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Mog is a good friend. Always there to offer words of advice, and sit uncomfortably close to you.

part 1 part 2

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Some people on this website learnt the word “trope” and let it settle comfortably into the vocabulary space that should have been occupied by the word “cliché”.

“Trope” is a neutral word. If a particular trope is overused ad nauseam, it becomes a cliché. Saying you hate tropes does not make any sense.

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You have been sentenced to death in a magical court. The court allows all prisoners to pick how they die and they will carry it out immediately. You have it all figured out until the prisoner before you picks old age and is instantly transformed into a dying old man. Your turn approaches.

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celestial rune sorceress

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tiefling for @battlescarmentatality 

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OMFG.

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local trash warlock ✨

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signs a writer is working

they said so on social media to make it real

they made coffee

now they’re dusting the ceiling

bought a few books

thinking about baking BREAD FROM SCRATCH

is typing

is that 10,000 words!!!

no it’s 100 words

could go for a snack tbh

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“come away, o human child! to the waters and the wild… for the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand” - w.b. yeats 

[ some close ups + character design inspired by labyrinth from over the years ] 

instagram: @winterofherdiscontent 

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Three lovely tiefling ladies I have had the delight of painting recently! These are all from my current commission batch, as soon as I’ve finished working through that, I’ll be ready to take on some new work.

For info about commissions and when I’ll be opening for more, please check out my patreon or twitter!

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How to Kick a Reader in the Gut

Disrupt the reader’s sense of justice. 

This generally means setting a character up to deserve one thing and then giving them the exact opposite. 

Kill a character off before they can achieve their goal. 

Let the bad guy get an extremely important win. 

Set up a coup against a tyrannical king. The coup fails miserably.

Don’t always give characters closure. 

(Excluding the end of the book, obviously)

A beloved friend dies in battle and there’s no time to mourn him.

A random tryst between two main characters is not (or cannot be) brought up again.

A character suddenly loses their job or can otherwise no longer keep up their old routine

Make it the main character’s fault sometimes. 

And not in an “imposter syndrome” way. Make your MC do something bad, and make the blame they shoulder for it heavy and tangible.

MC must choose the lesser of two evils.

MC kills someone they believe to be a bad guy, only to later discover the bad guy was a different person altogether.

Rejection is a powerful tool. 

People generally want to be understood, and if you can make a character think they are Known, and then rip that away from them with a rejection (romantic or platonic) people will empathize with it.

MC is finally accepting the Thing They Must Do/Become, and their love interest decides that that’s not a path they want to be on and breaks up with them

MC makes a decision they believe is right, everyone around them thinks they chose wrong.

MC finds kinship with someone Like Them, at long last, but that person later discovers that there is some inherent aspect of MC that they wholly reject. (Perhaps it was MC’s fault that their family member died, they have important religious differences, or WERE THE BAD GUY ALL ALONG!)

On the flipside, make your main character keep going. 

Push them beyond what they are capable of, and then push them farther. Make them want something so deeply that they are willing to do literally anything to get it. Give them passion and drive and grit and more of that than they have fear.

“But what if my MC is quiet and meek?” Even better. They want something so deeply that every single moment they push themselves toward it is a moment spent outside their comfort zone. What must that do to a person?

Obviously, don’t do all of these things, or the story can begin to feel tedious or overly dramatic, and make sure that every decision you make is informed by your plot first and foremost. 

Also remember that the things that make us sad, angry, or otherwise emotional as readers are the same things that make us feel that way in our day-to-day lives. Creating an empathetic main character is the foundation for all of the above tips.

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ok but like when did self-sacrifice become synonymous with death? writers seem to have forgotten that people can make personal sacrifices for the greater good without giving their lives. plots about self-sacrifice and selflessness don’t always have to end in death. suffering doesn’t have to be mourning. you can create drama and emotional depth on your show without killing everyone. learn to explore the meaning of living rather than dying

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Sometimes falling in love with a character is about seeing yourself in a character, or what you could be, and drawing strength and inspiration from them.

And sometimes it’s like finding an angry opossum in a dumpster, eating your trash, and deciding it’s your baby.

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It’s time to paint Molly again :)

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dangle sword earrings my beloved <3

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