent start, great establishment. And paprika

[zackstriker]

please drop the reading list!!

I’m SO glad you asked omg. Here’s my summer reading list!!!

Fiction

- We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

Synopsis: strange girl with strange family lives in strange house. Cerebral weird horror + young woman descending into madness

- Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado (re-reading)

Synopsis: Sapphic speculative short story collection that impressively balances the edge of commercial and literary fiction. (highly recommend this one— i’m teaching this collection of short stories to my class next semester. I’ve met the author a few times and she is so sweet even tho i get really starstruck around her lol)

- Enter-Ghost by Isabella Hammond

Synopsis: What if necromancy was real and impacted by capitalism?

- I Who Have Never Known Men by Jaqueline Harpman

Synopsis: An experimental translation in collective first about a bunker full of women who have been raised without men. (I had a workshop w/ one of my fav authors and she recommended this book highly)

- St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell (re-reading)

Synopsis: Another great often speculative short story collection about young women being feral.

- The Taiga Syndrome by Cristina Rivera Garza

Synopsis: Gonna be honest idk what this one is about, going in blind. Was recommended to me by a friend in my MFA program.

- The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (re-read)

Synopsis: a classic feminist lit book about societal pressures and young women.

Poetry

- Glass, Irony, and God by Anne Carson

(Anne Carson is my fav translator of all time— you’ve probably seen her work, she’s the one who wrote the “it’s rotten work // not to me, not if it’s you” line that is very viral)

- Little Mercy by Robin Walter

- Love Prodigal by Traci Brimhall

(I’ve met Traci at a writers conference a few times! She’s so sweet— I made a collage inspired by one of her poetry collections and the collage inspired her to make stickers for this poetry collection, so it’s kinda cool seeing my passion influence a writers promotional stuff!)

- Fast Animal by Tim Seibles

- The Natural Order of Things by Donika Kelly

Memoirs

- In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado (re-reading)

Synopsis: speculative memoir about a queer abusive relationship during the authors time in her MFA program. very good and weird.

- Collected Schizophrenias by Esme Weijun Wang

Synopsis: Idk yet tbh. Carmen Maria Machado recommended it so it’s on the list, lmao.

- Bluets by Maggie Nelson (rereading)

Synopsis: beautiful fragment memoir teeming with lush lyrical prose (if you like this one you can then read its companion piece ‘Pathemata, or the story of my mouth’— I’ve got a commissioned book review about Pathemata coming out in a major literary magazine in a few weeks, so if anyone reads these books hit me up for my review lol)

Drama/Plays

- The Last Days of Judas Iscariot by Stephen Adly Gurguis

Synopsis: Absurdist play depicting a trial about the betrayal of Judas Iscariot. Also Jesus and Judas were in love. (for any phannies out there who want more Jedus content after the RPF tourney)

Craft

(non-writers may feel free to disregard this section if they want)

- Writing Fiction, tenth edition by Janet Burroway

- Six Memos for the Next Millennium by Italo Calvino (this one has been recommended to me by like everyone in my MFA program, it’s apparently very good)

- The Emotional Craft of Writing Fiction by Donald Maass (re-reading)

- Characters and Viewpoints by Orson Scott Card

- Meander, Spiral, Explode by Jane Alison (re-reading)

- From Where You Dream by Robert Olen Butler (re-reading)

[michaelbaileywriter]

Station Identification Time

Who Am I? I’m a writer originally from Falmouth, MA who now lives in Oxford, MA with my awesome wife Veronica, two dogs, and four cats who don’t like to let us sleep in. After 15 years with the Falmouth Enterprise, where I worked as a general and political reporter, blogger, and editor, I left the news industry to focus on my creative writing. In addition to my novels (more on that in a…

[sohannabarberaesque]

Because anything can happen in flicktoons, Hanna-Barbera's included:

[mortalityplays]

This is a dangerous sentiment for me to express, as an editor who spends most of my working life telling writers to knock it off with the 45-word sentences and the adverbs and tortured metaphors, but I do think we're living through a period of weird pragmatic puritanism in mainstream literary taste.

e.g. I keep seeing people talk about 'purple prose' when they actually mean 'the writer uses vivid and/or metaphorical descriptive language'. I've seen people who present themselves as educators offer some of the best genre writing in western canon as examples of 'purple prose' because it engages strategically in prose-poetry to evoke mood and I guess that's sheer decadence when you could instead say "it was dark and scary outside". But that's not what purple prose means. Purple means the construction of the prose itself gets in the way of conveying meaning. mid-00s horse RPers know what I'm talking about. Cerulean orbs flash'd fire as they turn'd 'pon rollforth land, yonder horizonways. <= if I had to read this when I was 12, you don't get to call Ray Bradbury's prose 'purple'.

I griped on here recently about the prepossession with fictional characters in fictional narratives behaving 'rationally' and 'realistically' as if the sole purpose of a made-up story is to convince you it could have happened. No wonder the epistolary form is having a tumblr renaissance. One million billion arguments and thought experiments about The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas that almost all evade the point of the story: that you can't wriggle out of it. The narrator is telling you how it was, is and will be, and you must confront the dissonances it evokes and digest your discomfort. 'Realistic' begins on the author's terms, that's what gives them the power to reach into your brain and fiddle about until sparks happen. You kind of have to trust the process a little bit.

This ultra-orthodox attitude to writing shares a lot of common ground with the tight, tight commodification of art in online spaces. And I mean commodification in the truest sense - the reconstruction of the thing to maximise its capacity to interface with markets. Form and function are overwhelmingly privileged over cloudy ideas like meaning, intent and possibility, because you can apply a sliding value scale to the material aspects of a work. But you can't charge extra for 'more challenging conceptual response to the milieu' in a commission drive. So that shit becomes vestigial. It isn't valued, it isn't taught, so eventually it isn't sought out. At best it's mystified as part of a given writer/artist's 'talent', but either way it grows incumbent on the individual to care enough about that kind of skill to cultivate it.

And it's risky, because unmeasurables come with the possibility of rejection or failure. Drop in too many allegorical descriptions of the rose garden and someone will decide your prose is 'purple' and unserious. A lot of online audiences seem to be terrified of being considered pretentious in their tastes. That creates a real unwillingness to step out into discursive spaces where you 🫵 are expected to develop and explore a personal relationship with each element of a work. No guard rails, no right answers. Word of god is shit to us out here. But fear of getting that kind of analysis wrong makes people hove to work that slavishly explains itself on every page. And I'm left wondering, what's the point of art that leads every single participant to the same conclusion? See Spot run. Run, Spot, run. Down the rollforth land, yonder horizonways. I just want to read more weird stuff.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

2025 book bingo time 📚

want a completely arbitrary set of reading goals for 2025? want to try something new in your literary diet but don't know where to start? just like a challenge for the sake of a challenge? just love a good game of bingo?

boy do I have something for you!

for anyone planning to participate, please know that I LOVE attention and talking about books, so I would be STOKED to be tagged on any and all updates about what you're reading or planning to read. I'm so, so excited to see all the different ways these prompts get filled, especially if and when they bring people away from the kinds of things they normally read. not to mention snag some new reading recs myself, hopefully!

and of course, I want to know whenever somebody gets a bingo - and ESPECIALLY if somebody fills the whole board! I don't have any prizes for you, but I can offer a sense of accomplishment :)

note that this is designed to be played as 1 book = 1 space, so even if you read, say, a fantasy graphic novel published in 1923 from an indie publisher that has a bat on the cover, you'd only cross off one space. I'm not a cop and I'm not in charge of what you read, so if it sparks more joy to check off multiple spaces per book then go nuts, but I am throwing that disclaimer out there.

EDIT: the 2025 book bingo challenge is now also on storygraph, thanks to @obi-wann-cannoli!

DOUBLE EDIT: there is also now a discord server for the book bingo, thanks to @drivingmebonkas! you can join it here!

wondering what some of these spaces mean? seeking a couple recommendations to get you started? no idea what a zine even is, let alone how to make one? worry not! I have a guide to all 25 prompts, including recommendations + an example of what I'll be reading throughout the year to fulfill each space. read on beneath the cut!

Literary Fiction: I find that a lot of people are reluctant to check out literary fiction, as it’s often written off as not being about anything but adultery and divorce. If this is you, I implore you to take a chance, acknowledge that adultery and divorce are compelling sometimes, and also remember that lit fic has a lot more to offer than that. At Writer’s Digest, Michael Woodson describes literary fiction as “less of a genre than a category,” which “focuses on style, character, and theme over plot.” My recommendations include Raven Leilani’s Luster, Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, and Melissa Broder’s Milk Fed. 

I’ll be reading: Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

2. Short Story Collection: You know, a bunch of short stories together in one book? It doesn’t get much more self-explanatory than that. Could be a collection of stories by a single author or an anthology—it’s up to you! I recommend checking out Mariana Enríquez’s The Dangers of Smoking in Bed (translated by Megan McDowell), Nalo Hopkinson’s Falling in Love With Hominids, and Kim Fu’s Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century. 

I’ll be reading: Your Utopia by Bora Chung and translated by Anton Hur 

3. A Sequel: It could be one that you’ve been meaning to get around to, one that’s not releasing until 2025, or the sequel to something you read to cross off another space on this very bingo sheet!

I’ll be reading: Heavenly Tyrant by Xiran Jay Zhao, sequel to 2021’s Iron Widow 

4. Childhood Favorite: Go back and read a book you loved as a child, tween, or teen! There’s no wrong answer here; anything from a YA novel to a picture book would be just lovely, and I can’t wait to see what people pick for this option! I’m not sure which of my old favorites I’ll be revisiting yet—should I go for the warm and fuzzy Casson Family series, or straight towards the mindfucky sci-fi of Interstellar Piggy? Or maybe I’ll go see how Artemis Fowl holds up...

5. 20th Century Speculative Fiction: For those not familiar with the term, speculative fiction can encapsulate science fiction, fantasy, and anything else that falls into the unreal. You’re spoiled for iconic choices here: the 20th century gave us Le Guin’s Left Hand of Darkness, Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale, Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Kindred, L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, the beginning of Pratchett’s Discworld series, Diana Wynne Jones’ Howls’ Moving Castle, and countless others.

I’ll be reading: Dawn by Octavia E. Butler, love of my literary life 💜

6. Fantasy: Fantasy comes in a thousand different shades, from contemporary urban wizards with day jobs at the office to high fantasy spellslingers chasing dragons away from castles. Some examples I’ve adored are N.K. Jemisin’s The Killing Moon, C.L. Polk’s Witchmark, Fonda Lee’s Jade City, and Nghi Vo’s Empress of Salt and Fortune.

I’ll be reading: The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty  

7. Published Before 1950: This one could not be more straightforward if I tried. You have all of human history (or at least, all the parts that have surviving literature), just not the last 75 years. Dig deep! 

I’ll be reading: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, published in 1938 

8. Independent Publisher: Did you guys know that just five publishing companies (Penguin Random House, HarperCollins Publishers, Macmillan Publishers, Simon & Schuster, and Hachette Book Group) are responsible for 80% of books published in the US each year, and 25% of books globally? Break away from the big five and see what some small presses are putting out! If you need some ideas about where to start, check out this list of nearly 300 independent publishers with notes on what kind of books they put out!

I’ll be reading: Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ and translated by Lin King, from Graywolf Press

9. Graphic Novel/Comic Book/Manga: Despite my personal obsession with Batman, the world of comic books is sooo much wider than Gotham City—or anything else that DC and Marvel have to offer. If superheroes aren’t your speed, check out the Southern gothic of Carmen Maria Machado and Dani Strips’ comic The Low, Low Woods, splash around in Kat Leyh’s graphic novel Thirsty Mermaids, or stop waiting for a new season of Dungeon Meshi and go read Ryoko Kui’s manga, translated to English by Taylor Engel. 

I’ll be reading: The Fade, by Aabria Iyengar and Mari Costa

10. Animal on the Cover: Yes, yes, don’t judge a book by its cover—but do go find one with a critter on the cover and give it a read! Absolutely no other requirements here, get silly with it.

I’ll be reading: Shark Heart by Emily Habeck

11. Set in a Country You Have Never Visited: Fiction or nonfiction, doesn’t matter so long as it gives you a little glimpse of a country you’ve never visited in real life. If you’ve somehow visited every country currently recognized in the world, then I guess you get to go read something set in space.

I’ll be reading: A Magical Girl Retires by Park Seolyeon and Kim Sanho, translated by Anton Hur 

12. Science Fiction: A genre just as diverse as fantasy, with a little something for everybody! I recommend Becky Chambers’ Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet for those who want to kiss an alien in the stars and Jessamine Chan’s The School for Good Mothers for those who want a surveillance state dystopia that hits much closer to home.  

I’ll be reading: Womb City by Tlotlo Tsamaase

13. 2025 Debut Author: Read a book by someone who’s releasing their first book in 2025. Fic or nonfic, any genre, no further requirements. Not quite a free space, but pretty close!

I’ll be reading: Liquid: A Love Story by Mariam Rahmani, coming out March 11

14. Memoir: Per Wikipedia, a memoir is “any nonfiction narrative writing based on the author’s personal memories.” Some are funny, some are heartbreaking, some are both! I recommend Carman Maria Machado’s In the Dream House and Roxane Gay’s Hunger, because I tend to lean heartbreaking! 

I’ll be reading: Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner. Again, I like heartbreaking!

15. Read a Zine, Make a Zine: Not familiar with zines? No problem! Check out some of these digital archives for inspiration, and then craft your own zine with this simple guide (or do it your own way, I’m not in charge of you). 

Internet Archives: https://archive.org/details/zines

Gay Zine Archive Project: https://gittings.qzap.org/ 

POC Zine Project: https://poczineproject.tumblr.com/ 

Library of Congress: https://www.loc.gov/collections/zine-web-archive/ 

16. Essay Collection: Like a short story collection, but it’s nonfiction now. Some of my favorites include Samantha Irby’s We Are Never Meeting in Real Life, Elaine Castillo’s How to Read Now, Aimee Nezhukhumatathil’s World of Wonders, and Cathy Park Hong’s Minor Feelings.

I’ll be reading: A Little Devil in America: In Praise of Black Performance by Hanif Abdurraqib 

17. 2024 Award Winner: What award? Any award you like! And boy, there are tons to pick from. Any book that won any award in the year 2024 is free game. If you need some places to start looking, check out some of these:

Lambda Literary Awards, for excellence in LGBT literature: https://lambdaliterary.org/awards__trashed/2024-winners/ 

The Alex Awards, for adult books with crossover appeal for teen readers: https://www.ala.org/yalsa/alex-awards 

Ignyte Awards, celebrating diversity in speculative fiction: https://ignyteawards.fiyahlitmag.com/2024-results/  

Women's Prize for Fiction (self explanatory) https://womensprize.com/prizes/womens-prize-for-fiction/

Others: https://www.bookbrowse.com/awards/ 

I’ll be reading: Biography of X by Catherine Lacey, winner of the 2024 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction

18. Nonfiction: Learn Something New: I know very little about archaeology, anthropology, or any other fields that involve studying ancient cities, but Annalee Newitz’s Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age was some of the most fun I had with nonfiction in 2024, because every page brought a brand new discovery. For 2025, find a nonfiction book about a topic you don’t know ANYTHING about, and learn something new!

I’ll be reading: Cooling the Tropics: Ice, Indigeneity, and Hawaiian Refreshment by Hi’ilei Julia Kawehipuaakahaopulani Hobart

19. Social Justice & Activism: Read a book about a social issue, the history of an activist movement, or brush up on a guiding philosophy or ideology. Arm yourself with knowledge, besties, because I have a feeling we’re going to need it! if you need a good place to start, why not try Angela Davis' Race, Women & Class, Mariame Kaba's We Do This 'Til We Free Us, or Molly Smith and Juno Mac's Revolting Prostitutes?

I’ll be reading: White Feminism: From Suffragettes to Influencers and Who They Leave Behind by Koa Beck

20. Romance Novel: Listen to me. Fucking listen to me. I mean a ROMANCE. NOVEL. Not a novel that incidentally has a romance in it. Romance novel, motherfucker. Go check out the romance section and have some whimsy as two people fall in love through the most contrived series of events ever conceived. If you really need a romance that makes you feel smart (that’s still sexy and messy as hell), try Akwaeke Emezi’s You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty.

I’ll be reading: Go Luck Yourself by Sara Raasche  

21. Read and Make a Recipe: Could be a cookbook, could be a recipe you yoinked from the New York Times, could be something your grandparents lovingly wrote down by hand. Could be as complex or as simple as you like, just make something tasty! Some cookbooks I’ve enjoyed are Sohla El-Waylly’s Start Here, Dan Pashman’s Mission Impastable, and John Wang and Storm Garner’s The World Eats Here.

22. Horror: Slashers, zombies, haunted houses, creeping paranoia, you name it! It’s time to get spooky and scary with all kinds of things going bump in the night. Maybe this is the year to finally keep up with Dracula Daily? Not for me, I'm not doing that, but you could!

I’ll be reading: I Was A Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones

23. Published in the Aughts: A throwback, but not too far back. Read something published between 2000 and 2009. Maybe it’s time to finally get into Twilight? (For legal reasons, that’s a joke.)

I’ll be reading: The Sluts by Dennis Cooper, published in 2004

24. Historical Fiction: You know, fiction that takes place in a bygone era! Please remember, this isn’t just about reading a book that’s old; we have a separate prompt for that! This is about reading something that takes place in the past relative to the time it was written. Pride and Prejudice is historical to us, but was contemporary when Austen wrote it. Think of Brit Bennett's The Vanishing Half, Markus Zusak's The Book Thief, or history + a bit of fantasy in book's like R.F. Kuang's Babel.

I’ll be reading: The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon

Bookseller or Librarian Recommendation: This one is fun, and something I always like to do when I’m travelling and visiting a new bookstore. Ask a bookseller or librarian to recommend something they’ve liked, and check it out! If going in person isn’t feasible, many bookstores and libraries have staff picks on their websites, and the Indie Next List is a monthly list of independent booksellers’ favorite new releases. 

I’ll be reading: The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich, which I bought at Erdrich’s bookstore, Birchbark Books, this summer :)

lastly: tagging people who asked to be tagged to make sure they didn't miss this! @thebisexualwreckoning @perfunctoryperfusions @reallyinkyhands come get your bingo sheet!

[midnitetech]

Write Books Overhaul

Hey Simmers! 🎉 I’m thrilled to unveil my latest creation—an epic overhaul of the writing experience in The Sims 4! 📚✍️

Ever feel like writing a Children’s book shouldn’t be so basic? Or that your creative Sims are stuck skilling up before they can explore other genres? Not anymore! Now, every genre is open to your Sims, no matter their Writing Skill level. That’s right—from romance to sci-fi, they’re free to let their imagination run wild from the start!

And it gets better! At Writing Skill Level 2, Sims can Self-Publish on Simazon, while at Level 5, they can score deals by selling their work to a Publisher. If they hit Level 9, they can even Submit to the Literary Digest—the ultimate recognition!

Plus, uninspired Sims can break through Writer’s Block by heading to a relaxing Writing Retreat. Can’t afford it? No worries! There are fresh online tools to help boost creativity right from home! 🖥️✨

I’ve poured a ton of heart into this, and I can’t wait for you all to dive in.

⚠️REQUIRED⚠️ 🌐Lot 51's Core Library 📁midnitetech_modlibrary 🎮Required DLC: None/Base Game Compatible

ℹ️ Note: This mod is now fully compatible with adeepindigo's Writing Overhaul! Previously, both mods overrode the same tuning file, but I've adjusted mine so that my custom genre publishing options are now available through separate mailbox interactions or on a Computer with Self-Publish with Simazon!

Get help, reach out, or explore more of my creations—all in one place!

Download to C:\Users\....\Documents\Electronic Arts\The Sims 4\Mods Don't forget Lot 51's Core Library and 📁midnitetech_modlibrary—script files must be no more than 1 folder deep.

PATREON (free)

[the-joy-of-knowledge]

Becoming an Intelligent Woman

My Dears,

There is no greater goal than being a fine woman who is intelligent, kind, and elegant. As much as we all want to be described with these adjectives, it takes a great amount of discipline to get there. It is very doable only if you are ready to put in the work.

Here are steps you can add to your routine in the next 4 weeks that will make you 1% more intelligent than you were before. This is a process that should become a habit not a goal. It is long term, however, I want you to devote just 4 weeks into doing these steps first and recognize the changes that follow.

Watch documentaries: This is the easiest step, we all have access to Youtube. Youtube has a great number of content on art, history, technology, food, science etc that will increase your knowledge and pique your curiosity. I really did not know much about world history especially from the perspective of World war 1 & 2, the roaring 20s, Age of Enlightenment, Jazz era, monarchies etc but with several channels dedicated to breaking down history into easily digestible forms. I have in the last 4 weeks immersed myself into these documentaries. Here are a few I watched:

The fall of monarchies

The Entire History of United Kingdom

The Eight Ages of Greece

World War 1

World War 2

The Roaring '20s

The Cuisine of the Enlightenment

2. Read Classics: I recommend starting with short classics so that you do not get easily discouraged. Try to make reading easy and interesting especially if you struggle with finishing a book. Why classics? You see, if you never went to an exclusive private school in Europe or America with well crafted syllabus that emphasized philosophy, history, art, and literary classics, you might want to know what is felt like and for me this was a strong reason. Asides that, there is so much wisdom and knowledge available in these books. In these books, you gain insights to the authors mind, the historical context of the era, the ingenuity of the author, the hidden messages, and the cultural impact of these books. Most importantly, you develop your personal philosophy from the stories and lessons you have accumulated from the lives of the characters in the books you read. Here are classics to get you started:

Animal Farm by George Orwell

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald

Candide by Voltaire

Paradise lost by John Milton

3. Study the lives of people who inspire you: I dedicate one month to each person that fascinates me. I read their biography (date of birth, background, death, influences, work, style, education, personal life) For this month, I decided to study Frank Lloyd Wright because I was fascinated by the Guggenheim Museum in New York. I began to read about his influence in American Architecture (Organic architecture, Prairie School, Usonian style), his tumultuous personal life, his difficult relationship with his mentor (Louis Sullivan), his most iconic works etc. By the end of the year I would have learned the ins and outs of people I am inspired by through books and documentaries. Here are other people I plan to learn more about:

Winston Churchill

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

Ada Lovelace

Benjamin Franklin

Helen Keller

John Nash

Isabella Stewart Gardner

Caroline Herrera

Ernest Hemingway

Catherine the Great

Ann Lowe

My dears, I hope you enjoyed this read. I cannot wait to write more on my journey to becoming a fine woman. I urge you to do this for four weeks and see what changes you notice. Make sure to write as well, it is important to document your progress.

Cheers to a very prosperous 2024!

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: Fight Scene

How to Write a Convincing Fight Scene

In practice, writing a realistic fight scene for your novel is one of the hardest things you’ll ever do.

That’s because fight scenes can be boring to read.

A movie allows the audience to take a passive stance and have the action wash over them.

In contrast, reading a fight scene requires the audience to activate their imagination.

The audience must participate in constructing the fight scene from your clues and seeing it play out in their mind’s eye.

That’s a lot more difficult than getting it fed to you visually.

Below are strategies for writing fight scenes.

Fight Scenes Should Move the Story Forward

The very first rule for fight writing (and writing any scene in general) is to ensure that it moves the story forward.

Say “no” to gratuitous fight scenes that only show off fancy moves or writing skills.

Here’s the easiest way to find out if your fight scene moves the story:

Delete it.

Now, read the scene before and the scene after.

Can you still make sense of what happened?

If the fight caused some type of transition in your story, keep it in.

And remember: Not all transitions are physical. Some are mental.

You don’t always have to discuss the physical aftermath.

You can also explore the mental fallout after a fight.

This can be how the fight moves the story forward.

Fight Scenes Should Improve Characterization

Because reading a fight scene can get boring quickly, it’s important that you focus on more than the bare-knuckle action.

Use fights as a way to explore your character(s) and provide more insight on the following:

Why does the character make the choices that they make in the fight?

How does each choice reinforce their characterization?

How does each choice impact their internal and/ or external goals?

Is this conflict getting the character closer or further away from their goals? How?

What are the stakes for each character? What do they stand to win/lose?

What type of fighter is the character? What are their physical or mental abilities? (Remember that not every protagonist will be a trained assassin, so they’re prone to make sloppy mistakes during a fight.)

Use the fight scene to reveal necessary information about the characters.

Be sure to give the reader a glimpse into the character’s soul and not just into their fighting skills.

Fight Scenes Shouldn't Slow the Pace

In movies and especially in real life, fights go by quickly.

But in literature, fight scenes can slow the pace.

That’s because you have to write all of the details and the reader has to reconstruct the scene in their minds.

However, if you employ certain literary devices into your narrative, you can actually create a taut fight scene.

Here are some tips:

Write in shorter sentences. Shorter sentences are easier to digest. It also speeds up the pace of a story.

Mix action with dialogue. Don’t just write long descriptions of what’s happening. Also, share the verbal exchange between your characters.

Don’t focus too much on what’s going on inside the character’s mind. Introspection happens before and after a fight, not during.

Keep the fight short. Fights should never go on for pages (unless you’re discussing an epic battle between armies, and not individuals).

Hit ’Em With All the Senses

One of the best ways to get visceral when describing a fight is to activate every sense possible.

This includes sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell.

Think of how you can use these five descriptors in your writing to immediately transport the reader to the scene.

Sight 

Perhaps the most obvious.

You’ll describe exactly what the characters are seeing and what the reader should pay attention to in the scene.

Hearing 

Is a little more delicate.

A fight scene is a perfect time to introduce onomatopoeia into your narrative.

Onomatopoeia - a word that sounds like what it is describing.

Try using more subtle examples, such as:

Boom, Clang, Clap, Clatter, Click, Crack, Creak, Crunk, Fizzle, Gargle, Groan, Grunt, Gurgle, Hiss, Howl, Hum, Knock, Plod, Rattle, Roar, Rustle, Sizzle, Smack, Splash, Splatter, Squeal, Tap, Thud, Thumb, Whine, Whisper

Taste 

Be careful with going abstract here.

Instead of using phrases like, “he could taste fear in the air,”

go for something more concrete like, “blood mixed with strawberry lip gloss was a strange taste.”

Touch 

Perhaps one of the easiest senses to convey.

Describe how the characters feel and interact with each other physically.

Smell 

You often see or hear a fight, but can you smell it?

In person, what would the fight smell like? Probably sweat.

Consider other scents, such as the ambient aroma in the scene.

Example: If the fight takes place in a car garage, there may be the lingering scent of motor oil and tire rubber.

Don’t be afraid to add that into the scene to introduce a different dimension.

When Writing a Fight Scene, Edit, Edit, Edit

A good story is an edited one.

The same rule applies to fight scenes.

A sloppy fight scene can slow the pace of your story and/or confuse the reader.

When editing your fight scene, keep the following in mind:

Don’t include a blow by blow of what happens in the fight. After your initial draft, remove non-essential details that can slow down reading.

Delete flowery language. Extra words drag the pace. Remove every single word that you can.

Consolidate characters to reduce reader confusion and frustration.

Source ⚜ Fight Scenes (Part 2) ⚜ Words for your Fight Scenes Word Lists: Fight ⚜ Poking/Hitting ⚜ Panting ⚜ Running ⚜ Pain

Writing Resources PDFs

[thepopculturearchivist]

LITERARY DIGEST, August 27, 1927

[cosmereplay]

If you are having strong negative emotions about Wind and Truth after you finish it, and you're having a hard time expressing why, consider: maybe you are sad about the stuff around the book.

Let me explain, because this happened to me over the last week.

Sanderson's books are known to be emotionally pretty rough, and it's hard to read my favourite characters going through it. The ending is the end of an arc, not the whole story, so many things are left open-ended. On top of that, the characters grow and change, so the characters I have grown to love are different now! AUGH CHANGE!!

On top of that, for me personally I have relied a lot on the Stormlight fandom to help me laugh and distract from my shitty life, so to go through a month minimum where people are avoiding social media for spoilers purposes, or not posting, or have info that they can't share yet, is isolating and frustrating. Even though it's not anyone's fault, it's just change! (More change. Fuck)

Change brings its own grief. Many people will be moving on to other fandoms after this, or thinking about characters in different ways than I might want to. I might have to rebuild my community a little as people develop different obsessions or ideas. It's normal, and it's okay to be sad about it!

Anyway so after I finished reading the book I had a real depressive low for a bit. It's commonly known as post-vacation blues, the time after the thing you looked forward to, when you have to go back to regular life. That just by itself is a well known cause of temporary sadness/depression. No wonder I was having trouble getting out of bed 😅

There can be a temptation, especially for those of us who like to project our feelings onto characters, to take umbrage at this or that characterization, or pick the book apart to find things to be upset about. But if the critique is based off projecting emotions, then it won't be a solid argument and you'll probably end up having a bad time in a conversation with someone who is enjoying the literary critique.

I just started coming out of it today and realized hey, maybe the book isn't bad. Maybe I was just sad, for all these reasons. It'll still take months for me to digest it but that's just me, I'm a slow learner for literary stuff. At least now (after a couple good mopes) I can start thinking about my true opinions not clouded by grief.

So I thought I'd pass it on in case others might relate! If you don't relate that's fine. (ie This is a mental health post, this is not the place to tell me what you didn't like about the book, that's not what this post is about.)

[michaelbaileywriter]

Station Identification Time

Who Am I? I’m a writer originally from Falmouth, MA who now lives in Oxford, MA with my awesome wife Veronica and four cats who don’t like to let us sleep in. After 15 years with the Falmouth Enterprise, where I worked as a general and political reporter, blogger, and editor, I left the news industry to focus on my creative writing. In addition to my novels (more on that in a minute) I’m a…

[mostlysignssomeportents]

When prophecy fails, election polling edition

In Canto 20 of Inferno, Dante confronts a pit where the sinners have had their heads twisted around backwards; they trudge, naked and weeping, through puddles of cooling tears. Virgil informs him that these are the fortunetellers, who tried to look forwards in life and now must look backwards forever.

In a completely unrelated subject, how about those election pollsters, huh?

Writing for The American Prospect, historian Rick Perlstein takes a hard look at characteristic failure modes of election polling and ponders their meaning:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-09-25-polling-imperilment/

Apart from the pre-election polling chaos we're living through today, Perlstein's main inspiration is W Joseph Campbell 2024 University of California Press book, Lost in a Gallup: Polling Failure in US Presidential Elections:

https://www.ucpress.edu/books/lost-in-a-gallup/paper

In Campbell's telling, US election polling follows a century-old pattern: pollsters discover a new technique that works spookily well..for a while. While the new polling technique works, the pollster is hailed a supernaturally insightful fortune-teller.

In 1932, the Raleigh News and Observer was so impressed with polling by The Literary Digest that they proposed replacing elections with Digest's poll. The Digest's innovation was sending out 20,000,000 postcards advertising subscriptions and asking about presidential preferences. This worked perfectly for three elections – 1924, 1928, and 1932. But in 1936, the Digest blew it, calling the election for Alf Landon over FDR.

The Digest was dethroned, and new soothsayers were appointed: George Gallup, Elmo Roper and Archibald Crossler, who replaced the Digest's high-volume polling with a new kind of poll, one that sought out a representative slice of the population (as Perlstein says, this seems "so obvious in retrospect, you wonder how nobody thought of it before").

Representative polling worked so well that, three elections later, the pollsters declared that they could predict the election so well from early on that there was no reason to keep polling voters. They'd just declare the winner after the early polls were in and take the rest of the election off.

That was in 1948 – you know, 1948, the "Dewey Defeats Truman" election?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dewey_Defeats_Truman

If this sounds familiar, perhaps you – like Perlstein – are reminded of the 2016 election, where Fivethirtyeight and Nate Silver called the election for Hillary Clinton, and we took them at their word because they'd developed a new, incredibly accurate polling technique that had aced the previous two elections.

Silver's innovation? Aggregating state polls, weighting them by accuracy, and then producing a kind of meta-poll that combined their conclusions.

When Silver's prophecy failed in 2016, he offered the same excuse that Gallup gave in 1948: when voters are truly undecided, you can't predict how they'll vote, because they don't know how they'll vote.

Which, you know, okay, sure, that's right. But if you know that the election can't be called, if you know that undecided voters are feeding noise into the system whenever you poll them, then why report the polls at all? If all the polling fluctuation is undecided voters flopping around, not making up their mind, then the fact that candidate X is up 5 points with undecided means nothing.

As the finance industry disclaimer has it, "past performance is no guarantee of future results." But, as Perlstein says, "past performance is all a pollster has to go on." When Nate Silver weights his model in favor of a given poll, it's based on that poll's historical accuracy, not its future accuracy, because its future accuracy can't be determined until it's in the past. Like Dante's fortune-tellers, pollsters have to look backwards even as they march forwards.

Of course, it doesn't help that in some cases, Silver was just bad at assessing polls for accuracy, like when he put polls from the far-right "shock pollster" Trafalgar Group into the highly reliable bucket. Since 2016, Trafalgar has specialized in releasing garbage polls that announce that MAGA weirdos are way ahead, and because they always say that, they were far more accurate than the Clinton-predicting competition in 2016 when they proclaimed that Trump had it in the bag. For Silver, this warranted an "A-" on reliability, and that is partially to blame for how bad Silver's 2020 predictions were, when Republicans got pasted, but Trafalgar continued to predict a Democratic wipeout. Silver's methodology has a huge flaw: because Trafalgar's prediction history began in 2016, that single data-point made them look pretty darned reliable, even though their method was to just keep saying the same thing, over and over:

https://www.ettingermentum.news/p/the-art-of-losing-a-fivethirtyeight

Pollsters who get lucky with a temporarily reliable methodology inevitably get cocky and start cutting corners. After all, polling is expensive, so discontinuing the polls once you think you have an answer is a way to increase the enterprise's profitability. But, of course, pollsters can only make money so long as they're somewhat reliable, which leads to a whole subindustry of excuse-making when this cost-cutting bites them in the ass. In 1948, George Gallup blamed his failures on the audience, who failed to grasp the "difference between forecasting an election and picking the winner of a horse race." In 2016, Silver declared that he'd been right because he'd given Trump at 28.6% chance of winning.

This isn't an entirely worthless excuse. If you predict that Clinton's victory is 71.4% in the bag, you are saying that Trump might win. But pollsters want to eat their cake and have it, too: when they're right, they trumpet their predictive accuracy, without any of the caveats they are so insistent upon when they blow it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jDlo7YfUxc

There's always some excuse when it comes to the polls: in 1952, George Gallup called the election a tossup, but it went for Eisenhower in a landslide. He took out a full-page NYT ad, trumpeting that he was right, actually, because he wasn't accounting for undecided voters.

Polling is ultimately a form of empiricism-washing. The pollster may be counting up poll responses, but that doesn't make the prediction any less qualitative. Sure, the pollster counts responses, but who they ask, and what they do with those responses, is purely subjective. They're making guesses (or wishes) about which people are likely to vote, and what it means when someone tells you they're undecided. This is at least as much an ideological project as it is a scientific one:

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2024-09-23-polling-whiplash/

But for all that polling is ideological, it's a very thin ideology. When it comes to serious political deliberation, questions like "who is likely to vote" and "what does 'undecided' mean" are a lot less important than, "what are the candidates promising to do?" and "what are the candidates likely to do?"

But – as Perlstein writes – the only kind of election journalism that is consistently, adequately funded is poll coverage. As a 1949 critic put it, this isn't the "pulse of democracy," it's "its baby talk."

Today, Tor Books publishes VIGILANT, a new, free LITTLE BROTHER story about creepy surveillance in distance education. It follows SPILL, another new, free LITTLE BROTHER novella about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/26/dewey-beats-truman/#past-performance-is-no-guarantee-of-future-results