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[Part 5] Previous parts: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4

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My favourite things about Scrivener

1. Navigation. You can see all your chapters, scenes, character & setting planning at one glance and switch between them very easily - compared to scrolling up and down in one long word processing document. Every file can also be a folder, so you can have collapsible items underneath it.

2. Word count targets. The “Project Targets” are particularly useful for NaNoWriMo so you don’t have to keep looking back at the website to see how you’re doing for the day, but more so outside of it, when you want to keep yourself working to a target but don’t have Nano’s charts and daily word counts. It also gives you a nice ding when you hit your session target.

3. How many pages? I only recently discovered this, but it’s very nice to be able to see in Project Statistics approximately how big your manuscript would be in pages without worrying about formatting. 

4. Outlining. Scrivener has two methods of outlining - one is Corkboard, which is exactly what it sounds like, a digital corkboard with notes pinned on it that represent your chapters/scenes with their summaries. The screenshot above is called ‘outliner’ and lists collapsible chapters/scenes with various statistics you can select as shown in the tick menu. Generally I prefer Corkboard, but Outliner is useful if you just want to see everything in a clear order. 

5. Full screen. I get distracted very easily when writing, so the full-screen writing mode is wonderful for me to avoid that - but you can still choose certain windows from the normal Scrivener view to show up. I have my targets and my summary, so I can stick to my plan when I’m writing and also see what progress I’m making.

6. Notes. No screenshot, but it’s a simple post-it note style box to the side of every document (chapter, scene, character etc.) that allows you to add notes. This may sound very simple, but it’s far more useful than I’d expected. During NaNoWriMo when I’m not meant to be editing at all, but I know something needs fixing, I will jot down something in the side like ‘Take out the horse’ so that when I go through again to edit I know exactly the things to focus on immediately but which would have taken too much time before. It’s linked to the scene so I don’t just have a pile of notes in one document at the end and then have to work out where it needs fixing.

Overall

I downloaded Scrivener for the first time two years ago, and now I can’t imagine working without it. It’s so nice to have the planning and the writing all combined into one place where I can easily switch between the two. I haven’t yet got as far in a novel created in Scrivener to use the compile features so I can’t comment on those, but so far all my experiences of it have been good.

One thing to note is that if transferring project between a Windows and a Mac version of Scrivener, it’s generally best to zip the file first.

[Screenshots from my current novel Kindling Ashes using the Mac version of Scrivener - some features may not be available in Windows yet.]

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How to write fic for Black characters: a guide for non-Black fans

Don’t characterize a Black character as sassy or thuggish, especially when the character in question is can be described in literally ten thousand other ways..

Don’t describe Black characters as chocolate, coffee, or any sort of food item.

Don’t highlight the race of Black characters (ie, “the dark man” or “the brown woman”) if you don’t highlight the race of white characters.

Think very carefully about that antebellum slavery or Jim Crow AU fic as a backdrop for your romance.

If you’re not fluent with AAVE, don’t use it to try to look cool or edgy. You look corny as hell.

Don’t use Black characters as a prop for the non-Black characters you’re actually interested in.

Keep “unpopular opinions” about racism, Black Lives Matter, and other issues pertinent to Black folks out the mouths of Black characters. We know what the fuck you’re doing with that and need to stop.

Don’t assume a Black character likes or hates a certain food, music, or piece of pop culture.

You can make a Black character’s race pertinent without doing it like this.

Be extremely careful about insinuating that one or more of a Black character’s physical features are dirty, unclean, or ugly.

Feel free to add more.

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alright so I completely lied

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Progress and Where I’ve Been

So recently I’ve been very busy with schoolwork (tonight was one of the rare exceptions in which I had no homework that I recall) and therefore I haven’t had the time to write. However, I also have been lacking the motivation to, and writing is very time consuming for me compared to my other hobbies. Despite all of this, I assure you guys that I do plan to come out with Season One Episode Three (which I have partially written already) sometime soon, and for November I may consider working on a longer project. 

Anyways thanks so much for putting up with my lack of activity as of late and I hope to be back shortly!

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ATTENTION ALL GIRLS AND LADIES: if you walk from home, school, office or anywhere and you are alone and you come across a little boy crying holding a piece of paper with an address on it, DO NOT TAKE HIM THERE! take him straight to the police station for this is the new 'gang' way of rape. The incident is getting worse. Warn your families. Reblog this so this message can get accross to everyone.

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i drew this little friend and i dont know what he is but i love him

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A writer sits down to write a new manuscript. The story is murder. And you are the killer. You know that, but you don’t want to be, and you try to resist their attempts to make you the most devious, sadistic, psychotic murderer they’ve ever written. 

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Why do people listen to the advice of those wannabe ‘writers’. I mean they are not even published? 

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me: *dies and goes up to heaven*

god: so why should you be accepted into heaven?

me, choking on an orange: gGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGkKkK

god: ok this bitch going straight to hell

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Season One - Episode Two

This wasn’t based off of anything, and I just wrote it last night. It took around five hours to get a little over thirteen hundred words (rip). Here I tried being fairly vague, half in order to seriously show not tell and half to capture the emotions of the narrator. I haven’t used first person in a while, so it was quite refreshing to start using ‘I’ and ‘me’ again, though I must admit I’m quite rusty.

It had been a long night, and it was only going to get longer with their arrival. I had everything laid out, like they asked me to hours ago when they called me at work. The papers were on the table, next to a pen I’d stolen from God-knows-where. My left leg was jackhammering into the floor as the clock chimed. It was eight already, they should be home soon. I occupied myself with twisting the ring on my finger, up and down, until it slipped off and hit the floor with a sickening clink. As though death were upon me, I quickly bent down to pick it up and return it to its place on my left hand. It was cold. Was that a premonition of what was to come?

“You’re being irrational,” I told myself, though it didn’t help much to calm me down. I felt like I was losing it, with the talking to myself and the pacing and the—

And the rambling. I just had to focus on something, and I’d be fine, right? What could I focus on, what could I focus on…

What about the wall decoration? Of course! I traced the curves of the plastic which swerved back and forth like a snake. It was hypnotizing, the gradual neverending-ness of it, until I was hit with the hard reality that it indeed did end. But endings were good. Some of them, anyhow.

I’d bought the thing with them. It was a couple of years ago, I couldn’t exactly remember when. No, wait, it was in 2015. September. Back when we first got our then new apartment. I didn’t want it, but it caught their eye as we traversed the store. I was eager to please then, and so we went to checkout with it hanging out of the cart.

Where had things gone wrong? What happened? Why—

I held my head in my hands, rubbing the exhausted skin in an attempt to wipe the questions from my mind. It didn’t work, but they were now joined with arguably worse answers. I can’t tell if this is guilt or not. Maybe everything was my fault, like they’d said. Maybe all of their voicemails that I listened to, silently sobbing so as to not wake them, were true. They were an excellent sleep soundtrack, the curt remarks and stinging words. It was funny, how those painful sounds could reduce me to tears. Even I knew I’d never been this sensitive. Was this all brought on by the time I spent with them, or by the desperation to hear them talk for longer than a few minutes?

I had to get up. I feel paralyzed sitting in the teetering chair, confined to my thoughts. Making my way to the fridge, I was followed by the thought of the pictures framed on my desk. I’d left them there against my own recent judgement, a memento to when we were young and smiling. With their eyes staring at me, watching my every move, I knew I had to take them down. I couldn’t bear one more night of accidentally glancing at them, illuminated by my laptop’s soft glow at four in the morning while I did work. Maybe that was it.

I grabbed a beer from the fridge, holding it with two shaking hands as I nudged the door shut and sat back down. At this point would alcohol help to calm my nerves? Doubtful. A Xanax might be better. Or a gun. I don’t know which I’d prefer right about now. I forced myself to take a swig of the liquid, reminding myself that I hated beer, though it was quite difficult to pull away and set the bottle down on the table. Am I going to become an alcoholic?

No, that’s stupid. This is all stupid.

I still poured out the remainder into the sink. Would they smell it on my breath? Likely. I couldn’t have that. That’s really, really bad. What was I gonna do about it? What can I do? Damnit, they’ll kill me once they come home.

The sound of glass shattering startled me. Looking down, I saw the glass shards littering both the floor and my hand, the latter coming with trails of blood. I didn’t care much about it—it didn’t hurt yet—but I had to clean up what was on the ground so neither one of us would get injured later. Thankfully the broom was only a few feet away. I swept up the pieces in rather slow time, clutching onto the pole with whatever unscathed skin I had for the pain has started to set in. I also had to be careful not to get blood on the white tiles. I already had enough cleaning to do today.

After I made sure that everything had been properly cleaned and disposed of, I made my way to the bathroom, first opening the medicine cabinet behind the mirror. The first aid kit couldn’t fit in such a small space, so there were Band-aids scattered around the shelves. Twenty-seven of them, to be exact. Why had I counted? I’m not too sure. There wasn’t any gauze, thus leaving me with the sole choice of taking out the glass, cleaning off the wounds, and then using a ton of Band-aids. That isn’t too hard. I just needed to find the tweezers.

It turns out that picking out fragments of glass ranging from tiny to holy fuck that’s big how did that get in my hand isn’t as easy as it originally seemed. And I was also beginning to question how effective the last drops of a hand sanitizer bottle was on sterilizing tweezers that had several months to years worth of dust on them. The last thing I needed was to get an infection; that would prove to disappoint them more than they’d made clear.

The clock chimed to remind me that time was indeed a thing. It was now nine. How the Hell had an hour passed? Where were they? Were they okay?

What if they didn’t want me anymore? I knew the answer to that one already: they never wanted anything to do with me in the first place. I saw that in every aspect of them. The disengaged tone of voice. The burdened look they gave me when we locked eyes. And yet they pretended for so long? Why? That I didn’t know, and I have the slight suspicion that I don’t want to find out.

I was starting to get tired. The past few days left me exhausted with the amount of time I’d slept, or rather the amount of time I should’ve been sleeping. I could feel the solace of sleep grab at me, trying to lull me into deep slumber. Thank God it was Friday. I put on as few Band-aids as I could in an attempt to not be wasteful, though being barely able to keep my eyes open didn’t help much. In the end I used up ten: eight precariously hanging off the edges of my palms and two discarded. It’d be a good idea to pick up some more tomorrow.

Satisfied with what I’d done, I exited the bathroom and eventually collapsed onto the tiny sofa. I had the faintest recollection of building it with them, us taking hours to figure out the directions. By the time we’d finished, we both fell asleep on it. Those were the halcyon days. Now I was on it alone.

Within a few minutes, I found myself nodding off. I couldn’t sleep now! What if they came home? But my protests were to no avail. My surroundings were visible for brief moments before returning to the heavy darkness.

I shot up again at two in the morning. Curse my stupid mortal body. I checked my immediate field of vision for them. Nothing. Pushing off my blankets—

Wait, what? These weren’t here before. So they were home. And they’d been so nice as to dump the blankets from my bed onto me.

Maybe that was a sign that they did care after all.

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Putting on sunglasses is just turning down the brightness of real life

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Season One - Episode One

This was based off a prompt (link here) that I had to edit slightly to use. I had a ton of fun making this (though my 7 AM self tomorrow will utterly hate it, but what’s new), and I feel like I did a great job. One thing I did differently as opposed to my other writing pieces was omitting as many -ly adverbs as I could, which was quite the challenge (this note doesn’t count please don’t sue me)! So in conclusion I’m very tired and good night. 

This was it. Tonight was the night where Raz would find the Specter of Adonah, as the newspapers called them. When he caught them, a crowd would be there to cheer for him and the mayor would bestow upon him a huge golden medal. How they’d magically appear, he didn’t know, but that problem wasn’t at the top of his priority list. Rather, that title went to apprehending the Specter. From what he gathered at the last major raid a week ago, their hideout was somewhere in the south end of the city. He didn’t have a specific location, but a relative location was very handy.

He ran down block by block, cutting through dark alleys only lit by distant streetlights. He was making his way to the industrial sector where all the factories were located. Sure, an abandoned factory was pretty clichéd, but clichés had to be based off of some truth, right? He darted left in a sharp turn, skidding to a stop before he hit a pole. He then felt a cold rush of air from behind him as the sound of rippling became apparent over the backdrop of traffic. He turned around to see the source of the sudden noise.

There before him stood a looming shadow of a figure. Without even having to think for a minute, he knew that this was his guy. What kind of normal person would go around wearing a black cloak? He prepared to fight by standing in his most ‘I’m a pretty strong dude’ pose, hoping it would intimidate them.

Spoiler alert: it didn’t. Instead, they flew at him, claw-like nails bared, poised to swipe. He jumped both out of fear and to dodge, hearing wind whizz by him. He tried to counter with a punch, but he was stopped with a swift knee into his stomach. He doubled over, and before he could recover he was forced down with a kick. He dropped to the pavement, groaning. He didn’t realize just how good this villain was.

His field of vision was limited to the few objects that were just a few feet away from him. There were mainly stepped on wads of gum, smoked cigarette butts, and a scattered six pack of beers. That gave him an idea. He shot up before they could strike again, grabbing onto one of the bottles with a surge of adrenaline. Holding it by the neck, he smashed it on the pole and shoved it into their body. It stuck in with sickening ease.

They were taken aback by this, taking a few steps away from him. It seemed that they were smart enough to not take the bottle out and bleed out, though they still clutched their hands around the site of the wound. He knew that he hadn’t won just yet, and so he yanked it out, receiving a shocked groan. The bottle didn’t come out with as much ease as it had gone in with. He tossed it away so as to not vomit from the disturbing amount of blood that stained it. By now the Specter was holding onto the walls of a building for support.

“I want a vacation so bad, you know that?” They remarked, all while pressing their hand hard against their bleeding wound.

Raz was quite surprised. He didn’t expect that kind of response from them being stabbed. Then again, he didn’t know what to expect from them anyhow. This was the first time they’d actually met for longer than a minute in addition to the first time they’d spoken. He didn’t get many answers from hearing their voice like they thought they would. He still couldn’t tell if they were a guy or a girl, how old they were, nor their identity.

So, he replied, “I do too.”

He felt queasy watching them bleed out in front of him. It almost seemed too easy, minding the fact that he had gotten his ass beat in the beginning. He was also too afraid to approach the Spector, let alone help them. He kept his distance as they struggled to stay upright.

“I propose—” They said through labored breaths. “—that maybe we should both take one. After this whole situation is over. Goddamnit, I’m so tired.”

They collapsed.

Now he was at an even larger loss regarding what to do. He couldn’t go home with a clear conscience knowing that he would be leaving someone, even the Specter of all people, out to die. It was for that reason that he hugged his arms around their body and lifted them up. It was not as hard a task as he’d thought. They were very light, almost to a worrying extent. He didn’t pay it much mind. He wasn’t one to be judging people for their lack of weight when all he ate was ramen and the occasional subpar meal. That was just the college diet.

Snapping out of his thoughts, he realized that he didn’t know where he was. He didn’t have enough hands to pull out his phone and continue carrying them, so he instead decided to shake the close to passed out person in an attempt to get some semblance of directions out of them.

“Hey, weird question but do you happen to know where the nearest hospital is? I don’t, and it would kinda suck if you died in my arms. Well, I guess not kinda suck, it would suck a lot. But that’s besides the point. So, do you?”

They nodded, murmuring something that seemed like directions under their breath. Disliking how quiet they now were, he ran like Hell until he saw a glowing red cross. Could he go in through the front entrance? Glancing down, he knew he didn’t have much of a choice.

The doors slid open with such slowness that it was painful having to stand, take a few steps, and be met with another pair of doors. After the second pair, he gave up on running and approached the receptionist. She—or so he assumed—looked up to assess the people in front of her for a second before voicing something into the intercom. He didn’t know what it was that she said since he wasn’t concerned with it, but as soon as she said it two nurses appeared, leading him to what he figured was the emergency room. The nurses instructed him to release them onto a stretcher, though when he did they still held onto his hand. He didn’t fight it, nor did he notice it at first.

One nurse began to cut up the shirt they had on under their cloak, revealing the thin circle of red that was the wound. The skin around the circle was a blend of crimson flecks and their pale skin. Seeing the actual wound for the first time made him feel even worse, thus making him glad when another nurse led him to his own bed right next to theirs. He was grateful that they didn’t cut up his clothes as they asked him questions regarding his health. Instead, he took off his coat and shirt while they prodded around his chest. There were already several bruises forming, but the nurse told him that he would be fine, just in some pain for the next few days. He put his clothes back on and went to rejoin the Specter.

They were in much worse shape. There was bloodied gauze in red bags marked ‘Infectious Waste’. An IV line poked through their left arm as a result of a blood transfusion. They seemed to be awake now, their eyes flickering to Raz as soon as he reappeared in their field of sight. With their right hand, they again held onto him, though this time they grabbed onto his arm with their nails digging in a little.

He followed the nurses as they pulled the stretcher down a corridor to a room. When they entered, they put their body onto the bed, and proceeded to wheel the stretcher out, taking themselves with it. Now he was alone with them, neither one of them making a sound. He took a seat in one of the chairs provided, but didn’t move other than that.

“Why did you bring me here?” They asked. Their voice was shaky from a combination of confusion and exhaustion. He could do nothing but shrug and advise them to get some sleep. They listened, their eyes closing within a few moments. Once he was satisfied that they were asleep, he too followed suit. Without having to check the time he knew that it was way past his bedtime, though that seemed quite juvenile. He was very grateful to not have class tomorrow.

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me: writing at night increases my focus on the work itself and really allows my creativity to flow, not to mention giving me the lack of distractions needed to improve my word choices also me:

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What a good boy :,)

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everyone who reads this post will get some big spicy joy within 24 large minutes (hours)