#writing is HARD

[toyatenmacanon]

it would be so cool if when i wanted to write i could just write. that would be awesome. unfortunately, that is not the case and i am suffering because i have approximately 25 ideas in my brain at all times and only 2 of them have words on the page

[nondelphic]

me: i’m gonna write

also me: actually i’m going to spend the next 40 minutes lying on the floor while my brain plays a movie trailer for a novel that doesn’t exist and that i will never write. but it’s a really good trailer

[cranberry-queen]

Tips from a Beta Reading Writer

This one's for the scenes with multiple characters, and you're not sure how to keep everyone involved.

Writing group scenes is chaos. Someone’s talking, someone’s interrupting, someone’s zoning out thinking about breadsticks. And if you’re not careful, half your cast fades into the background like NPCs in a video game. I used to struggle with this so much—my characters would just exist in the scene without actually affecting it. But here’s what I've learned and have started implementing:

✨ Give everyone a job in the scene ✨

Not their literal job—like, not everyone needs to be solving a crime or casting spells. I mean: Why are they in this moment? What’s their role in the conversation?

My favourite examples are:

The Driver: Moves the convo forward. They have an agenda, they’re pushing the action.

The Instigator: Pokes the bear. Asks the messy questions. Stirring the pot like a chef on a mission.

The Voice of Reason: "Guys, maybe we don’t commit arson today?"

The Distracted One: Completely in their own world. Tuning out, doodling on a napkin, thinking about their ex.

The Observer: Not saying much, but noticing everything. (Quiet characters still have presence!)

The Wild Card: Who knows what they’ll do? Certainly not them. Probably about to make things worse.

If a character has no function, they’ll disappear. Give them something—even if it’s just a side comment, a reaction, or stealing fries off someone’s plate. Keep them interesting, and your readers will stay interested too.

[give-me-a-moose]

Then after six months, you decide to just do a scene break and it's literally fine 😂

writing is so funny because i could write nonstop for 9hrs and then hit a block where im like "how do i transition between this moment and the next?" and then i just dont touch it for 6 months

[elleldoe]

sometimes the words just flow and other times you'd have more luck wringing out a dry towel

[greyling-writes]

Listen I know staying awake until 4 AM is technically bad for me but the last time I did it, I woke up to 2.5k words. What do you have to say to that?

[awriterfaraway]

"THE FUCK YOU MEAN I HAVE TO WRITE IT ALL OVER AGAIN?! " Was my reaction when I discovered that I had to go through multiple drafts and not just one.

[bruisedconscience-reblogs]

I hate/love u. I chose the one I have been THE most stuck on and there r 3 new sentences! Might as well go to 5–!

If you're reading this...

go write three sentences on your current writing project.

[thebadphilosopher]

I love rereading stuff when editing and realizing that I can write. Does it happen often? No (haha), but it's nice when it does.

[quillver]

When Your Favourite Scene Doesn’t Fit

You love it. You crafted it. The prose hits. The dialogue sings. The vibes are immaculate.

But when you zoom out, the scene drags the pacing, diffuses the tension, or pulls focus at the wrong moment.

So now you’re rewriting around it. Bending character arcs to justify it. Padding earlier chapters just to make it “fit.”

That’s not editing. That’s attachment.

Sentimental attachment isn’t structure. Let it go if it doesn’t serve the story.

[there-must-be-a-lock]

Pry my em dashes from my cold dead hands, I fucking dare you.

Current writing advice I'm seeing on TikTok and Insta is telling authors to stop using em dashes in their work because, "AI uses em dashes so people will think you've used AI."

Y'know, the AI that was trained on the stolen work of real authors?

Anyway, I will not be doing that. What I will be doing, however, is adding a note at the start of all my books that no AI was used in the creation of my work because I, the author, did not go to university for four fucking years to study English literature and linguistics only to be told I can't use proper grammar because someone might think a robot wrote it.

Fucking, insane.

[nondelphic]

people be like “just sit down and write” as if i’m not already fighting 12 inner demons, a collapsing attention span, and the evil spirit of a plot hole i forgot to fix in chapter two

[ruchi-writes]

you've heard of bad boy love interest who is only nice to the female protagonist...but are you ready for wholesome dude who gets along with everyone except the unhinged goblin female lead?

[artemisdesari-blog]

A writer friend told me something that broke my heart a little bit today; they're going to quit publishing their fanfic.

My instant thought was that they had been trolled or attacked or that something terrible had happened in their life because this person is so passionate about their writing. It wasn't any of that. Engagement with their works has been going down, as it has for many of us. Comments are like gold dust a lot of the time, and just looking through the historical comment counts on old fics on ao3 demonstrates this trend very clearly. It was not simply the comments dropping off which caused them to decide to stop posting, however.

My friend came across a discord server for their fandom (I should point out here that their fandom interest and mine diverged a couple of years ago, we stay in touch but don't currently read each other's posts because I'm not into their fandom and they would rather gouge their eyes out with a wooden spoon than read anything Star Wars) and specifically to share fic in that fandom. They joined, because we all love a good fic rec, only to discover that their latest multichapter fic, which has almost no comments and very few kudos, is being hotly discussed in this server as one of the best stories ever. Not one of these people has bothered to say this to them on the fic. When they asked, none of participants could see the point in telling the author of the fic they apparently loved so much that they love it.

This discovery has absolutely destroyed my friend's love of sharing fic. They share because they love seeing other people's enjoyment, and fic writers do that through comments and kudos/reblogs/likes because we don't get paid. There is no literary critic writing a blog post/article about how amazing the story is for us to copy and keep/frame. There is no money from royalties. All we have are the words of the people reading our works.

Those people on that server could have taken five minutes of the time they spent gushing about how amazing my friend's story was to other people and used it to tell the one person guaranteed to want to hear that praise how much they loved it. They could have taken a moment to express their opinion to the person who spent hours upon hours plotting, writing, editing, and posting those chapters. Instead, they deprived my friend of thing that keeps them sharing their writing, and in the process have killed their love of it. My friend now feels used and unmotivated.

I won't be sharing a link to their fic, they said I could share their experience but not their identity. I know they plan to post one final chapter. I know they intend to express their hurt at being excluded from the praise for the thing they created, and I know they intend to announce that as a consequence they will not be posting for a long while, if at all.

So please, I beg you, don't hide your love of a story from the writer. It's just about the only thing we have.

[xoperidottea]

The horrors persist and so does the need to write fanfiction. But it's okay because my therapist said go for it :D

Why do I feel the need to write fanfiction again? I have several novels to work on but suddenly for the past 2 weeks I've been wanting to finish my SPN fanfic projects.

Oh.... right.... *gestures at everything*

[thewordsarestuckinmyhead]