jlwritesstories - Tumblr blog

[jlwritesstories]

One of the best writing advice I have gotten in all the months I have been writing is "if you can't go anywhere from a sentence, the problem isn't in you, it's in the last sentence." and I'm mad because it works so well and barely anyone talks about it. If you're stuck at a line, go back. Backspace those last two lines and write it from another angle or take it to some other route. You're stuck because you thought up to that exact sentence and nothing after that. Well, delete that sentence, make your brain think because the dead end is gone. It has worked wonders for me for so long it's unreal

[jlwritesstories]

Reblog the writers’ fortune cookie for luck!

[jlwritesstories]

List of British words not widely used in the United States. Lists of words having different meanings in American and British English. List of American words not widely used in the United Kingdom.

[jlwritesstories]

Some Things I Wish I Knew as a Baby Writer

You can find writing advice of every shape and form online, and most of it will never fit your process entirely.

I wish someone had told me that it's ok to disagree with the advice you see, even if the person is more experienced than you.

I wish someone had told me that writing is part craft part art; there is no right way to build a fictional concept, only tried and tested ways to bring it to life.

I wish someone had told me that it's ok to fail.

So I'm telling all of you this:

Failure is a blessing because we can learn from it

Success is dangerous because it can make us complacent

The joy of creation outweighs the comfort of acclaim

Persistence matters more than talent in most cases

Writing as a hobby and writing as a job are two different beasts, neither is better or worse

The stories you hate most may be your best because they have tried you and frustrated you; we rarely see the beauty in our own faces - our writing is no different.

You deserve to love your stories, but it's not the only way to measure growth.

[jlwritesstories]

oooh have you ever done a post about the ridiculous mandatory twist endings in old sci-fi and horror comics? Like when the guy at the end would be like "I saved the Earth from Martians because I am in fact a Vensuvian who has sworn to protect our sister planet!" with no build up whatsoever.

Yeah, that is a good question - why do some scifi twist endings fail?

As a teenager obsessed with Rod Serling and the Twilight Zone, I bought every single one of Rod Serling’s guides to writing. I wanted to know what he knew.

The reason that Rod Serling’s twist endings work is because they “answer the question” that the story raised in the first place. They are connected to the very clear reason to even tell the story at all. Rod’s story structures were all about starting off with a question, the way he did in his script for Planet of the Apes (yes, Rod Serling wrote the script for Planet of the Apes, which makes sense, since it feels like a Twilight Zone episode): “is mankind inherently violent and self-destructive?” The plot of Planet of the Apes argues the point back and forth, and finally, we get an answer to the question: the Planet of the Apes was earth, after we destroyed ourselves. The reason the ending has “oomph” is because it answers the question that the story asked. 

My friend and fellow Rod Serling fan Brian McDonald wrote an article about this where he explains everything beautifully. Check it out. His articles are all worth reading and he’s one of the most intelligent guys I’ve run into if you want to know how to be a better writer.

According to Rod Serling, every story has three parts: proposal, argument, and conclusion. Proposal is where you express the idea the story will go over, like, “are humans violent and self destructive?” Argument is where the characters go back and forth on this, and conclusion is where you answer the question the story raised in a definitive and clear fashion. 

The reason that a lot of twist endings like those of M. Night Shyamalan’s and a lot of the 1950s horror comics fail is that they’re just a thing that happens instead of being connected to the theme of the story. 

One of the most effective and memorable “final panels” in old scifi comics is EC Comics’ “Judgment Day,” where an astronaut from an enlightened earth visits a backward planet divided between orange and blue robots, where one group has more rights than the other. The point of the story is “is prejudice permanent, and will things ever get better?” And in the final panel, the astronaut from earth takes his helmet off and reveals he is a black man, answering the question the story raised. 

[jlwritesstories]

I hope Nael knows their poem made me cry

[jlwritesstories]

The stuggles of being a writer.

A shame that I have to actually finish my book before I get to read it. I enjoy writing it just as much but I am looking forward to finishing my first book and getting to read through it, even if I do know what's going to happen.

[jlwritesstories]

If you ever are self-publishing or illustrating a paperback, an absolutely essential tool is this page, which gives you the exact pixel count of a book spine based on its page count, and/or a template you can use for the correct width/height ratio.

[jlwritesstories]

idc how hard you try you will NOT get me to stop using snorted in my dialogue. i will always use growled and choked and hissed and huffed and grunted and breathed and frowned and sniffed and scoffed and spluttered and purred and snickered and exhaled and whimpered and smiled and laughed and sneered and frowned

i love you words that indicate sound and tone i love you poetics i love you dialogue tags they will never take you away from me i love you i love you i love you

[jlwritesstories]

The Eyes Are The Windows To The Soul update

I'm so sorry to everyone who's waiting for the last chapter of Dieter's perspective of The eyes are the windows to the soul, but it will not be released for a while.

It will be finished and posted privately, just not released immediately.

Don't panic yet! I will make all the posts public again eventually.

As you may have noticed all the posts have been made private. That is because I have decided to turn the story of Dieter and their Engel into an expanded book. Which I will be sending to agents and trying to get published.

(I may have also been told off by family members for "giving away such good ideas for free".)

I promise that once it's published (whether traditional or self), I will make all the original The Eyes Are The Windows To The Soul posts visible again.

Thank you so much to everyone who's liked commented and reblogged!

Your love for Dieter has meant the world to me.

Stay tuned for more updates.

Tag list for The Eyes are the Windows to the Soul:

@waywardstardustcollector @liv-007

[jlwritesstories]

Medieval Dance by Andrey Vinogradov

[jlwritesstories]

My publisher just out of the blue sent me an animated trailer for my book?? WHAAT??!!

[jlwritesstories]

Lesser-known steps of the writing process:

Finding all the paragraphs where you used some hyper-specific word more than once

Rearranging paragraphs that you swear you wrote in the right order but turned out to be totally backwards

Going for a walk, coming up with the perfect line, and forgetting it as soon as you get home and open your laptop

Creating a separate document where you can dump all of those nice sentences that no longer fit in anywhere

Waking up in a cold sweat because so-and-so was supposed to be barefoot but never actually took his shoes off

[jlwritesstories]

The ends justifies the means

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[jlwritesstories]

I just wrote 8 pages when I haven't written in months and was beginning to think I'd never be able to again. Idk what it is, but I am sharing and manifesting this energy for every writer who sees this. May you write 8 quality pages effortlessly and find joy writing once more