#thoughts on writing

[trilliath]

honestly shout out to the dead dove: do not eat creators, the darkfic authors, the people who can unflinchingly stare into their darkest desires and curiosities and give them life enough to share with other people. It's absolutely so much harder than it looks to pull off

[barbwritesstuff]

I went to a couple of writing workshops on the weekend and one of the authors speaking had some very prescriptive things to say about writing.

Things such as:

"If you don't use the hero's journey structure your writing is ugly."

"There can only be one protagonist. If someone tells me they have multiple protagonists in their story, they fundamentally don't understand the craft of writing."

"Readers have to empathise with the main character. Being relatable is the most important trait for a main character to have."

"Action comes before dialogue."

"Our bodies mimic the breathing patterns in punctuation."

"Stories have to have a satisfying ending, or they're not good stories. Unsatisfying endings are a modern invention which has harmed book sales."

And. Look. I know I'm not a big, famous flash-bang author or anything.

But some of these things are just outright false. I also really feel like this sort of attitude is (at best) snobby, and (at worse) shitty.

It's also not a very new attitude. Since the dawn of humanity, humans have been saying things like: "Stories are only good if XYZ."

And so, I just wanted to get online and say one thing:

"Aviate. Navigate. Communicate."

Those are the actions pilots are meant to do in an emergency. It's very important that they do them, in that order, because if they don't, there is a higher probability of disaster.

Like... crashing to the ground in a flaming ball of death level of disaster.

Writers (and I cannot stress this enough) are not pilots.

If we break rules, no one dies.

Sometimes, when we break rules, wonderful things happen.

So��while I think it's hugely useful to learn about story structure, craft, etc—coming at an art with absolute rules like this, is silly.

We're not pilots. Lives are not on the line. We can (and should) be creative and have fun. And if it doesn't work out? Oh well. That's fine. That's how we learn and grow as writers.

Also, what works for one writer may not work for another, and that's fine. Commerical success isn't everything... and there are actually plenty of very commercially successful books and stories that break these 'absolute' rules this author talked about.

So...

Yeah.

That's my lukewarm take.

Write and have fun. Don't worry about this sort of snobby silliness.

P.S I did actually enjoy the workshop and I think overall this author had good takes. I think there were just some very silly takes sprinkled in and I've been ruminating on them for a couple of days.

[emmg]

I think I’ve told this story before, but in the grand tradition of oversharing on the internet, we go again: Once upon a time, I was absolutely blitzed. I stumbled across this 20-something-chapter fic and thought, “You know what? Let’s binge the whole damn thing tonight.” So I did. And then, because apparently I become a literary scholar when stoned, I left a comment on every. single. chapter. Full-blown mini essays. Which is not abnormal for me (those of you who know know lmao) but yeah lol.

ANYWAY, the point, yes, I have one, shockingly, is this: art doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Especially fanfic. Especially fandom. It is born in context, it thrives on connection, and it withers in silence. This reciprocity is the lifeblood of fandom. Remove it, and the machine stalls. Fan creations live and breathe because of community. That sacred little exchange of “I made a thing” and “HOLY SHIT I LOVE YOUR THING.”

Fanwork is a unique kind of art. It’s created for free, shared for love, and almost entirely powered by emotional investment. Unlike traditional publishing, where gatekeeping and monetary structures create a buffer between audience and artist, fandom operates on immediate, often intimate exchange. The currency is not dollars, but comments, reblogs, tags, and general screaming in the replies.

Look, I’m famously terrible at replying to my own comments because I’m shy (if you know, you know, yes, I’m still sorry about it), but that doesn’t mean I don’t cherish them. I hoard them. I snack on them like emotional Pringles. Nom nom nom.

Anyway, the point is: share the stuff you like. I love making threads for fics I’m obsessed with. I read, I comment, kudos, yeah yeah, somebody give me a trophy. I’m a hero.

And don’t get me wrong, I adore those little book club vibes on Discord… except when people never actually tell the author they liked the thing. And then it just stays trapped in the Discord void. Like c’mon, we can do better. Whispering praise into a private server is cute, but maybe also… tell the human who wrote it?

[gray-r-regan]

I hate knowing I'm one of those writers who will get to 'celebrate' finishing drafts by taking time off to deep-clean the house before I can start again. Really celebrating it would be having the money to pay someone else to do it while I scream into a pillow about the last three months.

I know my ADHD well enough to know that when I finish these two projects, I want to work on only one thing until it's done, and I will not be able to.

My brain will whine for variety and a 'fun' project, which will be fun -- until I'm done planning it, and have to start writing.

Today I wrote a scene in D86 (the main project, not the 'fun' project) that felt emotional, purposeful and not entirely awful, and might survive the final draft process with minor revisions.

Then I saved it, closed it, and opened PV (the 'fun' project), and I'm sitting here staring at it thinking okay, we're in the 'debate' section. What the hell are we debating? Where, when, and why are we? What's the point of the conversation these two are having? Why am I wasting my time on this? Do I know how to write at all? Did I ever? Can I get there? I hate everything, I want a shower, I'm overwhelmed, and there are other overwhelming life things I have to do today, too. I don't want to do those, either.

I think it was a Stephen King book, maybe On Writing, maybe just a foreword or afterword in something else. He said something to the effect of no matter how many books he finishes, every time he starts a new one, he feels like he has to learn how to write all over again.

I think some of us do this because of and in spite of that. It doesn't feel like mowing the lawn. You don't just haul the machinery out of the shed and go through the same motions every time, unless you're Jodi Picoult or Agatha Christie (no hate, it works for them).

For the last two, maybe even three weeks, writing has felt like that awful forty-five minutes I spent yesterday evening:

I have two dehumidifiers, they run all the time, but it's summer in Illinois and they can't keep up, so the attic hatch, swollen outside its frame, popped open, and the spring-loaded murder ladder decided to schwing! out on its own and crash into the hardwood.

To keep the cats from dashing up into the dark, spider-infested depths of my clearly haunted attic, which would necessitate me going up there, I had to stand on the step ladder holding the door up, trading off shaking arms and sore shoulders, sweating in the wet air while waiting for my kid to look for (and not find) the tools I needed to rig a temporary fix (wood screws and a handful of zip ties).

I'm straining to hold the projects up so I don't have to go up into the dark depths of failure and try to coax my own self-esteem out of the cobwebbed corners while the ghost of my future self screams at me that I wasted what's left of my life.

I'm tired. I'm sore. I'm sick of it. Experience has taught me I am very good at wringing the last milliliter of strength out of my body and mind in order to finish something I think is important, so whenever the thought, 'I can't do this,' comes along, I roll my eyes and keep going.

I just hope someday I take on a project that, unlike my attic ladder, doesn't want to kill me.

[gaslightwestern]

Which of your stories have the most meaning to you as the writer? Who are the characters?

Thank you so much for this question!

While not my characters, Blackwater will forever serve as a reminder that:

The voice inside telling me I'm not skilled enough to write a certain story is a goddamn liar. Never listen to it or anyone who makes you doubt your craft.

Write the story you want to read. It has been such a joy to take Red Dead Redemption 2 and turn it into a noir. The fact that so many others have enjoyed it as well is a blessing.

When Sins Haunt also means a lot to me because it was the first time I actually wrote a full novel. It ended up being ~125K and needs heavy revision but it gave me Charlotte, Warren, Sam, and the backstory which I am currently exploring in Hell's Half Acre.

[tellmeallaboutit]

They said they loved my work // but they never even read it to the last chapter! 🥲

I am a huge fan of Clive Barker. I was discussing his novel "The Hellbound Heart" when someone asked me if I liked the ending.

The thing is, I could hardly remember how it ended. In fact, I am not sure I even made it to the end the first time I read it. I would not have left a comment on Clive Barker's final chapter if it had been on AO3.

Why, I was asked? How can I say I'm a huge fan of someone and not even bother to read the whole thing?

Well, the thing is, I love Clive Barker for his visions and concepts and language and the themes he tackles. I don't even think he's that great of a storyteller. Steven King is a better one; I certainly read his novels like page-turners, but how much was left over? Very little. The visions of Clive Barker are burned into my mind forever.

So what's the point? The point is: don't think that the only real reading experience is the one that got to the last chapter as quickly as possible. Appreciate the ones who didn't, but have that scene in chapter 7 etched in their minds forever.

Your writing isn't just about plot and getting from A to B; it's much, much more than that. Sometimes there's just one line that stays with the reader forever, but it's your line.

That line for me would be "That which is imagined can never be lost", Clive Barker, Weaveworld.

Never made it to the end either.

[mrcatfishing]

I can't stand all the people acting like the only thing an LLM can do for a writer is to write entire paragraphs of prose for them.

My father had a tumor removed from his brain two years ago. He now has difficulty with larger planning and organizational tasks. He is also writing a multi-book murder mystery series, thanks to ChatGPT laying out the overarching structure and formula to work from.

The idea of exercises like NaNoWriMo is to provide structure to writers. Most obviously in the form of word goals, but also with plot outlines, story prompts, and more.

[love-ardour-anarchism]

sorry buds, i choose to treat Terry Pratchett and Ursula K. Le Guin somewhat like lots of christians treat their holy scripture... I've not read terribly much of it and yet quotations from their catalogue of writing give me what passes for hope, meaning and the ability to understand this mess of a world we're in

[lassify]

Writing fanfiction is so wierd, man. I have these characters living in my head that I can talk to at any time, and even worse, they're not even my characters. They'e someone else's characters!!

Someone else thought of this galaxy of personality traits and childhood traumas and now THEY are in my head like they belong there😂

But, they're not like how they are in the story. It's like a backstage version of them where I'm like "hey I'm gonna write this huge trauma happening to you hope that's ok" and they're like "aw man not again" like I'm a film director and they're the actors

[elacular-kink]

Let sleeping beauties lie?

At least one of you has already seen me kvetching about this, but in the currently dead hiccup forum, there's some stories that I wrote over a decade ago before vanishing off the face of the earth (apologies to anyone there who wondered about that). It was the longest and most involved thing I'd ever written at the time, I was really proud of it, and I still think back on it fondly, but I posted it under a name different from "Elacular" (which I had already started using in non-kink contexts at the time). And now, having the original google docs, but having barely touched them for ten goddamn years, I'm really not sure what to do about it.

I don't want that old writing to vanish into the void. But something about reposting it as myself doesn't feel right. Somehow, though, it also wouldn't feel right to do so under a new pseudonym, or even with the old one. I wouldn't feel like I was lying or stealing or anything, but I'm a very different person than the one I was then. Maybe I'm just a little scared to look back and cringe at my old writing when I've come to actually like rereading my current writing a lot, something I never expected to do.

Whatever I decide, I definitely won't be reposting the crossover shit I wrote with someone else (which is a shame, because that was by far the best part of it in my opinion, and my co-author was fantastic), but I'll see what I end up doing with the stuff that was just me.

Brief, barely relevant personal musings under the cut.

Man. Without getting too deep into it, I remember being curled up in a corner of a public library as a homeless, queer, barely 20 year old writing fetish fics, having not or only just met the people in my life who have become my friends and partners. Times sure change. The world's a lot better for me now, and I'm unbelievably lucky and grateful that's the case. If you're younger and going through the shit, I can't imagine how rough it is for you, but it is possible for things to get better. And if you're dealing with homelessness or queer issues specifically, there's an organization called Outside In that could be worth reaching out to, especially if you're in the pacific northwest. Good luck out there.

[trilliath]

We've seen lots of polls around authors saying it's not at all weird to get comments on old fic (it is in fact a delight!), but I'm curious about the other direction.

Life happens, writers can be shy or just get busy or simply not have the spoons to always reply right away even if they want to, and eventually it starts to feel like it might be weird to reply after a certain point. So:

[heyjude19-writing]

hello! i've got some writing questions! Do you outline? what's your writing process like? any writing advice? any books about writing or dialogue or plot that you would recommend? thanks! love your fics <3

hello there! i love writing questions.

1.) I do outline! it's actually my favorite part of the writing process. every writer probably has a different preference for outlining, and mine is on the more chaotic end, i think. it's chronological, but mostly bullet points and dialogue snippets, half-formed scenes that excite me, etc. i feel the most free, creatively, at this point. anything i think up gets thrown on here and then when i feel like there's enough of a story to pursue, i go in and write right within that outline to flesh it all out and string it together.

2.) my writing process involves a lot of daydreaming and thinking through scenes ten different ways before I go write them down. I make a story playlist. I dig into the vibes i want to feel while reading and writing this story. then, per my outline response, i go into my outline and see what excites me about the story and where i'd like to focus my energy. i generally won't fully commit to a story idea unless i have a beginning and an end i want to work towards.

3.) writing advice: find what works for you and throw the rest out. for me, writing sprints are a HUGE motivator for me to get words on a page. i also dont always write a story chronologically, but skip around my outline based on what interests me. i have to have music. don't box yourself into a particular method or style just because it works for one writer. you may need complete silence, or a designated spot in your home to work, or maybe even a schedule. try out some routines and see what sticks.

4.) im not one for books on writing, so perhaps others can weigh in on any that might have helped them. i will say that for dialogue specifically, listening to transcripts has helped me a lot. pay attention to speech fillers when you hear real conversations and don't be afraid to have your characters speak imperfectly (bc you want them to sound like real people, right?). also one of the best dialogue tips i ever read was the 'pass the potatoes' tip. basically, if you're having a meal scene, it probably makes sense to have some of the conversation revolve around the setting, to make it feel more natural/immersive and less like your characters could be talking anywhere.

even though i don't read technical books, another tip would be to read widely and pay attention to what writers you admire do in their work. im constantly impressed by writers who are skilled at leaving narrative white space, or who can master large character casts, so i focus on what i want to improve and look for that when im reading novels/fics/magazine articles.

i hope some of this helps you on your writing journey, always happy to chat about writing 🥰

[emmg]

I have no idea how people write short, succinct chapters. Meanwhile, all my shit snowballs into 10k word monstrosities, and I absolutely fucking hate myself for it, lmfao

oh, you thought you were settling in for a quick, fun fic? Surprise, bitch! Here’s a full-blown dissertation on every character’s trauma, their hobbies, the weather that day, and overly descriptive smut. Hope you cleared your schedule~

[gray-r-regan]

Having high standards for the work you're willing to share with others means you rarely get to share.

Especially when you believe you still need to develop your skill before you can create anything to your standards.

This is a fine line between having standards and being a victim of perfectionism who fears judgment. I used to be a perfectionist to the point where I couldn't even start something, and part of it was driven by fear of judgment (based on negative experiences), and I do still struggle with hiding even the work I somewhat like to protect myself from all the symptoms of my mental illness and how they make it more difficult for me to accept critique than it is for someone who doesn't have these conditions, though I am working to separate my self-worth from the worth of what I produce.

There's something to be said for creating and slinging it out there and treating it as continuous learning, especially if you get feedback (and decide whether it's useful, and apply it) ... if you can stand knowing you've put things out in the world that don't reflect the best you know you can do.

I mostly can't.

If you're specifically asking for critique, especially, I've said before that I feel like it's a waste of their time and yours if they're just pointing out flaws you already know about but didn't take the time to root out on your own.

It's easy to give up.

You have to incentivize creation for yourself, lacking the incentive of other people's attention, which is one of the biggest incentives of creation (but also one reason many works of art fall short of their potential).

So many things are underbaked due to a lack of patience and willingness to do hard work with no immediate payoff, and no promise of a payoff in the future.

Especially thanks to recent technology that has all but destroyed our ability to delay gratification or do anything for any reason other than gratification (which is also, not coincidentally, why the world is on fire).

It's really essential to develop a mentality of celebrating your milestones, reminding yourself of why you're doing what you're doing, being proud of your standards and your efforts to achieve them, and just being able to sit in a room alone and deal with the silence, day after day.

[gaslightwestern]

Confession: Mabel Williams--my seamstress by day, aspiring crime journalist by night--exists because I cannibalized an old OC.

Hell's Half Acre had too many male main characters so I decided to change Jack Cadwell, aka the plucky, in-the-wrong-genre journalist of When Sins Haunt. I got rid of his grew-up-on-the-streets past, took his personality (a clever, career-driven, smart ass) as well as working class background and turned him into no-nonsense Mabel.

Mabel is a young black woman from a loving, small-town family who moved to New York to pursue becoming a journalist. Fed up with the papers not taking her seriously, Mabel decides she is going to make it so that they can't ignore her anymore, even if that means risking her neck to get to the bottom of a major story.

I considered making Mabel part of the wealthy black elite but dropped the idea when I remembered this show exists:

The Gilded Age features Peggy Scott, an upper class black woman and aspiring journalist who befriends an "Old Money" white woman.

Yeah I know, two cakes and everything but the set-up is too similar to Mabel and Charlotte. Also I wanted to write someone who lives beyond the bubble of Fifth Avenue to give a fuller picture of Gilded Age New York. Not to mention if Mabel (and an exasperated Charlotte) are running all over the city investigating organized crime, it makes sense to have one actually know where the hell they're going.

Changing Jack into Mabel kind of messes up When Sins Haunt, but that's for future me to worry about ¯\_(ツ)_/¯