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I think everyone needs to start posting about how many people have been coming out in solidarity with trans people everywhere in the US especially in vulnerable states, because I’m really touched by what happened at the University of Iowa. These kids shut it down because it’s not just a youtube bigot on their campus it’s so much bigger than that! This is huge

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Check my Patreon out if you’d like to support the comic, even a little bit helps. Or just to check out the reward tiers, there’s some neat bonus stuff and I tried to make them fun: https://www.patreon.com/waitingforthet

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I hope every writer who sees this writes LOADS the next few months. Like freetime opens up, no writers block, the ability to focus, etc etc you’re able to write loads & make lots of progress <3

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Did I daydream this, or was there a website for writers with like. A ridiculous quantity of descriptive aid. Like I remember clicking on " inside a cinema " or something like that. Then, BAM. Here's a list of smell and sounds. I can't remember it for the life of me, but if someone else can, help a bitch out <3

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the worst part of my job (standing around at college orientations being Visibly Queer) is when parents nervously alter their entire walking trajectory to stay out of range as if I'm going to bite them and pass on my infectious homosexuality.

this is wildly eclipsed by the best part of my job, parents who are such wildly enthusiastic allies that their children seem a little embarrassed about it. I'm talking parents who eagerly point out my little rainbow-draped table and urge their kids to come over, parents who excitedly pick through my button box offering up the relevant pride flags and pronouns to their kids, parents who have detailed questions about harassment policies and gender affirming care while their kids are trying to wander away, parents who rush over with open arms and obvious glee on their faces knowing there's a space on campus dedicated to keeping their kids safe.

the ferocity with which these parents love and affirm their queer kids is so humbling and wonderful.

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Tiktok SEEMS like it fills the same ecological niche as Tumblr circa 2014, but everything that happens on tiktok is the result of some multitrillion dollar conglomerate setting a Rube Goldberg machine I'm motion that makes people act insane , and this leads to an increase in profits for someone somehow. Tumblr was just good old fashioned mass hysteria.

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Every time I see that post about how Excalibur and Caliburn are different swords, and Excalibur is the sword given by the Lady in the Lake, and Caliburn is the sword in the stone, I just sit there shaking my head, because everyone on it is so earnest, and certain of their rightness, and frustrated with everybody else being Wrong about Arthurian myth, and they are all just as wrong as the people they are trying to correct.

Excalibur and Caliburn are two words for the same sword, both derived from the Welsh Caledfwlch. Caliburn (or Caliburnus) is the Latinization, and Excalibur is the Old French version. Sometimes this sword is the sword in the stone, and sometimes it's given by the Lady in the Lake. Sometimes there is a sword in the stone, and sometimes there isn't. Sometimes there is a Lady in the Lake and sometimes there isn't. Arthurian myth, like all myths, doesn't have a single definitive version. It's a grab bag of many related stories told by many different people, that don't fit together into any kind of cohesive whole, and that often contradict each other. Every one of us gets to pick the bits and pieces to stitch together into the version we like best.

So Excalibur and Caliburn can be two different swords, or one sword. There can be a sword in the stone, or a Lady in the Lake, or both. It's up to you. And no one version is the right one, but also none of them are wrong.

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WEBSITES FOR WRITERS {masterpost}

E.A. Deverell - FREE worksheets (characters, world building, narrator, etc.) and paid courses;

Hiveword - Helps to research any topic to write about (has other resources, too);

BetaBooks - Share your draft with your beta reader (can be more than one), and see where they stopped reading, their comments, etc.;

Charlotte Dillon - Research links;

Writing realistic injuries - The title is pretty self-explanatory: while writing about an injury, take a look at this useful website;

One Stop for Writers - You guys... this website has literally everything we need: a) Description thesaurus collection, b) Character builder, c) Story maps, d) Scene maps & timelines, e) World building surveys, f) Worksheets, f) Tutorials, and much more! Although it has a paid plan ($90/year | $50/6 months | $9/month), you can still get a 2-week FREE trial;

One Stop for Writers Roadmap - It has many tips for you, divided into three different topics: a) How to plan a story, b) How to write a story, c) How to revise a story. The best thing about this? It's FREE!

Story Structure Database - The Story Structure Database is an archive of books and movies, recording all their major plot points;

National Centre for Writing - FREE worksheets and writing courses. Has also paid courses;

Penguin Random House - Has some writing contests and great opportunities;

Crime Reads - Get inspired before writing a crime scene;

The Creative Academy for Writers - "Writers helping writers along every step of the path to publication." It's FREE and has ZOOM writing rooms;

Reedsy - "A trusted place to learn how to successfully publish your book" It has many tips, and tools (generators), contests, prompts lists, etc. FREE;

QueryTracker - Find agents for your books (personally, I've never used this before, but I thought I should feature it here);

Pacemaker - Track your goals (example: Write 50K words - then, everytime you write, you track the number of the words, and it will make a graphic for you with your progress). It's FREE but has a paid plan;

Save the Cat! - The blog of the most known storytelling method. You can find posts, sheets, a software (student discount - 70%), and other things;

I hope this is helpful for you!

(Also, check my blog if you want to!)

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archived blog

you can find me at @insert-cleverurl and my new projects at @circees

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DRESS UP by melancholytown

click the source link to gain access to the page preview & code!

FEATURES

a wardrobe based page to show off a character’s style and various outfits

mix and match system !  click on the boxes to cycle through the options

draggable boxes that you can arrange however you’d like ( great for screenshots and general outfit planning )

works best when used with pngs that have a transparent background. image sizes are present in the code !

TERMS OF USE

don’t remove / move my credit or obscure it in any way.

don’t use this theme as a base code

don’t take parts of this code to put into other themes

doedit for personal use

do message me with any issues @melancholytown​

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This is a masterlist consisting of links to different types of posts here on Tumblr. I compiled this for theme-makers in mind as a way of double-checking if any elements have been accidentally left unstyled. You can reblog the posts onto your test blog to check if everything looks as intended. Particularly for NPF posts, there may be some default properties you wish to override. I had these links saved all over the place so I decided to group them in one post for easier access. This list is by no means definitive, but I hope it can help somewhat. ♡

💌 If you have any suggestions or additions to this list, let me know!

Keep reading

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I’m taking a couple hours today to do a research deep dive on publishing, marketing, and the book market in general! Would anyone be interested if I share the results of my notes?

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history fucked me up

oxford was built and operational as a college before the rise of the mayans and cleopatra lived in a time nearer to pizza hut’s invention than to the pyramids being built

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How to write a novel

I was talking to a girl at ComicCon, the kind of person who has a million creative projects at the same time. As many people do, she has a story she wants to write, with amazing characters she wants to share with the world, but writing is hard and a first novel can be daunting. Here’s what I told her.

Now, this applies to the people who REALLY want to see their story done. These are the main pillars of the cathedral that is your story. Let’s begin.

1- YOUR GOAL IS TO WRITE A COMPLETE FIRST DRAFT. It will be shit. But it will be complete. You can build on it and rewrite, but the most important thing is to WRITE TILL THE END OF THE STORY.

2- SIT DOWN AND WORK. That’s the difference between writers and the million people who say they have a story that they’ll write someday.

Alright, let’s get technical, and start by the end. 

3- Art is about causing your public to have emotions. Decide right now what emotion you want to leave your readers with when they close your book. Is it happy, sad, bittersweet, hopeful? Pick one. (This can be changed later if you rewrite and find some other ending, but we are working on the first draft.)

— Maybe you have a nice gimmick, a cool idea for a story, like idk, ‘What if you cloned yourself and that clone took over your life’. This is interesting, but it’s not a story in itself. A story needs emotions. If you don’t pick the emotions you want your reader to feel, your idea is just a gimmick. 

4- Now that you have the final emotion, decide your ending in accordance to said emotion. Are characters dying? Is the bad guy defeated? Is everyone splitting up or leaving together as a found family? 

Then we go back to the beginning.

5- You probably have a million characters you all want to write. Pick one to be your protagonist. Yes, just one. Multi-characters stories are harder to write and demand experience and time. We want this novel to exist, and not be stuck in limbo forever. Anyway, people tend to always prefer side characters. Who has heard of someone having a protagonist as a fave?? Your side characters will be loved, no worry. 

How to find your protagonist: It’s the person who makes decisions and makes the plot advance. Simple as that. Not to be mistaken for the leader of a group.  

6- Now that you have your protagonist, you decide what is normal for them. That is your beginning. 

7- And then, you break that normality in some horrible way that will prevent your protagonist to come back to it. That is your inciting incident. 

Then we write the middle

8- You google Three-Act-Structure and get one of these babies. 

(But Talhí, I hear you say, why should I follow this? It’s been overdone, and my story doesn’t follow this, and I have more to write than this… Well, that’s your choice. I’m not the boss of you. I’m just saying that this is a solid model for western storytelling and it’s been proven to work time and time again. You can create outside of this, but again, the main goal here is to get your novel on paper. This is a solid template.)

9- You probably have a general idea of events you want to happen in the story. Place these scenes where you feel they should go on the structure. Like, a confrontation with the main bad guy goes in climax of act three, and the confrontation with the main henchman goes to climax of act two, etc. Be mindful of the rising action and tension: a cute misadventure in the woods would probably go earlier in the story than a fight to the death.

10- Now, a secret: What separates bad writing from good writing? Bad writing is adding a bunch of events in the middle and have the characters go through them like a checklist of scenes. You can often see this in movies. But good writing links the events. Each and every event that happens has to be a result of your character making a decision. Then, an obstacle happens, and your character makes another decision, that leads to your next event/obstacle. 

11- Another secret: A character will gain power, money, weapons and allies through the story. In videogames, this is useful to defeat the bad guy. But storytelling is not videogames. Having a superpowerful hero at the end is boring. What we want is keeping the reader in suspense. So you’ll have to take everything from them. Leave them powerless and alone. And then, break their leg. I mean, not literally, although you can do that too, but have them super disadvantaged. And then they can use the personal growth they got in the adventure to prevail. (What is more interesting: a character fleeing from a facility but with weapons and kickass moves, or a character fleeing the same facility without weapons or shoes and with a broken arm? Who do you root for?)

Other tricks

The rest of the crew: I go with what Pixar does for characters: Main character gets three or more characteristics. That’s your Woody. Second tier character gets two characteristics. That’s your Buzz. Third tier characters get one characteristic, like Rex and Mister Potato Head. Keep control of your character tiers and never give too much time to the lower tiers ones, it doesn’t help your story.  

Herd your cats: Characters will want to wander in every direction, and you’ll want to follow them. Keep them in groups, and even though you can follow a side character for a scene or two, focus 80 to 90% of your story on your protagonist. 

DND is not a novel: I’m pretty sure your campaign is super fun, but you can’t just put it on paper and call it a novel. It needs a narrative arc and serious editing. You can use a campaign as a base, but it needs to be worked as a novel, because you’re changing mediums, and a novel has different requirements. 

That’s pretty much what I can remember for now. This should help you with the bones of your novel, and you can add the meat on that. I hope it helps. But honestly, the best advice I can give you is 

SIT DOWN AND DO THE THING. 

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I'm in need of Asian FC (teens; Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino) but I don't know many Asians prominent in the media. Can you suggest some, even ones that are underused? Thanks.

I would suggest checking out these masterlists;

This one is truly incredible, with pictures and everything you might need

This one is great as well, no pictures, but a lot of useful info

This one

This tag might help as well. So would this one

Hope this helped dearest!