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LOVE YOUR OCS!!! YOU DID GREAT ON THEM!! EVEN IF THEYRE OVERPOWERED!! EVEN IF THEYRE EDGY!! EVEN IF THEYRE CLICHE!! YOU PUT SO MUCH TIME AND EFFORT INTO THEM AND YOU SHOULD LOVE THEM AND LOVE YOURSELF FOR MAKING THEM!!! 

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— patti smith, woolgathering

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So you know when you're writing a scene where the hero is carrying an injured person and you realize you've never been in this situation and have no idea how accurate the method of transportation actually is?

Oh boy, do I have a valuable resource for you!

Here is a PDF of the best ways to carry people depending on the situation and how conscious the injured person needs to be for the carrying position.

Literally a life saver.

(No pun intended.)

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circling back around to the issue of writers being expected to do all their own goddamn marketing via social media these days, because it completely nixes the possibility of writers being weird shut ins, off-putting eccentrics, or misanthropes. 80% of the literary canon was written by weird shut ins, off-putting eccentrics, and misanthropes. if you weed out everyone who’s the wrong kind of insane to maintain a twitter presence, who on earth is left

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There's nothing more important than writing what you want to read. Don't worry about who will like your book. Don't worry about what market it can neatly fit into. Don't cut corners or blunt edges to satisfy an imaginary person who might dislike aspects of your art. It's yours. Treat it as a pure expression of your soul. Compromise is for cowards.

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your unreliable narrator fucking bit me

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Rewatching Treasure Planet (great movie, watch it) made realize something about the way that stories convey information to their audiences. There's been a lot of discussion on the overuse of plot twists and how many stories prioritise surprising their audience over telling decent stories. However, if you instead reveal the "twist" to the audience before it becomes known to the characters, you can build tension and stakes. Treasure Planet comes right out and tells you that Long John Silver is the main villain almost immediately after his introduction (And even before he's introduced we're warned about a cyborg, so you'd have to be pretty dense to not put 2 and 2 together and realize he's a bad guy). So when the audience watches him and Jim bond and grow closer, it builds tension for when Jim finds out and it highlights the tragedy of their friendship, because we all know it's not going to end well. Then, after the truth is revealed, stakes are created because we want the friendship between Jim and Silver to be repaired, because we know it was real, but we don't know if can be after what Silver's done. And all of this would have been lost if Silver's true nature had been a cheap plot twist. The tragedy would be completely overshadowed by the surprise and betrayal, and any investment in their relationship would have been built on the false impression that Silver was a good guy.

Another good example of this is Titanic. Even if you were somehow ignorant of the ship's sinking, the film makes sure you know that it sank with its framing device of Old Rose telling her story to people salvaging the Titanic's wreak. And Titanic's plot structure could only possibly work if you know the ship is going to sink. I'm not just talking about building tension, tragedy, and stakes for the characters like with the above example, I mean that if you didn't know that the Titanic was going down walking into the film, the abrupt shift from romance to suspense-disaster would be an increadibly tough pill to swallow. But it works because we expect it. You don't walk into a film called Titanic without expecting the damn boat to sink.

However, the sad thing about both of these examples, is that despite all the benefits that came from telling the audience these things ahead of time, I think the main reason the creators didn't make them plot twists was because they couldn't have. Treasure Island is the single most influential piece of pirate media out there, and you'd have to have been living under a rock for over a century to not know the Titanic sank. So, the writers had to work around the fact that these important turning points in the narratives were common knowledge, and they wound creating incredible stories as a consequence.

I want to see more of this style of writing in stories where the writers aren't forced to do it. We've clearly seen that you can tell some really damn good stories by giving information to the audience before the characters learn it, and I just wish more works would do that instead of trying to surprise people with shocking twists.

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Anxiety: That sentence is the wor-

Me: Shakespeare is crying with envy as we speak.

Anxiety: You haven’t developed your backstory enou-

Me: The mystery. The intrigue. So intense even I’m not sure what happened.

Anxiety: You’re just copying all of your favorite tropes and clich-

Me: An incredible combination of all the best things in fiction. A testimony to human creativity. The paragon of prose. *blows kisses*

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Been a little while! Life's been pretty crazy recently (the horrors raised themselves from the ocean, ew) but we're all alive! So here's a quick look at upcoming plans, since I got far too distracted to actually talk about them on the proper streams.

A series on Writing Basics

TSE character sheets, speedpaints, and breakdowns

Character Building for writers

Book Reviews!

Extra long, celebratory, "we made it through finals" writing stream in May

Perhaps an actual, focused recap of March's Publishing Adventure?

Thumbnail announcements and another new series!

Essays 101

Analyzing different writing advice

Posting links and recaps of the few streams that have happened in between the last blog update and now

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I'm gonna book everyone I see

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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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Telling myself this every day so here's a meme

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Alternate Livestreams Episode 1

Features: Deviantart, Dolly, drawing, and lots of mutterings

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thinking about how the world would be better if more people understood the differences between 'the author failed to tell the story they wanted to tell' and 'the author told the story they wanted to tell, but they told it badly' and 'the author told the story they wanted to, and they told it well, but it wasn't the story I wanted to read'

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Writing Livestreams Episode 11

Features: Actual writing, not just prep work, Tam playing Genshin in the background, and me enjoying when plot holes fill themselves.

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"No one wants to see art of ocs" If I dont see art of peoples ocs at least once a day I DIE. Do you want that to happen? Do you want me to DIE? Draw your ocs.

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Writing Livestreams Episode 10

Features: More Bingo Cards, new titles, mistaking Tam for Patches, and discussing reading levels.