#writing discussion

[tahbhie]

Creating Emotionally Devastating Scenes.

Crafting a scene that earns the total sympathy of your readers can be challenging, but it's not impossible. Most emotionally devastating scenes fail at two things, but when these are done right, the results can be powerful.

⚪ The Important Concepts for Writing an Emotionally Devastating Scene

1. The Build-Up,

2. Breaking the Dam.

Before I explain these concepts, let me share a case study.

⚫ Case Study

I wrote a story about a young orphan named Jackie and her younger brother. Their village was burned down, leaving them as the only survivors.

For the next few chapters, readers followed their painful journey and their struggle to survive. The younger brother had a heart problem, and Jackie vowed to become a cardiologist to save him.

She was very ambitious about it, but at the time, it was very ironic. Later in the story, when they encountered a tragic living condition with a family, the brother died while telling his sister how much he missed their parents.

When her brother was fighting for his life, she was sent out of the room, only to be let in again to see his cold, lifeless body.

⚪ Explanation of Concepts

1. The Build-Up

The build-up is extremely important when you aim to convey strong emotions. Here's a secret: if you plan for a scene with strong emotions, start leaving breadcrumbs from the very beginning of the story.

Take the previous case study. I carefully built up their journey so people could easily relate and feel the pain of the older sister during her brother's sudden death.

You need to give the situation enough reason to feel utterly hopeless and devastating. Gradually cultivate the tension until it's ready to let loose.

⚫ Understanding the Use of Breadcrumbs.

Breadcrumbs in stories ensure you utilize the time you have to build up certain emotions around your characters.

At the beginning of my story, Jackie’s fate was already pitiable, but she survived every hurdle. This gave the readers enough to feel for her while still leaning away from the outcome. When I built enough, I introduced her brother's sudden death.

Hence, leave your breadcrumbs while leaning away from the outcome.

⚪ How to Properly Leave Breadcrumbs

When building up your story, consider these elements:

☞⁠ Character Relatability: The characters need to be realistic to draw readers into the story. This helps readers invest themselves in your story.

☞⁠ Realistic Emotional Pain: Just as characters need to be relatable, their emotions need to be realistic and not appear forced.

☞⁠ Create a Strong Emotional Attachment: Give them something they care about or that has the power to ruin their lives in any way. It could be something that makes them happy or something their happiness relies on. When it's time, snatch it away without remorse.

☞⁠ Have a Backstage Struggle: This struggle keeps readers occupied, so they won't see the outcome coming. For example, Jackie’s constant struggle to find food and shelter keeps readers engaged while the impending tragedy looms in the background.

☞⁠ Attach Believable Elements: For a realistic character, emotion, and struggle, attach believable elements. It could be death, ailments, sickness, disorder, disappointment, failure, etc.

Now that we've covered the build-up, let's move on to the next crucial part.

2. Breaking the Dam

This is when you make your readers feel the strong emotions alongside your characters. All the tension you’ve been building up is released, making all emotions come into play.

☞⁠ Break Your Strong Attachment: Cut off your strong attachment from your character when they least expect it or at a point when they couldn't use more struggles (i.e when they are helpless).

This will not only evoke readers’ emotions but also pique their curiosity as they wonder how the character will survive the situation.

☞⁠ Description of Sensory Details to Invoke Emotions: The advice of "show, don't tell" will be really helpful here. It's crucial to ensure that the final execution matches the build-up.

A well-crafted build-up can fall flat if the emotional release isn't handled effectively. To avoid this, blend the climax seamlessly into the narrative, making it feel natural and impactful.

Reblog to save for reference! 💜

[polling-sonic-fans]

Is Sonic trans?

- Yes, trans man

- Yes, trans woman

- Yes, nonbinary

- Yes, genderfluid

- Yes, some other identity

- No, he is not

- I’ve never considered this before

Thanks anon! Polls for the Sonic fandom on just about anything. Share polls you like to get more data. Asks and submissions always open.

[wrenmkingsley]

If you think you're going a little far in torturing your character, you're probably doing just fine. Remember, a character at the very brink of madness is a happy character.

[seaglasswrites]

Dear writers, please describe your characters.

A lot of people seem to think that describing a character’s appearance is limited to skin color, eye color, hair color + style, and body type, but there’s so much more than that.

If you don’t know where to start, try thinking about each individual feature.

Eyes, for example; It’s great to know that your character has brown eyes, but what do they look like outside of that? Are they big, or small? Upturned, or downturned? Do they have any prominent features, like heavy dark circles? What about their eyelids; Are they monolids or double eyelids? What about the eyes’ general shape?

I’m not saying you need to go into detail about your characters’ nostrils and tear ducts, but give the reader something to work with outside of the basics.

Here’s some stuff to think about for other features, as well:

Nose - Is your character’s nose bridge high or low on their face? Is it more flat, or more defined? How wide or narrow is their nose? Long or short?

Mouth: What color are your character’s lips? How thick or thin are they? Are they horizontally long or narrow? Hell, are the corners of their mouth upturned or downturned?

Face shape: Does your character have a wider face or a slimmer one? Is this due to fat concentration or just their bone structure? What shape would you say most accurately represents your character’s face shape; Circular, triangular, etc? How long or short is your character’s face?

Other features: How high up on your character’s face are their brows? Their brow bone? How heavy and/or noticeable is their brow bone? What shape is their chin? Are their cheekbones prominent, or do they tend to blend in with the rest of the face?

Looking up references on sites like Pinterest can help with this a lot. If you find a person who looks sort of like your character, examine their face and what about it is similar or different to your vision for the character. What features stand out to you?

[specs-does-stuff]

I have been having a blast with Rivals since I picked it up last month, I main Peni and it inspired me to finally give her comics a read the other day, and they are great! (Even if sadly there aren't that many, still.) But, it also reminded me of the discourse surrounding her and more specifically how she's been characterized outside her original comics. People have loads of opinions on the subject, and understandably so, but I decided to break down my thoughts on the subject with this helpful diagram! (Also FEMC is there because she is the best example I can think of for the synthesis, plus she's cool too!)

[a-cosmic-elf]

I’m still processing Andor.

*spoilers ahead*

One of the small but beautiful details to me was how they described K2S0. That it wasn’t ‘reprogramming’.

That it was ‘Impulse supression’.

That’s such a neat detail. It means K2S0 is choosing to not kill them all - because that’s very much what he was programmed to do - kill the rebels.

Thanks to the added personality, he chooses not to.

As a writer of my own AI character, that’s an incredible detail to me. A nuance that I think my Emrys would appreciate very much indeed.

Not reprogrammed. Just choosing to suppress their darkest impulses. The impulse to kill. Such a beautiful detail. I love it so much.

Edit:

I mean they touched on it but never elaborated on Rogue One.

“Why does she get a blaster and I don’t?”

Oh, K! Never truly trusted, but he proved himself loyal to the very end. I mean, I think Cassian did trust him, just not everyone else? Therefore, he was never allowed a weapon? I know he is a weapon, it’s just nuance!

It’s beautiful. Ahhh…

[did-i-do-this-write]

Discussion for the Table

How do you approach worldbuilding? What resources or tools do you use? What do you focus on and how do you develop your ideas? What's your favorite part of worldbuilding or your favorite specific idea you've come up with?

Feel free to answer one, some, or all of these questions! Don't forget to respond to your fellow writers!

Writer's Roundtable Taglist (ask to be +/-): @himbos-hotline, @hallowed-nebulae, @mixing-bowl-of-stories, @scriptrix-eclectica, @darkluminosity

@houndsofcorduff, @kingragnarok-writes, @thearchivistsletterbox, @willtheweaver, @inadequatecowboy

[godhusksapostle]

Whenever I post a new chapter of my stories online I feel like SpongeBob in that one pie-bomb episode when he says “GARY!! YOU ARE GOING TO FINISH YOUR DESERT, AND YOU ARE GOING TO LIKE IT!1!!!” After Squidward asks him to act angry but maybe that’s just me.

[allegedlyiwrite]

Ok so maybe this is a hot take, but I delete so much of my writing. Like routinely. Otherwise I feel like it’s cluttering up both my writing software and my brain.

[dove-tears]

there are a PLETHORA of things about the httyd franchise canon that i have my gripes for but one little nitpick in particular that's always irked me even when i was younger was the way naming the species of a dragon worked.

like the 1st movie already established that the dragons were named the way they were by the berkian tribe because to them they were a deadly force to be reckoned with, driving home the idea that they were "extremely dangerous and to kill on sight", the whole point of the movie turning that notion around and proving that they are incredibly misunderstood creatures that are deserving of respect and thrive off of love and companionship.

and afaik the berkians (at least during the time of the 1st movie) were confirmed to be an isolated tribe before they befriended dragons, the book of dragons was never cowritten by anyone else and any outsiders are clearly shown as foreign and new to the tribe, the later installments pretty much retcon this and dragons are still called by what the berkians call them by outsiders, like for example why does eret, an outsider, call toothless a night fury and why did nobody ever question him for that lmao, i have this exact same frustration with the tv shows.

i feel like it'd be much more better worldbuilding if people outside the berkian tribe actually referred to dragons differently to show their different perspectives on them. like how the berkians once viewed the monstrous nightmare as quite literally what they call them another tribe may view them as an reincarnation of a benevolent sun god deserving to be revered or something along those lines and the way they refer to them being reflective of that, ik the shows kinda sorta already touched on this but i feel like it could've been handled better imo. i hope i made some sort of sense here idk that concludes my babbles for tonight

[tahbhie]

Effective Ways of Creating Relatable and Realistic Conflicts

As a writer, whether you're a beginner, intermediate, or expert, you've likely heard about the importance of creating "relatable and realistic conflicts." This advice appears in almost every writing guide. Yes, it's crucial.

However, this recurring statement might seem vague. Let's break down what these terms mean. We'll discuss how to create conflicts in your style that work, and what can lead to the opposite results.

✧✧✧✧

This is a flexible guide, not a strict set of rules. Let's begin.

✧✧✧✧

First, relatability is different from realism, at least in this context.

Relatability offers an experience that people have gone through before. They can easily identify it as something that happens.

Realism, on the other hand, can be a fresh experience or something entirely fantastical. Here's the catch: it must stay true to your setting and plot. For example, in a fantasy setting, your conflict could be the protagonist's dragon falling sick on the eve of a big race.

In the real world, we have no dragons. But in your setting, your situation with this creature feels real. Now consider an instance where we have intelligent insects with no apparent reason or explanation. This is an example of an unrealistic conflict that doesn't align with its setting. It's either you adjust a few things in the settings or adjust the conflict that stems from their intelligence or is solved by it.

Now that we've established that, let's consider what to keep in mind when writing conflicts.

Conflicts can be resolved instantly or extend further. They can begin your story, occur during it, or happen after a sweet moment.

Before writing a conflict, think about:

1. The Setting:

Where is your world set? This matters a lot! You can use our real-life world but still create your own rules, as long as you make that clear. Your conflict could come off as both realistic and relatable. However, where you have a total no is when your world is the normal world we know, with no changes, and your conflicts are unrealistic and unrelated.

You have such examples in some Bollywood movies. No offense to anyone in love with these movies. This is just a case study for clarification purposes.

Think of the fight scenes. The physical conflicts often stem from a grander conflict. You'll understand where I'm coming from.

2. Duration:

How long will this conflict last in your story? Earlier, I mentioned lasting conflict and fleeting conflict. The former helps create more meaning for your plot. The latter adds excitement that drives the plot forward.

3. Solvability:

Sometimes, the resolution to your conflict can render it meaningless, even after you've nailed the creation. Resolve your conflict in agreement with your plot.

4. Interesting Premise:

Conflict ideas sometimes come naturally as you write your story. I remember when I wrote high school stories, conflicts came to me as I wrote, but this doesn't happen every time. Sometimes, I knew I needed something more exciting and less predictable.

For example, it's common for a new female student to be rivaled by the school's most popular girl. This is usually because of the love interest—the most popular guy in school. But what if they become best friends, and the love interest turns out to be the popular girl's brother?

She mistakes the protagonist's friendship with a different guy as cheating, and the feeling of betrayal turns them against each other. This twist offers a fresh take on the usual antagonizing characters. It could make your story more interesting. This time the antagonist is doing what she feels is in her brother's favour not herself.

5. Character's Involvement:

This is slightly similar to the above. The difference is that it deals directly with the characters themselves, not just the conflict they face. The actions towards the conflict give the situation meaning.

6. Aim and Goals:

What do you aim to achieve with your conflict? Do you wish to entertain, hook the readers, drive the plot forward, or introduce a new object or character? It's best to aim for two at a time. Trying to achieve all in a single conflict could lead to complications.

Which conflict have you read in a book that made you wish you wrote it?

Aiming for a powerful plot? Check out this plot progression planner that helps you plan the aspects you often overlook. You get a free gift!

If you love what I do, support my work to enable more content production.

[polling-sonic-fans]

Thanks for the poll anon! Polls for the Sonic fandom on just about anything. Share polls you like to get more data. Asks and submissions always open.

[wrenmkingsley]

You DON'T have to suffer for your art, I promise!

You know how sometimes the algorithm backfires and you find something on your dash that makes you go not just bruh, but brrrruh? I came a across a post on my lunch break today, all about what it means to Be A Real Writer®. I'd link it, but I don't trust y'all not to be a dick to the person who posted it. (I'd threaten to come to your house and fuck your mom if you did, but many of you guys live an ocean away and I don't travel by plane for ethical reasons.)

Anyway!

There is no such thing as a real or fake writer. Do you write? Yaaay, congrats you're a writer!

There is no such thing as a real or fake author, either. Have you, through one way or another, commercially sold your writing? Guess what, you're an author now!!

Suffering for your writing and seeing writing as a fate you can't escape from, some glorious purpose that you were burdened with at conception, does not make you any more or less valid of a writer than the twelve year old girl writing minecraft youtuber RPF straight into the AO3 post work page.

And I'm not saying that because I'm a twelve year old girl writing RPF or because I'm somehow butthurt about people looking down on romance and smut writers like me. I genuinely do not give a fuck. (And, yes, that's exactly what someone that gives a whole lot of fucks would say, but you're just gonna have to trust me on that one.)

I'm writing this post, because I can't think of anything that would stifle your growth as a writer more than aspiring to Be A Real Writer®. Been there, done that, and all I got where years of my life in which I barely wrote, and if this stupid rant saves even one person from that fate I'll die happy.

But what does Being A Real Writer® even mean? If you're still reading this post you probably have a feeling for the concept already, but let's try and cobble together a definition:

Being A Real Writer® means embodying the ideal of the tortured artist. You creative process needs to be painful. Writing hurts. Not writing hurts more. So, driven, haunted creature that you are, you write. You have to hate everything you write, have to burn and hide everything that isn't up to snuff, because you're not writing so you can share it with other people who might enjoy it or — perish the thought — to make a living, no you're writing for the art, for the Craft, to create something real and true.

And that pursuit of art is something that people should respect! You're martyring yourself on the altar of Literature®! You're slaving away in the solitude all Real Writers® crave, spending years and countless ripped-up drafts on your masterpiece, your good and true and beautiful contribution to the cultural world heritage, unlike those self-proclaimed "authors" that churn-out content to the brain-dead masses, the people writing romance and mysteries and smut and thrillers and fucking cozy fantasy.

… You don't have to live like this. Listen to me, I'm taking your face in between my hands and staring directly into your soul: You don't have to suffer for your art.

"If literary fame could be safely measured by popularity with the half-educated, Dickens must claim the highest position among English novelists" wrote Leslie Stephen in the Dictionary of National Biography about Charles Dickens. Yeah, you read that right. Charles the GOAT Dickens. The Real Writers® of the 19th century considered Charles Dickens peakslop. (Please also note that you have no idea who the fuck Leslie Stephen is.)

Being A Real Writer® is meaningless. More than that, it's holding you back. If you hate what your doing and also kind of hate readers (at least those that dare to read genres other than belles lettre), buddy, I don't know how to break this to you, but at some point you're gatekeeping yourself.

Dickens was the most famous british writer of his time and the literary elite thought he suuuuuucked. But the readers? They adored him.

What if, instead for some vague pursuit of true literature, we wrote to tell a story? To entertain! To brighten peoples' life and maybe even make them think a little? (Dickens wrapped his bitter pill of social commentary in delicious delicious wit and melodrama and readers gobbled it up, still gobble it up two centuries later.) To make people feel? Even so-called lesser emotions like anger and fear and disgust and arousal?

What if we wrote because we enjoyed it? (Yes, sometimes it's a schlep and it sucks and you hate being literate at all, but that shouldn't be the norm and there is no glory in it.) What if we published out work to make money to have more time to write, because we have to work less hours at our jobs now that we have a second income?

Or just to make money?

There is nothing morally wrong with writing something formulaic just to sell it. People enjoy things for a reason, mostly because those formulas work. (I could go into the theory and, yes, Craft® that goes into writing a half-decent generic-ass romance novel, but it's not really that important.)

The only bad novel to write is the one you hate writing.

That's the actual issue with 'churning out content'! That many people that try to do it absolutely hate it! Because the people that go out of their way to write something genre (derogatory) for money (derogatory), are too scared of failure to write something 'hard to sell', so they turn to something they think is easy. Otherwise they wouldn't be 'churning out slop', they would just be writing. And just as a sidenote, most if not all successful genre authors are just doing what they love, because readers can lowkey tell if you're looking down on them and your own books.

Just, for the love of the oxford comma, find the joy in your creativity! Write a shitty book, publish a shitty book, read a shitty book, if only it brings you joy! You will never live up to your standards of good and real and true writing, because you made those stupid standards up to feel better about the fact that you believe that your writing will never be good enough to publish! That you will never be good enough to call yourself an author!

But, hey, at least you're humble enough to know that you suck, not like those wannabes that self-publish smut, like uh, what's his name? Oh, yeah, Hugo Award finalist Chuck Tingle.

… Oh.

[seaglasswrites]

How to Describe a Character’s Appearance when Writing in First Person Perspective

Something I’ve noticed when reading a lot of books written in First Person POV is that they hesitate to describe the protagonist’s appearance. I can understand the apprehension - Real people typically don’t go around describing what they look like in their inner monologue, so descriptions can often come off as clunky or out-of-place.

Assign Feelings to the Character’s Appearance

If your protagonist is thinking about what they look like, chances are they have some kind of opinion about it. Sure, your main character has “raven black hair”, but do they like it? Try thinking about what kind of emotions your protagonist has about certain aspects of their appearance. A character thinking about how proud they are of their well-maintained brown hair, or how much they hate their crooked nose, comes across as much more natural than just thinking about those things on their own.

Give your Main Character a Reason to be thinking about their Appearance

Try adding instances where your protagonist needs to, say, brush a strand of hair out of their eyes; This gives you an opportunity to describe their hair’s color, texture, thickness, and length, as well as their eye color.

Contrast your Protagonist’s Appearance with that of Other Characters

When describing what other characters look like, use that as an opportunity to give information about your POV character as well. If the person they’ve just met is tall, you can use that as a chance to tell the reader that they themselves are short; If they have round eyes, you can add that it is in sharp contrast to the protagonist’s own angled ones.

Know When and Where to put Descriptions

Concentrate important information, like height, body type, and hair, eye, and skin color, near the beginning of the book, so that readers have a general sense of what the protagonist looks like.

Meanwhile, leave unimportant information (ie, if your character has skinny fingers) to be sprinkled in later on. The finger example can be added into a section where the protagonist is using their hands for something, like fiddling with a trinket or opening a door.

[twst-hottest-takes]

Idk if this has been brought up before but I hate book 7

Like I love the bits and pieces of lore they feed us but they just don’t work jammed together, esp since it feels like the plot has stretched on for far too long.

Also a lot of character relationships were under utilised in the main story, like you thought it’d make sense for the light music club to be worried about kalim in book 4 (his change in attitude was big news around school) or Jack to show up in book 5 cus he’s vil’s friend right? But I guess twst has to stick to the one-dorm-over-two-chapters plot beat because screen time really IS an issue

Thank you for sticking through the rant (if you’ve made it through) but I really enjoy your content and want to know your thoughts on this

Not an uncommon sentiment around here, for better and for worse.

I find a lot of solidarity in the fact that so many people can acknowledge that Twisted Wonderland has some great ideas and characters but the writing quality is awfully inconsistent. I don't know what Book 7 is planning to hit us with post-dream-hopping, but it had better shake me to my core for all the time I feel was wasted lollygagging on stuff that didn't need to be touched on here (ironic, right?).

The character relationships is one that definitely falls flat the most in terms of the main story. There's so much extra content in the vignettes and events but it's kind of hard to put stock in those when how the characters interact with each other there isn't reflected in the main story. Now, that's not to say that EVERYTHING needs to be covered in the main story in a game like this, but more than one person has pointed out now that certain relationships (Jack and Vil, and the Pop Music Club most commonly) should really shine through more because they are absolutely relevant and could add much needed depth to the story and characters.

Thank you for your take.