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Ways I Show a Character is Emotionally Burned Out (Before They Even Realize It Themselves)

I love writing characters who think they’re fine but are actually walking emotional house fires with bad coping mechanisms.

They stop doing the things they used to love and don’t even notice. Their guitar gathers dust. Their favorite podcast becomes background noise. Their hobbies feel like homework now.

They pick the path of least resistance every time, even when it hurts them. No, they don’t want to go to that thing. No, they don’t want to talk to that person. But whatever’s easier. That’s the motto now.

They’re tired but can’t sleep. Or they sleep but wake up more tired. Classic burnout move: lying in bed with their brain racing like a toddler on espresso.

They give other people emotional advice they refuse to take themselves. “You have to set boundaries!” they say—while ignoring 8 texts from someone they should’ve cut off three emotional breakdowns ago.

They cry at something stupidly small. Like spilling soup. Or a dog in a commercial. Or losing their pen. The soup is never just soup.

They say “I’m just tired” like it’s a personality trait now. And not like… emotionally drained to the bone but afraid to admit it out loud.

They ghost people they love, not out of malice, but because even replying feels like too much. Social battery? Absolutely obliterated. Texting back feels like filing taxes.

They stop reacting to big things. Catastrophes get a blank stare. Disasters feel like “just another Tuesday.” The well of feeling is running dry.

They avoid being alone with their own thoughts. Constant noise. TV always on. Music blasting. Because silence = reckoning, and reckoning is terrifying.

They start hoping something will force them to stop. An accident. A missed deadline. Someone else finally telling them, “You need a break.” Because asking for help? Unthinkable.

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Showing 'Excitement' in Writing

Eyes sparkling with anticipation.

Bouncing on the balls of their feet.

Clapping hands together in delight.

Speaking in a high-pitched, rapid tone.

Grinning from ear to ear.

Jumping up and down with joy.

Hugging others spontaneously.

Cheeks flushed with enthusiasm.

Widening eyes and raised eyebrows.

Waving hands animatedly while talking.

Giggling or laughing uncontrollably.

Unable to sit still, shifting in their seat.

Heart racing with exhilaration.

Feet tapping or legs jiggling.

Practically vibrating with energy.

Exclaiming, "I can't believe it!" repeatedly.

Reaching out to touch or grab someone’s hand.

Dancing or spinning around.

Clutching their chest as if to contain the excitement.

Practicing or rehearsing what they’ll say or do.

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Electricity situation got better so now I need to practice self restraint to not read all the "don't exaggerate, it's just a war in Ukraine, not a genocide" comments

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ive found that partially treated mental illness can sometimes look to uninvolved onlookers like faked mental illness.

[lizzywizzyeatsart]

hot artists don't gatekeep

I've been resource gathering for YEARS so now I am going to share my dragons hoard

Floorplanner. Design and furnish a house for you to use for having a consistent background in your comic or anything! Free, you need an account, easy to use, and you can save multiple houses.

Comparing Heights. Input the heights of characters to see what the different is between them. Great for keeping consistency. Free.

Magma. Draw online with friends in real time. Great for practice or hanging out. Free, paid plan available, account preferred.

Smithsonian Open Access. Loads of free images. Free.

SketchDaily. Lots of pose references, massive library, is set on a timer so you can practice quick figure drawing. Free.

SculptGL. A sculpting tool which I am yet to master, but you should be able to make whatever 3d object you like with it. free.

Pexels. Free stock images. And the search engine is actually pretty good at pulling up what you want.

Figurosity. Great pose references, diverse body types, lots of "how to draw" videos directly on the site, the models are 3d and you can rotate the angle, but you can't make custom poses or edit body proportions. Free, account option, paid plans available.

Line of Action. More drawing references, this one also has a focus on expressions, hands/feet, animals, landscapes. Free.

Animal Photo. You pose a 3d skull model and select an animal species, and they give you a bunch of photo references for that animal at that angle. Super handy. Free.

Height Weight Chart. You ever see an OC listed as having a certain weight but then they look Wildly different than the number suggests? Well here's a site to avoid that! It shows real people at different weights and heights to give you a better idea of what these abstract numbers all look like. Free to use.

[lizzywizzyeatsart]

Attract Those Readers: When to Post on Ao3

Miraculous Fanworks Guide: When to post and when not to post on Ao3

Do you struggle to attract readers to your Ao3 fanfictions? Looking to boost your numbers on a fic?

Then you’ve come to the right place!

When to post to get those eyeballs on your piece:

Using a script they coded themselves, Olcalhoun conducted a year-long study of Ao3′s posting times tracking four things:

How many users were online.

How many new stories were posted in the last 10 minutes.

How many stories were added to the feature box in the last 10 minutes.

How many stories were in both the ‘new’ and 'featured’ boxes.

Olcalhoun collected over 50,000 data points, and found that the best times to post on Ao3 were Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, from 12pm to 5pm PST.

It’s science!

When not to post:

However, if there’s a good time to post, when is the worst time to post? The answer, provided in this post by jenroses, is anytime between 5pm and 10pm PST. The worst day to post overall is Friday.

But why?

Turns out there’s a bug in Ao3′s system. If you post during that time, your story will have a manually-set publication date.

What this means is if you post between 5pm and 10pm PST, your story will not appear on the top of the new stories in the tag. 

Your story will appear “earlier” than those stories–lower on the front page than stories posted hours before.

So now you know: 

do post on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday from 12pm to 5pm PST

do not post on Friday, or from 5pm to 10pm anyday 

Happy writing!

-Cass

Image credit.

[lizzywizzyeatsart]

Visual development for Lilo & Stitch by Paul Felix

[lizzywizzyeatsart]

hot artists don't gatekeep

I've been resource gathering for YEARS so now I am going to share my dragons hoard

Floorplanner. Design and furnish a house for you to use for having a consistent background in your comic or anything! Free, you need an account, easy to use, and you can save multiple houses.

Comparing Heights. Input the heights of characters to see what the different is between them. Great for keeping consistency. Free.

Magma. Draw online with friends in real time. Great for practice or hanging out. Free, paid plan available, account preferred.

Smithsonian Open Access. Loads of free images. Free.

SketchDaily. Lots of pose references, massive library, is set on a timer so you can practice quick figure drawing. Free.

SculptGL. A sculpting tool which I am yet to master, but you should be able to make whatever 3d object you like with it. free.

Pexels. Free stock images. And the search engine is actually pretty good at pulling up what you want.

Figurosity. Great pose references, diverse body types, lots of "how to draw" videos directly on the site, the models are 3d and you can rotate the angle, but you can't make custom poses or edit body proportions. Free, account option, paid plans available.

Line of Action. More drawing references, this one also has a focus on expressions, hands/feet, animals, landscapes. Free.

Animal Photo. You pose a 3d skull model and select an animal species, and they give you a bunch of photo references for that animal at that angle. Super handy. Free.

Height Weight Chart. You ever see an OC listed as having a certain weight but then they look Wildly different than the number suggests? Well here's a site to avoid that! It shows real people at different weights and heights to give you a better idea of what these abstract numbers all look like. Free to use.

[lizzywizzyeatsart]

The Welsh Viking is pretty cool! 

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Drawing from References with deep Foreshortening

And some practice poses:

Edit: 1/11/24 It was brought to my attention that some of the language in this tutorial read as fatphobic. This tutorial was originally written and published on DeviantArt in 2011 and I was generally unaware of these issues at the time. I have adjusted the language in the tutorial to hopefully address these concerns, though old versions may continue to circulate. Thanks for taking the time to point these things out to me. I will continue to learn and grow. ♥ Here's a few more refs with foreshortening from a larger variety of models:

[lizzywizzyeatsart]

Reblog art guys. Seriously.

[lizzywizzyeatsart]

Writing tips for long fics that helped me that no one asked for.

1.) Don't actually delete content from your WIP unless it is minor editing - instead cut it and put it in a secondary document. If you're omitting paragraphs of content, dialog, a whole scene you might find a better place for it later and having it readily available can really save time. Sometimes your idea was fantastic, but it just wasn't in the right spot.

2.) Stuck with wording the action? Just write the dialog then revisit it later.

3.) Stuck on the whole scene? Skip it and write the next one.

4.) Write on literally any other color than a white background. It just works. (I use black)

5.) If you have a beta, while they are beta-ing have them read your fic out loud. Yes, I know a lot of betas/writers do not have the luxury of face-timing or have the opportunity to do this due to time constraints etc but reading your fic out loud can catch some very awkward phrasing that otherwise might be missed. If you don't have a beta, you read it out loud to yourself. Throw some passion into your dialog, you might find a better way to word it if it sounds stuffy or weird.

6.) The moment you have an idea, write it down. If you don't have paper or a pen, EMAIL it to yourself or put it in a draft etc etc. I have sent myself dozens of ideas while laying down before sleep that I 10/10 forgot the next morning but had emailed them to myself and got to implement them.

7.) Remember - hits/likes/kudos/comments are not reflective of the quality of your fic or your ability to write. Most people just don't comment - even if they say they do, they don't, even if they preach all day about commenting, they don't, even if they are a very popular blog that passionately reminds people to comment - they don't comment (I know this personally). Even if your fic brought tears to their eyes and it haunted them for weeks and they printed it out and sent it to their friends they just don't comment. You just have to accept it. That being said - comment on the fic you're reading now, just do it, if you're 'shy' and that's why you don't comment the more you comment the better you'll get at it. Just do it.

8.) Remove unrealistic daily word count goals from your routine. I've seen people stress 1500 - 2000 words a day and if they don't reach that they feel like a failure and they get discouraged. This is ridiculous. Write when you can, but remove absurd goals. My average is 500 words a day in combination with a 40 hour a week job and I have written over 200k words from 2022-2023.

9.) There are dozens of ways to do an outline from precise analytical deconstruction that goes scene by scene to the minimalist bullet point list - it doesn't matter which one you use just have some sort of direction. A partial outline is better than no outline.

10.) Write for yourself, not for others. Write the fic you know no one is going to read. Write the fic that sounds ridiculous. You will be so happy you put it out in the world and there will be people who will be glad it exists.

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I just saw a post on Tumblr asking if you're "allowed" to do something in a story you're writing. (In this case, a POV shift.)

I just want to sing to the tune of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, "THERE ARE NO RULES. THERE ARE NO RULES. There are no rules there are no rules there are no rules..."

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How To Always Have Writing Ideas…

For A New Story:

1. Keep a list. Any time you have one of those sudden bursts of inspiration in the middle of writing a separate story, don’t quit your current WIP or pretend you’ll ‘just remember it’, put it into a separate list. You can always go back to this later on

2. Writing prompts. Look them up, use random word generators, pick a random object you can see, whatever helps you come up with any idea at all. Write a few paragraphs. Can it evolve from there?

3. People watch. Go to a public place and make up backstories for the strangers you come across. That man in the hat is using it to hide his elf ears. That woman with the bright pink hair didn’t dye it, she’s secretly the main character of an anime trying to dodge all the tropes and cliches. That toddler is actually a guardian angel reincarnated to watch over their new baby sibling. What brings them to this place? Where did they come from? Where are they going next?

To Continue An Existing Story:

1. Act it out. Say the words aloud, act out what your characters are doing, get props or people to act off of if you need to. See what feels like the most natural progression of the moment

2. Coffee shop AU, or other substitutional one-shot. Good for establishing dynamics between two or more characters, or even just working out a lone character’s day-to-day. Just write a few paragraphs about your characters entering a coffee shop or similar appropriate establishment/ordinary location. What do they do? What do they order to eat/drink? What do they say to each other? How do they treat the staff and other customers? If all else fails, write what they do after they leave, as if it were an ordinary day for them

3. Rubber duck it. This is something programmers use to work out where they went wrong in their code, but I’ve found it can work for figuring out story stuff as well. What you do is get a rubber duck, or any other object of focus, and start explaining your problem to it out loud. In this case you can read your chapter to the duck, or even give it the full run-down of the plot so far. Warning; side effects may include getting frustrated that the problem was right in front of you and subsequently throwing the duck

For Both:

1. Writing graveyards. I talked a bit about them in a previous post, but writing graveyards are basically just the folder you store your deleted scenes in instead of yeeting them into the void. Reread those, see if they have anything you can recontextualise or repurpose

2. Combine ideas. My WIP Byoldervine is a combination of two separate plots I had that I realised I’d be able to combine - twice. I first realised I could put together my ‘angel and demon heroes protecting humans from a war between heaven and hell’ story and my ‘quest through the fantasy realm to find the ingredients to a cure for a dying god’ story into the same universe as two sides of the same story as a duology. Then I realised I could just remove a few characters, tweak a few plot points and mash them completely together into one book. Combining them works wonders and minimises worldbuilding

3. Go out with friends or family. I guarantee that the one time you’ll be flooded with inspiration is when you don’t have an opportunity to write it down

[lizzywizzyeatsart]

Don't kill me for this but methinks maybe some people on tumblr do not know what a toxic relationship is both in fiction and irl. like I'm seeing people calling their ships "toxic yuri" or whatever because their relationship is tumultuous and has ups and downs or because the people involved got into a fight and hurt each other's feelings a couple times like....my liege that is just a normal relationship. In literally any kind of interpersonal relationship it is inevitable that you are going to hurt people sometimes and you're going to be hurt. You're going to disagree with people. You're going to do things wrong. That doesn't mean you're toxic or that your relationships are unsalvageable. That's just how people work. Like I'm starting to genuinely worry that people r gonna carry this attitude into their real lives and fuck themselves over because they think that their real relationships with other people aren't supposed to have any conflict or discomfort whatsoever and I feel like it ties into this weird hyper-individualism thing that tumblr has going on where people are not supposed to rely on each other or try to grow and have compassion for other people or it's "emotional labour"....babes relationships are supposed to take work. We work on ourselves for other people because we care about them. Take my hand it's okay you can do it