#start blog

[visenyaism]

i don’t know about you guys but the main reason i am still on tumblr in 2024 is BECAUSE it is the most cloutless least influential social media app out there and that is the experience i am after. absolutely none of this will ever translate into significant attention or real success in my life and that is so beautiful.

[do-you-know-this-queer-character]

Do you know this queer character?

Castiel is Queer and Agender or Genderfluid, and uses varying pronouns based on presentation!

[thewriteadviceforwriters]

✨ HOW TO ACTUALLY START A BOOK

(no ✨vibes✨, just structure, stakes, and first-sentence sweat)

hello writer friends 💌 so you opened a doc. you sat down. you cracked your knuckles. maybe you even made a playlist or moodboard. and then… you stared at the blinking cursor like it personally insulted your entire bloodline.

here’s your intervention. this post is for when you want to write chapter one, but all you have is aesthetic, maybe a plot bunny, maybe a world idea, maybe nothing at all. here’s how to actually start a book, from structure to sentence one.

—

🌶️ STEP 1: THE SPICE BASE ~ “WHAT’S CHANGING?”

start with this question:

what changes in the protagonist’s life in the first 5–10 pages?

doesn’t have to be earth-shattering. they could get a letter, lose a job, run late, break a rule, wake up hungover in the wrong house. what matters is disruption. the opening of your book should mark a shift. if their day starts normal, it shouldn’t end that way.

🏁 opening chapters are about motion. forward movement. tension. momentum. if nothing is changing, your story isn’t starting, you’re just doing a prequel.

—

⚙️ STEP 2: THE CRUNCHY BITS - CHOOSE AN ENTRY POINT

there are 3 classic places to start a novel. each one works if you’re intentional:

The Day Everything Changes most popular. you drop us in right before or during the inciting incident. clean, fast, efficient.

pro: immediate stakes con: harder to sneak in worldbuilding or character grounding

The Calm Before the Storm starts slightly earlier. show the character’s “normal” life, then break it. useful if the change won’t make sense without context.

pro: space to introduce your character’s routine/flaws con: risky if it drags or feels like setup

The Aftermath drop us in after the big event and fill in gaps as we go. works well for thrillers, mysteries, or emotionally heavy plots.

pro: instant drama con: requires precision to avoid confusion

📝 pick one. commit. don’t blend them or you’ll write three intros at once and cry.

—

🧠 STEP 3: CHARACTER FIRST, ALWAYS

readers don’t care about your setting, your magic system, or your cool mafia politics unless they’re anchored in someone.

in the first scene, we need to know:

what this person wants

what’s bothering them (externally or internally)

one trait they lead with (bold, anxious, calculating, naive, etc.)

that’s it. just one want, one tension, one vibe. no bios. no monologues. no “they weren’t like other girls” essays. put them in a situation and show how they act.

—

⛓️ STEP 4: OPEN WITH FRICTION

first scenes should create questions, not answer them.

there should be tension between:

what the character wants vs. what they’re getting

what’s happening vs. what they expected

what’s being said vs. what’s being felt

you don’t need a gunshot or a car crash (unless you want one). you need conflict. tension = momentum = readers keep reading.

—

✏️ STEP 5: WRITE THE FIRST SENTENCE - THEN IGNORE IT

okay. now you write it.

no pressure. you’re not tattooing it on your soul. this isn’t the final line on the final page. you just need something.

tricks that work:

start in the middle of an action

start with a contradiction

start with something unexpected, funny, or sharp

start with a small lie or a weird detail

💬 examples:

“The body was exactly where she’d left it - rude.” “He was already two hours late to his own kidnapping.” “There was blood on the welcome mat. Again.” “They said don’t open the door. She opened it anyway.”

once you’ve got it? keep going. don’t revise yet. don’t edit. just build momentum.

you can come back and make it ✨iconic✨ later.

—

📦 BONUS: WHAT NOT TO DO IN YOUR OPENING

don’t start with a dream

don’t info-dump lore in paragraph one

don’t give me three pages of your OC making toast

don’t try to sound like a Victorian cryptid unless it’s on purpose

don’t introduce 7 named characters in one scene

don’t start with a quote unless you are 800% sure it slaps

be weird. be sharp. be specific. aim for interest, not perfection.

—

🏁 TL;DR (but make it ✨useful✨)

something in your MC’s life should change immediately

pick a structural entry point and stick to it

give us a person, not a setting

friction = good

first lines are disposable, just make them interesting

and if you needed a sign to just start the damn book, this is it.

💌 love, -rin t.

P.S. I made a free mini eBook about the 5 biggest mistakes writers make in the first 10 pages 👀 you can grab it here for FREE:

[sashayed]

i've been making a lot of bad art lately which is one of the world's most healing activities but if you have perfectionist tendencies you really have to commit to volume (if you make ONE bad painting it's just a bad painting whereas if you make 20 it's a meditative practice!). unfortunately we live in a one bedroom apartment and now we have to commit a significant portion of our storage to bad paintings. i would recycle them but unfortunately i need spare bad paintings to weave together into bad papercraft!!

anyway so i decided to move my bad artmaking into a new, smaller sphere and make bad linocuts. and let me tell you. if you are trying to get past thinking "my art should be good," linocut is a wonderful teacher. everything can be going great and then you exert slightly too much palm pressure and WHOOPS! sliced the face off. luckily the craft is so niche that negative self-talk can't really stick to it. i'll think something like "everybody else's linocuts are perfect. nobody else fucked up their linocut of a hot lady sphinx." and this is such a patently bananas sentence that i can simply laugh fondly at it and continue hacking away at my little rubber square. recommend

[charl0ttan]

putting [gender] dni on your blog on tumblr feels a lot like going to a rave and asking them to turn on the lights and confiscate all the drugs and alcohol and have quiet reading time. like do u know where you are and what these people believe

[larasraj]

hey let's have this conversation again since the like/reblog ratio is getting SOOOO much worse. if you like content, reblog it. the people who follow you cannot see when you've liked a post, unless your likes are visible and they are routinely going through them, which i assure you they are not. by reblogging content, you are making it visible to other accounts. fanart, gifs, edits, etc. may be fun to make but they are very time consuming and it is much appreciated that if you enjoy them, you take the brief moment to reblog them to show that appreciation - and it helps. as fun as they may be, it is often kind of discouraging for posts to not do well because for every one person that reblogged it, five left a like and kept it pushing

[vocabulary-altering-posts]

you really need to raise your standards for what's considered "a phrase" because if it only makes sense in the specific context of the post it was originally found in and it isn't repeatable in other situations, that's not a phrase that has entered the lexicon, that's just something someone said one time.

i started this thing last week i need all the posts i can handle

What doesn't alter your vocabulary may alter, or may have already altered, someone else's. This is not about adding to The General Lexicon - I have an entire tag for things that change this site as a whole, which has a higher bar; this is largely about novelty and humor. This is us curb-stomping whatever the fuck we want into the right form for our needs, whatever those needs may be, including altering aspects of the phrase to fit the necessary format or context. It's a linguistic shotgun.

its my fuckin blog bitch ill shit where i want

[nyaa]

early 2000s visual novel special effect cgs are such a mood

[gomzdrawfr]

boom? boom.

[bunnbird]

(...full scar drawing under the cut)

this whole thing just to chop 75% of it off LOOL

[teebeeache1234]

cas WIP! i lowkey lost the file to this so it may never be finished 💔

but do not fret!!! i will be posting more spn fanart soon.

[doodledrawsthings]

Dwbi AU Goumang and Shennong plus some others. I think they should be friends.

[theriverbeyond]

tbh I can't stop thinking about how i went into Hadestown being like "this is a tragic love story based on a greek myth I enjoy :)" and I came out the other side covered in blood being like "this is a thesis about how capitalism inevitably leads to both personal and global ruin, and so we are duty bound to resist it even as we lose, again and again and again. no matter how impossible it feels or how many times we fail and hit a wall and fall, we try again"

[bun-a-day]

hoppy new year everyone 🎆🎊🎉🐇