supersoakerfullofblood

[supersoakerfullofblood]

I woke up this morning and immediately thought of this, but instead of Steven Universe, I thought "sexual uh-ssault," which gets the incorrect buzzer

stfu = shut the fuck up

tf = the fuck

su = ...steven universe?

the english language is beautiful

[supersoakerfullofblood]

stfu = shut the fuck up

tf = the fuck

su = ...steven universe?

the english language is beautiful

[supersoakerfullofblood]

The Other Wind, Ursula K Le Guin

[supersoakerfullofblood]

I managed to wrangle my brain enough to read ONE (1) book, wrow!

Anyway, here are some attempts of drawing The Tombs of Atuan era Sparrowhawk from Earthsea.

[supersoakerfullofblood]

I'm curious why I see so many writing posts here talking in terms of genres, character labels ("villain," "hero," idk "whump"?), and specific tropes (all the "character A and character B" stuff, shipping dynamics--you know). I feel like putting a story and its elements under labels like this probably just restricts where your story really wants to go and ends up being more or less derivative. I think writing is similar to comedy in that if you dissect the art too much, you end up killing it by writing something sorta fun and floofy and railroaded.

Not that writing has to be some grandiose "deeper" thing, just that writing discussions centering around that stuff here feels weird. Genuinely wondering--can anyone weigh in?

As Lear said (probably), "anatomize [your story], so you can put it into little boxes"

[supersoakerfullofblood]

propaganda

[supersoakerfullofblood]

please

FUCK YOU

[supersoakerfullofblood]

[supersoakerfullofblood]

[supersoakerfullofblood]

the question has been answered with the creation of mr tenna

spamton son or david bowie's tvc-15 daughter

[supersoakerfullofblood]

deltarune chapter 3 spoilers no context

[supersoakerfullofblood]

sorry to both of my followers if i become a deltarune blog for a while, i understand if you unfollow

[supersoakerfullofblood]

spamton son or david bowie's tvc-15 daughter

[supersoakerfullofblood]

Introductory Clauses

Another running theme I’ve noticed in workshops is an affinity for dependent clauses at the beginning of sentences: “Riding up to the command point, ~~~,” “Surprised by their treaty’s failure, ~~~,” “Thoughtfully stopping along the lines, ~~~.”

These are great constructions to sprinkle in to keep the pace fresh, but when even one or two too many appear, it gives the piece a distractingly iambic rhythm. Prose does have rhythm, but it’s more free verse, and favored sentence constructions make things a little too rigid. This rigidity often works well in poetry, where the author’s goal is to get the reader to ponder over individual words and their wells of meaning, so the verse’s goal is to lull the reader into a sense of the metaphysical, like hypnotism. But in prose, the author’s goal is to convey information—not so much get at the metaphysical truths of certain words, but in the subtexts created by words flowing together (i.e. sentences). And if you’re trying to convey information, well, that’s like telling your audience to eat their vegetables. They hate it! So you have to vary the pace, hit them with one-two punches, duck and dive, because that’s what makes prose entertaining, and entertainment is the only way a reader will want to take in information about your story.

I think this error of an overabundance of prepositional/adverbial/adjectival phrases is that you’re trying to cram as much information into each sentence as you can. This makes sense from the pace perspective mentioned above—if you want the pace to be quick and entertaining, you can’t dally with paragraphs of exposition. You want to get to the good stuff! But in an information-heavy section (or a piece that needs a good bit of exposition), I would much rather read slower, lengthier sections that convey this information rather than phrases too crammed with information to remember them.

[supersoakerfullofblood]

Concealing Information in Fiction (Don't Do It)

Back in a workshop class in grad school, and I'm noticing a pretty common bad habit that is certainly more common the more sophomore at the craft you are, so I thought I'd post a little blip of advice here:

When you start out trying to write something dramatic, you have a notion to hide information up front. (And certainly even as you get better at writing, the temptation is still there.) Usually, it's a character's secret past that the reader isn't cued in to, something like magic powers they aren't yet savvy to, a traumatic life event, or some secret rivalry with other characters. Concealing these things aren't bad in-and-of itself, but it worsens the story whenever the narrator or a character explicitly references the secret.

For example, I'm workshopping a piece wherein the main character is a disgraced member of a former gang. None of this is stated explicitly for a long time, so it should be something the reader discovers naturally through the narrative. (I.e. when the character bumps into someone of his former gang.) Instead, we see other characters around the main character say things like:

"Would you rather eat bread? And make it easier for the Bread Knives to find you?" (names and contexts changed for anonymity, should this piece be published.)

"I don't think you have the luxury to choose where your bread is baked, what with your current standing with the Bread Knives."

Etc.

Why don't these work? Well, for starters, moments like this are used to convey information to the reader. ("Hey, reader, this character has a shady past!") But if both characters in the conversation already know this, then it wouldn't be natural for them to reference it so explicitly. It would make much more sense for character B to say something like, "Would you rather eat bread? If you say so." and only getting at character A's past obliquely. This works better as writing but doesn't convey much information to the reader.

If that reasoning doesn't make sense, imagine a friend you have in real life. Now imagine one of their siblings died. Whenever you talk about that event in the future, you wouldn't say, "Hey Jim, remember when your brother died on a rainy night ten years ago? Well, dialogue dialogue dialogue." It's just not human.

You also don't want to convey information so explicitly like that when the object of the information is purposefully concealed, because I as the reader have no clue what you're talking about. In the Bread Knives example, I have no idea what the Bread Knives are. You wouldn't even know they were gang, but I told you earlier in this post. Since I don't know what the Bread Knives are, I have no way of framing them with relation to the viewpoint character; and since I can't frame them with the viewpoint character, my brain has no reason to care about the information. And it won't hold onto the info, either, for when your big reveal of the concealed information happens. Readers are fickle and by nature do not care about what you're writing--you have to trick them to care. If you give information about something they don't know about yet, you're asking them to care enough to store that information in their brain, which just won't happen, nor should it. Readers want as much information as possible about your characters and their situations--concealing information in order to create a big "Aha!" moment later on will never yield the aha moment. It will only frustrate the reader's efforts to enjoy your story.

Similar discussion here: https://www.tumblr.com/supersoakerfullofblood/744302665349169152/plot-twists-arent-real-defining-agency?source=share

[supersoakerfullofblood]

52.8% dni

[supersoakerfullofblood]