#Narrative Structure

[thewriteadviceforwriters]

🔪 3 Plot Twists That Slap (and 1 that should be arrested) 🔪

hello and welcome back to me yelling on main about storytelling crimes. today we are talking about plot twists. specifically: the good, the god-tier, and the why-would-you-do-this-i-trusted-you tier.

let’s go.

✨ The Twist That Reframes Everything ✨ a.k.a. the “wait. WAIT.” twist. This is when you drop a twist that doesn’t just add drama - it recontextualizes the entire story. It makes the reader go back and reread earlier scenes like “was this character ALWAYS sketchy or am I just stupid??” It retroactively changes the emotional weight of everything that’s happened. Suddenly that offhanded comment in chapter three hits like a brick. The romance subplot becomes 500% more tragic. The villain’s motive makes SENSE now. Delicious.

✅ Best used when: the breadcrumbs are subtle but real. The twist shouldn’t come out of nowhere - it should feel inevitable in hindsight. Like Sixth Sense, Knives Out, that one betrayal in your favorite anime you still haven’t recovered from.

2.🧨 The Emotional Betrayal It’s giving: “i would’ve died for you” energy. This is the kind of twist that hurts. You thought they were loyal. You thought they cared. They did care - and still did it anyway. Or they never cared, and now you’re spiraling. This twist slaps because it’s not just about plot, it’s about trust. It stabs the characters AND the reader in the same motion. Bonus points if it’s a slow burn betrayal. Bonus bonus points if the betrayer feels genuinely torn up about it.

✅ Best used when: the reader is emotionally attached. Don’t waste this one on a side character we barely know. Save it for the love interest. The best friend. The mentor figure with dad energy. Make it personal. Make it RUIN lives.

3. 🧊 The “They Were Dead the Whole Time” but Make It Interesting Listen. This one’s risky. It’s a classic for a reason but also easy to flop. But when done well? Haunting. Creepy. Unhinged in a gorgeous way. It doesn’t have to be death either - maybe the character’s been possessed. Or they’re not real. Or the narrator’s memory is lying. The KEY is to not lean too hard on the shock. Lean on the vibes. Give it eeriness. Make it a slow unraveling. Give us dread. Give us melancholy. Give us psychological decay with a side of unreliable narrator.

✅ Best used when: you’re writing something surreal, gothic, speculative, or emotionally weird. This twist isn’t about plot logic, it’s about atmosphere and emotional rot.

🚨 The Twist That Should Be Arrested: “It Was All a Dream” 🚨 I’m sorry but. no. if I read 80k words of someone’s descent into madness just to find out it was their stress dream and now they’re normal again?? I will throw the entire book into a lake. This twist erases tension instead of escalating it. It invalidates everything the reader emotionally invested in. It’s the narrative equivalent of gaslighting. don’t do it. UNLESS - and this is a big unless - you’re doing it with INTENT. Meta intent. Dream-within-a-dream psychological horror intent. If you’re gonna do it, it better haunt me. It better RUIN me. Otherwise? Into the lake.

okay that’s all. go forth and commit plot crimes responsibly. bonus points if you use all three Good Twists in the same story and then look me in the eye like “oh was that too much?”

it wasn’t.

tag me when you emotionally destroy someone with it.

🕯️ download the pack & write something cursed:

[physalian]

How to Make Your Writing Less Stiff 8 | "to-be" and auxiliary verbs

Part 7

Part 6

Part 1

As I go through editing my latest manuscript, I'm faced with the dilemma of when to drop a to-be verb, but also when to keep it and how the differences between the two in any given situation can make just a little... a little *garnish* of a difference.

To-be verbs:

Am, is, are, was, were; a subset of auxiliary verbs

Auxiliary verbs:

To do, to be, to have (simplified)

Auxiliary verbs tend to indicate tense, but we use them more often as crutch verbs, filler verbs, because you can just conjugate the verb itself to the proper tense without the need of the auxiliary verb.

The advice generally goes to remove these, as they count as filler words when followed up by a second verb. Versus the TBV or AXV and an adjective.

He does look / He looks She is cooking / She cooks They were standing / They stood I am fishing / I fish She does cry / She cries We have slept / We slept

vs

He is afraid / He fears She was sorry / She regrets They were happy / They cheered I was confused / I hesitated

The verb+adjective combo can't so easily drop the verb without changing either the tone, the flow, or the actions of the characters, because one is an act of doing, and one is a state of being (for the most part, 'fear' is one of those exceptions in English).

You would have to rearrange the sentence, e.g. "I was confused by this" to "This confused me," to elimiate the TBV. Which, most of the time, does help the narrator feel less passive in the story, but, again, we're here for flavor text, not an MLA formatting guide.

So, sometimes the inclusion of the TBV or AXV adds subtext to the action itself.

"He does look" has slightly more urgency and weight than simply "he looks" because the AXV emphasizes that this is an action the actor might not have taken otherwise, for better or for worse.

In the silence, she stands there huffing, voice wrecked from crying as he heads for the open door. “Don’t you walk away from me.” He turns, face impassive. “There’s nothing left to be said.” vs He does turn, face impassive. “There’s nothing left to be said.”

The latter indicates that this might be hesitation or regret on his part, as opposed to a decisive, quick action, or that this is an action that she, the narrator, didn't expect him to take.

It also helps convey the tone of voice (or at least the general direction of the level of emotion in a voice). This absolutely varies on a case-by-case basis and the context of the action and should not be abused.

One of the juicier verbs for subtext here is "try"

He tries to coach her through how to do it properly. vs He does try to coach her through how to do it properly.

The former is direct and simple. He is attempting (he attempts) to help but through the act of "trying" and not "doing" there's an indication that she isn't getting it.

The latter is a little more hopeless, where he and she both know that whatever she's attempting to learn, she won't succeed, but he's doing it anyway. Maybe because he cares or he feels bad, or, that he wasn't going to help her, but something changed his mind.

Deciding when to use these helps convey the inner thoughts of non-narrating characters without head-hopping, and also shows the biases of the narrator.

Hope this helps!

[tarysande]

Mass Effect 2: The Case for the Heroine's Journey

I have a theory. And I think it's something others--especially other storytellers--might find interesting. It explains why some people absolutely adore Mass Effect 2 while others (not as many, in my experience!) think dealing with all the companions and their personal quests is boring or irrelevant.

What it boils down to is the difference between the Hero's Journey and the Heroine's Journey. There a couple of takes on the Heroine's Journey (ranging from more philosophical and psychoanalytical to more story-based), and I'm going to be pulling hard from the story-based iteration, which author Gail Carriger has written a fabulous book about. I highly recommend it.

One thing I want to mention right off the bat: the gender, sex, or sexuality of your protagonist has nothing to do with whether they're a hero or a heroine.

Everyone and their dog knows the Hero's Journey. A literal ton of writing advice refers to the Hero's Journey as if it's the be-all and end-all of narrative (thanks Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, and Christopher Vogler); it ain't called the monomyth for nothing.

But if a part of you grits your teeth every time it gets trotted out as The One Right Way to tell a story that sells or a story people love, you may have your mind blown by the concept of the Heroine's Journey. Every single one of you who tingles with excitement at the very thought of found family (or romance, for that matter)? Yeah, strap in, we're going for a ride.

I don't want to go into a lot of detail about the Hero's Journey; it's everywhere. You know it even if you don't realize you know it. So for brevity's sake, I'll give you wikipedia's one-sentence description: a hero goes on an adventure, is victorious in a decisive crisis, and comes home changed or transformed. Luke Skywalker. Everyone always talks about Luke Skywalker. And on the surface, Mass Effect could seem like a Hero's Journey, right?

According to Gail, a Hero's Journey boils down to

A repeated pattern of withdrawal and return, and those withdrawals are voluntary, as voluntary withdrawal and increased isolation yields self-reliant strength.

Victory is in isolation and asking for help is bad.

But looking at it (especially ME2) through the lens of the Heroine's Journey is where it gets interesting.

This is the infographic Gail created and supplies on her website:

In her book, Gail notes that not every element has to be present to qualify a story as a Hero/Heroine's Journey and the events don't have to happen specifically in this order.

In the Heroine's Journey

The heroine's withdrawal is involuntary; something is broken and she must abdicate the power she had in order to rebuild, retrieve, or reunite with what was taken or broken.

Victory is a group effort; asking for help is a sign of strength; and the protagonist realizes that while she can't do everything herself, she has surrounded herself with people whose skills she can effectively deploy.

In the Heroine's Journey, the DESCENT is involuntary. Something is done to her or taken from her, and it breaks her familial network.

In ME2, obviously, uh, the thing that's taken from Shepard is her own life. Of course, instead of that being the end of the story, it's the inciting incident that leads to the involuntary withdrawal from her found family on the Normandy, her connection to the Alliance, and her Spectre status. Her home is literally destroyed. And then, kinda hilariously, she wakes up in the literal underworld. You know. Cerberus, dog that guards the gates of Hades?

I play a very Paragon Shepard and haven't played Renegade, so I can't speak to that. However, I can tell you that my Paragon Shep wakes up working for Cerberus and promptly proceeds to gain more Renegade points in the first couple of missions--hell, the first couple of conversations with Miranda, Jacob, and TIM--than she got in all of ME1.

Jacob: Do you trust me, Shepard? Shepard: NO, omg.

I've probably played ME2 five or six times with this Shepard, and she always strikes me as a bit off, a bit manic even, until she sees Tali. And she doesn't really start to settle or feel like herself until Archangel takes off his helmet, believes she is who she says she is, and without hesitation agrees to follow her into hell.

(As the protagonist in his own story, Garrus is also a heroine on a Heroine's Journey, by the by. Shepard's death breaks his network; C-Sec and the Council's denial of the Reapers leads to his abdication of power in the hunt for justice. His underworld is Omega. He puts together a surrogate family to fight injustice; he learns to delegate; he doesn't do it for glory... And then Sidonis's betrayal breaks the new family and sends him on another cycle. My theory, however, is that if you let him kill Sidonis, his journey takes on the revenge aspect of a Hero's Journey instead of the family and reunification structure of a Heroine's Journey.)

In ME2, the arc of recruiting an ally, earning their loyalty, and deploying their suggestions to improve the entire team's chances of survival is repeated over and over; this is the SEARCH of the cycle. And anyone who's ever tried to race their way through ME2 without doing all those loyalty missions or without scanning all those planets for resources finds out pretty quick why they're important.

So, while you potentially could race through ME1 without even recruiting several teammates (did you even know you can play that game without recruiting Garrus???), thereby making it much more of a Hero's Journey of the Strength of the Individual, you really can't do that in ME2 without massive casualties. You need the people around you. You need to build relationships. And you need to learn to delegate well, or things will absolutely fall apart during the end run.

Even the stated mission of ME2 is more Heroine's Journey. You're not fighting for glory; in fact, most of the people who used to be in awe of you now think you're a crazy terrorist. You're fighting to stop what's happening to human colonists.

The end run is so satisfying specifically because it leans in to the Heroine's Journey of information gathering and network building. You cannot beat the game as a solitary soldier. You cannot achieve a good outcome--minimal deaths, etc.--without having spent a lot of time and effort gaining the loyalty of your crew and then knowing how to deploy them to best serve the whole team.

ME2 is a story about finding and building a family after the last one is broken.

And though it's a whole other can of worms, I actually think the reason why the ending of ME3 was ultimately so unsatisfying for so many (again, not all) is because the majority of the game is once again a Heroine's Journey--team building and information gathering across the galaxy--but the endgame pulls the expected narrative out from under you. Instead of actually using the resources you've so carefully built, you're quite literally beamed up into complete isolation (weakness) and left to make a choice in isolation. It breaks the narrative promise that's been set up since the beginning of the game. And, whether you realize it or not, that's a huge part of why that lonely choice feels so hollow. Instead of a structured reunion and a rebuilt network, it's actually the broken family and involuntary descent that heralds the beginning of a new Heroine's Journey--not the the end of a successful one.

Also, incidentally? It's Heroine's Journeys that usually get satisfying instead of distracting-the-hero-from-his-real-mission romance, banter, fully realized side characters, and humor.

[rosemarymoodboards]

Why My Post Hit a Nerve: When Critique Feels Like Exposure

Sometimes, a critique doesn’t just get pushback it rattles. It spirals people. It makes them lash out. And it’s not because the critique was mean. It’s because it hit something real.

Here’s why my post about a fictional ship, no less hit a nerve.

I didn’t insult. I exposed.

I didn’t say Zutara fans were delusional.

I said the pairing, while popular in fanon, wasn’t emotionally compatible or supported by canon.

That kind of calm analysis is more threatening than insults because it’s harder to dismiss.

People couldn’t play the victim, so they called me manipulative instead.

I challenged a deeper fantasy.

Zutara isn’t just a ship it’s a romanticization of emotional intensity, healing through pain, and being chosen after conflict.

My post said:

“That’s not intimacy. That’s trauma-colored projection.”

To someone who ties their identity to that narrative? That feels personal.

I said the past mattered.

I said Zuko being the heir to Katara’s colonizers isn’t just background noise. It’s baked into their power dynamic.

I said forgiveness ≠ romance.

I said Katara didn’t need to kiss the Fire Nation to complete her arc.

That’s uncomfortable. It disrupts the fairytale.

So instead of examining that discomfort, they attacked the person holding up the mirror.

I refused to center a man’s redemption over a woman’s peace.

Zuko’s redemption is valid.

Katara’s forgiveness is powerful.

But I said:

Katara doesn’t owe him her heart to prove she’s healed.

That’s a threat to anyone who thinks a “good man who changed” deserves the girl. And they called that misogyny. Think about that.

I stayed calm, and they lost control.

I didn’t yell. I didn’t name call.

I responded point-by-point, clearly, confidently.

And when people can’t win with logic or receipts, they fall back on:

-Tone policing

-Fake feminism

-Guilt tactics

-Character assassination

Because if they can’t discredit your argument, they’ll try to discredit you.

The truth? It hit.

This wasn’t about ships.

It was about the emotional stories people use to feel seen. And I critiqued one of those stories and stayed standing.

That’s why they deleted comments.

That’s why they reblogged to spiral.

That’s why they called critique manipulation.

Not because I was wrong.

But because they weren’t ready to hear it.

[quillver]

Micro-tip: How to make emotional scenes hit harder

Don’t put the emotional payoff in the confrontation itself.

Put it two scenes later. Quiet. Off-guard. Uncontrolled.

Let your character hold it together when it matters.

Then let it fall apart in the silence that follows.

Not when they’re being watched.

When the door sticks.

When someone looks away.

When they forget the wine.

When they ask if anyone’s hungry just to fill the space.

Readers don’t cry when the character explodes.

They cry when the damage surfaces — quiet, and far too late.

[gayofthefae]

There is something in a story structure called a cave. It is when all hope is lost, the lowest point for a character; they hit rock bottom. It happens right before the climax to force them to make an important decision, force them into a dilemma.

Every scene has one, every episode has one, every season has one to varying degrees. But Stranger Things as a whole is also a single story. A 5-season single story.

It's why season 4 is the only time they lose the battle. It is at the perfect point of the cave in the story - 4 of 5. "All hope is lost". It is the cave of the story as a whole.

So, though it may be played as his season climax, Mike Wheeler's story cave is this:

"Forced to make a decision between bad and worse" in my screenwriting teacher's words, he chooses that she live and he lie irrevocably over that he be honest and risk her dying. I once said he spent the season wondering whether he would have lied if he'd known it'd keep her safe; now he knows. A dilemma.

And I must say, it is genius to place it right here. Exactly here. The perfect way to convince you. It is his season climax: everything he's wanted achieved...But it is his story cave: rock bottom.

Yes, he achieved what he originally wanted - to love her. But he has reached the point in the story where he realizes what he wants and needs are not only different but at odds. He always wanted to love her. He always wanted to love a girl. He always wanted to avoid this fate

But unfortunately, he really did end up loving El, not just in concept or cover, so when what he needed was to be true to himself against their relationship, he acted in favor of his previous wants - and of her, not his needs.

Mike's story is confirmed to be incomplete. This is why.

Additional support to this analysis if you have doubts:

Will's decision would much more obviously be considered an all time low in this same structure. He had a dilemma Mike and El continuing to be sad or himself being sad and chose to sacrifice himself.

This clearly supports that the structure is being applied. Narrative structures aren't just applied once. That would make an incoherent mess in an ensemble cast. Mike and all characters follow the same structure we can prove is present with Will.

Will built up to giving Mike the painting, what he wanted to do all season, but sacrificed what he needed, to share his feelings. Mike is the same. Mike cannot be different. That's just not how writing works.

[plotandelegy]

Crafting Future From Ruins: A Writer's Guide to Designing Post-Apocalyptic Technology

Photo: Standard License- Adobe Stock

Crafting post-apocalyptic tech involves blending creativity and realism. This is a guide to help you invent tech for your post-apocalyptic world:

Tinker, Tailor, Writer, Spy: Start with modern tech. Take it apart (conceptually or literally if you're feeling adventurous). Using the basics, think of how your character might put it back together with limited tools and resources.

Master the Fundamentals: Understand the basic principles underlying the tech you're working with. Physics, chemistry, and biology can be your best friends. This understanding can guide your character's resourceful innovations.

Embrace the Scrapyard: The world around you has potential tech components. Appliances, vehicles, infrastructure - how could these be deconstructed and repurposed? Your characters will need to use what's at hand.

Cherishing Old Wisdom: Pre-apocalypse books and manuals are the new internet. A character with access to this knowledge could become a vital asset in tech-building.

Indigo Everly

[abby-howard]

Scarlet Hollow decision tree

People occasionally ask to see a decision tree for Scarlet Hollow, so a while back I put one together for episodes 1-4! It’s not comprehensive, as most scenes at this point have at least some variation due to any number of tracked variables, but it accounts for most of the really major deviations.

For those who don’t want spoilers but would like to hear about how we kinda structure the game: I like to talk about it as more of a braid than a tree, which is not a new concept or anything, but I feel like it helps other narrative designers understand how to limit the absolute vastness that you can get with branching structures. The narrative branches off at decision nodes, but instead of continuing down significantly different routes, it comes back together at key moments. So there’s a single narrative throughline to the game-- events unfold in the town and you witness them in some capacity, but your perspective on them, who you’re with, the options available to you, all these are impacted by other choices you’ve made along the way, including the character traits you chose at the start of the game.

It’s not necessarily easier than doing routes, since it means Tony and I have to keep track of a ridiculous number of little variations including one-off dialogue choices players have made AND steering players to the important narrative moments can be tricky, but I think it makes for an interesting player experience! People get so excited when, say, a line at the end of Episode 4 calls back to something they said when they first met Tabitha at the beginning of Episode 1.

ANYWAY, HUGE SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT, do not proceed if you don’t want to know about basically everything that’s currently in the game!

Things start to get a little hard to read from here on out....

Episode four had to be broken into four images and looks like spaghetti

I’ll make another one of these for Episode 5 after it comes out sometime next year! (I know that’s a bit of a wait but it’ll be worth it >:D)

[sapphiresaphics]

When we say Arcane is about the “cycle of violence” we are referring to it in the Shakespearian sense.

That is to say, the cycle of violence is going to continue by the end of the show, and we are not supposed to be happy about it. It is a thematic narrative device.

Much like a Greek tragedy where the hero does everything they can to avoid the future that was foretold, only to realize too late that their attempts to avoid their future is what caused it to happen in the first place.

What we DON’T mean is that “the cycle of violence” is an objective problem that must be fixed by the end of the story. It is not a “how to” guidebook on solving world issues. Arcane was never going to solve centuries worth of human history problems in 18 episodes.

The violence between Piltover and Zaun was ALWAYS going to remain because that’s how LIFE is. Arcane is about looking at how these problems affect people, empathizing with the characters, understanding the faults and flaws of other human beings, and being able to look at the story from the perspective of self introspection.

You should watch the end of the show and think to yourself “how can I not repeats the same cycles they are?” Not complain “the writing was bad cuz Zaun didn’t get independence!”

“What’s the point of starting the show off with class warfare if the politics don’t change by the end of the story?” Yeah… that’s kinda the message of the fucking show, isn’t it? The cycle continues. They had MULTIPLE options to escape the cycle and they CHOSE NOT TO. That’s the problem. That’s not them forgetting about the politics, that’s them addressing the narrative THEME they’re exploring.

Like, the show ends with the two cities teaming up to stop a magical oppressive force… and they STILL can’t work together afterwards. That’s the fucking CYCLE continuing. That’s the TRAGEDY of the two cities.

You want Zaun to be independent. You want Piltover to stop oppressing. But that doesn’t happen. And it’s not because this is some centrist message. It’s because the TRAGEDY of the city is that they will NEVER get along. The happy AU exists as a reminder of what we’ll never have but what could’ve been.

And every character thinks they have the way to solve the problem of the two cities. And every one of those solutions that involves violence just sparks more violence.

And yes, you can ABSOLUTELY put the blame on Piltover for the vast majority of ALL the problems. But the show is trying to get you to understand that when you retaliate with violence you are going to be met with violence. Zaun doesn’t come together with Piltover because Zaun was able to beat Piltover with a stick. They come together, despite all their issues and the past atrocities Piltover caused, because they found common ground and Piltover literally begged them for help.

Viktor’s plan to subjugate all of humanity to stop them from enacting violence is stopped by Jayce’s love and empathy and mutual understanding.

Empathy. Compassion. These are the forces that break the NARRATIVE cycle of violence.

Caitlyn was willing to give Zaun a chance because she connected with Vi and Ekko and saw for herself how things are in Zaun. And you can bet your ass that she would’ve followed through with that had Jinx not VIOLENTLY ripped all that away from her. And the result of that violence against her was MORE and WORSE violence. And it’s not until the end when Caitlyn has Jinx in a cell, defeated, depressed, emotionally drained and exhausted… does she find the compassion and empathy to let her hatred for Jinx go.

You guys gotta stop looking at this show as a “how to guide to anarchy” and actually look at it from the perspective of a STORY trying to send a MESSAGE. And that message is “You have a good heart, don’t ever lose it, no matter how much the world tries to break you.”

Piltover and Zaun were never going to stop being antagonistic towards each other. The cycle was never going to end for them. But the cycle can end for you. You can find ways to BRIDGE the two cities in your own life. You can’t change centuries of human failure and history. But you can change who YOU are. And when presented with a chance to inflict violence on another person, you can reflect on what choosing to use violence will do to them and to you.

[colleybri]

Andor season 2 - the “needle drop” approach

It’s so interesting, but also a bit anxiety inducing, that they are going to structure Andor season 2 in these four 3-episode arcs that each take place over just a few days within each of the years remaining up until the time of Rogue One. Tony Gilroy refers to these as “ needle drops” . There is a lot of story to be told and arcs to follow for characters old and new - and I wonder how much of all this will happen in the year-long ‘gaps’. Because the majority of this time period will be happening offscreen, so to speak.

Leading to questions like:

… will we see how K2SO originated, or will he just be there at the start of one of the arcs? What about Melshi, or any of the other characters we know have to return for Rogue One?

… will a major character or two be killed off in one of those gaps? Could there be a significant move of location? The start or end of relationships? Even… a major Galactic event?

… will any of the missing pieces of information be filled in by flashback, or will the job be done by dialogue alone?

I’m generally optimistic, as there were time jumps already in season 1… notably the very big gap between Cassian’s arrival on Ferrix as a child and the start of the present day narrative. But this time there is just so much ground to cover.

I’m sticking with my theory that the Ghorman massacre will be in the second arc, mostly because I’m trying to manifest a Mon Mothma monologue written by the great Beau Wilimon. There will then be an arc free to follow the formation of the Rebel Alliance (and maybe get us to Yavin?!) before the final “just-days-before-Rogue One” arc.

Spoilers to follow below: some season 2 official stills so far. (Already… I have just so many questions. We’ll get the answers in April. At last! )

[thewriteadviceforwriters]

✨writing rant because i’m UNWELL and someone said enemies to lovers is “overdone”✨

okay listen.

i don’t care how “overdone” the trope is. let her fall in love with the enemy prince. let him smile like a knife and lie like a prayer. let her fall anyway. and then let her stab him with a hairpin. a hairpin!! we deserve this.

this isn't about originality. this is about execution and emotional violence and aesthetically pleasing betrayal.

tropes aren’t dead. they’re haunting us in new outfits.

every trope is a reusable little narrative skeleton and you get to dress it in whatever cursed, beautiful, petty, yearning flesh your heart desires. you can take enemies to lovers and make it toxic, or tender, or tragic. you can give them shared trauma. you can make them childhood friends turned enemies turned lovers turned enemies again. you can make the stabbing literal or metaphorical. you can make it an almost-stabbing, where she presses the blade to his throat and doesn’t do it. you can make her do it and then sob in his arms while he bleeds out whispering her name like a prayer he never meant to say out loud.

you can make it GAY.

that’s the power of tropes. they’re not restrictive. they’re launchpads. they give readers expectations so you can BREAK them. or better--fulfill them in devastating, soul-twisting ways.

also. like. if you think a trope is “overdone” maybe it’s not the trope that’s the problem. maybe it’s just being written without any real teeth. no emotional bite. no stakes. no tension. no pain. and that’s not the trope’s fault. that’s just boring writing.

give me the obsessive yearning. give me the knife-to-throat confessions. give me the battlefield truce that turns into a five-second pause before they go right back to trying to kill each other. give me quiet moments in enemy territory where they realize they’re not so different. give me the one bed. give me the i hate you but i’d burn down a kingdom for you and hate myself for it.

let the prince kneel at her feet, kiss her knuckles like he’d never crush them, and then go home and report to his war council like nothing happened. let her wear the hairpin he gave her while plotting his assassination. let them both suffer about it. let them choose each other anyway. or don’t. let them fail. let them fall apart in the final act and still reach for each other across the ashes.

i literally do not care how many times we’ve seen it. i want it again. i want it done well. i want it done with spite and softness and aching inevitability. i want to feel like the betrayal was worth it. i want to scream into my hands and text my writer friends like “why would you do this to me” while secretly living for it.

write your trope. write it the way it’s been done before or write it sideways and backwards and messy. just write it with emotion. and a little hairpin. and blood under their fingernails.

okay bye

Rin T.

[physalian]

When To Keep Your Writing Stiff (pt 7)

Part 6

Part 1

Gonna shoutout a specific fanfic, “Salvage” (ATLA) for writing that is even leaner than mine is, and mine has zero fat whatsoever. This was really good. I particularly like how some scenes were only 2 or 3 lines long as an example of what I’m going for here.

When I say “stiff” in the following examples I’m specifically talking about a lot of the same syntax, few similes and metaphors, few ‘said’ synonyms, very little, well, “life” in the prose. And this can be good in a few situations.

1. Your narrator is in shock

Shock doesn’t all look the same, but the kind of shock I mean is the one where the person is really quiet and un-emotive, they’re probably not speaking or reacting much to whatever catastrophe just happened and probably not responding to their name or anything spoken to them. Their body is pretty much going “uhhhhhhhhh factory reset!” when whatever it is, is too much to process.

A asks them a question. Once. Twice. B stares ahead. There’s a brown stain on the wall that looks like a thumb.

So if they’re narrating, they’re probably going to be giving the absolute bare minimum, need-to-know information and won’t be thinking about the best adjectives and adverbs. Especially if you normally write with fluffier prose, a jarring shift like this can really help sell the shock and dissociating of the character, something so traumatizing that it effects how the story is told.

2. Your narrator is depressed

Somewhere between New Moon’s 4 pages of just Months to show Bella did absolutely nothing in a depression rot and normal prose (though it was effective, particularly in the movie when they could draw out the words on the screen for longer and did the whole spin-around-her-depression-chair montage).

January came. It rained a lot.

They’ll probably either narrate very thinly, or listlessly. They might focus on a random detail and start going on a long ramble about that one detail that isn’t at all important, but it’s either all they can think about or all that can move them to feel anything in this moment, like:

On the bedside table, that coffee mug still sat there in a thin sheet of dust. What had been liquid now long since dry and gluey. It still sits there, collecting cat fur.

This might be the best place for sentences that all sound and flow exactly the same, but use it sparingly.

3. Your narrator is having a panic attack or trapped in a traumatic situation

Different from shock in that while they are physically capable of moving and interacting, they can’t let themselves describe what they’re seeing and feeling in grand detail. Maybe they’re moving through the horrific aftermath of a battle and all they can describe is the mud under their feet and how it squelches. Or they simply say that “there’s bodies everywhere” because looking too long or too hard at who those bodies belonged to is too much.

4. You’re writing something that has incredibly fast pacing

This post was inspired by a fic I just wrote that spanned about 5 months in about 18k words. Narrative was skipping days ahead between paragraphs at some point as my character was processing the end of an abusive relationship. It sped up and slowed down where necessary, but compared to its sequel that I also just finished (22k words across 7 days), I’d covered a whole month in about 2 sentences in the first one.

See nearly any part of Salvage (or my fics if you feel like it)

What happened in that month didn’t matter, only what was before and what’s different now and how this character realizes how their life is slowly changing, some things they never noticed that are suddenly right in their face or things that quietly slipped away.

—

TLDR; sometimes the lack of emotion and sensory details and frenetic, dynamic syntax is the point, that can sell the reader on the narrator’s mental state far better than picking the juiciest adverbs. If it’s so impactful to them that the physical telling of the story is changed, you’ve done your job.

[writingtheother]

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[rosemarymoodboards]

Underrated Avatar Ships That Deserved More Love (and Why They Just Work)

Everyone talks about the big ships, but let’s talk about the ones that had spark, depth, or raw potential and got sidelined, erased, or just plain slept on.

Because some of these pairs? They made sense. Quietly. Powerfully. Perfectly.

Katara x Haru — The Match That Was Already Aligned

This was a quiet ship that made way too much sense to be ignored. Haru wasn’t intimidated by Katara he respected her. He admired her leadership without trying to compete with it. She called him to action, and he followed not out of obligation but because he believed in her.

They met through revolution, not romance, and that’s what made it strong.

Same values. Same fight. Same kind of softness beneath all the strength.

They would’ve had a relationship built on shared purpose, quiet comfort, and emotional respect. Not possession. Not redemption. Just peace.

This could’ve been the slow-burn, healthy pairing no one saw coming.

Zuko x Jin — The Calm That He Was Never Allowed to Have

Say what you want, but Jin saw Zuko in a way that wasn’t tied to status, legacy, or trauma. She didn’t know who he was, and for a second, he got to pretend he wasn’t carrying the world on his shoulders.

She was warmth and curiosity. He was guarded but gentle. And that moment they shared it was clumsy, awkward, sweet, and real.

Zuko didn’t have to impress her. He didn’t have to prove anything. He just had to be.

And for someone who lived his whole life in exile, that’s a rare kind of intimacy.

They wouldn’t have been this epic enemies to lovers' story, but they could’ve been a healing one. The kind you grow into, not crash into.

Sokka x Suki — The Relationship That Deserved More Room

This ship had potential that the writing never fully let breathe. Their early dynamic was gold. Suki pushed Sokka to unlearn his biases, and Sokka rose to meet her. They challenged each other without tearing each other down.

She taught him grace. He gave her space to be soft. But once they were “together,” the depth kinda flatlined.

Not because they didn’t work but because the show didn’t let them evolve on-screen. They were reduced to “already in love” when their growth was just starting to get interesting.

They deserved to be complex. We deserved to see them fight, talk, learn, and rebuild. Instead, we just got glimpses.

Toph x Aang — The Pair That Could’ve Surprised Everyone

They challenged each other. Toph taught Aang how to stand his ground. Aang taught Toph that softness wasn’t weakness. There was real tension there, not romantic tension, but philosophical tension. And tension like that? It can transform, under the right circumstances.

She taught him how to face things head-on.

He reminded her what softness looked like without condescension.

They were both prodigies. Both burdened by things they didn’t choose. Their dynamic had this push-pull rhythm that could’ve easily evolved into something more grounded and real if the narrative had let it breathe.

In the End…

These pairings weren’t about destiny.

They were about emotional potential that didn’t get center stage.

They weren’t written for fanservice or tension they just worked in the background if you were paying attention.

Some ships burn bright.

These could’ve glowed warm for years.

Also, what's with the Earth Kingdom and having so many great love interests? 🪨🌱💚

[quillver]

✍️ What Makes a Good Ending

For anyone trying to figure out when a story truly ends — this is what I’ve learned.

Not every ending has to be tragic.

Or clever.

Or loud.

But it does have to be true.

Not true to fact —

true to what the story couldn’t lie about any longer.

To the silence it couldn’t maintain.

To the version of itself it couldn’t protect anymore.

A good ending doesn’t just finish the plot.

It breaks the pattern.

It stops the story from circling.

It names what the pages were afraid to say.

Maybe the lovers kiss — and know it won’t be enough.

Maybe the lovers kiss — and this time, it means something.

Maybe the kingdom burns — and the villain lives on.

Maybe the kingdom burns — and something gentler rises from the ashes.

Maybe someone stays silent — and no one forgives them.

Maybe someone stays silent — and it protects more than it ruins.

A good ending makes everything before it heavier.

It shifts the gravity of the first page.

It doesn’t resolve tension —

it reveals what the tension was protecting.

And the great ones do more than land.

They declare what mattered.

They withhold what didn’t.

They risk being misunderstood — in service of truth.

Because a good ending doesn’t just reveal.

It dares.

It cuts off escape.

It says: this is where it ends — and nothing after this would be honest.

It costs the writer to say it.

It costs the reader to accept it.

And still it stays.

Not because it ended.

But because it stopped protecting you.

And you didn’t look away.

🧠 Writers — where did your story finally stop circling?

And what truth was left when the page went quiet?

[gayofthefae]

Character arcs by definition are about choices. That is what characterization is: choices. And a climax is actions. The character makes a choice to change their life in some way. They have impact on the world around them, as we all do, and decided what to do with that impact.

Will's arc cannot be to come to terms with an unchangeable situation. "Be depressed forever or think really hard til you get over it" is not a big character moment choice. Because there are no options.

If there is a single situation and it does not change no matter what you do, there is no choice.

Learning to cope with a bad situation instead of getting out of it is not an arc or a good message. And Will's feelings are not a mental illness that must be cured for him to be happy.

His queerness is not a mental illness, I know you know that. But treating the APPLICATION of his queerness as one is still a flaw to be improved on. You are inadvertantly saying "be gay, but not like that". This is how he wants to be happy. Let him. He's allowed. Stop giving him substitutes. Will's feelings for Mike do not need to be treated.