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This is partly true, but affect is also a noun, and effect is also a verb:

Affect (v.) to change something. "Procrastination will affect my ability to write."

Affect (n.) a disposition. "His affect is poor today."

Effect (n.) the result of something. "Staying up late had an effect on my productivity."

Effect (v.) to bring about a result. "He effected to solve the mystery by sundown."

The noun form of affect and the verb form of effect aren't very common anymore, and it's close to impossible to use them accidentally, but knowing they exist can come in handy :) for common use, effect will be a noun and affect will be a verb.

affect and effect …. my mortal enemies ………..

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More thou, thee, etc. facts

Romance languages—and I believe some other languages?—have two words for "you": one when referring to someone casually, and one when referring to someone with status or to a group of people. In French, for example, "tu" is informal and singular where "vous" is formal and plural. We use "you" for both today in English, but "thou" used to be the other half! "Thou" was informal and singular (which sounds weird to our brains. Thou sounds way fancier than you), and "you" was formal and plural. Eventually, we just lost "thou," but I'm not sure why.

Another English fact, now about articles: there's a lotta misinformation about "ye" as in "ye olde shope" and similar words. Our idea of "ye olde" comes from a typographical error, and people speaking Middle English wouldn't have spelled it that way. It would've been "þe." That þ is called a thorn and is common in Old and Middle English, Old Norse, and is still used in Modern Icelandic! It's used for the "th" sound in, well "the," and "bathe" for another example. When modern English speakers tried to replicate the aesthetic of "þe olde" signs, common practice was to substitue the þ for a y because, well, y looks close enough, and it's hard to find a thorn on a typewriter. The "eth" is another letter (ð) that makes a different "th" sound, like in the word "bath." Hear the difference between bath and bathe. Try using the wrong "th" in "the." It sounds funky!

We get "the" from Old Norse into Old English, which is how we also get the demonstrative pronouns "this," "that," "these," and "those." Pretty cool!

THOU, THEE, THY, THINE. SAME THING RIGHT?

NO.

Although they seem very similar, Shakespeare would be in tears if he saw how most people mix them up. lets save William the misery and teach you when to correctly use thou, thy, and thine.

THOU

Thou = You (in subject form)

"Thou art killing me." "Art Thou crying?"

THEE

Thee = You (in object form)

"I want to kill thee." "My dog ate thee in my dream."

THY

Thy = Your (before a word that starts with a consonant)

"Thy mother." "Give me thy duck."

Thyself is used the same as any other thy+word combination like "thy mother" but without a space

"Take care of Thyself."

THINE

Thine = Your (before a word that starts with a vowel)

"Thine unibrow is evident." "Thou art on thine own."

Now Shakespeare can truly rest in peace.

Go follow me @leisureflame for more posts like this!

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TW: depression, suicide, Taylor Swift

I feel like I have an ethical compulsion to remind everyone that "torture" or any sort of mental, physical, emotional, or spiritual duress, does not inherently make "better" art, and especially not poetry. Any sort of trauma or illness, however you define those terms (and for this argument, I'm defining trauma with a lowercase T: anything that affects you so fully that it trains your body's future reactions to similar circumstances), is a decent tool to generate ideas but in no way helps in the creative process. Romanticizing this is destructive to popular perceptions of both artists and anguish. Van Gogh wasn't a better artist because of his depression; Sylvia Plath wasn't improved when she tried to take her life, and her art wasn't improved when she succeeded. Like everyone else, artists live despite their "tortures," and they (we if you reading this are, like me, a writer or artist or etc.) create beautiful things despite what has happened to them.

If you read enough poetry or prose or study enough painters, you'll realize that pretty much all of them, even the most outwardly cynical, have incredible joies de vivres. Artists love living--this love and fascination and delight in life is where art comes from.

It's okay to be sad and worse than sad, but it's not romantic, and it's not helping your art.

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Beta Reading, Workshopping, and Peer Editing for Indie Writers: a Guide

Beta reading is a term you might hear tossed out as a vague buzzword, kind of like how people talk about "character development" and "worldbuilding"; I've made a bunch of posts to demystify words in that latter category, but beta reading is a different type of term. Where those latter words and their ilk are terms of craft, things we can discuss in theory ("this is how I think characters are developed best"), beta reading is about a novel after its first draft and first wave-ish of edits. Pretty much everything before and after the production of a novel or story is purely up to what works best for the writer, so this post will introduce beta reading if it's new to you, and I'll give you my process if you want to tinker with it!

Beta reading is when interested readers work through your polished manuscript and make workshop comments so you can make an extra wave of edits. Publishing houses usually have two waves of this type of reading--alpha reading (AR) and beta reading (BR). If you can find enough people to alpha read for you (and you want alpha readers), go for it! But if you're confident in your grammar, your ability to craft a scene and characters, and the other formalities of creative writing, alpha reading isn't a requirement (as an indie. If you ever query your work to a house, it'll probably go through alpha reading).

Alpha reading is to catch grammar and syntax slips, mischaracterizations, character development that doesn't add up, excesses of adverbs and adjectives, and other craft faux-pas that the average reader wouldn't catch. Your alpha readers should pretty exclusively be other writers.

Beta reading is to gauge what your audience is thinking or feeling while they read your work. If your beta readers want to make alpha reading comments ("I don't feel like [character] would do that here"), that's A-okay, especially if you didn't have alpha readers, but that shouldn't be your chief concern with your betas. These are your audience surrogates! The job of beta readers is to tell you what they think or feel: "I like this," "I don't like this"; "This paragraph hit me hard"; "This word is confusing"; etc. If they add more words to their comments, that's A-okay ("I like this because these words go well together" or "This word is confusing--does it mean X or Y?") but not necessary! If your beta readers are your audience and not people who really get how writing works, then you should be taking any reasonings in their comments as loose, loose suggestions. Maybe those words that go well together to one reader feel, as you look at them a second time, cliche. Or perhaps the confusing nature of a word or phrase was by design. In any case, try to see your beta readers as a "live audience reaction" and not a "live reactionary critique."

One aside about alpha/beta reading: "this is bad" and "this is good" comments are toxic and should be avoided at all costs. Tell your readers to avoid these before they start writing. No good can come from these. Even "I don't like this" and "I like this" are worlds better, though still not great. But absolutely warn your readers against using objective blanket statements like "good/bad" as they read.

Now that we've laid the foundations, I'll go into my own process so hopefully everything above makes more sense.

Before I give my manuscript to beta readers, I go through 2-3 waves of revision on my own. After I finish my first draft, I wait about a month to let the dust settle, to gain at least a little emotional distance from the project so I can look at it a little more objectively. Then, I read it through, revising for content: cut this scene, add a scene here, chop paragraphs and sentences, add paragraphs and sentences, move this chapter here, make sure this character actually functions as he should in the narrative, etc. These are my macro edits.

Then I let it sit a week or two and go into line editing: punctuation and syntax, word choice, tweaking figurative language, etc. Close pruning of your work. Filing your nails after you've clipped them.

The third read-through is at a normal reading pace, as if you were a reader, to catch anything that may have slipped past during your close edits and revisions. This third read-through is likely the first time you've read your manuscript as it should be read--a book! This step, then, is a victory lap, but it's also one last troubleshoot. You might not find the errors in a computer program until you run the program. So too it is with writing.

This is a lot of work! You might want to relegate these tasks to your readers, but DO NOT!!! If you're still heavily revising and editing your work, don't let your readers to the table. This is your work and your story, and outside influence will stray it from what you want. Own this. Buckle down. Read.

Once you've got your polished draft, it's time to contact your readers! I would recommend 4-6 readers total unless you think you can handle more cooks in your kitchen at a time (I cannot). I typically just ask some of my friends to beta for me. Here's an example text:

"Hey all! I finished that book about church camp a while ago and was wondering if you'd beta read for me! Basically, I'd just need you to read through the book and make comments in the sidebar whenever you like something, don't understand something, are excited or intrigued by something, or other general impressions. You can comment however often or little you feel comfortable with--some people make one comment a chapter, others make multiple comments a page--anything works great. Really all you shouldn't comment are blanket statements of "this is bad" or "this is good," but feel free even to say stuff like "I like this" or "I don't like this." Just avoid objective language when possible.

I don't have any money for this, so sorry in advance, and if possible, I'd love for all of my beta reading to be done by the end of summer.

Let me know if you're down or not! :)"

I really have had readers comment that much and that little on my manuscripts. This is normal. If your readers are supposed to comment whenever something in their attention triggers, different readers' attentions will trigger differently.

It's also a wise idea to form your beta reading group (again, especially if you aren't doing a wave of alpha reading) as a mix of people from different backgrounds and writing experience. My church camp novel group is below:

Person A who went to church camp with me, is into poetry

Person B is into fanfiction, little church experience, mindful of social issues

Person C has little church or writing experience, mindful of social issues

Person D is very into writing, pretty into church

Person E is very into social issues and church, not a writer

I would advise to find a similar balance of people who are into your subject matter and those who aren't.

It's also helpful to give them a timeframe to read by, and make this longer than they need. I gave people ~two months for my ~60k-word novel.

Also, as a little incentive for your readers, plan something for when everyone's done! A post-beta party! Something like this will also encourage you through the process :)

Once you have your betas' comments, it's time for one last wave of revisions. Compile these comments however you like, and start tweaking. I like to have each beta's document open so I can cross-reference while I work through my own doc. And remember: these are audience comments, not writer comments (unless you explicitly brought writers on). If someone says something confuses them, that might just be their cross to bear. If none of your other betas were confused by it, or if one of your betas compliments the same section, it may be worth ignoring that first comment. Try to rule with the majority when you can, and take everything with a grain of salt. "I don't like this" doesn't mean it needs to be changed. It means you should figure out why that reader doesn't like it.

If you have any questions, my asks are open! Again, this is a pretty open concept where anything works as long as it works for you, so don't feel pressured to "get it right." But if you have any questions or suggestions, I'm all ears :)

Hope this helps!

[supersoakerfullofblood]

I've also only ever been the person giving manuscripts for beta reading and have sadly never beta read outside of workshop classes. I imagine the easiest way to beta is just to ask your moots here if you can beta for them, or just make a post in your circles saying you're looking to beta something. This will 99% of the time be unpaid, so only do it if you want to help someone out, develop your craft and revision skills, etc.

Paid beta-reading is almost always done in-house at publishing houses, which is a tough gig to get without a masters degree or higher, especially as the market still course corrects from Covid. Unless you have a lot on your resume/CV--and even then--I'd honestly just forget about payment entirely.

Will make a post about effective beta reading on my blog in a sec

i think i might want to try to start beta reading but i truly don’t know where to start as someone who’s never done anything like that before. any tips would be greatly appreciated :)

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long overdue jerma fanart!

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god i wish that was me. but then, i know i could never do it. what he did.

I don't know. Some people hate this, James. I don't know what it is, but they fuckin' hate it. There's people that wanna kill me, James.

- The Driving Crooner

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Cutting "Looked," "Felt," and Similar Errors

Saw a post looking for "words to use instead of 'looked'" when the real error, more often than not, is using that word to begin with. If the reader's POV is already grounded in a solid viewpoint character (see here for more depth on that), then you don't need a verb liked "looked," since the reader is already looking through their eyes! Any description in the text is implied to be seen by the viewpoint character.

This doesn't mean you can't use "looked"--if you need to refocus the POV, if you need an extra two-syllable word for pacing reasons, etc.--but more often than not, it can be cut, and more often than you probably think, it should be cut.

Below are some examples from my own writing.

Using "looked" to refocus the scene:

But Piper was content in her appearance and what maintained behind it. She knew herself not by theology but the seafoam eyes reflected in the glass. Thin, lime glasses framed these, and her hair whorled above her jaw in nautilus spirals while crooked bangs hung from her forehead. A silver stud in her nose cemented her as an outcast in the Baptist crowd. She knew herself also as a woman; cogs turned in her affections. The machine she grew into endowed her with a boldness unknown until then, a girl rebuilt with fire and sounds, animated. She looked at her mirrored face as the speaker prayed. Could she leave without breaking it, without being seen?

Using "looked" for pacing:

Carmen looked between the man’s eyes, looked for something lucid to hold to and steady himself with, anything to explain what he was saying.

A "looked" that should probably be cut:

She looked at the heads of these girls and caught herself picking at their faults, the poorer structures of their bones, the empty words cluttering their phrases, but she shook her head away from these assaults.

The above isn't offensive but could be remedied to something like:

The heads of these girls crested the seats ahead of her. She caught herself picking at their faults, the poorer structures of their bones, the empty words cluttering their phrases, but she shook her head away from these assaults.

The same logic applies for verbs like "felt," "thought," and likely many more I can't think of right now. If your POV is strong, you don't need to tell the reader how your character thinks, feels, looks, etc., because the reader will be experiencing it directly through the character. This is much stronger than the alternative--filler words create a buffer between the reader and your characters that you want to avoid at all costs!! Examples below:

"Felt" as pacing:

Selby lunged her arm forward, sent the knife at his heart, and felt her own heart spike with terror, rage, and a year stripped of its longing.

Something that should probably be revised:

He felt now that his chest was full of lightning, and he thought only of the step ahead.

And its simple revision:

His chest was full of lightning, and he thought only of the step ahead.

Awareness of filler words and phrases that create a buffer between your characters and reader is crucial to our writing!

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One of the best pieces of advice I gathered from a recent writing conference came from M.T. Anderson. Someone asked him how he writes socially- or politically-minded fiction without coming off as "preachy"; how he could write these things while staying genuine. His answer was to make sure you see yourself in every character you write, regardless of where they stand on a given issue.

Fiction is first and foremost an act of empathy, not an instructional device. If you think you know the answer to a topic, write an essay, not a novel. Characters serve to imbue your story with your own lived experiences and your own complicated emotional history about these experiences. Reading these characters is an act of empathy! You aren't finding an answer to a question but feeling what someone else has felt and asking yourself how you've felt like that too. It's up to the reader, then, to draw conclusions from a piece of fiction--the author can and should only provide the empathetic grist.

And if you want to provide the strongest empathetic grist possible, you need to inhabit all of your characters. This isn't to say you need to "take the side" of any particular issue--if you're writing a drama about abortion, you don't need to play both sides--because again, the fiction writer shouldn't be concerned with this as much as they should be about emotional histories. In the above example, you may not be pro-life, but have you also been blind to how your worldview hurts people? Have you ever developed stubborn, reactionary tendencies? Etc. etc. etc. For a hypothetical pro-choice character, have you ever been so firm in your belief that you see the other side as lesser-than-thou?

See your emotional self in your characters. If you're writing socially- or politically-charged fiction, you should at the very least pity your characters. Feel for them, and the audience will too.

[supersoakerfullofblood]

Just got back from a banger conference (Festival of Faith and Writing), will post stuff I learned in the coming days once I rest and reflect :)

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When it comes to making character personality attributes, are there any "main categories" you advice splitting them into?

This is a really great question that hits at what I think is a big flaw in how a lot of writers view character creation. Especially on this website, but also in general discourse, you see people put their characters into hard, definable boxes: lists of a character's greatest fear, strongest strength, weakest weakness, favorite bands and candies, who they would fuck/marry/kill in the Beatles, can they swim and how well?, what would they tell their past self?, religious belief, etc. etc. etc. While this is a great exercise in initially describing your character, they do little to actually characterize them vis-a-vis your story.

You can only give your characters meaningful definition by, well, writing them. Characters will grow into who they want to be regardless of how much pre-writing definition you give them, and this is good and natural! Maybe your character actually likes vanilla way more than chocolate; maybe their greatest fear isn't that they'll end up alone but that they could never be comfortable alone; maybe they're hot-tempered when alone but docile around others; maybe Ringo looks fuckable and Paul gives killable vibes.

Will all of these listed details matter when writing your characters? Of course not! But the things that do matter will reveal themselves.

What I'm trying to say is that however you define your character outside the text of your story--the lists you make of their characteristics, how you divide and define their parts--doesn't matter. If you think you write the character better in the text of the novel by having detailed, grouped and subgrouped categories of who they are, do that! Divide the lists however you'd like, because this part of the process is purely for you. I wish I could give you a clearer answer, could tell you the "main categories" I use for my characters, but in truth, I give my characters basically no definition before I start writing. I usually just think of what a character wants and what a character needs (more on that if you filter through my blog--I'll be making a directory post soon hopefully), often before I know their name, and I get their personality as I write them in the first few pages and chapters.

So no, I don't have any advice here. This is really a do-what-works-for-you thing :) My one actual piece of advice here is to not put too much weight into this sort of stuff. Characters will define themselves as you write them, and that's infinitely more important than anything you could plan out ahead of time.

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Reblogging because this might be helpful for other people too

Pretty often, you see writers with weird ideas about how to write fictional (especially fantasy and sci-fi) cultures. For something like fantasy, people play into genre tropes almost as if these are the correct eccentricities of the culture: a language reminiscent of Victorian England, some hyper-developed feudal setting, fundamentalist ideas of nobility, courtly love, and other popular notions of "the past," etc. This phenomenon of "the default fantasy culture" happens because much of our fantasy canon is written in something similar to it, but also because there's some air of exoticism to the past. Victorians and Anglo-Saxons may as well be fantasy cultures to we who live in the present.

But if you're looking to be accurate, this isn't a good thing. (It's also incredibly problematic if that "air of exoticism" is directed towards, say, Asian cultures, as it so often was in the 20th century and still today. Ex. "the Chinese are much more spiritual than us westerners" or "the Native Americans were spiritually connected with the land in ways we simply could never understand.") I'm currently writing historical fiction in 800s AD Faroe Islands, a culture wildly different from anywhere today, and the most important thing I've learned while writing is to balance that air of exoticism--the idea that the culture you're writing about is completely foreign and definite and stratified and that everyone acted according to the same broad cultural rules, rules we could never understand--with the fact that everyone is their own agent.

People are affected by their culture, but that doesn't mean everyone will talk the same, dress the same, believe the same things, etc. etc. I've found great success with my Faroese novel by imagining that my characters are just people from 2024 transported to the setting. 2024 people don't have that air of exoticism--to you, they're the default. But people in the past also viewed themselves as the default and not a foreign culture. Your characters don't know they're living in the past; historical fiction is, at its core, realistic fiction.

Calling All Historical Writers For Advice

Historical writer friends - this one is for you!

I've had some really great ideas for a historical piece of fiction and I'm just starting to put pen to paper and I was wondering if there was any advice you have.

The best way to do things or any pitfalls to avoid, I will be forever grateful for your insight!

[supersoakerfullofblood]

Lotta people here and elsewhere say things like, "Don't listen to anyone who says what you read is bad—all writing is subjective! Like what you like!" and while I agree on a surface level, retreating into the artistic closet so you don't have to engage with others' thoughts of what makes "good art" is also really rough. There is no solid definition of "good art"—this is true, and anyone worth their salt will agree with this. BUT this doesn't mean we as readers and writers should turn to a hyper relativistic, no-stepping-on-toes view of literature, a "I'll like what I like, you'll like what you like, and if you don't like that, dni" attitude.

Art exists to show us who we are. Good art does this well. If someone says something is good art and you disagree with them, listen to them, because refining your view of art is how you refine your view of who we are. If you say something is good art and someone disagrees with you, they should listen to you too.

Obviously, this isn't how it works in practice. The internet and general discourse is filled with people who see reading as a competition to find the objectively best book and the platonic ideal of writing, and if your favorite book doesn't fit that mold, it is lesser than. This is batshit, obviously. But the reclusive response to this is equally harmful to genuine artistic interaction and growth.

Listen to the wisdom of others about what they've found makes a good book good, and in turn, give the wisdom you've gained from reading to others! There is no right answer, but you gotta play the game, because in playing the game, you find out what it means to be you!!! That's why we're all doing this, people!!!!!

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Ged in the Farthest Shore, realizing he’s left a teenager with a slavish devotion to him vulnerable while he follows a shifty drug addict into the valley of death:

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Will Wood Earthsea crossover, you made this for me specifically

I Me Myself

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My Favorite Cover Designs

I just posted about how I love cheap paperback book printings that aren't first and foremost concerned with aesthetic value, and that the recent drive of "books as aesthetic decoration" is wack,

BUT

that doesn't mean you can't love a good lookin book! The aesthetics of a book's cover should be admired, even if that isn't the book's main purpose. So here's a thread of my favorite book covers:

This cover series of Evelyn Waugh's work by Back Bay Books. (Not all books pictured.) Haven't read too much Waugh, but these covers are beautiful and get at the hearts of Waugh's stories: satirizing the high-class culture of England.

Pengunin Random House's Vintage Classics Collection. They don't all have this cover motif, but a lot of them do, and it's charming. A good chunk of them have the plant/flower design motif, but not all of them do, and I love them all regardless. The colored triangles on the side is an attractive way to show that it's a cover series, and the covers (at least the ones I've run into) are matte, which I love!

Penguin Random House's The Master and Margarita

Just the best book cover I've ever seen. And one of the best books I've ever read.

Not a huge Gaiman fan personally (his stuff is great, just not for me), but damn do these books from William Morrow Paperbacks hit.

Not a big Chabon fan either--just not for me--but this series gives his books an undeniable character. Couldn't find the publisher to credit.

Mariner Books's series of Virginia Woolf's most popular novels has been my favorite cover series for a long time. It really feels like Woolf's prose in a way I can't put into words because I don't know artistic lingo, but it's there.

Dell Publishing's series of I believe all of Kurt Vonnegut's work gets at the witty, comic nature of Vonnegut's novels and are instantly recognizable by color.