#Adventures in Writing

[bookshelf-in-progress]

No time to write: Seven quintillion ideas that have a vivid hold on my imagination and I wish I could get on paper immediately.

Time available to write: I have never had an interesting or worthwhile idea in my life.

[fictionadventurer]

Truths:

I want to start listening to music more often and expanding the types of music that I listen to.

I'm upset that writing is a hobby that doesn't allow for multitasking.

Therefore:

I want to get back into the practice of listening to music while writing.

I need new music to listen to.

I need recommendations of songs/albums/playlists that make for good background music while writing.

I would appreciate any suggestions people can provide.

[scrapimmortal]

i know i said fat xie lian friday. but i lied. fat xie lian wednesday!

[tarisilmarwen]

Help him, he is Tired™.

[echochqmber]

this chapter is so funny... hua cheng is like "if xie lian finds out that i'm actually Dangerous Supreme Ghost Hua Cheng he'll hate me" and xie lian is like "Hua Cheng? i've never heard of him..."

like sometimes fafa really does overestimate his own reputation, or perhaps just underestimates xie lian's ability to tune out anything not related to his recycling hyperfixation

[romantichore]

when I was in college, my Brazilian Literature professor told us this story about an author who wrote weekly adventures for some newspaper. as one would expect, the author was paid peanuts.

as the series grew in popularity, the author started pressing for a raise, and was always denied or told he'd get his raise after x or y issue. so he kept on writing, and funneled the story into a series of amazing plot points, only to reach a cliffhanger that had readers writing letters to rave about it.

he asked for a raise again, and got told no. so he quit, and no one thought much of it. only they couldn't find another writer to continue the original story. "too many loose ends", "no way to rescue the protagonist from this literal cliff", no one could do it. weeks went by and readers were getting impatient.

the newspaper reached out to the author and offered him more money. whatever would get him back, and the story out of the corner. naturally, the writer accepted it, but at this point everyone was curious to know how he'd keep the protagonist from meeting his grisly death. how could he possibly solve all those problems he had created in the narrative?

the following week, a new issue was published, and the story continued: "once all those problems were behind him..."

you see, this was just meant to be an entertaining story about how fiction was published in the olden days, told by a professor to future teachers. I like to think my professor was also trying to encourage us to try our hand at writing, seeing as he was a published poet himself and passionate about it.

it's been a decade since, and I think about his story often. in particular when I've been sitting in front of my computer for an hour and can't find the perfect way to end this chapter or introduce this new plot point. writing seems so complicated, and so many people have so much to say about it. what's right, what's wrong, what works, what doesn't.

but it's really simple, isn't it? start a new line, put all those problems behind you. if nothing goes right, go left. sometimes the simpler explanation is the best one. maybe there are better ways to go about it, but a patch is better than a hole.

go and open that wip, the one you gave up on writing because the plot seemed so convoluted or too difficult. press enter. put the problems behind you and keep going

[mecharose]

putting my foot down @ myself

[renecdote]

writer struggle #89540: when you have one line that you really want to use but no story to go with it

[bookshelf-in-progress]

I love how a well-written romance is so often structured as a mystery. A person starts with a certain idea about another person, and over the course of the story, they uncover more evidence that gives them a fuller picture of who the other person truly is. They learn about layers to the personality and backstory that give the other person more depth. They learn how the other person's personality meshes with theirs. Even the third-act misunderstanding fits the mystery structure--it looks like they've uncovered the final secret to the other person's identity, which is that they're not the worthy person they seemed to be, but then discover that they misinterpreted that evidence, or the other person takes steps to apologize and repair the level of trust. When the mystery is resolved, they've reached a full understanding of each other and know they've found a partner they can trust their whole future to.

[fictionadventurer]

The best trope of all is:

Doing the right thing will have terrible consequences.

They do the right thing.

They suffer for it.

But in the end, doing the right thing allows things to work out better than they could have imagined.

[scrapimmortal]

me: okay for your smut practice maybe ease into it, maybe something vanilla

also me: okay so filthy filthy kinky sub hc

me: ... not what i had in mind initially but sure

[tarisilmarwen]

Right, while I'm on the subject, fandom please learn the difference between an anti-hero, an anti-villain, and a sympathetic villain.

Anti-hero: A protagonist who lacks traditional heroic qualities and nobility, but ultimately works towards good or better ends within the world of their narrative. Can be pretty reprehensible as an individual depending on the cynicism of the story and world they inhabit (i.e. The Punisher, The Bride from Kill Bill, Batman in certain incarnations), but often develops more into a hero classic in more idealistic works (see: Han Solo, Wolverine, also Batman again depending on writer/incarnation).

Anti-villain: An antagonist who, while nominally opposing the goals of the protagonist, has a core of nobility and traditional heroic qualities, or understandable sympathetic motivations. Is a "bad actions, good motives" character but approaches the issue from the opposite end of the spectrum as an anti-hero. Again depending on the cynicism/idealism of the work and the character's actions may complete a Heel Face Turn and ultimately become more like a protagonist or hero classic (Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender) or make a slide into full-on villany (Thrawn, several incarnations of Magneto). Many Well-Intentioned Extremists fall under this umbrella, along with a lot of Lawful Evil characters, but whether the label applies to them or not depends on how heinous the actions they take within the story are. Generally there is an in-narrative "line" these characters cannot cross before their evil actions outweigh their noble or sympathetic motives.

Sympathetic villain: A villain who has sad, tragic, affable, understandable or sympathetic qualities which makes them pitiable and/or likeable. While similar to an anti-villain, and they may start out as one, the major difference is that this character has already chosen, or repeatedly chooses, to cross the aforementioned narrative "line" within the story. They are a villain who "has a sad", basically. (Examples include Darth Vader, Mr. Freeze, and Megamind--who as a bonus is operating as a Villain Protagonist.)

There is obviously some gray area and as I've mentioned some characters slide up and down the whole range and gamut depending on how they're written but I promise they are in fact separate categories.

[echochqmber]

i want to post a fic for xie lian's birthday

which is tomorrow

i have not started this fic yet

let the games begin: can i write a fanfiction in 24 hours?

[siaanme]

Today I have learned that the term "eponym" and the adjective "eponymous" are only technically meant to apply when a something is named for a person, e.g. the city of Victoria being named for Queen Victoria. It is not meant to refer to, for example, a city in my story being called Valleytown because it is situated in a valley. This leaves me with three options:

Figure out the correct term for this (which so far cursory googling is not helping with)

Rewrite the phrase "the eponymous valley" in my story into something else

Invent a person, such as George Valley, who was the founder of Valley town

[clairelutra]

so, just a heads up:

I'm going to be removing my stories from AO3 and porting them over to my Dreamwidth.

i'm feeling incredibly sick with upper management and how they've treated the volunteers in their organization, and until the people responsible are gone and changes are made, i'm not going back.

as i have 272 stories public at the moment, along with a number of others scattered across accounts and in anonymous collections, i likely won't do this all at once, or in full completion. nonetheless, if there are stories of mine that you enjoy and don't want to lose, i highly encourage you to download them either manually, or with a tool or scraper.

as I want to keep all the lovely responses and feedback i've gotten over the years, i'm going to leave the fic postings themselves up, and replace the contents, and link to the full stories on dreamwidth.

i'll be starting on or after june 25th, 2023

(note: my stories will still be accessible on dreamwidth; this post is for those who want to preserve or download them as they are)

this is why i'm leaving

this is my dreamwidth that i'll be crossposting to

here's a downloader tool and its instructions

here are instructions for another mass download tool

here is my ao3