a-thousand-attempted-words
a-thousand-attempted-words
May include traces of soy, philosophy and hubris.
68 posts
Welcome to my writer blog! I blog and reblog writing tips, try to help other writers when I can and, on occasion, I share my own work :) Thanks for coming by!
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google's useless. tumblr tell me something fun about cuttlefish idegafanymore
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The Drowned Halls
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honestly we should really remake that whole "you're doing multiple rows of teeth Extremely Noticeably Wrong" post that we made once and got deleted (it was technically a reblog of someone else's post and it must've been deleted). it's still happening and it's still so prominent every time it happens.
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♡ show descriptions |
forest 404 a data analyst uncovers haunting recordings from the 21st century witchever path an dark fantasy anthology where audience choices effect the story apollyon a scientist tries to deliver a cure to save people from a deadly virus adventures in new america a political satire buddy comedy set in a futuristic new york city childish a new york college student aspires to become a famous rapper life with leoh(h) a robotics lawyer receives an illegal android programmed to love her pleasure machine a sound artist becomes an employee in a supposedly woke workplace deconstructive criticism a couple with a review podcast assess their own relationship obsidian an afrofuturistic collection of several science fiction stories
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🍖 How to Build a Culture Without Just Inventing Spices and Necklaces
(a worldbuilding roast. with love.)
So. You’re building a fantasy world, and you’ve just invented: → Three types of ceremonial jewelry → A spice that tastes like cinnamon if it were bitter and cursed → A holiday where everyone wears gold and screams at dawn
Cute. But that’s not culture. That’s aesthetics.
And if your worldbuilding is all outfits, dances, and spice blends with vaguely mystical names, your story’s probably going to feel like a cosplay convention held inside a Pinterest board.
Here’s how to fix that—aka: how to build a real, functioning culture that shapes your story, not just its vibes.
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🔗 Culture Is Built on Power, Not Just Style
Ask yourself: → Who’s in charge, and why? → Who has land? Who doesn’t? → What’s considered taboo, sacred, or punishable by death?
Culture is shaped by who gets to make the rules and who gets crushed by them. That’s where things like religion, family structure, class divisions, gender roles, and social expectations actually come from.
Start there. Not at the embroidery.
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2.🪓 Culture Comes From Conflict
Did this society evolve peacefully? Was it colonized? Did it colonize? Was it rebuilt after a war? Is it still in one?
→ What was destroyed and mythologized? → What do the survivors still whisper about? → What do children get taught in school that’s… suspiciously sanitized?
No culture is neutral. Every tradition has a history, and that history should taste like blood, loss, or propaganda.
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3.🧠 Belief Systems > Customs Lists
Sure, rituals and holidays are cool. But what do people believe about: → Death? → Love? → Time? → The natural world? → Justice?
Example: A society that believes time is cyclical vs. one that sees time as linear will approach everything—from prison sentences to grief—completely differently.
You don’t need to invent 80 gods. You need to know what those gods mean to the people who pray to them.
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4.🫀 Culture Controls Behavior (Quietly)
Culture shows up in: → What people apologize for → What insults cut deepest → What people are embarrassed about → What’s praised publicly vs. what’s hidden privately
For instance: → A culture obsessed with stoicism won’t say “I love you.” They’ll say “Have you eaten?” → A culture built on legacy might prioritize ancestor veneration, archival writing, name inheritance.
This stuff? Way more immersive than giving everyone matching earrings.
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5. 🏠 Culture = Daily Life, Not Just Festivals
Sure, your MC might attend a funeral where people paint their faces blue. But what about: → Breakfast routines? → How people greet each other on the street? → Who cooks, and who eats first? → What’s considered “clean” or “proper”? → How is parenting handled? Divorce?
Culture is what happens between plot points. It should shape your character’s assumptions, language, fears, and habits—whether or not a festival is going on.
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6. 💬 Let Your Characters Disagree With Their Own Culture
A culture isn’t a monolith.
Even in deeply traditional societies, people: → Rebel → Question → Break rules → Misinterpret laws → Mock sacred things → Act hypocritically → Weaponize or resist what’s expected
Let your characters wrestle with the culture around them. That’s where realism (and tension) lives.
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7.🧼 Beware the “Pretty = Good” Trap
Worldbuilding gets boring fast when: → The protagonist’s homeland is beautiful and pure → The enemy’s culture is dark and “barbaric” → Every detail just reinforces who the reader should like
You can—and should—challenge the aesthetic hierarchy. → Let ugly things be beloved. → Let beautiful things be corrupt. → Let your MC romanticize their culture and then get disillusioned by it later.
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📍 TL;DR (but like, spicy): → Culture is not food and jewelry. → Culture is power, fear, memory, contradiction. → Stop inventing spices until you know who starved last winter. → Let your world feel lived in, not curated.
The best cultural worldbuilding doesn’t look like a list. It feels like a system. A pressure. A presence your characters can’t escape—even if they try.
Now go. Build something real. (You can add spices later.)
—rin t. // writing advice for worldbuilders with rage and range // thewriteadviceforwriters
Sometimes the problem isn’t your plot. It’s your first 5 pages. Fix it here → 🖤 Free eBook: 5 Opening Pages Mistakes to Stop Making:
🕯️ download the pack & write something cursed:
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When I was in my teens, I used to make an entire magic system with 360+ unique spells, ordered in magic schools and categories, and it boggles my mind that I basically reinvented DnD mechanics, even down to metamagic.
I wanted to make a wiki about it but I don't have time for it.
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The point was to try to encompass every "superpower" I could think of into a magic system.
I even got lore related to it all, I'm pretty sure I'm gonna simply reuse it all for OC worldbuilding. Ngl the fun part was naming all the spells, symbols and coming up with the logic of it all.
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a-thousand-attempted-words · 2 months ago
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OK, look, I guess I have to say this...
The killer's identity in a mystery/thriller/horror needs to mean something.
I think a lot of folks read a couple Agatha Christies and came away with all the wrong lessons. So let me clear this up for you: the mark of a good murder mystery is not that the killer is completely impossible to guess.
The response you are looking for from a reader is "ohhh, of COURSE! now it all makes sense!"
You are NOT looking for "wait, what? who the fuck is this guy?"
Introducing a walk-on role on page 5 and then patting yourself on the back for "foreshadowing" it when he's revealed as the killer is stupid, actually. Not only is that not really playing fair with your reader, it also fails to say anything interesting.
Look: The cozy mysteries where the victim is an asshole and everybody in town could plausibly be the killer because everyone has motive? That entire construct is saying something. It's a form that follows function.
The reason why "everyone in the slasher thought the killer was the weird guy who's in love with the final girl, but actually it was the rich/popular guy" is such a common construct is it is taking an expectation we have in society about who is trustworthy and inverting it.
If your killer is the weird creepy old dude, that delivers a message about your world-view.
If your killer is the rich handsome prep, or the scorned lover, or the trans person, or the quiet religious one, or WHATEVER, that is sending a message whether you intend it to or not. So you'd damned well better pay attention to the message you're sending and be willing to own it, or else change gears and put a different killer in the hot seat.
And, yeah, you absolutely can have the take-away message of your piece be "there is no meaning to this, the killer is not significant in any way" but if that's what you're going for, you have to commit to it and build it up through the narrative, not just tack it on at the end for a surprise shock value twist.
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a-thousand-attempted-words · 2 months ago
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More medieval dyes for y'all!
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a-thousand-attempted-words · 3 months ago
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every writing tip article and their mother: dont ever use adverbs ever!
me, shoveling more adverbs onto the page because i do what i want: just you fucking try and stop me
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a-thousand-attempted-words · 3 months ago
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a-thousand-attempted-words · 3 months ago
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It's actually pretty clever and logical.
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a-thousand-attempted-words · 3 months ago
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just precisely how bad was 1500s jerusalem at making maps, you ask? well,
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a-thousand-attempted-words · 3 months ago
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a-thousand-attempted-words · 4 months ago
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👏🏾Education 👏🏾is 👏🏾a 👏🏾right,👏🏾 not👏🏾 a👏🏾 service 👏🏾
Pass along and use the shit out of them
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a-thousand-attempted-words · 4 months ago
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More medieval dyes for y'all!
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a-thousand-attempted-words · 5 months ago
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it is once again... binturong appreciation hour
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a-thousand-attempted-words · 5 months ago
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I just discovered foodtimeline.org, which is exactly what it sounds like: centuries worth of information about FOOD.  If you are writing something historical and you want a starting point for figuring out what people should be eating, this might be a good place?
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