# my writing

[hollow-lime-green]

hi folks so i'm a pretty fast writer/rough drafter, and on this sunday of sundays, while i am a little bit down about what i am writing, i figured i would share a little bit about how i write it (with pictures).

Outline View

use outline view on gdocs. if you take nothing else from this, use outline view on gdocs. you can trigger it using ctrl-alt-a, View->Expand Outline View, or just click the little squiggly icon in the top left (my preference).

what is outline view and why should you use it?

outline view is a list of all of the headings and subheadings in your document. this is helpful, because if you use headings strategically, it gives you a very nice, vertically-organized map of your entire document, and you can always see the structure without having to scroll through or reference a second doc. however, we do need to do a little groundwork to set this up: headings

headings are just formatted strings of text that gdocs recognizes as "oooh that looks important". you can completely customize what they look like, but you need to manually tell gdocs which lines are heading lines (and what heading level) so it will all go into outline view nicely. headings nest and can be collapsed, so use the first big headings for your big things, and then smaller chunks, like scenes, can drop down to the next heading size for nesting.

Document Settings

you'll figure out what works best for you, but generally:

good background color so your retinas aren't blasted with blue light (i also recommend f.lux or just use the settings most computers have these days)

center the document on your eye line. this is obvious but if you write with two monitors like I do, it is something you actually have to think about.

readability - font size, font style, zoom, color contrast, etc.

one tip i've picked up along the way is to change the font to subliminally influence your writing. it could be placebo, but it works on me. spectral is my standard, but i will change my colors and serif presence if I am trying to write something more atmospheric/fantasy vs something more comedy/modern.

i have also learned that writing in ugly ass fonts is a good way to draft dumb fanfic shit without psyching yourself out about it. rough drafts should be ugly and terrible and cringe - you're going to fix it in post. however, sometimes it is difficult when you are actively thinking about how ugly and terrible and cringe it is, and you get stuck trying to massage the rough draft before it's even time to edit. well, if you draft in neon green comic sans, it's going to look like shit no matter what words are on the page, so you can relax.

Writing the Words

now, how you actually go about writing the fanfic is all up to you - our brains all work differently, and rather than seeking an objective 'right' way to outline or draft, you just need to learn how your brain works and what kind of cues and tools it needs to get going.

outline your plot in chunks that are meaningful to you. i use bullets, and i try to make every bullet something I think i will need about 500 words to get across. this is just to say - there's generally a bullet for the exposition of a scene (where, who, when, maybe why), and then i chop the events of a scene down into manageable actions - (1) someone says something important and maybe someone feels some type of way about it, (2) that leads to action which is performed a certain way, (3) uh oh maybe there are consequences which are XYZ. etc.

my outlines are heavily based on choreography - what are they doing, where are they moving, what is the point (and sometimes, what are they thinking - mind choreography). this is not necessarily the best fit for everyone's writing style, but I do this because it lets me flip in between scenes very quickly and write the actions that I feel most compelled to at any point in time - the bullets act as easy, laid-out choices for what i want to rough draft whenever the mood strikes.

organizationally - two things that have been helpful to me:

use the headline view as a progress tracker.

here, one star indicates that my scene is in the rough draft phase (0 stars for outline, 2 stars for edited). this shows me where I'm at progress-wise on the sidebar.

2. write with your outline below you

i sort of just stumbled into this practice and it's kind of goated. often times, we keep our outlines at the top, or on a separate page, but that makes referring to it a huge pain in the ass tbh. if you keep the bullet point below you (as i've done above), then it will move with the text as you write, and you can always see your next immediate goal that you are writing towards.

ok hope this was helpful!

i've been peer pressuring my friend into writing fic recently, and part of that was anxiously screen sharing some messy under-the-hood stuff on discord. she said something along the lines of: "wow. i never would have thought of this (writing w/ outline below you) but it's crazy that this is not like writing 101" (she did a humanities degree, idfk what's in writing class i was too busy crying over matrices)

there is no singular correct way to write or outline, but this is a good way to start with organization to keep everything in sight as you write. you can start here, and then make modifications based on what feels best

the best way to write and draft is whatever works most intuitively with your own brain. <3

[caramelldansenu]

also lamb

[aca-4]

I had this idea back in 2022 but didn't like the end result, so I never posted it. Figured I should try again and redo it.

+ the original comic i don't recall ever posting.

[theunconcernedembalmer]

( @yellow-rose-embalmer )

"Ah... Mr. Carl. It's a pleasure to meet another like myself." The incoming Aesop straightens his posture, checking and adjusting his uniform as if he were interviewing for some sort of job. "How has... our mission been going?" There is a notable hesitance, and the shaky eye contact is now entirely averted.

You must be new. Anyone who has bled out in enough matches will know that our mission is meaningless here.

[fraternum-momentum]

oh also! did you use a custom font or is your handwriting just that neat?

hehe i just write like that :3

[digital-gargoyle]

There might be a theme when it comes to my favorite characters...

[invinciblerodent]

why am i like this

why am i the type of person who'll sit down to finally answer a very sweet ask about My Guys, and instead of doing that, or anything that's of any interest to anyone else, spend an hour just picking through fonts to see what could be fitting for each of their handwritings.

i'm still wearing my streetclothes, and i've bespoke fonts chosen for 11 of my characters now

......... at least now i could write fake notes and stuff in their name if i wanted, that's something

[turtle-ly]

im seeing that poll about learning cursive in school a lot on my dash and as a vietnamese im kinda bewildered bc what do you mean you cant read cursive?? because to us cursive is for capital letters only! the rest are normal letters. so ig our normal written letters are the american cursive, and our "computer" letters are your normal letters?

↑ these are the fonts we learn in school. The left are our normal letters, the right are our cursive. Oh and the thing is, these are the only fonts we actually taught a school, the "typing" font is just what we imitate from printed books. In elementary school we have "good handwriting competitions" where the participants write in the above fonts and are graded on how close it is to the table above. its like boring calligraphy

[hana-bobo-finch]

character summary was going well until I forgot I was supposed to be writing from the perspective of a renowned history professor lmfao

[novafire-is-thinking]

TF fan moment of the week:

I copied two of my TF meta posts to a Google doc and sent them to my academic advisor/tutor to fulfill a writing requirement. He knows nothing about Transformers, so I was afraid he wouldn’t receive them well. I knew they were good, personally. I was just worried he wouldn’t recognize that.

However, to my delight, he used the word “scientific” to describe one of the pieces and went on to compliment my self awareness as a writer during our discussion today.

He also pointed out grammar and syntax stuff I’d messed up on and habits that would need to be corrected to make my future writing meet typical academic standards, but all of that hardly matters. It’s the middle of the night, and I’m over here obsessing over the compliments when I should be writing or sleeping. lol

If only I could write about my favorite silly little robots for every assignment…

[godofthestupid]

water studies! the last few illustrations had water in them but looked like shit ngl,so I tried to learn how to draw water

my notes more readable:

first pic

bubbles are not perfectly round

scribble the white highlight

general form is a curve, make it more interesting by alternating sharp edges with soft curves

use the darkest dark as if it were a (reverse) highlight

add at least one saturated color!

second pic

foam is,in contrast to the wave,sharp and has lots of highlights

contrast the cool colors with desaturated dark blue and brown

third pic

splash has an 'organic' side and a 'motion' side(organic=more bubbles;motion=line of action,less bubbles)

treat it a bit like a ribbon

[nacligang]

I spent wayyy too much of my drawing skill tree on being able to draw Pokemon but it's super fun

[spouseoftherisingsun]

is it weird to be so extremely uncomfortable with paragraphs with lines that are unequal or lacking a consistent, harmonious transition in length that you have to edit what you write specifically to create a less aesthetically jarring presentation bc it bothers you. or is it normal

[riarnu]

garamond is cooked now like i'm just calling it and i'm calling it rn

[deerlisteners]

ahem

AHAHSHEHEHHAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AHHHHHHHAHAHHAHAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH AHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!! AHAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! NOOOOO OH NO AHHHHHHHHHHH AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[bentreznor]

wait what book were u talking about in the tags of that poll bc i do love a good multiple pov story

devil house by john darnielle!