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listen don’t get me wrong i love epic fantasy and sci-fi but it is very very important to me that we get fantasy & sci-fi on a smaller scale as well. i’m tired of reading about the Special Person Who Will Save The World. that’s not relateable. i want to hear more stories about bit players on the world stage! a traveling theatre troupe of goblins struggling to write a new play, two rival families of smugglers living on the same space station transport hub, a rom-com about a young hedge witch, a coming-of-age story about a dryad

give me more weird clever small stories

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things people do in real world dialogue:

• laugh at their own jokes

• don’t finish/say complete sentences

• interrupt a line of thought with a sudden new one

• say ‘uh’ between words when unsure

• accidentally blend multiple words together, and may start the sentence over again

• repeat filler words such as ‘like’ ‘literally’ ‘really’ ‘anyways’ and ‘i think’

• begin and/or end sentences with phrases such as ‘eh’ and ‘you know’, and may make those phrases into question form to get another’s input

• repeat words/phrases when in an excited state

• words fizzle out upon realizing no one is listening

• repeat themselves when others don’t understand what they’re saying, as well as to get their point across

• reply nonverbally such as hand gestures, facial expressions, random noises, movement, and even silence

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Ways to un-stick a stuck story

Do an outline, whatever way works best. Get yourself out of the word soup and know where the story is headed.

Conflicts and obstacles. Hurt the protagonist, put things in their way, this keeps the story interesting. An easy journey makes the story boring and boring is hard to write.

Change the POV. Sometimes all it takes to untangle a knotted story is to look at it through different eyes, be it through the sidekick, the antagonist, a minor character, whatever.

Know the characters. You can’t write a story if the characters are strangers to you. Know their likes, dislikes, fears, and most importantly, their motivation. This makes the path clearer.

Fill in holes. Writing doesn’t have to be linear; you can always go back and fill in plotholes, and add content and context.

Have flashbacks, hallucinations, dream sequences or foreshadowing events. These stir the story up, deviations from the expected course add a feeling of urgency and uncertainty to the narrative.

Introduce a new mystery. If there’s something that just doesn’t add up, a big question mark, the story becomes more compelling. Beware: this can also cause you to sink further into the mire.

Take something from your protagonist. A weapon, asset, ally or loved one. Force him to operate without it, it can reinvigorate a stale story.

Twists and betrayal. Maybe someone isn’t who they say they are or the protagonist is betrayed by someone he thought he could trust. This can shake the story up and get it rolling again.

Secrets. If someone has a deep, dark secret that they’re forced to lie about, it’s a good way to stir up some fresh conflict. New lies to cover up the old ones, the secret being revealed, and all the resulting chaos.

Kill someone. Make a character death that is productive to the plot, but not “just because”. If done well, it affects all the characters, stirs up the story and gets it moving.

Ill-advised character actions. Tension is created when a character we love does something we hate. Identify the thing the readers don’t want to happen, then engineer it so it happens worse than they imagined.

Create cliff-hangers. Keep the readers’ attention by putting the characters into new problems and make them wait for you to write your way out of it. This challenge can really bring out your creativity.

Raise the stakes. Make the consequences of failure worse, make the journey harder. Suddenly the protagonist’s goal is more than he expected, or he has to make an important choice.

Make the hero active. You can’t always wait for external influences on the characters, sometimes you have to make the hero take actions himself. Not necessarily to be successful, but active and complicit in the narrative.

Different threat levels. Make the conflicts on a physical level (“I’m about to be killed by a demon”), an emotional level (“But that demon was my true love”) and a philosophical level (“If I’m forced to kill my true love before they kill me, how can love ever succeed in the face of evil?”).

Figure out an ending. If you know where the story is going to end, it helps get the ball rolling towards that end, even if it’s not the same ending that you actually end up writing.

What if? What if the hero kills the antagonist now, gets captured, or goes insane? When you write down different questions like these, the answer to how to continue the story will present itself.

Start fresh or skip ahead. Delete the last five thousand words and try again. It’s terrifying at first, but frees you up for a fresh start to find a proper path. Or you can skip the part that’s putting you on edge – forget about that fidgety crap, you can do it later – and write the next scene. Whatever was in-between will come with time.

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“This is your daily, friendly reminder to use commas instead of periods during the dialogue of your story,” she said with a smile.

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How I pratice drawing things, now in a tutorial form. The shrimp photo I used is here Show me your shrimps if you do this uvu  PS: lots of engrish because foreign 

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i’ve finally found my drawing style

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A mouth-watering fuck-ton of hand angle references.

By Shadowcross on DA.

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Guys, if you want to be a good artist and storyteller you need to absorb other media and influences beyond popular comics and movies and video games. Hell, even beyond visual art. Read novels, science articles, history books. Listen to podcasts, watch documentaries. Dip into different disciplines. Explore stuff outside your everyday. What you create and the pool of ideas you can pull out of is expanded by the knowledge you gain. Don’t do yourself a disservice by limiting your library. You never know when some weird shit you read about mushrooms could end up inspiring you or helping you solve a design/story problem.

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And this is how I nose.

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for the anon that wanted more head angles. It’s not explained well, I apologize for that but maybe this will help a little bit. 

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finishing a drawing and realizing your shadows make no sense

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Some tumblr tips for artists

• only the first five tags are serchable so make um count.

•Some of the most popular art related tags are #art, #illustration, #design, and #artists on tumblr.

• If you put a link in your post it won’t appear in serch results

• The best time to post seems to be from around 8pm to midnight east coast time

• socialize with other artists. Comments and asks are appreciated by a lot of us, and being friendly will encourage others to check out your stuff

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Do you have any tips on how to get my fics to stop sounding like essays?

You don’t need to elaborate on time and setting and background in your writing. I really don’t know how to explain it, sorry. 

[allonsyspaghettios]

important things for new or young digital artists to remember:

don’t shade colors with black

don’t overuse the airbrush tool, especially when it comes to shading

layers have different settings, explore them!

if your lines are wiggly when you draw, check your brush stability settings

if you find your lineart is looking too stiff/not like your sketch, try cleaning up the sketch instead of lining it. it helps keep fluidity and the feel of your original drawing

crop your pictures, don’t leave a ton of empty space unless you add some kind of background

make sure your canvas is set to at least 300dpi 

draw on a large canvas ( i draw on a 3000x3000px canvas) it will be easier to line your work and everything will look much smoother even if you shrink it down

.jpeg files save space, but this file type may compress your art and sacrifice quality. when I post art I always use .png

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The most valuable chart…

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Fernando Vicente ~ “Marquis de Sade”, 2014