taaroko

[taaroko]

Jaime Lannister is protecting me from Timon and Pumbaa. We're about to have a barbecue, which will be a great setting in which to recommend a therapist and resources for acquiring a modern prosthetic hand.

Spin the wheel. That's who's trying to kill you.

Spin the wheel again. That's who's trying to protect you.

[taaroko]

SO HERE IS THE WHOLE STORY (SO FAR).

I am on my knees begging you to reblog this post and to stop reblogging the original ones I sent out yesterday. This is the complete account with all the most recent info; the other one is just sending people down senselessly panicked avenues that no longer lead anywhere.

IN SHORT

Cliff Weitzman, CEO of Speechify and (aspiring?) voice actor, used AI to scrape thousands of popular, finished works off AO3 to list them on his own for-profit website and in his attached app. He did this without getting any kind of permission from the authors of said work or informing AO3. Obviously.

When fandom at large was made aware of his theft and started pushing back, Weitzman issued a non-apology on the original social media posts—using 

his dyslexia; 

his intent to implement a tip-system for the plagiarized authors; and 

a sudden willingness to take down the work of every author who saw my original social media posts and emailed him individually with a ‘valid’ claim,

as reasons we should allow him to continue monetizing fanwork for his own financial gain.

When we less-than-kindly refused, he took down his ‘apologies’ as well as his website (allegedly—it’s possible that our complaints to his web host, the deluge of emails he received or the unanticipated traffic brought it down, since there wasn’t any sort of official statement made about it), and when it came back up several hours later, all of the work formerly listed in the fan fiction category was no longer there. 

THE TAKEAWAYS

1. Cliff Weitzman (aka Ofek Weitzman) is a scumbag with no qualms about taking fanwork without permission, feeding it to AI and monetizing it for his own financial gain; 

2. Fandom can really get things done when it wants to, and 

3. Our fanworks appear to be hidden, but they’re NOT DELETED from Weitzman’s servers, and independently published, original works are still listed without the authors' permission. We need to hold this man responsible for his theft, keep an eye on both his current and future endeavors, and take action immediately when he crosses the line again. 

THE TIMELINE, THE DETAILS, THE SCREENSHOTS (behind the cut)

Sunday night, December 22nd 2024, I noticed an influx in visitors to my fic You & Me & Holiday Wine. When I searched the title online, hoping to find out where they came from, a new listing popped up (third one down, no less):

This listing is still up today, by the way, though now when you follow the link to word-stream, it just brings you to the main site. (Also, to be clear, this was not the cause for the influx of traffic to my fic; word-stream did not link back to the original work anywhere.)

I followed the link to word-stream, where to my horror Y&M&HW was listed in its entirety—though, beyond the first half of the first chapter, behind a paywall—along with a link promising to take me—through an app downloadable on the Apple Store—to an AI-narrated audiobook version. When I searched word-stream itself for my ao3 handle I found both of my multi-chapter fics were listed this way:

Because the tags on my fics (which included genres* and characters, but never the original IPs**) weren’t working, I put ‘Kara Danvers’ into the search bar and discovered that many more supercorp fics (Supergirl TV fandom, Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor pairing) were listed.

I went looking online for any mention of word-stream and AI plagiarism (the covers—as well as the ridiculously inflated number of reviews and ratings—made it immediately obvious that AI fuckery was involved), but found almost nothing: only one single Reddit post had been made, and it received (at that time) only a handful of upvotes and no advice. 

I decided to make a tumblr post to bring the supercorp fandom up to speed about the theft. I draw as well as write for fandom and I’ve only ever had to deal with art theft—which has a clear set of steps to take depending on where said art was reposted—and I was at a loss regarding where to start in this situation.

After my post went up I remembered Project Copy Knight, which is worth commending for the work they’ve done to get fic stolen from AO3 taken down from monetized AI 'audiobook’ YouTube accounts. I reached out to @echoekhi, asking if they’d heard of this site and whether they could advise me on how to get our works taken down.

While waiting for a reply I looked into Copy Knight’s methods and decided to contact OTW’s legal department:

And then I went to bed.

By morning, tumblr friends @makicarn and @fazedlight as well as a very helpful tumblr anon had seen my post and done some very productive sleuthing:

@echoekhi had also gotten back to me, advising me, as expected, to contact the OTW. So I decided to sit tight until I got a response from them.

That response came only an hour or so later: 

Which was 100% understandable, but still disappointing—I doubted a handful of individual takedown requests would accomplish much, and I wasn’t eager to share my given name and personal information with Cliff Weitzman himself, which is unavoidable if you want to file a DMCA.

I decided to take it to Reddit, hoping it would gain traction in the wider fanfic community, considering so many fandoms were affected. My Reddit posts (with the updates at the bottom as they were emerging) can be found here and here.

A helpful Reddit user posted a guide on how users could go about filing a DMCA against word-stream here (to wobbly-at-best results)

A different helpful Reddit user signed up to access insight into word-streams pricing. Comment is here.

Smells unbelievably scammy, right? In addition to those audacious prices—though in all fairness any amount of money would be audacious considering every work listed is accessible elsewhere for free—my dyscalculia is screaming silently at the sight of that completely unnecessary amount of intentionally obscured numbers.

Speaking of which! As soon as the post on r/AO3—and, as a result, my original tumblr post—began taking off properly, sometime around 1 pm, jumpscare! A notification that a tumblr account named @cliffweitzman had commented on my post, and I got a bit mad about the gist of his message :

Fortunately he caught plenty of flack in the comments from other users (truly you should check out the comment section, it is extremely gratifying and people are making tremendously good points), in response to which, of course, he first tried to both reiterate and renegotiate his point in a second, longer comment (which I didn’t screenshot in time so I’m sorry for the crappy notification email formatting):

which he then proceeded to also post to Reddit (this is another Reddit user’s screenshot, I didn’t see it at all, the notifications were moving too fast for me to follow by then)

... where he got a roughly equal amount of righteously furious replies. (Check downthread, they're still there, all the way at the bottom.)

After which Cliff went ahead & deleted his messages altogether. 

It’s not entirely clear whether his account was suspended by Reddit soon after or whether he deleted it himself, but considering his tumblr account is still intact, I assume it’s the former. He made a handful of sock puppet accounts to play around with for a while, both on Reddit and Tumblr, only one of which I have a screenshot of, but since they all say roughly the same thing, you’re not missing much:

And then word-stream started throwing a DNS error.

That lasted for a good number of hours, which was unfortunately right around the time that a lot of authors first heard about the situation and started asking me individually how to find out whether their work was stolen too. I do not have that information and I am unclear on the perimeters Weitzman set for his AI scraper, so this is all conjecture: it LOOKS like the fics that were lifted had three things in common:

They were completed works;

They had over several thousand kudos on AO3; and

They were written by authors who had actively posted or updated work over the past year.

If anyone knows more about these perimeters or has info that counters my observation, please let me know!

I finally thought to check/alert evil Twitter during this time, and found out that the news was doing the rounds there already. I made a quick thread summarizing everything that had happened just in case. You can find it here.

I went to Bluesky too, where fandom was doing all the heavy lifting for me already, so I just reskeeted, as you do, and carried on.

Sometime in the very early evening, word-stream went back up—but the fan fiction category was nowhere to be seen. Tentative joy and celebration!***

That’s when several users—the ones who had signed up for accounts to gain intel and had accessed their own fics that way—reported that their work could still be accessed through their history. Relevant Reddit post here.

Sooo—

We’re obviously not done. The fanwork that was stolen by Weitzman may be inaccessible through his website right now, but they aren’t actually gone. And the fact that Weitzman wasn’t willing to get rid of them altogether means he still has plans for them. 

This was my final edit on my Reddit post before turning off notifications, and it's pretty much where my head will be at for at least the foreseeable future:

Please feel free to add info in the comments, make your own posts, take whatever action you want to take to protect your work. I only beg you—seriously, I’m on my knees here—to not give up like I saw a handful of people express the urge to do. Keep sharing your creative work and remain vigilant and stay active to make sure we can continue to do so freely. Visit your favorite fics, and the ones you’ve kept in your ‘marked for later’ lists but never made time to read, and leave kudos, leave comments, support your fandom creatives, celebrate podficcers and support AO3. We created this place and it’s our responsibility to keep it alive and thriving for as long as we possibly can.

Also FUCK generative AI. It has NO place in fandom spaces.

THE 'SMALL' PRINT (some of it in all caps):

*Weitzman knew what he was doing and can NOT claim ignorance. One, it’s pretty basic kindergarten stuff that you don’t steal some other kid’s art project and present it as your own only to act surprised when they protest and then tell the victim that they should have told you sooner that they didn’t want their project stolen. And two, he was very careful never to list the IPs these fanworks were based on, so it’s clear he was at least familiar enough with the legalities to not get himself in hot water with corporate lawyers. Fucking over fans, though, he figured he could get away with that. 

**A note about the AI that Weitzman used to steal our work: it’s even greasier than it looks at first glance. It’s not just the method he used to lift works off AO3 and then regurgitate onto his own website and app. Looking beyond the untold horrors of his AI-generated cover ‘art’, in many cases these covers attempt to depict something from the fics in question that can’t be gleaned from their summaries alone. In addition, my fics (and I assume the others, as well) were listed with generated genres; tags that did not appear anywhere in or on my fic on AO3 and were sometimes scarily accurate and sometimes way off the mark. I remember You & Me & Holiday Wine had ‘found family’ (100% correct, but not tagged by me as such) and I believe The Shape of Soup was listed as, among others, ‘enemies to friends to lovers’ and ‘love triangle’ (both wildly inaccurate). Even worse, not all the fic listed (as authors on Reddit pointed out) came with their original summaries at all. Often the entire summary was AI-generated. All of these things make it very clear that it was an all-encompassing scrape—not only were our fics stolen, they were also fed word-for-word into the AI Weitzman used and then analyzed to suit Weitzman’s needs. This means our work was literally fed to this AI to basically do with whatever its other users want, including (one assumes) text generation. 

***Fan fiction appears to have been made (largely) inaccessible on word-stream at this time, but I’m hearing from several authors that their original, independently published work, which is listed at places like Kindle Unlimited, DOES still appear in word-stream’s search engine. This obviously hurts writers, especially independent ones, who depend on these works for income and, as a rule, don’t have a huge budget or a legal team with oceans of time to fight these battles for them. If you consider yourself an author in the broader sense, beyond merely existing online as a fandom author, beyond concerns that your own work is immediately at risk, DO NOT STOP MAKING NOISE ABOUT THIS.

Again, please, please PLEASE reblog this post instead of the one I sent originally. All the information is here, and it's driving me nuts to see the old ones are still passed around, sending people on wild goose chases.

Thank you all so much.

[taaroko]

It's the only chip type where I don't question the serving size. That limit is there for safety reasons.

salt & vinegar chips are snacks for fucking masochists. literally the entire flavour of the goddamn chip is “acetic acid, which will hurt your tongue, and then just salt on top of that to hurt it worse”. it’s brutal. this chip is designed to hurt you

[taaroko]

Why was Superwholock the only fandom trinity the tumblr community fixated on? Because Elementary/Leverage/Person of Interest would've been pure gold. The overlap wasn't perfect (Leverage began in '08, PoI in '11, Elementary in '12, by which point Leverage was nearly over) but they all have staying power and any combination of two or more would be *chef's kiss*.

A heist intersects with a number from the Machine. Hardison is revealed to have been a longtime admirer of Harold's code and Machine conspiracy theorist, and John initially fights Eliot to a stalemate and then WITH Eliot against various goons later.

John and Harold are working on a number of someone connected to a murder victim Sherlock is investigating, and Sherlock spots John near the scene of the crime multiple times. Just when we think he's mistakenly put John on his suspect list, Sherlock reveals he already knows a great deal about the Man in the Suit, and he's pretty sure he's been fed intel from his associate via Anonymous at least once (because they for some reason didn't require a humiliating display that time).

Anonymous are huge fans of the Leverage team and arrange for Sherlock and Joan to team up with them, or Sherlock is working the case from another angle and spots the con happening under some rich jerk's nose. He plays a subtle role to help the heist succeed, then turns up at Leverage HQ for a face-off to make sure they're what he thinks they are.

The Machine spits out Sherlock's number and he turns out to be the biggest handful Harold and John have ever had to deal with. He's in danger because he interfered in the business of exactly the rich/powerful type the Leverage team goes after, who they are just now going after, and at first the three teams are in each other's way, but then they come to an understanding (possibly offscreen, saved for flashbacks during the heist reveal).

[taaroko]

What even is webnovel?

The only time I've ever been on Webnovel was when a reader informed me someone had (very ineptly) plagiarized a large chunk of "If I Could Start Again," but then I got this comment on the appendix I recently attached to that fic—not the fic itself, or I might've believed it for .5 seconds longer. Behold:

I'm really upset! Your writing in (x fanfiction) is way too out of character. Is it even logical for the story to develop this way?! Just so you know, the "MARVEL: GAME MAKER SYSTEM" on webn0vel is the real deal when it comes to fanfiction. It's absolutely amazing and worth reading. My life changed after diving into that fanfiction!

-e31ym776 (Guest)

I love the complete lack of specifics, even before you get to them forgetting to fill out their form and include a title, but what the heck is this supposed to achieve? Is this a sock puppet account hyping up the writer's own fic? Is it more plagiarism? Is anyone else getting this kind of comment on their MCU stuff? As far as I can tell, the story the commenter so prefers isn't even about Marvel characters, it just has Marvel in the title, and it has 15.5 MILLION views so why would it need to feebly attempt to redirect readers from completely different websites? I am confusion.

[taaroko]

Okay that first reviewer clearly doesn't understand how kryptonite works but sounds like Sephora accidentally created a product line using Spiders Georg's face cream.

[taaroko]

With only 2 days to go before the marathon starts, how many of us are the cat right now?

@iwillrememberyoumarathon

that ‘pakige?’ post but me, a couple hours after posting a fic, like ‘comints?’

[taaroko]

The easiest way for me to get more written in a chapter I've already started is to reread and edit what's there. It often flows into new paragraphs without much effort.

4 days!!!

@iwillrememberyoumarathon

Writing Tip:

If you don’t feel like actually writing, prepare for writing:

Open your WIP Word doc

Read the last page again

Scribble notes on what happens next

Once you’ve done this, you might just find yourself wanting to continue after all. And if you don’t, no worries. You’ve made it easier to jump back into it later. 

[taaroko]

A great way for me to actually get some writing done is to work on it at all kinds of strange little moments. I used to bang out entire fic chapters on receipt tape when I was a Walmart cashier. Somehow it feels harder to find opportunities to write when I have more free time and less oversight. So frustrating.

7 days until the first story!

@iwillrememberyoumarathon

My weird yet effective writing routine

To me, writing is quite an intuitive process. I basically just follow my gut. Nevertheless, throughout the years, I’ve been able to develop a pretty effective routine, and I’m going to share it with you now!

Writing circuits. I don’t know about you, but I’m super lazy, and I also love to procrastinate. So, instead of writing for three hours straight, I split this time into little circuits and plan them throughout the day. Let’s say I’ll write for an hour in the morning, then an hour and a half in the afternoon and so on. It’s also incredibly beneficial for your health – both mental and physical.

Have a plan.  I’m a discovery writer, and I don’t really outline that much. But as I go about my day – eg. when working out, or running, or cooking, or eating, or sitting and doing nothing because of this procrastination right – I think about what I want to accomplish. And I usually ask myself the following questions. What is the purpose of this scene? Which characters should appear in this scene? Should it be more visual or more internally-focused? What actually happens? How should I describe it? Thanks to this, I have a general plan, and I’m much more motivated to actually write instead of visualizing that scene in my head (we all know this, don’t we?).

Write. Then I write. I write whatever pops into my head. I don’t care if it’s logical. I don’t care how many times I use abruptly, saw, felt, etc. I just allow my imagination to create this story.

Notes. When I end my final little session, I usually leave some comments for myself. What’s going to happen next, what’s the next big thing I want for my characters, etc. Having these notes makes everything easier; I immediately know what I’m supposed to do.

Having fun. I don’t care about the word count, deadlines, or anything like that. I enjoy the process, and I’m always very grateful for everything I write. I actually have this cute/weird habit: Whenever I end my writing session, I say ‘thank you’. Out loud. (Yeah, awkward, huh?) Thank you for my amazing imagination which allows me to create places and people in my mind! This kind of approach always makes me happy and even more motivated for my next writing session.

[taaroko]

On dialogue tags

I think the only thing that pulls me out of a story faster than overuse of fancy alternatives to "said" is when the writer has an allergy to identifying characters by pronouns or even their names. "The tall one"/"the blond one"/"the firstborn"/etc. It's like a series of little unnecessary riddles getting in the way of what's going on in the scene. It doesn't help paint a picture of the characters involved and sometimes makes it harder to tell how many characters I'm supposed to be keeping track of. Please, I am begging you, just use their names. In most cases, that'll work best and won't feel repetitive to the reader. Besides, I have a hard enough time remembering characters' names when they appear the right amount in the story!

The main exceptions that come to mind are:

If the PoV character doesn't know names of other characters yet, it's a good opportunity to think about which physical trait would jump out at them most, but this is probably best as a short-term strategy and they should learn names quickly.

If the characters you aren't naming are too minor to bother giving names, such as a group of vampire goons Buffy has to fight, pronouns and one memorable descriptor each should be enough to get her to the end of combat. "Goatee Guy," "Bad Bangs," "Sewer Breath," etc. Sometimes it's funny to go even more basic and identify them as "Goons 1, 2, and 3."

If you're writing about a character who is particularly defined by their profession or a certain descriptor, using that one repeatedly to identify them can be very effective. For example, in the Witcher books, the omniscient narrator uses "the Witcher" more often than "Geralt," which works very well in a setting where the general public is highly suspicious of Witchers and questions their humanity, and sometimes Geralt himself isn't so sure about his capacity for human emotion.

The main point remains, though, that using a wide array of descriptors in all the places where a pronoun or name will suffice can be very ineffective and distracting.

Only 11 days left! I'm in trouble!

@iwillrememberyoumarathon

[taaroko]

For me what usually fixes it is to reexamine the PoV character I've picked (because I'm most often writing rotating third person limited). That nearly always works, but occasionally I reexamine the scene and realize I'm trying to force a character to behave in a way that doesn't make sense for them. Once I loosen my grip, it starts flowing better again.

14 days left! One fortnight! Holy crap!

@iwillrememberyoumarathon

one of the best pieces of writing advice i’ve ever gotten:

if a scene isn’t working, change the weather.

it sounds stupid, but seriously, it works. thank u to my screenwriting professor for this wisdom

[taaroko]

I like this because I definitely remember writing Willow and Giles stammering a lot more in my early Buffyverse fics. That's how the actors deliver their lines a lot of the time, but it doesn't translate perfectly into fic. I think I subconsciously realized over time that including so many stammers took the impact away in situations where Giles would be flustered or Willow would be nervous.

16 days left!

@iwillrememberyoumarathon

Stop listening to this dialogue advice

Here’s my take on writing better dialogue for your novels. Think of it as art imitating life! A lot of thought goes into well-crafted dialogue, and the key to this is keeping consistent with your character voices.

You’ve heard this before right? - “Listen to real people’s conversations to write better dialogue.” Right?

WRONG.

Here’s why.

#1 People repeat themselves all the time

They end up sharing the same information several times in different ways, and repeating the same info in your book is quickly going to annoy your readers.

#2 Real conversations tend to be extremely incoherent

People meander from their original topic about 17 times within a single conversation. They start to make a point and interrupt themselves and go completely off subject. In writing, this can seem as if the author doesn’t actually know what they want their characters to say.

#3 People rarely finish sentences

You will rarely hear a full comprehensive sentence in a real conversation. People will interrupt themselves with examples, with different topics and ideas, or they will simply trail off. Real-sounding dialogue is an illusion of thought-out and well-crafted lines you wouldn’t often see in real life.

On paper - real conversations don’t sound real. They are messy and they rarely deliver the information they need to. Unless this kind of speech pattern is tied directly to a certain character voice, avoid implementing it to all your characters. Here’s what you should focus on instead.

Character voices Build each individual character’s voice and manner of speaking based on their background and their personality, and write it consistently.

Take inspiration from oscar-worthy film dialogues Why? Because screenplay writers’ jobs are to be straight to the point with their dialogue. No line is there for the sake of being there. Each piece of dialogue has its purpose in the story. Strive for the same in your writing.

Cut out all the fluff You can do this in the editing stage, but make sure your characters aren’t engaging in small talk, or repeating themselves, or sharing any information that’s irrelevant to the momentary situation, unless it’s there for a reason.

Did you know that I have a Youtube channel? Follow the [link here] or below to subscribe and watch my latest video!

[taaroko]

"Write what you know" is the one that always bugged me because how would anyone ever write fantasy if we stuck to what we've experienced in our own lives? Or period fiction? Or sci-fi? This was clarifying in a way my professors never managed to be. (But a lot of them frowned on those genres anyway.)

18 days to go!

@iwillrememberyoumarathon

I've noticed that people take writing advice way too literally and then get really mad about it, so here's a quick guide of what the typical "bad' writing advice is actually trying to tell you.

[Note: you don't have to take literally any piece of advice. It's just there for your consideration. If you hate it, leave it and do things the way you want. But the reason all of this advice is regurgitated so often is because it has helped a lot of people, so it's okay if it's not for you, but it may still be life changing for someone else.]

Write Every Day

"Write every day" is NOT supposed to be a prescriptivist, unbreakable rule that dictates anyone who doesn't write literally every day isn't a real writer. It's supposed to be a shorthand way of saying "establish a writing routine. Get used to writing at certain times or in certain places or in certain patterns, both so that you can trick yourself into writing even when you don't feel like it by recreating certain conditions, but also because if you only write "when you're in the mood", you may never get around to finishing a project and you likely won't be able to meet publishing deadlines if you decide to pursue publication."

The point of this advice is basically just to get used to seeing writing as part of your daily routine, something that you do regularly. But if you decide you can't write on Tuesdays or weekdays or any day when you have certain other activities, that's literally fine. Just try to make it a habit if you can.

2. Show Don't Tell

"Show don't tell" DOES NOT AND HAS NEVER meant "never state anything plainly and explicitly in the text". Again, "show don't tell" is a shorthand, and its intended message is "things tend to feel a lot more satisfying when your reader is able to come to that conclusion on their own rather than having the information given to them and being told they just have to accept it." It's about giving your reader the pieces to put the puzzle of your book together on their own rather than handing them a finished puzzle and saying "there. take it."

So if you have a character who's very short-tempered, it's typically more satisfying that you "show" them losing their cool a few times so that the reader can draw the conclusion on their own that this character is short-tempered rather than just saying "He was short-tempered". Oftentimes, readers don't want to take what you tell them at face value, so if you just state these sorts of details, readers will push back against that information. People are significantly more likely to believe literally any information they are able to draw conclusions on without being told what to believe, so that's where this advice comes in.

3. In Medias Res

This one is so often misunderstood. "In medias res" or "start in the middle", DOES NOT MEAN to literally start halfway through your plot. It also DOES NOT MEAN that you should start in the middle of an action packed scene. It just means that when you start your story, it should feel like the world and the characters already existed before we started following them. It shouldn't feel like everything was on pause and the world and characters only started acting the moment the story begins.

This is why starting with a character waking up or something similar can feel jarring and slow. We want to feel instantly compelled by your character, and the most efficient way to do that is [typically] to have them already doing something, but that something can be anything from taking a shower to commuting to school to chopping off a dragon head. We just want to feel like the story is already moving by the time we enter.

4. Shitty First Drafts

The idea that you should let your first draft suck and not revise it as you go is a tip presented to combat the struggle a lot of people have with not being able to finish a draft. If you find you've been working on the same first draft for five years and barely gotten anywhere, you might want to try this advice. The point is to just focus on getting to the ending because finishing a draft can give you renewed energy to work on the book and also makes it easier to get feedback from readers and friends.

That said, if your story is flowing fine even as you go back and make edits, then don't worry about this. This is advice specifically designed to target a problem. Likewise, this doesn't mean that you can't clean up typoes when you see them or even make minor edits if you want to. It just means not to let yourself get completely bogged down by making changes that you never move forward.

A "shitty first draft" also doesn't mean that your story has to be completely illegible. It just means that you shouldn't let perfectionism stop you yet. I see a lot of people say "well, I can't keep going until this first part makes sense", and that's totally reasonable! Again, the point of this advice is just to get you out of that rut that keeps you from making progress, but if you spend a couple weeks editing and then move on or you find the book is still making forward strides while you edit, then you're fine. You don't need this.

5. Adverbs

The idea that you "shouldn't use adverbs" DOES NOT MEAN that any time you use an adverb, you're ruining your story. It just means that you shouldn't *rely* on adverbs to carry your story, namely in places where stronger verbs or nouns would do a lot more heavy lifting.

For instance, you can write "she spoke quietly", but generally speaking, that "quietly" there is a lot weaker than just subbing out this clause for "she whispered". You probably have the word "spoke" all over your draft, so subbing out one instance of it here for a stronger verb in place of the same verb + an adverb makes for stronger prose. This doesn't mean that you'll never want to use the phrase "spoke quietly" over the word "whispered". For instance, if I write, "When she finally spoke, she spoke quietly, like that was all the volume her weakened lungs could muster." In this case, I'm using "spoke quietly" specifically *because* it echoes the previous spoke earlier in the sentence, and it evokes a certain level of emotion to have that repetition there. I also used it because she's not actually "whispering", but trying to speak at full volume only to come off sounding quiet.

So when people tell you to cut adverbs, they're saying this because people often use adverbs as a crutch to avoid having to seek out stronger verbs. If you're using your adverbs intentionally, having considered stronger verbs but ultimately deciding that this adverb is what does the job properly, then there's nothing wrong with using them. This is just a trick to help you spot one common weakness in prose that a lot of authors don't even realize they have.

6. Write What You Know

This is potentially the single worst-underestood piece of writing advice. "Write what you know" DOES NOT MEAN to write only what you know or that you have to put all of your life's knowledge on the page. It just means that drawing from your own experiences and already there knowledge will help you craft a better story.

So, for instance, being an eye doctor doesn't mean you have to write a story about an eye doctor. It doesn't even mean you need to write a story that directly deals with any eye knowledge. It just means that there are likely things you've experience as an eye doctor that can help inspire or inform your story. Maybe you remember a patient who always wore the same yellow shoes, and so you include a character who does exactly that. Maybe you spent a lot of hours dealing with insurance so you decide to write about insurance agents. Maybe your practice was located next to a grocery store so you decide to write a zombie apocalypse story that takes place in a location inspired by that shopping center.

The point is that, as people, our lived experiences allow us to relate to other people and craft more believable worlds. So don't limit yourself to your lived or experience or feel obligated to only write the things you've done, but when you find yourself wondering what to write about next or how to give a character more depth or how to describe this random location, pull things from your life and let what you already know bring a certain level of unique you-ness to your writing.

And the MOST important advice I can give you is to stop looking at writing advice as some holy, unbreakable rules passed down by the gods that you cannot ever deviate from. And if a piece of advice sounds totally bonkers, do some research on it. There's a good chance that whoever's passing it to you has no idea what they're talking about. But even if every other writer swears by a certain piece of advice, you absolutely do not need to take it. Try it on if you want, and throw it away if you don't, but stop making yourselves miserable by letting random internet people dictate your life. Most people giving advice on the internet aren't where you want to be anyway, so don't expect them to be able to guide you somewhere they've never been.

Everything's made up, and nothing matters. Write what you want.

[taaroko]

I think this post came across my dash a while ago when I wasn't clear on the differences between 3-5 and it was super helpful. I specifically remember noticing the last one as a kid when I was voraciously consuming book after book, but my characters rarely speak for multiple paragraphs without interruption by someone else or action tags so I don't often get to use it.

21 days to go!

@iwillrememberyoumarathon

Writing Tips

Punctuating Dialogue

✧

➸ “This is a sentence.”

➸ “This is a sentence with a dialogue tag at the end,�� she said.

➸ “This,” he said, “is a sentence split by a dialogue tag.”

➸ “This is a sentence,” she said. “This is a new sentence. New sentences are capitalized.”

➸ “This is a sentence followed by an action.” He stood. “They are separate sentences because he did not speak by standing.”

➸ She said, “Use a comma to introduce dialogue. The quote is capitalized when the dialogue tag is at the beginning.”

➸ “Use a comma when a dialogue tag follows a quote,” he said.

“Unless there is a question mark?” she asked.

“Or an exclamation point!” he answered. “The dialogue tag still remains uncapitalized because it’s not truly the end of the sentence.”

➸ “Periods and commas should be inside closing quotations.”

➸ “Hey!” she shouted, “Sometimes exclamation points are inside quotations.”

However, if it’s not dialogue exclamation points can also be “outside”!

➸ “Does this apply to question marks too?” he asked.

If it’s not dialogue, can question marks be “outside”? (Yes, they can.)

➸ “This applies to dashes too. Inside quotations dashes typically express—“

“Interruption” — but there are situations dashes may be outside.

➸ “You’ll notice that exclamation marks, question marks, and dashes do not have a comma after them. Ellipses don’t have a comma after them either…” she said.

➸ “My teacher said, ‘Use single quotation marks when quoting within dialogue.’”

➸ “Use paragraph breaks to indicate a new speaker,” he said.

“The readers will know it’s someone else speaking.”

➸ “If it’s the same speaker but different paragraph, keep the closing quotation off.

“This shows it’s the same character continuing to speak.”

[taaroko]

This has definitely happened to me once or twice.

23 days left!

@iwillrememberyoumarathon

Truly the all time funniest writer thing is when you're doing edits and you think to yourself "omg I've got the PERFeCT sentence to add right here!" and then you stick it in all excited, only to find that literally three lines down you have virtually that exact same sentence in the draft already.

[taaroko]

I think I've reblogged something similar to this already, but I love that it's coming from established authors too. I could probably get better at doing this. I mostly use brackets when I'm outlining an entire chapter, and then I go back and turn each set of brackets into a scene, but using them on a more micro scale to leave smaller chunks for later sounds very useful.

25 days left!

@iwillrememberyoumarathon

[taaroko]

Some editing advice for those of you who are already at that stage. Couldn't be me...

And for a non-paywalled article on the same topic...

27 days left!

@iwillrememberyoumarathon