#am writing

[catfayssoux]

[barryroyco]

“be the change you wanna see in the world” no. write the fic you want to see in the world

[tracle0]

Small writing tip

I've found myself getting lost in chapters quite a lot. Finding the sentences dawdling or meandering, or just not being fully sure what my intention is anymore. To try and counter this, I've started writing little plans for each chapter before I start writing, it, and keeping it at the bottom of the document.

Some examples (from my lil prophet story woo):

nd in this case, 'bus scene' ended up needing expanding too:

It's very base bones, very rough, just an outline of what happens plot-wise and maybe emotion-wise, if it's going to be a heavy chapter. Helps to have something to refer back to. I don't know if it's useful or helpful to anyone else, but could well be? Food for thought :)?

[forasecondtherewedwon]

The plot of the Bridgerton fic I'm working on is that I personally have a lot of feelings about Peneloise and I'm going to write them all down.

[charliejaneanders]

Random writing thought: the best stories are often the ones that only you could have written — but also the ones that you could only write at this one moment.

I couldn't write All the Birds in the Sky from scratch now if I tried. But the me of 2013 couldn't have written The Prodigal Mother either.

[shepardsherd]

When your characters just start revealing lore you didn't know about them, as you're writing them

[emeryleewho]

I used to work for a trade book reviewer where I got paid to review people's books, and one of the rules of that review company is one that I think is just super useful to media analysis as a whole, and that is, we were told never to critique media for what it didn't do but only for what it did.

So, for instance, I couldn't say "this book didn't give its characters strong agency or goals". I instead had to say, "the characters in this book acted in ways that often felt misaligned with their characterization as if they were being pulled by the plot."

I think this is really important because a lot of "critiques" people give, if subverted to address what the book does instead of what it doesn't do, actually read pretty nonsensical. For instance, "none of the characters were unique" becomes "all of the characters read like other characters that exist in other media", which like... okay? That's not really a critique. It's just how fiction works. Or "none of the characters were likeable" becomes "all of the characters, at some point or another, did things that I found disagreeable or annoying" which is literally how every book works?

It also keeps you from holding a book to a standard it never sought to meet. "The world building in this book simply wasn't complex enough" becomes "The world building in this book was very simple", which, yes, good, that can actually be a good thing. Many books aspire to this. It's not actually a negative critique. Or "The stakes weren't very high and the climax didn't really offer any major plot twists or turns" becomes "The stakes were low and and the ending was quite predictable", which, if this is a cute romcom is exactly what I'm looking for.

Not to mention, I think this really helps to deconstruct a lot of the biases we carry into fiction. Characters not having strong agency isn't inherently bad. Characters who react to their surroundings can make a good story, so saying "the characters didn't have enough agency" is kind of weak, but when you flip it to say "the characters acted misaligned from their characterization" we can now see that the *real* problem here isn't that they lacked agency but that this lack of agency is inconsistent with the type of character that they are. a character this strong-willed *should* have more agency even if a weak-willed character might not.

So it's just a really simple way of framing the way I critique books that I think has really helped to show the difference between "this book is bad" and "this book didn't meet my personal preferences", but also, as someone talking about books, I think it helps give other people a clearer idea of what the book actually looks like so they can decide for themselves if it's worth their time.

Update: This is literally just a thought exercise to help you be more intentional with how you critique media. I'm not enforcing this as some divine rule that must be followed any time you have an opinion on fiction, and I'm definitely not saying that you have to structure every single sentence in a review to contain zero negative phrases. I'm just saying that I repurposed a rule we had at that specific reviewer to be a helpful tool to check myself when writing critiques now. If you don't want to use the tool, literally no one (especially not me) can or wants to force you to use it. As with all advice, it is a totally reasonable and normal thing to not have use for every piece of it that exists from random strangers on the internet. Use it to whatever extent it helps you or not at all.

[selenekallanwriter]

Person: What's your book about?

Writers:

I'm both somehow 🙃

[xisadorapurlowx]

[moonshinemagpie]

There are little romance subplots all around me irl and I don't have the time to turn any of them into novels

Today I went to my favorite Italian restaurant and was seated at the table nearest the kitchen. We noticed a change to the menu. The list of pastas had been replaced by just "pasta of the day." We asked what the pasta of the day was. The waiter told us it was a mystery. So we ordered it, and when it came it was pasta with eggs and bacon, and I was so surprised and delighted by this unexpected whimsy that I started to clap. And then I noticed the chef watching me from the doorway and smiling. He had clearly come out wanting to see what people's reactions would be.

I'm not saying I love the chef or that the chef loves me. I am saying that is a seed with which to grow a romance that I don't have time to write.

[jgmartin]

me, after clearing my schedule to write:

uhhhh it was raining... and dark (and also night) and um... cold i guess?? anyway, something dramatic~ happened

me, stuck in traffic on my way to work:

Rain tumbled through midnight leaves, casting the forest in liquid moonlight. A low growl shook the horizon. Death had come.

[dice-wizard]

Okay writers listen up

I'm gonna tell you about how I wrangled my shitbird brain into being a terrifying word-churning engine and have written over 170K words in under a year.

I wanna be clear that before unlocking this Secret Technique I was a victim of my unmedicated ADHD, able to start but never finish, able to ideate but not commit and I truly and firmly believed that I'd never write a novel and such a thing was simply outside of my reach.

Now I write (and read!!) every day. Every. Single. Day. Like some kind of scriptorial One Punch Man.

Step the First

Remove friction between yourself and writing.

I personally figured out how to comfortably write on my phone which meant I didn't have to struggle with the insurmountable task of opening my laptop.

I don't care if this means you write in a Discord server you set up for yourself, but fucking do it. Literally whatever makes you write!

(if you do write somewhere that isn't a word processor PLEASE back your work up regularly!)

Step the Second

Make that shit a habit. Write every day.

For me, I allow myself the grace that ANY progress on writing counts. One sentence? Legal. Five thousand furious hyperfixated words? Also legal.

Every day, make progress. Any progress.

I deleted Twitter from my phone and did my best to replace doomscrolling with writing. If I caught myself idly scrolling I'd close whatever I was looking at and open my draft and write one (1) sentence until I made THAT a habit, too.

Step Two-point-Five

DO NOT REWRITE. If you are creating a first draft, don't back up or restart. Continous forward motion. Second drafts and editors exist. Firsts are for ripping the fucking thing out of your brain.

If you're working on revisions after an editor or beta readers or whoever has given you feedback, then you can rewrite that's OK (and it counts as your writing for the day!)

Step the Third

Now that you've found a comfortable way to write and are doing it every day, don't stop. Keep doing it. Remember, just one sentence is all you need. You can always do more, but if one lousy sentence is all you can manage then you're still successfully writing.

Remember: this is what worked for me. Try things until you find what works for you.

You can do it. I believe in you.

[magiccarpetman]

When you see this post, add one sentence to your current WIP.

(I need to work on my thesis, so I’ll add a sentence per note as long as that’s sustainable. We can do this together 🧡🧡)

[theyoungwritersmind-aristanelson]

[nikasholistic]

You don’t have to be a perfect writer to start writing. The more you write, the better you become. 

[charliejaneanders]

I just saw a post on Tumblr asking if you're "allowed" to do something in a story you're writing. (In this case, a POV shift.)

I just want to sing to the tune of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, "THERE ARE NO RULES. THERE ARE NO RULES. There are no rules there are no rules there are no rules..."