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Tips from a Beta Reading Writer

This one's for the scenes with multiple characters, and you're not sure how to keep everyone involved.

Writing group scenes is chaos. Someone’s talking, someone’s interrupting, someone’s zoning out thinking about breadsticks. And if you’re not careful, half your cast fades into the background like NPCs in a video game. I used to struggle with this so much—my characters would just exist in the scene without actually affecting it. But here’s what I've learned and have started implementing:

✨ Give everyone a job in the scene ✨

Not their literal job—like, not everyone needs to be solving a crime or casting spells. I mean: Why are they in this moment? What’s their role in the conversation?

My favourite examples are:

The Driver: Moves the convo forward. They have an agenda, they’re pushing the action.

The Instigator: Pokes the bear. Asks the messy questions. Stirring the pot like a chef on a mission.

The Voice of Reason: "Guys, maybe we don’t commit arson today?"

The Distracted One: Completely in their own world. Tuning out, doodling on a napkin, thinking about their ex.

The Observer: Not saying much, but noticing everything. (Quiet characters still have presence!)

The Wild Card: Who knows what they’ll do? Certainly not them. Probably about to make things worse.

If a character has no function, they’ll disappear. Give them something—even if it’s just a side comment, a reaction, or stealing fries off someone’s plate. Keep them interesting, and your readers will stay interested too.

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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.

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So uh….some dude apparently recreated Adobe Photoshop feature-for-feature, for FREE, and it runs in your browser.

Anyway, fuck Adobe, and enjoy!

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FALCONIERE SHOP Accessories if you want to support this blog consider donating to: ko-fi.com/fashionrunways

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Polymer clay jewelry by Iva Nix on Instagram

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Glaze is out!

Tired of having your artwork used for AI training but find watermarks dismaying and ineffective?

Well check this out! Software that makes your Art look messed up to training AIs and unusable in a data set but nearly unchanged to human eyes.

I just learned about this. It's in Beta. Please read all the information before using.

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Orange glass floor lamp by Tibor Hazi, Hungary, 1973

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octopus pirate hair accessories

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vintage 357 magnum hair dryer

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some resources for people who want to start animating

free animation programs

the 12 principles of animation

51 animation exercises (from beginner to expert)

glen keane animates a scene

my advice: have fun and play–play is learning | always be watching real life to see how things move | also be watching cool animations to learn from them | don’t wait until you’re ‘good at art’–animating will help you improve | it’s hard but so worth it when things turn out well, good luck!

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Fifth Day of Gift-Giving

Five Fights (and Reconciliations)

... five times they fought and reconciled

The fight had been about nothing. They had been on edge for the last couple weeks and it finally came out of them. Thank god a conversation and a big hug was all that was needed to make up.

He had told her not to make a fuss about his birthday. He definitely hadn’t told her to plan a surprise party.

It had all just been a big misunderstanding and after finding that out all they could do was laugh.

They had very different approaches to problem solving and it took some time to figure out how to accept that without getting into fights every time they disagreed on something.

Humour is different for everyone, but when they realize that they’ve hurt their friend with their careless jokes, they know that they desperately need to apologize and do better next time.

24 Days of Gift-Giving