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Tropes You can Pry from My Cold, Dead Hands:

Royalty/Bodyguard OTP dynamic

Tough, stoic character who is soft for one(1) person

Enemies to Friends to Lovers

“My job is to protect you!” “Well I’m gonna do the dangerous thing anyway because it’s the right thing to do. If you wanna protect me, you’ll just have to come with me.”

The Power of Friendship

Friend groups that have both a Mom Friend and a Dad Friend (even better if the two are dating/pining)

Characters that are total badasses, but also crack jokes and snark the whole fight

Self-rescuing damsels in distress

When the tough loner character that got hurt protecting the other characters pretends not to be injured

The other characters realizing the tough loner character got hurt protecting them, immediately shouting “You’re hurt!” and rushing to help them

True Love

The super nice/peaceful character that can also whoop your ass

When the super nice/peaceful character utterly DESTROYS the bad guy that hurt/scared their friends

That moment right after the Hero’s Self-Doubt Moment, when they look up at the villain, the music changes, and you KNOW the bad guy is about to get wrecked

The heroes all sitting down for a meal together, talking and laughing and being a family

Found Gamily Dynamics

When a villain is doing their villain song and they grab the hero and maneuver them through a dance

When the tomboy and the girly girl are actually besties

Awkward love confessions

OTPs being domestic

When the stoic loner character is playing with a bunch of kids, and the character that didn’t like them very much is watching from afar with a smile as they realize they’re not so bad after all

When to characters accidentally get married to each other

When an OTP accidentally confesses their love in the middle of an argument

The character that’s basically the team’s adopted mother/grandmother, and every member of the team will JACK YOU UP if you do much as talk bad about her

When two characters who are pining for each other end up dancing together at a party, and the UST is so thick you could cut it with a knife

The sunshiny optimist character who’s best friend is the grim and cynical character

The grim and cynical character who would die for the sunshiny optimist

When two characters have gotten really close together as they argued and keep glancing to the other character’s mouth because they realized how close they are and really want to kiss them

When a character is desperate to talk to their crush, but has no idea what to actually SAY once they’re together

When the emotionally constipated character waxes poetic about their crush in their head/to their friends, but can only manage to say things like “What’s up asshole” to their crush in person

When the tough stoic character just MELTS when looking at their lover/best friend

Villains who treat their subordinates like friends

When a character who’s jilted lovers and been selfish in the past goes full ride-or-die for the hero they’ve fallen in love with

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So I had a thought about a plot I want to do.

Imagine muse a and muse b work for the same company. Muse a works pretty high up, while muse b is the new kid in IT who literally works in the basement. However muse a is completely hopeless with technology, everything thing they touch seems to crash or break. Everyone in IT knows how hopeless muse a is and passes all their help requests off to the new kid as an ‘initiation’ for muse b. Weeks go by and muse b has been solving muse a’s tech problems everyday by either taking over their computer from their desk downstairs or talking them through it on the phone. However something happens that has to be solved in person, so muse b goes up to muse a’s office for the first time expecting to see someone older and frumpy, but damn…they’re hot…and damn what’s this sexual tension.

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for all you writers out there:

donjon has tons of generators. for calendars. for demographics of a country and city. for names (both fantastical and historical) of people, nations, magics, etc.

this site lets you generate/design a city, allowing you to choose size, if you want a river or coast, walls around it, a temple, a main keep, etc.

this twitter, uncharted atlas, tweets generated maps of fantasy regions every hour.

and vulgar allows you to create a language, based on linguistic and grammatical structures!!! go international phonetic alphabet!!!

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a handful of (probably) unpopular opinions on writing:

a kiss scene doesn’t have to lead to sex. it can, ofc, but it doesn’t have to. your characters can kiss for the sake of kissing and nothing more. kissing is hella enjoyable in and of itself, so it doesn’t always have to be a means to an end

a story doesn’t have to be steeped, marinated, and executed with tragedy to be a Real Story. obviously you can and should put your characters through the wringer, but if you don’t tell a story with hope and happiness it’s not really a story worth telling. be brutal but don’t be 100% dismal and bleak

a fantasy doesn’t have to be centered on a war, especially if you don’t feel fully capable of writing about war. they’re tricky and unruly beasts, and if you aren’t willing to give them the proper treatment (read: not romanticizing them), you’re better off not writing about war in the first place

your royal character can be fine with arranged marriages. they don’t always have to run away to escape them only to fall in love with the betrothed they were running from in the first place

on the note of romances, your story A. doesn’t need a romance if it doesn’t fit and B. doesn’t necessitate every character getting into a relationship by the end. for some people, romance isn’t their idea of a happily ever after, so you don’t have to force that into your book

perhaps the most unpopular, but it needs to be said: your female character should not slap your male character. ofc there are times when a slap is warranted, but if he’s just being a dick he doesn’t need to be slapped. that’s physical assault and abuse, which should never be acceptable, even if it makes some people laugh (it shouldn’t and yet it always does 🙄)

your female character A. doesn’t have to be thin, B. doesn’t have to be a Strong Female Character, and C. doesn’t have to go through nauseating hardships (read: sexual assault or physical abuse) for her story to be worth telling

these are all i can think of off the top of my head. feel free to add on if you think of any!

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i’ve been doing my homework on how to break into a writing career and honestly. there’s a Lot that i didn’t know about thats critical to a writing career in this day and age, and on the one hand, its understandable because we’re experiencing a massive cultural shift, but on the other hand, writers who do not have formal training in school or don’t have the connections to learn more via social osmosis end up extremely out of loop and working at a disadvantage. 

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tropes i will never get tired of

fake dating

omniscient narrator who immediately contradicts the characters (“This is fine,” she said. It was, in no way, shape, or form, fine.)

deadpan jokes while swordfighting

the “I FUCKING LOVE MY WIFE” guy

oblivious pining that slowly escalates until A is going on page rants about how pretty B’s eyes are but still doesn’t seem to recognize they’re in love

Strong Leader Type having to physically fall down in order for the other characters to see how exhausted they are

funny villains who talk and make jokes with their heroes while they’re fighting them

the villains presented as the protagonists

*increasingly pulls out bigger and bigger weapons from more unlikely places*

“I said all of your weapons” *pulls out more*

“ALL OF THEM” *pulls out one last tiny dagger*

traumatized character using humor to cover up ptsd

characters going out for a break at a restaurant/movie/whatever and something bad happening

using the “*gasp* what’s that over there???” trick to avert the enemy’s attention and it working

a villain’s weakness being something totally random and nonsensical

a hero duo arguing over who’s the sidekick while fighting a villain

“don’t be silly, we don’t need [important thing]”  “you lost it, didn’t you?”  “yeah”

“what’s the one thing I told you not to do tonight?”  “raise the dead”   “and what did you do?”  “raised the dead”

“I think that went pretty well” *explosion in the distance*

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me: i have an idea for a new plot

partner: oh cool what is it!

me:

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7 Worldbuilding Tips

I. Diversity exists, everywhere

II. Multiple religions and languages can and should exist in the same area

III. No info dumps or any of the Exposition Monologues

IV. Magic and powers should have limits and rules, whether the characters know them specifically or not

V. Know how the world accommodates (or doesn’t) for people with disabilities because… they certainly exist

VI. Figure out not only the advances in technology but also its availability to different people

VII. Always a good idea to know how messages are sent and information is shared

A lot more is covered in my worldbuilding master lists: Part One and Part Two

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Self Sacrifice

I’ve been thinking a lot about this trope lately. Especially when it comes to whumpees offering themselves up as the sacrificial lamb:

The whumpee who distracts and taunts the villian so they will go after them instead of their friends

The leader of the team who pushes the youngest one out of the way and takes the bullet/arrow/gets stabbed

The hero who tricks their friends into staying behind so they can go off and face the villian alone

The team memeber who surrenders and distracts the enemy just long enough for the rest of the team to get away

The companion who skips their ration of food/water so an injured member doesn’t have to suffer further

“I’m fine. Help the others first”

It’s my favoite kind of whump. 💜

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A Kissing Prompt List

Places Where People Kiss:

In the rain.

In a vehicle.

In the street.

On the sidewalk.

In the shower.

In the kitchen.

In the snow.

Under the stars.

In the moonlight.

By the river.

In the water.

In the bedroom.

In a bar.

At a party.

At the other’s place.

By a campfire.

Reasons to kiss:

Life or Death

Love

Celebration

Longing

Missing the other

Relief

Lust

Need

No reason at all

Admiration

Power

First Kiss

Confessing feelings

A bet

Sad or hurt feelings

First date

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When I get ideas for character backstories/details when I should be sleeping:

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invented love

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How to tell the difference between a smart character written by a dumb person vs a smart character written by a smart person

The dumb “Smart Character”: Gets conclusions almost entirely through revelation, lacks methodology, intelligence is hyped up constantly by others, lacks realistic problem solving, knowledge comes solely through a nebulous mental encyclopedia which always gives them the needed facts at the right time, seemingly disconnected from human thought process because they are guided into decision making through plot, not the merits of their work.

The smart Smart Character: Conclusions made by working out problems and following a practical methodology. Knowledge is gained and learned from experience through said methodology, not plucked from a mental encyclopedia. Act rationally and realistically to problems as if they were in the world and aware of nothing but the world and their immediate circumstances, not afraid to experiment and fail if it means eventually working out a solution.

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You know what I don’t get?  When fanfic authors apologize for long chapters.  It’s like?  You gave me bonus content, for free, and you’re sorry about it?  Bruh.  I have already named my firstborn after you.  Dude.

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Trying to find the perfect name for a character, but you only have a vague idea of what you want, like “he feels like a 2-syllable kind of guy” or “It need a hard consonant at the end.”