#because even stephen king had a first story first draft <3 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

drysaladandketchup · 5 months

Text

Writing Meme

Tagged by my dear @irrelevanttous <3

RULES: go to your published works on AO3 and list the first fic you ever published there, the last fic you published, any fic that you wrote for a fandom/ship only once, your favorite fic you wrote in the fandom/ship that has the most works, the fic you wish more people read, the fic you agonized over the most, the fic that sprang fully formed from your mind without any effort, and a work you are proud of—for whatever reason

first fic you ever published on Ao3: Spirit of Champions, for the Supernatural/Destiel fandom. I don't even know why I'm linking the fic, it was ten years ago I'd like to think my writing has improved a lot since then so... maybe don't read it lol. I actually have another fic that says it was posted on the same date but I think that's because I moved them both over from livejournal at the same time, so whatever

last fic you published: Acts of Devotion for the Hockey/Mattdrai fandom. Much prouder of this fic haha, though I was still getting a feel for hockey and these guys during it's construction. It hopefully won't be my last mattdrai fic though. Got a few ideas and WIPs sitting in my drafts

a fic you wrote for a fandom/ship only once: I don't think I've ever written just one fic for a fandom. Though I certainly have many abandoned WIP's and a few unpublished fics from days gone by. Also due to a lack of ideas or energy, I often end up publishing nothing for a fandom, despite my love for it. But I'll go with the fandom I only published two fics for. After Life's Fitful Fever, He Sleeps Well for The Terror. It's actually a platonic ship (if that counts? Depends on your definition of 'ship' I suppose), but it's still one I'm quite fond of overall

favorite fic you wrote in the fandom/ship with the most works: well I already mentioned Supernatural, so that would be the obvious answer lol. But I already did that, so I'm going to go with a fic from the next biggest fandom I've published for. Which I would say is String Theory for Final Fantasy XV. The only FF game I've ever played, but I had a grand old time, made a lot of friends and had a lot of growth in that community

fic you wish more people read: Can I say any of my fics from the Dunkirk fandom? No? Boo. It's a tiny fandom so I don't expect a tonne of interaction haha. But it is the fandom I've written the most for. Ideas just kept on coming (probably because I love history and angst). So I'd say... Where You Were, Where You're Needed. My first for the fandom, and one I still love dearly

fic you agonized over the most: Skybound, for Dunkirk. It's the only novel-length fic I've written, and it took me two years. I also didn't publish it until it was completely finished, edited, re-drafted, and remodelled within an inch of it's life so... yeah that one. Plus all the history research and story planning that went into it was a lot more than I usually do. It was fun, I'm glad I finished it, but fuck I don't know how people write novels regularly. Stephen King tell me your secret

fic that sprang fully formed from your mind without any effort: For The Glory, for the Hockey/Mattdrai fandom. Maybe the fastest I've written anything. Basically wrote it from start to finish within a couple hours, not including food and sleep. Not a monumental fic, no, but for someone with chronic fatigue and adhd... astounding. It was very much a result of conversations with M. and her determination to drag me into hockey and mattdrai. Successfully, clearly haha

work you are proud of: I'm going to say Skybound again. Small fandom, but a huge fic for me. One I could probably turn into an original piece with minimal finagling if I wanted. I would also like to think one could enjoy the fic without having seen Dunkirk. That being said, now that it's been over a year a half since I finished it, I'm already looking at it thinking 'I could have written this differently. I could have removed this or tweaked that.' Editor hell. But I'm leaving it as is, using it as a benchmark for my (hopefully) continued improvement as a writer. I think I improved over the course of writing it, even. A lot changed from inception to publication. But I'm no less proud of it, as a written work or as a story. I did what I wanted, and I wrote the exact story I wanted to read. So I'm happy :)

Thank you for the tag, M.! <3

#text #asks #see M. if you tag me in things I will do them. eventually. it just takes me a while lol

2 notes · View notes

winterhawk-olympic-bang · 3 years

Text

How To Edit Your Writing

Guest Poster: Chronicwhimsy

Here is our final Writer Workshop post, written by Chronicwhimsy. Have a read and then head over to the Discord Server where we have a channel for you to take part in a discussion based on the post, with chances to share your own ideas too.

Editing: a drive-by guide

Hi, my name is Claire, and I’m an editor.

(Hi Claire)

I’ve been asked to give a quick guide on tips for editing your stories, as I’ve been a beta/editor for various fanfic writers over the years. I’m a professional editor, working for a publishing house in the UK, and I offer independent freelance editing too, via my website. I’ll be on the Discord server answering questions this evening, but I’m also happy to chat to people either through my website or even if you wanted to drop me a line on tumblr.

The key thing to remember about editing is that the end goal is to make your story the best it can be, and make sure your initial idea comes across as clearly and purely as you first imagined it. It’s about ensuring that the lines of communication between you and your reader are 100% open.

To do that, you need to have finished your story, because you can’t fix something that doesn’t exist.

Then you edit.

What now?

So, you’ve finished your Winterhawk Olympic Bang Fic, and you’re wondering what to do next?

The very first, and most important thing you should do? Celebrate. I mean congratulate the hell out of yourself, pat yourself on the back, and have some cake. Finishing stories is hard. Getting through a first draft is one of the trickiest parts of writing, so you should be proud of yourself, and proud of your story.

Because in a short while, editing is going to make you hate both.

I mean that in the nicest possible way of course, but you absolutely are going to be thoroughly sick of this whole thing by the time you’re done, and you’re going to question everything you’ve ever written. You’re going to get a close-up view of all your narrative bad habits which will make you think you’ve never had any skill at all, and you’re going to re-read your work so many times that it’ll feel trite, old, uninspired. This is normal and it is your brain lying to you. If you remember nothing else, remember that!

“The writing itself is no big deal. The editing, and even more than that, the self-doubt, is excruciatingly impossible.” Jonathan Safran Foer

Don’t lose faith! Editors and editing exist for a reason, no first draft is perfect. You’ve done something amazing in finishing, and now you’re going to make it incredible.

Before You Start - Take a Break

You know the phrase “can’t see the wood for the trees”? It could just as easily be “can’t see the story for the words.” It’s never recommended to go straight into editing as soon as you finish writing, and part of the reason for that is because you’re too deep in the story to be able to assess it objectively, or to catch things that are missed out because you know they’re there, but the reader wouldn’t.

“Once it's done, put it away until you can read it with new eyes. When you're ready, pick it up and read it, as if you've never read it before.” Neil Gaiman

Most writers and editors advocate putting a story away for a month or so before returning to edit, so you’re looking at it with fresh eyes. Obviously, with a Big Bang (or other fic event) this sort of time is usually at a premium! Try and make as much space as you can while still leaving yourself time to edit.

If you really don’t have any time, one trick that can help is changing your location. If you write in your room, can you relocate to your kitchen? Or a café (if you can safely)? Could you print it out? (Printing Top Tip: if you do print it, try and do it double-spaced - this makes it easier on the eyes, and gives you room to make notes. Also, serif fonts can often be easier to read than sans serif fonts, as it gives stronger distinctions between different letters.)

The Filter System

I like to think of the editing process as a series of different filters which, when used one after the other, produce a finely-sieved finished product. Each filter stage has slightly smaller holes than the one before it, as you look increasingly closely at your work.

Filter 1: Structural editing

Does the story make sense? Is the pace okay? Do all the scenes work where they are, or would they be better elsewhere? Do some scenes need to be there at all? Is the characterisation consistent? Does anyone change names halfway through? Did you forget what time of year it was set halfway through?

Filter 2: Line editing

Is this phrase as tight as it could be? Have you repeated yourself anywhere? Does this sentence add anything or does it throw the pace off? Have you gone overboard with adjectives and similes? Have you been too sparse with them?

Filter 3: Copy editing

Is your style consistent? Did you start writing in present tense and switch to past tense? Could this scene transition be snappier? Are there any bits that you want to tidy up? Have you left any half-finished sentences because you got distracted before you could end it?

Filter 4: Proofreading

Is everything spelled correctly? Have you caught all the strange grammar mistakes?

Some of these things might be picked up by your beta reader if you have one. Different beta readers have different styles, and also they will work based on their relationship with you and what you prefer. Some may stick to proofreading and consistency-checking, others may be more confident to dive right in and look at structure, pacing and characterisation. Some may work through the process with you as you write, others may only look at the story when it’s complete so they can get a full overview. There is no right or wrong answer, and having a conversation with your beta about your respective styles at the start can help you work better together!

Filter 1 - Structural Editing

For this stage, you want to read your whole story through from start to finish, and resist the urge to tweak anything to begin with! You will want a way of making notes as you go through because as you do, you’ll make yourself a cheat-sheet to help you with your line edit. Things to keep track of:

Character name spellings

Character ages

Character relationships (drawing a relationship web can be very helpful to visualise this!)

The time span of the story - the date it starts, the date it ends.

As a subset of this, I find it can be very helpful to set up a spreadsheet with a timeline of what happens in the story, and who is involved. Doing this both chronologically for the characters and in order of how it happens in the story can help you keep track of what characters know when, and also when the readers find out certain information. You might have one of these from when you were planning your story (as detailed in Sara Holmes’ workshop). If you’ve kept it up to date with changes to the plot and structure as you’ve written, this will be super helpful.

At this stage, you’re looking to see if everything works as a consistent story. You want to check to see if it feels like it’s the right pace, or if there are bits where it drags or rushes through the action. Why is this? Are there scenes which aren’t adding anything to the progress? Could they just be referred to in passing, or removed entirely without impacting the story? Are there other scenes which need to be added to provide more detail and growth? Is there anything that you as a writer know that is essential to the story, but you forgot to actually put in the text?

“Crafty writers...don't allow Exposition to form Lumps. They break up the information, grind it fine, and make it into bricks to build the story with.” Ursula K. Le Guin

You’re also looking to see if the characters feel true to themselves all the way through. Do the relationships spark? Do they sound like themselves? Can you hear them in your head?

Some people recommend doing several structural edits, with a different focus each time. One pass to look at the pacing, one pass to look at the characters, one to look at the story arc. You’ll work out what floats your boat, but you will be re-reading this story a lot of times before you’re done editing - which is why it’s very important to write what you love and want to read! You’ll go through many stages of hating this story before you let it go, and that will be even harder if it wasn’t something you enjoyed in the first place.

Filter 2 - Line Editing

So you remember I told you to make all those notes during your structural edit? Here’s where you’re going to use them. Now’s the time to go through your story line by line and check that the details in your cheat sheet are correct all the way through the story. I’ve written a novel that I initially set in November, but by the time I finished it, I’d decided it was taking place in early May. I had to go back and fix all the dates and weather descriptions to make sure the action hadn’t actually been yeeted forward six months spontaneously in the middle of a conversation.

Arguably, the line edit will be the most painful part of editing. At this stage, you will be taking a fine-tooth comb to everything you have written, examining it to within an inch of its life, and casting judgement. You’re going to find every stylistic tic you have (for me, everyone is constantly quirking their eyebrows and smirking like they’ve got cramp in their facial muscles), and you’re going to get rid of them (a person only has so many eyebrows, and they can only quirk so far). Now is the time to kill your darlings - don’t hang on to anything unless you feel it’s really doing a job to further the story and the characters.

“Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler's heart, kill your darlings.” Stephen King

If you have ever worried about the unbearable sensation of being Known, the line edit is where you will experience that with every word, and you’ll be doing it to yourself. This is when the doubts will really start to creep in and you will maybe feel like everything you write is unoriginal, derivative trash and unfit for human eyes.

Here I’ll reiterate what I said above:

This is a normal feeling, everyone experiences it when editing. E V E R Y O N E.

It’s a lie. No-one else will ever read your story in this state, no-one else will ever read your story this closely. Of course it feels obvious and uninspired to you - you wrote it. It’s your idea, and you’ve read it several times, it holds no surprises for you. (I may be projecting my feelings from every time I’ve edited something here, but…)

You’ll also be catching any ELEPHANTS or whatever your mammal of choice for placeholder text is that you’ve stationed throughout the story as a flag for you to come back and add in a name, or a food, or a song title later. You know, the things you decided were a problem for Future!You. I have bad news, the future is now.

Top Tip: if you have changed someone’s name halfway through, DON’T for the love of Mike, just do a straight find and replace to correct it. Because that’s when you suddenly find out how many other words actually contain names (Mark became Bill? That’s great, until your characters are going to the superBillet to buy groceries). Some word processing programmes have a “whole word” option which is your friend, otherwise ensure to put spaces either side of the word when you search. If you don’t, you’ve just made another horrible job for yourself...

Filter 3 - Copy Editing

Once you’ve made it out the other side of the Line Edit (and given yourself a nice treat to congratulate yourself because that stage is HARD), we get onto copy editing. This is basically the set-dressing stage. You’ve built the house, you’ve decorated the room, and now you’re just making sure every bit of furniture is in the right place for optimal feng shui.

Here’s where you go through and go, do I really need a dash here, or could I just use a comma? Could I use fewer commas? Could I go in and move all of @kangofu_cb’s commas around because I’m the sort of person who will come into your house and change how you hang your toilet paper or where you keep your ketchup.

Now is the time to be as picky as possible, like you’re an interior designer for the most demanding client in the world and the ornament must be exactly equidistant from both ends of the mantlepiece and facing precisely south-west. Things that may have just survived your line edit will be measured again, and if they’re found wanting, then they get binned.

“Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very’; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.” Mark Twain

Another thing you might like to do here is check that all your features and things are correct. Did you make a wild claim about the lifecycle of salamanders, or the average price of corn and then never go back to verify this? Take a second to just do that now. It may be that you decide it’s not a problem (I received one copy edit note saying that an idiom used in a book wasn’t recorded until 200 years later, and I made the editorial decision that no-one would care), but for bigger things you may want to make sure you’re accurate.

If you google it (as I just did, to make sure I was definitely giving you the right information), copy editing is often conflated with line editing, and that’s because in reality a lot of the elements of copy editing actually wouldn’t usually be done by the author, and are probably irrelevant to fanfic. The copy editor is responsible for ensuring the book has a consistent grammatical style in line with the preferences of the publisher (em-dash or en-dash, curly quote marks or straight ones, how you deal with acronyms, what needs to be italicised, etc. etc.), which isn’t necessarily required for fanfic. In reality, for fanfic I’d use this stage as a second, lighter line-edit to see where things can be tightened up in phrasing, as well as perhaps a preliminary proofread where you start to mark up any spelling errors.

Filter 4 - Proofreading

By this stage, you’ll be exhausted, and sick to death of the blasted thing. But the end is in sight! Now you’re onto the proofread. This is another close read, where you go through and check for spelling errors, typos, missing full stops, strange formatting stuff (which probably will be less of an issue as AO3 basically makes everything uniform anyway).

Before you even start this, change your font.

We’ve all been there, thought we’d caught every spelling error, every weird typo, only to spot six immediately after posting. That’s because after a certain point our brain becomes used to the font we’ve written in, and will automatically correct things that aren’t right. AO3 has its own unique formatting - colour, spacing, font - and the minute your fic appears on there in this new format you brain wakes up and is like “oh shit, yeah, that’s not how it should be.”

By changing the font before you proofread, you preempt this step.

Another thing to remember: it’s unlikely you will ever catch every mistake. Published books regularly go out with a smattering of typographical errors throughout the text - how many first editions of books are valuable because of misspellings that slipped through the net? You’re only human.

“Connie's other job was proof-editing which she did very badly. Transferring the author's corrections to a clean sheet of proofs was something Connie was unable to do without missing an average of three corrections a page, or transcribing newly inserted material all wrong... she put angry authors' letters about the mutilation of their books under the cushion of her chair to deal with later.” Muriel Spark, A Far Cry from Kensington

Often, spelling errors and things you would look for in a proofread are things that a beta reader will pick up as they go, as they’re the easiest things to spot, but it’s also worth looking over yourself for anything your beta might have missed.

Whether you decide to follow any or all of these steps, always do the proofread last.There is no point carefully spellchecking a chapter you are then going to delete, or proofreading the whole thing, but adding loads of new paragraphs later that either don’t get looked at or mean you end up having to proofread twice. That’s the only hard and fast rule when it comes to editing, and it will save you a lot of unnecessary work!

FREEDOM

And then, finally, unbelievably - you’re done. Your literary child is ready to leave the nest. Resist the urge to keep re-reading and tweaking. Instead, click “publish” and give yourself a nice little treat. You’ve earned it.

Miscellany and Disclaimers

These editing stages are ones that would be applied to a published novel. An author would probably do this several times - once on their own to get it ready for submission, then perhaps again with their agent, but the really heavy work would be done with their editor. The structural edit would be done under the advice of an agent or editor where the author looks at their comments, rejigs things accordingly, and lather, rinse, repeat until everyone’s happy. The editor would undertake the line edit, and the author would decide what they wanted to keep or change. The copy edit and proofread would be done in-house or sent to freelancers, with queries and changes wafted past the author for clarification or approval.

Self-published authors will often hire freelancers to help at various stages to get feedback and advice.

Very rarely would an author go from draft to final published piece by doing all their editing alone. Because it’s hard fucking work, and because your brain will get exhausted.

In light of that, you need to remember:

You’ve written a fanfic

The editorial standards of fanfic are significantly less stringent than published books

Editing by yourself is really hard work that many people are often paid to do for published books

No-one is paying you for your fanfic

Fanfic is supposed to be fun

Some published authors will edit and rewrite and edit and rewrite again and again. At a panel I attended, Joanne Harris said that if she didn’t rewrite her work at least five times she was being too easy on herself, while Joe Hill said he usually aimed for three rewrites - Joe edited as he went along, going over the previous day’s pages before continuing, where Joanne completed her manuscripts before editing. Elizabeth May has talked about her stages of drafting, starting with her Trash Draft, then her Clean Draft, and then rewriting and editing after that.

These are people who are writing professionally, getting paid for their work, and so the time they put in has monetary results. If you want to write original fiction, their advice is extremely valuable.

For fanfiction, it’s a large time investment for something you’re doing as a hobby for free. If I’m strictly honest, I’m fairly lax with my fanfiction editing. I do structural discussions and tweaks with my beta reader as I write, and then a spell check. I’m also aware that my fanfics aren’t narratively complex, nor do they seem as polished, rich and deep as some of the other works out there. That’s fine by me. You simply need to find the level you’re happy at, where you can still feel proud of your work but you’re enjoying the experience.

In the end - it’s all for fun!

Resources:

Online

Curtis Brown Creative: An Editor’s Guide to Editing Your Novel

Joanne Harris: Ten Tweets About Editing

Joanne Harris: Writing Resources

NerdsLikeMe: Beta Reading vs Proofreading vs Editing

Books

Stephen King - On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Ursula K. Le Guin - Steering the Craft: Exercises and Discussions on Story Writing for the Lone Navigator or the Mutinous Crew

#winterhawk #winterhawk olympic bang #whob #writer workshops #writer workshop: editing #guest post #chronicwhimsy

19 notes · View notes

throwitawayokay · 3 years

Text

Predators around every corner

This is confusing. A lot of your favorite fandom creators, out of nowhere, are being accused of endangering minors and others for making nsfw content or following/being-friends-with people who do; that is a serious claim, and a frightening one, and no one would say such a thing if they weren’t 100% sure they were correct about it, right? After all, to say something about someone is an awful thing to say, and needs proof and reason, or else it is libel and grounds for a defamation lawsuit and would, morally, be an absolutely terrible thing to accuse a person of if it was not true.

Obviously, they must have reason. Obviously, these accusations are founded and must eventually prove to be true, even if they cannot now, or maybe they can, maybe the accusations would hold up in a court of law, but for some reason the same people making these accusations... won’t come out directly and accuse these people and don’t have any evidence besides what they ‘think’ this other person is thinking.

Someone has made an argument, somewhere, that writing nsfw of aged up minor characters in atla is predatory behavior and endangering to minors. Is it?

1. Is it legal?

Easy answer, yes. It’s legal. By definition it is smut of adult characters, regardless of where it originates. None of it is on tumblr, where it would not be allowed, but instead on a web site where it is clearly tagged and behind an age limit. In fact, this argument would be laughed out of court. Because no law is protecting the nsfw depictions of fictional characters, who are not real, regardless of age, besides potentially copyright.

If the stories are about underage fictional characters? It still, at least by USofA law, still not illegal. Yes. That’s correct. Stories depicting underage fictional characters in sexual situations does not follow under the definition of child porn and is allowed in publication and law. To see proof of that, besides reading the actual law which you are free to do, simply note the fact that Stephen King’s It is not only still in print but recently had two film adaptations.

So that, would in fact, be allowed; however what is being called into question is depicting adult fictional characters in nsfw situations. A completely different thing that is, actually, very different from the other. But, to simply answer the question of legality, it’s all legal.

2. When is it endangering to minors?

This content can, in fact, be endangering to minors when they are exposed to it either without warning, in a search, or if they are sent this content by another person. Ways that this could happen are if nsfw images appear google searches (where such content can be reported and taken down) or if nsfw writing is not properly tagged or accompanied by archive warnings (posted on ffnet for example or not properly rated on ao3). If this is happening, it is a good idea to go to the website to report it properly, or have someone contact the artist/author about the lack of tagging - the content itself is irregardless, the problem that exists here is the lack of warning.

Nsfw art is also not allowed by the tumblr guidelines; feel free to report it if seen. Please, however, take a step back to remember than an image of a person in their underwear is not, in fact, pornography. If you’ve ever walked past a billboard for a clothing company or seen a Victoria’s Secret catalogue you should know this. There is, in fact, an actual parameter for what sets apart sfw and nsfw.

If this content, however, has been properly tagged and is behind a proper age limit, with warnings and the like, it is not endangering toward minors. Clicking on a nsfw art or writing with clear warnings for what it is does not make the creator of that content responsible; a porn star is not responsible for endangering minors if a minor answers falsely to a website agreement stating they are 18 and views their content. The responsibility lies with the minor as well as the guardians of that minor for not teaching them how to responsibly search the internet and recognize what they should or should not be viewing.

If you are not mature enough to recognize this, you should not be online.

3. But I disagree?

You are within your rights to have a difference of opinion or feel uncomfortable if a person posts links to their nsfw content, or mentions that they make nsfw content. In fact, nsfw content makes many people uncomfortable. There are many ways to avoid seeing this.

First, go to the filter on your blog and filter all nsfw related tags you can think of, some starting points I would suggest are: nsfw, nsfw tw, nsfw mention, adult content, adult content tw, adult content mention (feel free to keep going, be as thorough as makes you comfortable). Next, block the blogs you do not personally like; feel free to block as many blogs, for any reason, that you like. This is absolutely fine and no explanation is needed. If you feel uncomfortable having your blog followed by any adults at all, you can also take steps to make the blog unsearchable and only follow as few people as you like.

What you should not do is harass people for making content that you personally do not like. This includes nsfw content. Making such incredibly serious claims as to state someone is a predator who endangers minors for making nsfw content in your fandom is unfounded, dangerous, and entirely irresponsible. Adults participating in this rhetoric need to take a very good look at themselves, and minors who have been experiencing anxiety as a result of this claim, I am very sorry.

4. What was the aunt-suki thing?

Where did this whole thing start? No one was making this point only a few months ago, did it just pop up out of nowhere?

^ this blog, since deleted [also goes formerly by tumble-dump (nowlil-baby-man) as well as jetru(deleted) safe-for-atla, and dennis-quaid] spearheaded this opinion after accusing one of the largest creators in the fandom, an adult poc, of endangering minors for an image posted to tumblr with possible suggestive themes (Tumblr does not allow nsfw art, it was not nsfw). Aunt-Suki is a 23 year old, self-described “titanium white” woman. She stated directly that anyone who posted nsfw content behind age limit barriers was predatory and that nsfw artwork of atla characters was rampant on this website without evidence.

After curating a blocklist, and admittedly receiving hate for doing so (despite oddly enough asking for anon hate on several occasions) aunt-suki did in fact create a first draft blocklist including fandom creators who make nsfw content, who are follow or are friends with those who make nsfw content despite not doing it themselves, and people who specifically asked her to be on the blocklist. This, in itself, was fine. A list of creators making nsfw content could, in fact, be helpful and good for those who do not want to see such content to have a handy resource of who to block and avoid. Unfortunately, the rhetoric of “they are all predators” was something aunt-suki fostered and continued to repeat, getting a lot of people to also feel the same way. This invited harassment, much of which directly done and targeted at others by aunt-suki. She repeatedly stated on her blog ‘I am safe, no one else is unless I say so, in order to keep yourself safe you must ask me who is bad [paraphrase, not direct quote]’ insisting that anyone who wished to know who was a predator on the website had to privately DM her for the information. Aunt-Suki used this to gain followers of minors and to specifically foster friendships with them.

We know this because aunt-suki made a post exposing herself. An anon asked her to defend the way she interacted with minors and she defended herself with phrases such as “I love kids so much more than grown ups”[quote], stating she runs a server of 13+ wlw and they all “care a lot about each other”; she also admitted she takes it upon herself to “expose kids to [heavy topics]” including race, sexism, queer issues, mental health, politics, etc. Aunt-Suki is not a trained professional for these issues and admits in the same post that she does not understand there could be any difference in power dynamics between her and these teenagers.

In addition, while defending these close relationships with minors that she specifically admits to reaching out for, Aunt-Suki also divulged her past at 18 years old of saying the n-word (excused by explaining she has a black friend); saying that this is the reason why she should, as a 23 year old white adult, be allowed to discuss “heavy topics” with minors.

This most certainly calls into question the fact that it was, with one exception, non-white creators that aunt-suki chose to publicly call out by name.

After being asked to defend herself for these actions she admitted to, Aunt-Suki deleted her blog but has continued to go online on her others blogs and discords, dm’ing others and making posts accusing people who called her out of being predators, asking for sympathy, blaming her actions on her adhd, and refusing to answer any of the messages sent to her. Other large creators have made posts about this, very rarely using her name to allow her some anonymity or time to explain her actions which she has not done. She choose instead to send anonymous messages further accusing these creators.

5. Why did you tell me that?

This directly illustrates the problem with presenting an issue such as nsfw art/writing in the fandom without pointing out why others might disagree with it; and jumping past logic to decry those who don’t agree with extremely serious accusations. Someone with actual ill (or misguided) attentions may take advantage, deliberately isolating minors and portraying themselves as ‘good and safe’ while slowly whittling down who the minors can and cannot follow until no one able to call them out when they are the one participating in actual behavior that is inappropriate to minors.

6. I still don’t agree with the first points.

That’s fine. Please call out actual predators if you see them. Do not, however, do so without any evidence or for reasons that simply are not, and never would be, considered basis for doing so in any legal or reasonable capacity.

#zutara #zukka #kataang #atla #atla fandom #drama #discourse

7 notes · View notes

inkinghubris · 3 years

Text

Hemingway and Other Things You Shouldn't Talk About

Hemingway Said, You Do Not Talk About Writing

Rule number one: You do not talk about writing. Rule number two: You do NOT talk about writing! I always picture Brad Pitt walking around telling a group of authors all the rules before a furious word slinging writers event, in some dark, seedy basement covered in sweat and coffee stains.

Hemingway and Fight Club have things in common, such as rules about not talking. Obviously this is not the case. However, as writers we have a series of unwritten laws that we tend to either abide or pretend to be oblivious too. I am Jack's complete lack of interest. Writers Have Heroes, Too As writers, we have authors as heroes just as those school kids look up to athletes. Stephen King, Ernest Hemingway, Henry Miller and Stu Stein, to name a few. These authors broke the first rule of Writing Club: they all have a publication called On Writing. "Throughout Ernest Hemingway's career as a writer," says Larry W. Phillips in his introduction to Ernest Hemingway on Writing, "he maintained that it was bad luck to talk about writing." So what else are we mortal writer's, superstitious or otherwise, not supposed to do or say? There is quite a list, actually. I am Jack's bleeding heart. Rule #1 As we have established, it is bad luck to talk about writing. Thanks, Ernest. Why, though? Basically, as Hemingway explains further, it is better to just write and not speak of it. In his method of removing all the bullshit and leaving behind only the greatness. I disagree with this almost completely. Almost. I feel that we are just glorified campfire story-tellers. It is our duty to tell stories. Written down for others to enjoy at their leisure, obviously, that's why we are "writers". At the core of it all, however, we tell stories. Talking about our stories is just in our nature. I am Jack's gaping mouth. I do agree with the concept that we shouldn't brag, and we also shouldn't try to school or teach every passer-by with our knowledge of the process. Just tell the story, mate. Rule #2 Another no-no myth is that we should write perfect. I am Jack's decaying ego. As the saying goes: practice makes perfect. I disagree. I used to tell my football teams that practice does NOT make perfect, only perfect practice makes perfect. They just looked at me and nodded "yes coach".

Don't practice writing, practice perfect writing. In writing, this same method applies to an extent. If you practice writing you will get better, but only so far as you write perfect. The problem is that no one just writes perfectly out of the box. If we did, there would be no need for drafts and we would just pump out perfect final drafts day in and day out. James Patterson was said to have written over a million words before he wrote his first novel. Writing makes you write better, but to write better you don't just write words, you write better words. The one issue I have with this is that trying to write every word perfectly distracts from the art. Instead, I suggest that you just write. Worry only about perfection while editing and focus on writing perfectly whilst writing the final draft. Otherwise, just write. Rule #3 Don't write like your idols. Sigh. I have heard this over and over and over and every time it upsets me to no end. Believe it or not, there is a finite number of writing genres. We are drawn towards certain ones and turned off by others. I, for example, love thriller and horror and dislike romance and most young adult. Having authors as idols is not a bad thing and if we aspire to be an author then who should we emulate? Our idols. Exactly. So why are we told not to? The reasons vary from one mouth to another, but the main theme seems to be that we should write our own style in our own voice. I tend to believe, though, that our own style and voice will come out, anyway. We should write like our idols. I don't write romance, and would never try to emulate Nicholas Sparks. However, writing horror I see nothing wrong trying to write in similar styles of King, Koontz or Barker. Will I ever write a book and have a publisher read it and say... "Hey! did Clive Barker write this?" No. That will never happen. However, if I am trying to sell a horror book and someone compares it to Clive Barker, then I should feel overwhelmingly excited about that. Writing like your idols is never a bad thing. Rule #4 You should never ask your mom for feedback. Again, heavy sigh. Friends and family are essential for writers' feedback, especially if you are just starting out. While it is true that mom and dad will have a harder time giving you negative feedback (generally) this is not a bad thing. As a writer, you will experience enough setbacks and hardships and negativity to last five lifetimes. Eventually it will harden you, make you better, make you more fierce. In the beginning though, it's detrimental to your writing career. If you start out with negative feedback, you will eventually believe it. Having mom coo and gush over your first few works will help boost your ego and keep you going. From there, you will begin perfect practice and have thousands more words under your belt. You must seek out your mom and close friends for feedback in the beginning (and again any time you need to return to your happy place of believing you can accomplish this task). It is essential, and helpful. I am Jack's boastful pride. Rule #5

If you don't know, believe you know. Base it on natural physics or biology and readers will believe it as real, too. Write what you know. This is tricky and I agree with it to a very limited extent. Readers (and publishers alike) know when you are bullshitting them. If you are writing about car mechanics and you know nothing of repairing an engine, you will turn your readers off. Once you lose a reader because you don't know what you are talking about, they will never believe another word you write, if they even finish the book. However, just writing what you know will severely limit what you write about. And what about things that no one knows about? Aliens, vampires, deep space... if we only ever wrote what we knew, then books like Lewis' Narnia or Tolkien's ring quests and hobbits, would never exist. I take the phrase "write what you know" and change it slightly to "write what you believe." A simple change that allows the author to have a slight edge in the truthfulness in the story. I am Jack's cancer-ridden mind. We Don't Know Everything Certainly no one knows about hobbits, but Tolkien believed in them so much that what he said about them was a gospel of truth. No one doubts hobbits because Tolkien didn't doubt them. However, we can't always write absolute fantasy. So you should know your material. You need to know how wounds heal, how radios operate, or how television signals work. Otherwise, if you bull shit these small details, You won't have much success. Roald Dahl wouldn't have such success with Willy Wonka. Sure there is a great deal of fantasy in that chocolate factory, but imagine if Dahl had simply made up how television signals work? We would never believe that it was possible to travel through those television waves and might have put the book down. Believe what you write and learn what you do not know. Don't be afraid of research and get the small details right. Rule #6 Don't write cliche. The main problem I have with this "advice" is that we then have to define what is cliche. Then, further, if we don't write cliche, there wouldn't be cliche to write. The issue there is that cliche works. That is why it is cliche. Now you are asking yourself how many more times can I possibly say that word in one paragraph. The answer is 97. However, I will refrain. Yes, the works can be overworked or even trite. They are important. This is never more obvious than when you get ideas for stories. Just like Hollywood, the literary world goes around in a circle. For example, right now we have an influx of super hero movies that followed a slew of Romance and Romantic comedies. True, too, will be that the literary world will follow suit. Wizards and broom stick games followed by vampires and werewolves. It's all a Cycle Horror is popular when Young Adult is on the decline and Romance blooms when Fantasy fades. Just because you write cliche projects (96) don't worry about it. You may have to put it in a drawer and forget it for a few years, but soon and once again, the time will be right and people will be clamoring for that long-forgotten cliche (95) to be unleashed. Don't be afraid to complete a project, just because the market is currently flooded with a similar style of work doesn't mean it won't get noticed. "It's only after we've lost everything that we are free to do anything." Rule #7 You must find your unique voice. Umm. This is such a convoluted piece of advice. Yes, you do, but no, you do not. Confused? You should be. I spent too many wasted hours trying to follow this seemingly simple "fact". Hours I will never get back. Quickly (as I have other posts and pages about voice here that go into deeper detail), voice is not how you talk or the sounds that come from your characters mouths. Voice is, in essence, a style. The catch, however, is that your book's voice is unique to that book. Your voice will change from project to project. Do you need to find it? The real answer is that you will notice the voice emerging as you work. From draft to draft your project's voice will emerge and you can then focus more on it. For now, in the beginning, it isn't such a big worry. It will come and if it doesn't, then that is one tale-tell sign that perhaps that particular project isn't making the finish line. Rule #8 Finally, the old tale to ensure you write every single day. You must write X amount of words, or for X amount of hours every single day if you are going to be successful. There are so many "facts" to support this: King writes 2000 words every day and won't stop until he's done it. Or, Koontz ensures, he writes for a minimum of 2 hours each day. Yes, that method works for some, even a lot of, people. However, these famous authors are paid to write. Are you yet paid to write every day? I know that I am not. I have work, and children and family and friends and shopping to do and places to go. Let's be frank. You need to make the time to write. It does need to be a habit that you can do and get into. If it's ever a chore, then perhaps it isn't for you. It is nice to have goals. However, I will fight to the death against anyone that says I must write a certain amount or for a certain time every single day. We Have Lives I have a life. You do too. While you, like me, want to make a career from writing, you also have other obligations and other spontaneous things that appear that take our time, focus and attention away. Go with it. Get a break. Take a day or even two off. Go outside. Research. Read. Watch a movie. Get some sun on your skin. Go shopping. You do not have to write every single day. Just as long as you don't fall in the hole and make not-writing the habit. I am Jack's exhausted colon. Write. Write often. Get lost in it. Talk about it. Get positive feedback. Enjoy what you do and do it with a fervor and a vigor that rivals pure passion. Read the full article

#Novels #Writing #writingrules

5 notes · View notes

gentlethorns · 4 years

Note

1-31

JKJFLKJGDKLS did you mean. 1 through 31?? like. all of them?? LMFAOOOOOO okay but i’m sticking them under a readmore bc that is gonna be SO long

1. what is a genre you love reading but will probably never write? mysteries/crime. i love the technique and expertise it takes to expertly lay out and set up a plot twist, but i don’t think i could ever do it aptly myself.

2. which writer has had the greatest stylistic influence on your writing? probably stephen king, if we’re talking fiction, but even then i don’t think he’s influenced me a ton - my writing voice is pretty distinctive (or so i’ve been told). as far as poetry, i think reading @candiedspit‘s work has really caused me to stretch my expectations of where words can go and what they can do.

3. has a specific song/lyric ever inspired a work of art for you? absolutely! i’m super inspired by music, bc music is really important to me as a means of emotional expression. back in sophomore year of high school i was working on a story where all the chapters were inspired by songs from folie a deux by fall out boy. it didn’t pan out and i never finished it, but i still think the concept was neat.

4. a writer whose personal lifestyle really speaks to you? lmfao not to talk about him again, but stephen king’s lifestyle really appeals to me. his writing is widely known and renowned, but he just chills at home and watches the red sox games and takes pictures of his corgi and keeps turning out stories. that literally sounds like paradise to me.

5. do you write both prose and poetry? which do you prefer? i do write both! and i can’t say i honestly prefer one over the other - my interest bounces between them and waxes and wanes, but i don’t consistently indulge one more than the other, i don’t think. last year i went through a huge fiction phase in october and cranked out eight or nine different short stories/flash pieces, and then in november/december i went through a poetry phase and wrote multiple poems a day for a long stretch of time. it just depends on my mood and my mindset and what i need from writing (a kind of escape vs. emotional expression/release).

6. do you read both prose and poetry? which do you prefer? i do read both, and again, i don’t think i have a preference. i definitely read fiction more, i think, but like writing, it kind of depends what i need at the time.

7. which language do you write in? which do you want to write in someday? i write in english, since it’s the only language i know. i’d like to learn spanish at some point, but i don’t know if i could ever write in spanish - i’m so firmly married to english grammar and structure that i don’t know if i could ever exercise the same control and mastery over spanish that i could english.

8. share a quote or verse that has been on your mind lately. “you said i killed you - haunt me, then!” from wuthering heights.

9. a writer/poet whose life you find interesting. *sigh*. stephen king. i’ve read his memoir/writing workshop book (”on writing”) and his success story always fascinates me. i just can’t imagine living in a shitty one-bedroom apartment with your wife and two kids and working days at an industrial laundromat and spending nights writing on a shitty wobbly desk in the laundry room, and you get your first manuscript accepted for publication, and eventually the paperback rights go up and you think you might get $60,000 if you’re really lucky, and then one day while your wife and kids are visiting the in-laws you get a call from your agent telling you that the paperback rights for your book sold for $400,000 and 200K of it is yours. that’s just literally. unfathomable to me lmfao.

10. what do you feel about the idea of someone unearthing your unseen or discarded drafts someday, long after your death? what about your personal journal? it’s really hard for me to imagine that happening, i think bc i tend to see myself as really like. insignificant or unimportant in the grand scheme of things, so i can’t imagine any part of me lasting beyond my life. also, it’s very hard for me to imagine someone i don’t know personally reading my work, probably because my work (especially a personal journal) is a window into me, and i have a hard time even letting people i trust see into that window sometimes, much less a stranger.

11. do you prefer to write in silence or listen to something? what do you listen to? i definitely prefer music in the background, although i can work in silence. i tend to gravitate to music that goes with the scene i’m writing, if i’m writing fiction (often i work music into my fiction, so if there’s a song playing in the scene, i’ll listen to that song), and if i’m writing poetry i tend to just listen to laid-back music (unless i’m writing from a place of grief or sadness, in which case i listen to sad music lmfao). i do also love writing when it’s storming outside and just listening to the rain and the thunder as i write.

12. has an image ever impacted your artistic lens/inspired your work? absolutely! less often than music, but visuals can inspire me on occasion. i once wrote a poem based on this image. i just couldn’t get it out of my head, so i decided to figure out what it was saying to me.

13. how would you describe the experience of writing itself? as in putting the words to paper, not planning or moodboards etc. do you agree with the common idea that the satisfaction lies in reading your work after you are done with it, rather than the process of writing itself? i think the process can be arduous sometimes, and other times it can be incredible. sometimes i write very slowly and haltingly, sometimes i write at a normal pace and it feels like the work it is (bc i am trying to write professionally), but sometimes the magic tap in the mind turns on and it starts flowing. that being said, i don’t necessarily agree that the satisfaction lies only in reading your work rather than also in the process. there’s a certain fulfillment in watching everything come together and knowing it’s going to be good.

14. how often do you write? it varies. i would like to write more often than i do, now that i have a full-time school schedule and work part time friday-sunday, but i think i still get a decent amount of writing done, when i can actually sit down and motivate myself to get the words out.

15. how disciplined are you about your writing? not very, in the creative sense - as discussed above, i don’t write as often as i should/would like to, and don’t hold myself to much of a schedule. however, as far as the business side of it (submitting to magazines/contests), i’m pretty disciplined, and i’m usually pretty good about keeping all my “good” pieces in circulation at a couple of places at a time.

16. what was your last long-lasting spurt of motivation? maybe last night? i worked on a couple of pieces and then submitted a few groups of poems to some magazines. i also did some decent work on thursday while i was in my campus starbucks waiting for my zoom class to start.

17. have you ever been professionally published? are you trying to be? i have been professionally published! i got my first acceptance back in 2018, and now i’ve had poetry published multiple times and fiction published twice. i’m still trying to publish more of my work, but i think i’ve had a decent start.

18. do you read literary magazines? not regularly, although i entered a fiction contest for into the void last year, and since it came with a year-long subscription, i’ve been browsing the fiction there periodically. into the void tends to publish good short/flash fiction, so anytime i feel like reading some new stories, i head there.

19. a lesser known writer you adore? idk if she’s necessarily “lesser-known,” but i loved ally carter’s gallagher girl series when i was younger. the first four books were immaculate (although i do remember that the last two books seemed almost unnecessary, and the ultimate end of the series was anticlimactic).

20. do you write short stories? do you read them? i write and read them! up until october of last year i could never figure out how to write a short story and effectively resolve a conflict in 5000 words or less, but then suddenly (like. literally overnight), a switch flipped in my head and i could do it. as far as reading them, i don’t read a ton anymore bc of my busy schedule ( :( ), so sometimes if i’m in the mood to read i’ll opt for a short story online or a book of short stories instead of a full-length novel.

21. do you prefer to involve yourself with literary history and movements or are you more focused on the writing itself? any favourite literary movements? i’m typically more focused on the writing itself, although i do love to learn about the horror boom from the 50s-80s (if that counts as a literary movement lmfao). i also do particularly love work from the era of deconstructionism, which i think took place in like. the 40s-60s, if i’m not mistaken. i enjoy that era bc of its symbolism and abstract nature - a lot of the work leaves the reader to draw their own conclusions.

22. are you working on anything right now? not particularly? i have a few works in progress that i tinker with now and then, but i’m not seriously working on anything in particular.

23. how did you get started with writing? i honestly don’t even remember. i remember the first time i realized that i really liked writing and had fun doing it (in fourth grade, for a school competition), but i know that even before then i was writing stories and poems.

24. do you have any “writer friends”? most of my mutuals are writer friends! but i don’t have any irl. i almost made one in my math class last semester, but we lost contact when our university shut down in march.

25. what is your earliest work you can remember? the earliest work i can remember is when i was really young (maybe like. five or six?). it was about our dog being pregnant (which she was at the time) and able to talk (which she was not).

26. have you found your writer’s voice yet? does your work have a distinct tone? absolutely. i’m very confident in my style and the distinctiveness of my voice - it’s been there pretty much since i first started writing. i’ve improved since then, honed my voice and made it more sophisticated and effective, but at the core, it’s still me, like it always has been.

27. do your works share themes/are commonly about certain topics? or are your subjects all over the place? in poetry, i think i tend to write about grief or loss of some sort or another often, bc it’s something i tend to feel often - either that or a false bravado (but ig that’s more of a tonal device). as far as fiction, i like to write about religion gone wrong (false religion, religion as a front for personal gain and corruption, religion gone too deep into obsession and mania, etc.), and i like smart underdog-type characters that fight and have a lot of grit to them.

28. what does writing mean to you? to me, writing is catharsis, a bloodletting. this particularly applies to poetry, but it also applies to fiction. poetry shows you the things you’re regurgitating up-front, but fiction does it slyly, in a mirror or through a distorting lens. regardless, both stand to offer release and healing.

29. in an alternate universe, imagine you had not found writing. what do you think would be your fixation otherwise? honestly, i’m not sure. probably acting or theater. something creative, for sure.

30. do you feel defined by your work? maybe a little, but not to a large or limiting extent. like, in a new class, my interesting fact about myself will probably always be “i’m a writer and i’ve been published a few times,” but i think that i’m a well-rounded person and that once people get to know me, my writing is just a part of me, not my whole identity.

31. have you ever written/considered writing under a pen name? if you would be okay saying, why? no, i don’t think i have. while a pen name can be a good tool, depending on your goals and what you’re writing, i have a Thing about getting credit where i’m due credit lmfao. i don’t think i’ll ever use a pen name bc if i know something i do is good, i want my name on it.

#asks #anon #thirty-one asks for writers #JAKFJDLJDALKJ this was so long thank you for asking

5 notes · View notes

manuscripts-dontburn · 4 years

Photo

Carrie

Author: Stephen King

First published: 1974

Pages: 171

Rating: ★★★☆☆

How long did it take: 1 day

A good entertainment to cleanse my palette.... Might check out more King books eventually.

The Price Guide to the Occult

Author: Leslye Walton

First published: 2018

Pages: 288

Rating: ★★★☆☆

How long did it take: 3 days

First of all, there should be a MASSIVE trigger warning for self-harm and parental abuse. Second of all, this is one of those books that simply needed more meat and more time. The premise is interesting, the writing beautiful, but all the gore and horror in it would have benefitted greatly from a more complex world. Many key scenes and situations were explained in a hurry and left one unsatisfied. And saying all that, just because a book is centred around a teen girl should not make it a YA. Because this is not.

My Grandmother Sends Her Regards and Apologises

Author: Fredrik Backman

First published: 2013

Pages: 342

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

How long did it take: 4 days

Look, I completely understand why this book is so praised by many people. I could pinpoint the many places in it which probably resonate with others. But for whatever reason, I was bored for most of it. I had to force myself to continue reading and that is never good. This was just not for me.

The Gentleman’s Guide to Getting Lucky

Author: Mackenzi Lee

First published: 2019

Pages: 128

Rating: ★★★★☆

How long did it take: 1 day

This was just friggin stinking cute. Cannot wait for another book in this series.

Medieval Bodies: Life, Death and Art in the Middle Ages

Author: Jack Hartnell

First published: 2019

Pages: 352

Rating: ★★★★☆

How long did it take: 11 days

Very accessible to anyone, with or without a knowledge of medieval times. I enjoyed the way the book was structured according to various body parts, which then were used as a base for a discussion of other topics relevant to life in the Middle Ages. It is not just medicine, but also sexuality, travelling, fashion and other themes. I would have liked the book to be much more lengthy, to be honest, because I simply found it fascinating. My favourite part? Probably the ode to the vagina and the explanation of the penis trees. I am just a lowly human with a dirty mind after all!

The Raven Boys

Author: Maggie Stiefvater

First published: 2012

Pages: 409

Rating: ★★★★☆

How long did it take: 5 days

I had so much fun reading this! It was like The Secret History by Donna Tart, except less on crack and with magic. What I appreciated were the were very real conflicts dealing with social class, the clear individuality of each character, the fact that going to class and striving for good marks is actually a significant factor for these kids and also a twist I did not see coming. Intrigued. Will definitely read the rest of the series.

The Gloaming

Author: Kirsty Logan

First published: 2018

Pages: 320

Rating: ★★★☆☆

How long did it take: 8 days

First of all, I have to say that the cover and Kirsty´s previous books made me expect something completely else than I was given. So here goes for everybody else: this is NOT a book about mermaids and it is NOT in any way related to The Gracekeepers. It is a story about FAMILY and the weight of OBLIGATION in contrast to personal WANTS as well as searching for the meaning of HOME. Sprinkled with just a tiny magical element. The writing is gorgeous and the atmosphere utterly melancholy. So why didn't I love it more? Partly because of my misplaced expectations, but that I could probably overlook. However, this story is so slow that even halfway through the book I still had a feeling it hasn't started yet. It also took a little while to get used to the format in which the timelines skip here and there and everywhere. In the end, it all does click together and it did leave me thinking about the book though. To steal the very last line: perhaps that's all we can ask.

Every Heart a Doorway

Author: Seanan McGuire

First published: 2016

Pages: 168

Rating: ★★★☆☆

How long did it take: 1 day

I truly appreciate the idea as well as inclusivity of this book, at the same time I have to say that if anything, I felt it was unfinished. It felt like a first or second draft, just capturing the basic skeleton (pun intended) of the story before the author would return it and actually put meat on it (he he he). Why should I care for characters I know nothing about and met them yesterday? The language was felt adequate yet fairly unimpressive. And in what reality people have such a lacklustre reaction to brutal murder? This book feels like an opportunity not taken and it is a real pity. Because the premise and even the plot had so much potential.

Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War

Author: Svetlana Alexievich

First published: 1989

Pages: 224

Rating: ★★★★★

How long did it take: 5 days

This was an absolutely brutal read. A perfect gallery of human voices and the differences of their experience of the same events. Just really brutal.

Mermaid Moon

Author: Susann Cokal

First published: 2020

Pages: 496

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

How long did it take: 3 days

I am SO disappointed but I guess it serves me right since this one was a complete cover buy. Unfortunately, the gorgeousness of the book (including UNDER the cover) is not matched by the content. I had expected a melancholy fairytale since after all this is supposed to be a sort of retelling of the Little Mermaid. And the premise itself sounded promising too. A young mermaid comes on land to find her long lost human mother, but unexpected happenings surrounding our main protagonist inspires some pretty strong feelings in a humble and religious community. Sadly the story is told in a way which makes me wonder for whom it was intended. Most of the book reads like the most boring and basic teenage romance (including instalove and a love triangle), but then there are really unnecessary descriptions of interspecies mating techniques. The structure of the story is very sloppy. I feel the 2 stars are more than generous.

Hitler's Forgotten Children: The Shocking True Story of the Nazi Kidnapping Conspiracy

Author: Ingrid Von Oelhafen

First published: 2015

Pages: 256

Rating: ★★★☆☆

How long did it take: 3 days

I was misled by the title of the book. I went into it expecting a study of Lebensborn (which was not a completely unknown thing to me) which would explore the reasons of its birth (pun not intended), people behind it, more information on the people who ran it, exploration of the routine and of course personal stories of its children. In a concise but rather short and watered-down way, I got all of those, however, it did not offer me any real depth of information. So what this book actually is? It is a personal memoir of a lady who had battled all of her life with the question of identity and origins and found in her later years that she was actually a Lebensborn baby. We get to know her difficulties over searching for information and eventually finding her origins. On one hand, the story is interesting and the writing very accessible, on the other hand, I found it somewhat unengaging and, as previously noted, not too informative for someone like me, who already possesses some knowledge of the matter, both because I have studied history and because the Nazis stealing children has always been a big topic in my country, Czechoslovakia back then since it happened here too. .

The Home For Unwanted Girls

Author: Joanna Goodman

First published: 2018

Pages: 364

Rating: ★★★★☆

How long did it take: 3 days

A touching tale about complicated family matters and relationships in the context of 1950s Canada. I really enjoyed it and it earns bonus points for teaching me something new in terms of history. Definitely would recommend if you like books like Before We Were Yours.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Stories

Author: Robert Louis Stevenson

First published: 1886

Pages: 256

Rating: ★★★★☆

How long did it take: 9 days

I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this collection of short stories. True, I did not much care about one and felt a bit disappointed by another (The Suicide Club which had a phenomenal premise but fell short on excitement or satisfying finish), but overall I was quite intrigued and amused.

The Prince and the Dressmaker

Author: Jen Wang

First published: 2018

Pages: 277

Rating: ★★★★☆

How long did it take: 1 day

Oh my gosh this was SO PURE and THAT FINALE actually had me in stitches!!!!

#booklr #wrap up #April 2020

17 notes · View notes

coll2mitts · 4 years

Text

#65 Beauty and the Beast (2017)

I’m burning through my Disney+ subscription, and instead of this forever cursing my drafts section until I work my way through the other lower movies on this list, you’re getting this one now.

Beauty and the Beast was my favorite Disney movie as a child. Belle was smart, she read a lot, and she was a bit of an outcast, which were my only identifiers as a wee lass (other than being obnoxious and constantly having tangled hair). I'm going to bet that this movie is the reason so many girls my age went through a Paris phase in their tween years. I did take 3 years of high school French that I have almost no memory of.

The original's animation is gorgeous, the songs by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman are iconic, and the romance between two people who learn how to trust and support each other... it's probably the reason why I've stayed in terrible relationships for way too long. My father took me to see this movie in theaters when I was 6, and it is the first movie I remember crying during out of sadness. There I was, while the Beast was dying, trying to hide the fact tears were streaming down my face because I didn't want my dad to see I was crying and not take me to see another movie again. When they adapted it for Broadway, I listened to that soundtrack over and over... "Home" was my favorite song, and the end still makes me cry like a 6-year-old. It's perfect.

I had attempted to watch this remake once before. I hated it so much I started drinking, and then peaced out so hard when Lumiere started moving that I had to watch Moana to normalize myself. Visually, this movie is what happens when the Uncanny Valley turns into the fucking Grand Canyon. Little did I know that this movie gets worse... much worse... as it goes on, and that Stephen Chbosky, the author and director of The Perks of Being a Wallflower made it this way. A man who wrote one of my most beloved novels and movie adaptations helped in creating this narrative monstrosity, and that, out of all of this, was the deepest cut of all.

I'm not rehashing the plot, because I have too much to say about why this remake shouldn't exist, and I’m going to guess you’ve either seen the movie or are familiar with this almost 300-year-old story. It took the source material and just murdered it in its attempts to update it. I'm going to start positive and work toward the biggest issue I had with it, because I'm currently writing angry and that never turns out well for me.

Things I liked:

This may be controversial, but I did like Josh Gad's performance as LeFou. I'm not saying what LeFou did made any sense (he suddenly was upset Gaston was making things up again?), but as an actor, Josh Gad was working with what he had, and I think he owned it.

Chip's introduction to Maurice - I actually paused the movie because I was laughing so hard.

The piano playing the funeral march when it tackled LeFou.

When Mrs. Potts said Chip smelled good when he turned back into a little boy. It was a cute little detail.

The guillotine joke in "Be Our Guest" and the Les Miserables barricade reference.

I actually thought Cogsworth was adorable for being a CGI nightmare. I don't know how much of my opinion of this was influenced by the voice of Ian McKellan.

I really liked the costumes, except for Belle's gown, which was definitely a downgrade. Micarah articulated the issues with it perfectly.

Celine Dion singing the credits song was a nice homage to her cover of "Beauty and the Beast", although it sucks she's associated with this nightmare of a remake.

Little quibbles:

Whatever they did to Emma Watson’s voice made her sound like a robot.

Almost all the CGI, especially the Beast, was completely unsettling. The wardrobe was the worst of it, holy shit.

They went out of their way to explain plot holes like "Why don't the villagers remember the castle?" or “Why is it snowing when it looks like the middle of summer in the village?” or "How did Belle get the Beast up on that horse?" when none of that really matters to the overall narrative.

The reaction to Belle teaching a little girl how to read was unbelievably eye-roll inducing. Lindsay Ellis' video on this is so fucking good, watch it now - You don't have to read the rest of my ramblings if you do. #beastforshe

Ariana Grande slurring her way through "Beauty and the Beast".

It was nice to see Maurice updated from a manic inventor to a level-headed, sweet, competent, reserved man who treats his daughter like an equal. Clock-maker Maurice that actually takes care of Belle reads better to me, and I like how they had him wander into the garden to get a rose for her - it's a nice callback to the original story. The problem with doing this, however, is it negates the "crazy old Maurice" narrative that plays heavily into why the villagers don't believe his tale of the Beast in the first place. If Kevin Kline, a put-together man (up until this point), wandered into the tavern looking disheveled and conveying a story about his daughter being kidnapped, I'd be like, "Shit, Maurice, what did you see?!". But instead, the story goes out of its way to put him at the mercy of Gaston, and shoehorn in an attempted murder plot to really turn everyone against him - it's bizarre.

Medium quibbles:

Gaston went from being a well-liked, athletically inclined dude to a literal predator and murderer. Belle was a beautiful status symbol in the original movie, but she becomes literal game to Gaston in the remake, as he refers to her as prey, or something to be hunted. When Maurice gets in-between him and Belle, Gaston punches him in the face and leaves him out in the forest to be eaten by wolves?! What does this add to the story?! Gaston wasn't right for Belle because he wasn't kind and didn't intellectually stimulate her, but that nuance is wasted on the remake, turning him into a full-blown vengeful villain that will literally kill Belle's family to get what he wants.

The first time Belle is brought to her room, there is this long panning shot showing off how nice it is, and she comments, in wonder, how she thinks its beautiful. They had the fucking nerve to play “Home” in the background of this scene, completely ignoring the original context of the song is sadness and despair. But go off, I guess...

The Big Enchilada:

This is where my notes went from eh????? to WHAT THE FUCK, so be prepared. How someone with enough emotional maturity to write Perks can make the Beast into such an abusive asshole is so fucking beyond me, I'm still trying to process it.

Beauty and the Beast is a romance at heart, which you would never know by watching this movie, as Belle and the Beast have so little chemistry it's painful. This might be because the Beast is abusive to Belle at every turn in the beginning, making the pivot from enemies to lovers so completely unbelievable it's shocking. The remake is already at a deficit as the CGI Beast is terrifying, in contrast with the cartoon, which has the ability to make the Beast cuddly with big eyes and an expressive face. But they still decide to take all of the Beast's inner conflict out of the remake, remove his agency completely out of the relationship with Belle, and make him supremely unlikable in every interaction they have together.

There are a few scenes that illustrate this, starting with the dinner invitation scene:

In the original, the Beast sees the pain he's inflicted by pulling Belle away from her father, and offers her a tour of the castle and a bedroom instead of a prison cell. He also invites her to dine with him, although he could have gone about it wayyyy better. He confides in his staff that she is beautiful, and he realizes she can break the spell, but he doesn't know how to appeal to her. His staff give him tips on how to be charming and not so intimidating. He is receptive, but overwhelmed, because he hasn't had to interact with any other human in years. When he discovers she doesn't plan on eating with him, his anger takes over because she refused his hospitality, and he's a king, so how dare she? The staff try to help him appear genteel, cause again, HE expressed interest in being appealing to her. When this doesn't immediately work, he throws a massive tantrum and tells them not to feed her. When he looks at Belle later in the mirror, he hears the direct result of his actions as Belle is ranting to the wardrobe. He laments she'll never see him as a human because his actions have pushed her away.

youtube

In the remake, it's not the Beast’s idea to give Belle a room, or to invite her to dinner - it is his staff's intervening that puts him in that situation in the first place. He doesn't even want to get to know her because she's a daughter of a thief, and that's somehow below his current social status of recluse animal/human hybrid. His staff persuade him to give Belle a chance as they're all invested in breaking the spell because they'll turn into furniture if they don't! They give him tips to manipulate her into opening the door, he tries it, it fails spectacularly, he gets angry and he leaves - but not before calling his staff idiots... I appreciate he's not as physically violent in this version, but he just acts like he couldn’t be bothered with Belle. He does spy on her from the mirror, but she looks bewildered. He doesn't know if she's lonely, or missing her father, or what... There's no indication that how he treated her in that moment has pushed her further away. Then he just stares at the rose like, "Well, shit, this ticking time bomb is still ticking!". It's completely self-focused.

Oh, and then Mrs. Potts tries to handwave the Beast’s behavior away with, "People say a lot of things in anger. It is our choice whether or not to listen," which, excuse me, WHAT THE EVERLOVING FUCK DOES THAT MEAN?! You are in charge of how to interpret someone's actions, and you could just choose to ignore when they are being abusive?? I CAN'T. She also tries to gaslight Belle into seeing how great the Beast is when Belle has had zero positive interactions with the dude since she's been there. The wardrobe brings it up in the original, but this is after he's offered Belle a room and invited her to dinner himself, not by his staff...

The west wing scene and the Beast turning into less of a dick:

In the original, the Beast himself tells Belle not to go to the west wing. Her curiosity brings her there, because she wants to understand more about him and what he is hiding. She's invading his space knowing full well that she is invading his space. When she is discovered, she's about to fuck around with something that is literally tied with the Beast's livelihood. His anger is disproportionate, but justified, and you see that he immediately regrets his reaction after she runs away from him. That’s why he goes after her. Belle watches him risk his life to save her even though she broke a promise to him, so she decides to repay the favor by bringing him back. They fight while she's trying to clean his wound, and they're both right in their perspectives, but the Beast acknowledges that yes, his temper got the best of him - he realized that the moment she bolted. Belle then rewards his selfless act by thanking him, which sets his entire transformation in motion.

He gives her the library because he expresses interest in doing something to make her happy, and he vocalizes he's falling in love with her. He's delighted by her reaction. During the ballroom scene, the way he looks at her, you can see he absolutely adores her. He asks, "Are you happy here with me?" because he loves her, and her well-being is the most important thing.

In the remake, the staff tell Belle not to got to the west wing because it's a storage area. She wanders over there anyway, for whatever fucking reason, and takes a glance at the rose behind the glass. The Beast finds her looking at it and gets mad at her, even though he never told her not to visit him in the west wing, and she didn't fuck around with the rose. When she runs away, he doesn't even look like he cares. There is no reason for him to go after her, and there is no reason for her to help him back to the castle other than the plot told them to do it. She doesn't help him with his wounds, and the staff are the ones to thank her for returning him. She even asks the staff why the fuck they care about him, because he's such an asshole. They justify his behavior because he had a cruel father, and damn themselves to his fate because they didn't stop a literal monarch from raising his son. Belle continues to take care of him because she pities him? He repays her kindness by insulting her taste in literature.

He doesn't even show her the library because he knows she likes books, he does it because he wants her to read "better" books. Then he makes one joke about not reading Greek and THAT IS WHAT MAKES BELLE SWOON. THE FUCKING GREEK BOOK JOKE. I mean, I sort of get it, I fell in love with my ex because he made a bread pun, but he hadn't been continually abusive to me up until that point. Belle starts to read out loud to him, and that's supposed to be the event that incentives the Beast to be better? Even while Belle is singing about how much he's changed (he hasn't), he throws a boulder of snow in her face. The cherry on top of this sundae is his stoic question after they dance, "It's foolish, I suppose, for a creature like me to hope that one day he might earn your affection?" which not only sounds like complement fishing, it is primarily motivated by breaking the curse! Only after she gives an indifferent answer does he ask if she'd be happy at the castle.

Oh god, and the death scene is cut off in the middle because we have to watch 2 minutes of the staff members permanently turning into furniture, which, like, I wouldn't think they'd want to castrate the emotional climax of the movie, but this whole thing is an exercise on how to fuck something already good up.

This movie fails so spectacularly at this basic love story, I can't begin to justify its existence. I wouldn't recommend this to anybody. If you want to watch new Alan Menkin content, watch Galavant, because this movie just pissed me off.

It was bold of Disney to end it with a beastiality joke, though.

#unwarranted opinion #100 best musical movies of all time rotten tomatoes

4 notes · View notes

burninghoneyatdusk · 4 years

Note

For the fic asks: 8, 13, 16, and 28!

Thanks for the ask! I am so incredibly extra and these are so unnecessarily long. Enjoy!

8. Share a snippet from one of your favorite dialogue scenes you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

Oh god I honestly had to dig into the fics because nothing came to mind right away. I’m going to momentarily get on a soapbox here and say that what I really strive for is dialogue that flows naturally and threads in the subtle gestures/actions/expressions of the characters. I also will sometimes say the dialogue outside to make sure it sounds real. Nothing stops me short in fic more than stiff dialogue (i.e. no contractions, etc.). Anyhow, no one dialogue scene really comes to mind, but let’s go with this. It’s barely dialogue, but I loved this whole scene and feel like it really brought the story full circle. I’m hoping to post the last chapter this weekend or next week, which will be my first complete fic. Ah!

“Clarke...why are you really here?”

She sighs. “I think...I don’t know. I’ve just felt homesick for a long time. I wanted to come home.”

Clarke knows that’s strange. This hasn’t been her home in a long time. He hasn’t been her home in a long time. But she can’t deny that’s what it feels like. That bittersweet longing that she can’t seem to shake. It sure feels like homesickness to her.

13. What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever come across?

I honestly stumble upon so many good pieces of writing advice on tumblr and if I reblog, I tag it under writing, so that’s somewhere to check out on my blog if you’re looking for more of the sort. I don’t really love hard and fast writing rules because I think there are usually exceptions and it stifles creativity. Anyways, some top ones that come to mind are:

Write for yourself first, then the audience. That’s Stephen King and kind of similar to the idea that the first draft is just telling yourself the story (Terry Pratchett). Not worrying about if it’s “good” if it’s the first time you’re putting it on paper. Sometimes what you really need is to transfer it from your mind to the page, and the rest will follow. I think people thinking it has to be perfect in that initial transfer is where writer’s block often comes in.

Showing, not telling. This is more general than from someone specific. Sometimes it’s easy to info dump but I try to remember that in life communication happens via a lot of non-verbal cues and so much goes unspoken, even when as the reader we’re thinking, why don’t they just say X! Somewhat related, remember the POV you’re writing from. I constantly remind myself that the character whose POV I’m writing from doesn’t know everything that I, the author, the story God, knows. Also, kind of along those lines, not stating the obvious when it isn’t necessary.

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” This Maya Angelou quote is one of my favorite quotes. It’s such a good reminder of why to write. If someone has a whole story crafted in their head and is too afraid to put it on paper, just remember that no matter how good or bad it turns out, or who reads it, you’re going to feel some sense of relief that you released the story into the world in one form of the other.

16. If you only could write one pairing for the rest of your life, which pairing would it be?

Lol, the easiest question. Definitely Bellarke. Bellarke is the only fanfic I’ve written and that I’ve been inspired to write. I definitely had some Olicity head cannons during my 2013-15 obsession there, but nothing made it on paper and I’d barely discovered AO3. The only other fandom I want to write for at the moment is AWAE. I have a post 3x10 AWAE long timeline fic entirely planned out, but TBD if I ever get around to writing and posting it.

28. Share three of your favorite fic writers and why you like them so much.

Oh gosh. There are so many incredibly talented fic writers in the fandom. I’ll limit myself to 3 but there are so many more. It’s why I’m writing my own fic, because everyone sucked me in. There’s also so many fics on my to-read list I haven’t gotten to and as a side note, I generally don’t read G or T rated fics because I’m a heathen and looking for some smut in my fics, so these authors reflect that.

1. @eyessharpweaponshot : God, what to say. She’s just an amazing fic writer with stories that just completely suck me in. Lose You Too was a first non-canonverse bellarke fic I ended up reading and I was in awe. Waste It On Me is the best soulmate fic I’ve read. She also manages to leave the kindest comments amidst writing killer fics, which are always appreciated.

2. @asroarke : Let me start by saying that Sugar is the sugar daddy fic I never knew I even wanted and am now completely obsessed with. It’s my favorite WIP and probably one of my all time favorites. Where the Light Won’t Find You was an incredibly brave personal story she shared and one that I really related to given my own life/experiences, so I really appreciated that one. And Now You’re Home is my favorite post S4 fic. All the tropes I love - hurt/comfort, bed sharing, pregnancy. It’s just amazing.

3. JK, I’m not sticking to three, but I’ll wrap it up. @ktanansi is killing me with [Not So] Accidental Babies because I’m a hoe for any pregnancy fic. I love so many of FelicisQuill2′s stories and am always dying for an update to Almost Pure. Everyone knows @bettsfic and Training Wheels but I’ll say it again because she’s incredible. I really loved @kombellarke‘s Naked Truth just like the rest of the entire fandom and am super excited to read Finding North when I finally have some time to read fics again.

#asks #my fics #bellarke fanfiction

9 notes · View notes

inevitably-johnlocked · 3 years

Note

Hi Steph! I really want to write a fic, but I'm not sure where to start. (This is actually my first time trying to write something!) I have an idea for it, but I'm not really sure how to go from an idea to an actual story. Plus, I think I'm a terrible writer, which is making me hesitant to write it. Do you have any tips/advice for me? Thanks in advance!

Hi Nonny!

*HUGS* First of all: WRITE THAT FIC. No author was a brilliant genius on their first go, and only through writing more and more, do you improve your craft. AND some people “revisit” stuff years later as “remix” fics, and even artists do it so that you and they can see how much they’ve grown!

SO WRITE IT.

That said, @jbaillier actually has a tonne of writing tips (just click on the “Chapter Index” pulldown menu to see what the topics are, I don’t think there’s a masterpage othrwise) and does a videocast about fanfiction that you can check out, so yeah, it’s a good place as any to start!

But from experience, and as not a prolific writer by any stretch of the imagination, I can say start small, jot down your ideas and paragraphs of stories you have! It’s what I’m currently doing with the few stories I have written – I write any ideas I have at ALL, and any paragraph snippets, and divide them up. So like, do you have the main plot planned out? Then write it out. They’re called drafts for a reason! They’re not meant to be amazing. For me, I have PARAGRAPHS of stories all jumbled in Google Docs, and I just occasionally go back to them when I have another idea, or when I figured out how I’m going to tie one part of a paragraph chunk to another. Any lines I’m not sure about deleting yet, I change the font colour to red, so that I know I WANT to get rid of it, or it doesn’t fit in where it is currently, so I should go back to it later.

But again, this is how someone who writes for a hobby outside of daily blogging does this stuff... it’s a method I’ve used since I was younger (though I used to hand write EVERYTHING before typing it out), and more recently when I was writing meta AND currently replying to asks – if I have / had an idea for a response, I write it all out, and draft it to go back to edit later on. It’s always worked for me.

But again, different methods work for different people. I know some authors like to write start to finish, and then edit from there. Some write the ending first and work backwards. Some do brainstorming sessions and make those little idea trees. It’s all different for everyone based on how people’s thought processes work. As I said, my brain works in chunks, so I HAVE to write those ideas and paragraphs I have down before I forget, or it WILL be gone permanently.

So yeah, lovely, just write it because you want to write it. Why do you feel like you shouldn’t write it just because you’re new to it? That’s very disheartening to me :( Don’t let people discourage you.

As I’ve said in the past: even Stephen King, one of the most prolific authors of our time, got rejected by publishers the first go ‘round.

And if you’re uncertain start small with ficlets and work your way up. Honestly, there’s no “right way” to do things. Just do it because you’re passionate about it, because you WANT to write it.

And if and when you do publish it, Nonny, let me know, please. I would love to share with everyone <3

Good luck!! <3 We’re all here for you! <3

#steph replies #my advice #i am not a professional #writing advice #chatting with nonnies #Anonymous

49 notes · View notes

thephantomporg84 · 5 years

Note

[REDACTED] be complaining reg. the reactions of having "placed the cultist island Fortuna off the coast of Florida" while having the gall of "It’s the story & the way it’s told that should fucking matter" & "Who cares? It’s fictional geography, you idiots." Feels a bit like failing World-Building 101. I mean, Red Grave based on London would also be a callback to Dante's early concept of being a Brit.

Someone already sent me the whole post of hers that I’m pretty sure you’re referring to lmao. I’m in a particularly cunty but pleasant mood rn, and analysis is kind of my thing, so lets’s break it down, shall we?

Maybe someone can send this her way and… learn that tiny little brain of hers a thing. 😉

It’s fictional geography called world building, you idiots Karen after the cut:

‘I love how a number of shitheels have screeched amongst themselves on this hellsite about how I had placed the cultist island Fortuna off the coast of Florida or somewhere around the Gulf US states (re: the fanfic & project link in my header), whining that it should’ve been in Europe, namely Italy.’

An admission to stalking profiles is not exactly the best way to start a self-righteous rant or advertise your… magnum opus, but go off, I guess.

‘Not only that, but they whined about “plotholes and inconsistencies” without elaborating on what the latter are. The asshole who made the rant was annoyed when I used a poem as a spell in the story (“if I heard that, I’d turn off my PS4.”), but I’m sure she didn’t bitch about the cutscene before the last Agnus boss fight in DMC4.’

Like the movie The Room (2003), it’s just easier to say “all of it” is bad because “all of it” contains plotholes and is inconsistent in tone, has terrible half-baked ideas and plot threads that remain unresolved and/or do nothing to further the plot, is rife with poor + inconsistent characterization, has a lack of any knowledge how the medium it exists in is made, and in general makes me wonder how much pottery enamel you’ve been huffing to think any of this was a good idea. Howeverrrr, in contrast to you, Tommy Wiseau is kind of odd and weirdly charming both in general and about his terrible movie — he’s found glory and success in its terribleness. You, in contrast, remain a miserable cunt with delusions of grandeur.

Dante and Agnus’ Shakespeare bit is actually a pretty well known trope called Ham-to-Ham Combat. Dante and Agnus are both ridiculous Large Hams in DMC4, and when two Large Hams meet, in general, they are likely gonna try to ‘out-over dramatic’ each other. This can lead to a scene becoming either really funny or really corny (or both) really fast. If things go too far — and they do, in this case — the scene can become a Hormel Event Horizon.

‘…but they LOVE the plotholes & inconsistencies if Capcom makes the latter, and writes a terrible story! And Crapcom’s canon for DMC is as straight as a paperclip or a dog’s hind leg. Hypocritical pricks.’

Subjective opinion is not, and never will be, objective fact. People are, as of when I checked again in the last ~5 minutes or so, absolutely able to enjoy whatever media they want regardless of what the general consensus on the quality of that media is.

As an example, I enjoy The Room (2003) despite its terribleness and it never fails to make me laugh, while your magnum opus makes me want to huff pottery enamel so the pain will stop despite you thinking it is the work of an idiot savant.

‘They were also mad that I wrote Dante as a wiseguy who is a little more low-key about it due to the circumstances— instead of being a pathetic manchild airhead that tries too hard.’

You didn’t write Dante.

You wrote Reboot!Donte — a fucking terribly out of character version of him, at that.

‘I was primarily concerned about moving the story along. I didn’t care about where a fictional island is supposed to go.’

You literally had one (1) job, Karen.

‘…Meanwhile, not a single character in DMC4 had an Italian accent, so uh, why should I give a flying fuck where I put it?’

Haven’t you been like… shitting on the DMC staff… for terrible writing… this enti— You know what? You’re obvs way too dumb to notice that contradiction, so I’ll let it slide.

Just… a word of advice, if I may? Don’t ever watch dub TV shows. That last brain cell would fuckin’ just burst all over your carpet.

(Actually, don’t watch subtitled shows either. An extremely popular anime that was set in Italy just wrapped and all the characters — le gasp! — spoke fucking Japanese. You would shit.)

‘I wasn’t paid to write any of what I wrote, but be my guest & send a PM if you want to throw money at me. By all means, do that.’

Oh, thank fuck, because they would have been ripped off, big time.

[ btw, you sound p. jealous of people that write/do creative work/commissions for ko-fi/payment tho. Not a good look tbbh. If it’s any consolation, though, I don’t get paid for making fun of you and/or analyzing your dumb bullshit, either. :( ]

‘The pricks at Capcom didn’t even bother giving us a proper DMC4 and it was a half-assed game, with the latter half being hasty filler material. The “special edition” they coughed up in 2015 was just glorified overpriced DLC.’

Ya know, you gotta be pretty far up your own ass to think this much of your opinion. And I’m saying this as a person that’s pretty far up her own ass like 85% of the time.

‘And another thing, Redgrave City in DMC5 seems to be in England, yet no survivors speak with English accents or slang/dialects.’

Pretty sure no survivors had speaking roles.

If you played the game you’d know this.

‘Meanwhile, Dante and Vergil had lived there when they were kids (until age 8), but they both have ordinary American or Canadian accents. Furthermore, how did the twins make it to the USA or Canada? According to the little booklet in the DMC1 game case, Dante’s office is in modern America.’

You know that invoking the imagery of a specific place without naming your location is normal and standard practice, right? Overwatch even does this (For Ex: Byōdō-in (平等院), Uji, Kyoto Prefecture, Japan is the inspiration for Hanamura, Château de Duingt, Duingt, France for Château Guillard, etc.)

Furthermore, you know the original DMC was a rejected first draft of Resident Evil 4, right? This is what retcon is for. You at least know what retcon is, right?

‘…That information isn’t very important, but I’m bringing it up to illustrate a point that being a fucking pedant about geography in a fantasy game is idiotic, even if the setting is akin to modern Earth.’

So is freaking the fuck out and sending death threats over a fantasy game but you didn’t let that stop you either lmfao.

It’s actually super important to establish your scenery and the way your world operates, especially in a written work in which readers are dependent on your vision and your descriptions, and if you were a decent writer, you’d know this.

‘It’s the story & the way it’s told that should fucking matter.’

YOU HAD ONE (1) JOB, KAREN.

‘What US states are the Arklay Mountains located in?’

General description puts them in the U.S. Midwest. Raccoon City itself is stated to have a population of ~100,000 at the time of outbreak, and the only city in the Midwest that matches that population in 1998 is Springfield, Missouri, with a pop. of ~110,000.

Springfield is on the Springfield Plateau of the Ozarks region of SW Missouri. So they’re part of the Ozark Mountains.

This all took less than ~3 minutes to google, btw.

‘Where is “Zanzibar Land?”’

I actually just wrote a comprehensive answer to an ask a few weeks ago about this. It’s actually stated to be in Tselinoyarsk (Целиноярск), the (fictional) area of the former USSR in which Big Boss carried out the Virtuous Mission/Operation Snake Eater in 1964. Tselinoyarsk itself is heavily implied to consist of parts of Kyrgyzstan and/or Tajikistan. If you played MGS3 you’d know how important the setting and the varied environments/climates are to the game mechan-

oh yeah wait you believe in segregation of story and gameplay mechanics. I forget you’re completely tone deaf sometimes lmao.

How far is ‘Salem’s Lot or Derry from Bangor? Who cares?’

Stephen King does, quite a bit. He even has a map on his website of ‘his’ fictional version of Maine:

My disappointment is immeasurable, Karen.

#anonymous #replies #porg drama #derelict-stranger #derelict stranger #dmc #devil may cry #dmc5 #devil may cry 5 #dante #dmc dante #dmc fanfiction #dmc meta #writing #ao3

32 notes · View notes

theouterdark · 5 years

Text

Tag: Novel Prep Game

This one is hefty, @zmlorenz, thanks for the tag. I’m going to answer a few questions about The Devil from the Outer Dark. Even though it was an age-and-a-half ago.

Rules: Answer the questions and then tag as many writers as there are questions answered (or as many as you can) to spread the positivity! Even if these questions are not explicitly brought up in the novel, they are still good to keep in mind when writing.

First Look

1. Describe your novel in 1-2 sentences (elevator pitch)

In the summer of 1928, Blake Livingston travels to Céret to recuperate in the arms of family, but life in southern France is not as tranquil as she expects. Soon after her arrival, Blake is thrust into a mystery involving an apparent suicide, a stolen painting, an enigmatic artist, a gang of communist agitators, a pair of missing shoes, and a watcher in the dark.

2. How long do you plan for your novel to be? (Is it a novella, single book, book series, etc.)

This is a sequel to Coldwater Sound, and the second book in a planned series of cosmic horror/mystery novels involving Blake Livingston. Currently it sits somewhere around 70k words. It probably won’t get much more bloated than that.

3. What is your novel’s aesthetic?

Cottagecore horror? Maybe liminal space/entropy/madness + mist and mild diesel-punk/weird science. Is that an aesthetic? Evil/Darkness in plain sight? There’s a lot going on here. You know what—it’s its own aesthetic. Read it and tell me otherwise. I hate this question.

4. What other stories inspire your novel?

The works I thought about while outlining and writing:

Pickman’s Model by HP Lovecraft

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

Glamour in Glass by Mary Robinette Kowal

The Shining by Stephen King

5. Share 3+ images that give a feel for your novel

Main Character

6. Who is your protagonist?

Blake Livingston, arguably Adam Brand.

7. Who is their closest ally?

Blake: This is harder to answer. Either Major Devereux or Marco Denicourt. Both, in certain instances. Her sister-in-law, Sabine, could be considered that too, albeit a little later in the story.

Adam: Bertrand Faure is probably the only one. His life is complicated.

8. Who is their enemy?

Blake: Time. The other answers are spoilers.

Adam: Himself. Other answers, again, enter spoiler territory.

9. What do they want more than anything?

Blake: Stability, primarily. Belonging and love, definitely.

Adam: Expression, freedom, and recognition. Also, more paint.

10. Why can’t they have it?

Blake: She thinks she can’t be complete without some of these things, and is unfortunately in the wrong.

Adam: His pride gets in the way, among other things. Also money. He’d probably have more paint and food if he had more money.

11. What do they wrongly believe about themselves?

Blake: That she’s incapable of being useful, being loved, and that she’s crazy.

Adam: That his worth is calculated only by that which he creates.

12. Draw your protagonist! (Or share a description)

Don’t need to! @radley-writes drew her recently. (Thank you again!)

Plot Points

13. What is the internal conflict?

Fighting for a sense of belonging or purpose.

14. What is the external conflict?

A string of seemingly-unrelated crimes sows chaos around Céret. There are external sources of conflict for every character. Whether they be shady individuals, pressure from family, or high expectations placed on the main characters.

15. What is the worst thing that could happen to your protagonist?

Blake: Being mistrusted by family, or publicly discredited. Getting sectioned.

Adam: Being ignored in life and forgotten in death.

16. What secret will be revealed that changes the course of the story?

I kinda want y’all to find out by reading it.

17. Do you know how it ends?

I do. I wrote the ending already. Wrote the whole thing mostly linearly. Got to about the 40% mark and skipped to the end, pounded it out. I don’t think it will change much in the next draft.

Bits and Bobs

18. What is the theme?

There are several. I’ll pick the three most important ones.

Emptiness of attaining false dreams

Loneliness as destructive force

Overcoming – fear, weakness, vice

19. What is a reoccurring symbol?

I’ll name a few.

Black cats

Dames blanches

Pont du Diable (bridges in general)

Cherries (blossoms, fruit, rot, life)/Life Cycles

20. Where is the story set? (Share a description!)

The Devil from the Outer Dark takes place primarily in and around the city of Céret, France, among the foothills of the Pyrenees. It’s the summer of 1928, and everyone is upset about the new format for the Tour de France. Artists find inspiration in the hills. Love is in the air. Danger lurks in the nooks and crannies of the city narrows.

21. Do you have any images or scenes in your mind already?

Oh 100%. I’m a very visually-oriented. Most of this story came about from a series of images/scenes in my mind. I jotted down little ideas here and there for about a year before I wrote a single line. That actually seemed to help in the drafting process.

22. What excited you about this story?

There’s an edge to it, and a lot of elements I don’t normally work with. Romance is one of them. Particularly unrequited love and longing, lost love, and the pain love’s absence. I also adore the characters more than any other casts I’ve written.

I also love it because it frightens me. And that’s not something that happens often with my own work.

23. Tell us about your usual writing method!

I do the chicken peck for like thirty minutes to an hour before I break through the barrier and my fingers fly across the keys. Usually while in bed, listening to music. And once I start, I can’t stop. My momentum deadens if I so much as get up to get a glass of water.

Tag List: @writingmyassoff, @erinisawriter, @midnightstreetwanderings, @bethwrotethis, @doux-ciel, @hilunawrites, @ghost-possum, @zmlorenz, @doubleviewfinder, @veronicadent, @els-writes, @dantedevereaux, @tlbodine, @hypotheticalwriterquestions, @hazeywrites, @reeseweston, @withered-rose-unbreakable-lotus, @katabasiss, @dotr-rose-love, and @byjillianmaria. (Let me know if you’d like to be added or removed from tags future tags).

If any of you haven’t done this, and would like to, go for it, but I’m not going to subject anyone to it, I think. This one has been in my drafts for like four months.

#the devil from the outer dark #p:tdftod #blake livingston #major devereux #marco denicourt #Adam Brand #get to know me #get to know the writer #novel prep game #tag game #writeblr #writeblr community

21 notes · View notes

loki-hargreeves · 4 years

Note

New ask game for writers: 1. 4. 5. 10. 11. 13. 14. 17. 19. 22. 23. 27. 30. 33. 34. 36. 37. 39. 40. 41. 49. 50. 51. 52. 54. ... i am sorry they are all so good ... so i wanna know all

First of all, I want to say I love you. Thank you for sending them in! <3

(new ask game for writers)

1. Favourite place to write.

My bedroom, candlelit and all, preferably with coffee nearby. My room is my own little bubble where I can actually get creative things done.

4. Do you have writing habits or rituals?

Yes! I light up candles whenever I can and I brew a pot of coffee. I also play music that would suit the thing I’m writing. I have an angst playlist for sad stories etc.

5. Books or authors that influenced your style the most.

I started to write fanfiction as a literal kid because I was in love with Erin Hunter’s warrior cats books. Also, I’d say R.L. Stine’s goosebumps books have inspired me a lot. Recently, fanfiction inspires me a lot and old classics. Shakespeare is my favourite right now!

On tumblr, @delicrieux inspired me to make this blog and I am forever grateful for finding her amazing works.

10. Pick a writer to co-write a book with and tell us what you’d write about.

Ooh, I like this one. I would absolutely love to write an angsty/horror book with Stephen King! Probably a murder mystery, but I want to fill it with twists and just unthinkable solutions.

13. How do you deal with writer's block?

I procrastinate a lot. I either just sleep all day and feel bad for not writing, or I try to focus on art. Sometimes focusing on other things is a good canvas for fresh ideas.

14. What’s the most research you ever put into a book?

Once, I wrote a 100K word fanfic about Titanic so I read a lot of books about the ship and I watched a bunch of documentaries too. I also researched a lot in general of the early 1900s so I could try to make it as authentic as possible. I’m sad that I deleted it though. It was a lot of work.

17. On average, how much writing do you get done in a day?

This can be from 0 words to 20K words. But on average, I’d say I write about 1K words. Even if I don’t finish a fic, I try to write something every day.

19. First line of a WIP you’re working on.

“Mysteries have long questioned humanity on Earth, made mankind scratch their heads in wonder as they pondered what could possibly be the reasoning behind the odd things that occurred.”

22. How many drafts do you need until you’re satisfied and a project is ultimately done for you?

Honestly, very few. I tend to write on the go. Usually, I have two or three drafts and the rest just comes with time.

23. Single or multi-POV, and why?

It depends on the story. Personally, I like to write single POV better, but when I try to make the story oblivious and full of misunderstandings, multi-POV is much better.

27. Do you share rough drafts or do you wait until it’s all polished?

Sometimes, yeah. I usually ask my best friend for opinions and sometimes I might explain my plots to close friends. But that’s rare. They tend to stay in my head.

30. Favourite line you’ve ever written.

Well, it’s more than just one line, but I couldn’t think of anything else, I’m sorry!

“Their lips touched gently, yet all their love poured into it. For that short, beautiful moment, they tried to forget it was their final kiss goodbye. It was their final kiss on the same fields where they had their first. A kiss to seal the chapter of their love story to an end. “

33. Do you listen to music when you’re writing?

Always.

34. Handwritten notes or typed notes?

Handwritten! They feel more personal. It’s romantic.

37. Most inspirational quote you’ve ever read or heard that’s still important to you.

“You can be anything you want to be, just turn yourself into anything you think that you could ever be.”

39. Do you base your characters of real people or not? If so, tell us about one.

Yes, I do that quite often, but not always. I tend to base them on people I know or even celebrities.

If I have to write about someone who is being nasty or rude, I just imagine whatever my highschool bully would say/do.

40. Original Fiction or Fanfiction, and why?

Original fiction because it is the source for fanfiction. Without it, we wouldn’t have fanfiction at all.

41. How many stories do you work on at one time?

Too many.

49. What do you find the hardest to write in a story, the beginning, the middle or the end?

The middle, maybe. I try to avoid plain, boring ‘grey spots’ in fics and they always form in the middle. I hate that.

50. Weirdest story idea you’ve ever had.

It’s kind of weird, but I loved it.

So it’s about these creatures ‘ethereal explorers’(EE) that travel through dimensions/alternate universes. They keep track of different worlds, collect stuff and study creatures etc. Their main purpose is to be a messenger and try to keep up peace. Some of the EEs are good, others are evil.

Only these creatures can travel through many dimensions at once, but a human can only travel through one at the time safely. Then one day, a human slips into a portal accidentally and goes through multiple dimensions and miraculously survives, which is a 0.1% case. The ethereal explorer finds this human and is naturally interested to know how they survived.

The story revolves around the human and the EE as he is taking her home to her home dimension, which means they have to travel through 20 something dimensions. Of course, during that time they get into danger but they also get closer.

52. How did writing change you?

In many ways. Writing has brought me closer to other people. It has made me patient and perhaps wiser when it comes to choosing my words.

Writing has made me an old soul. I have studied the past so much and fallen in love with a time that is no longer.

54. Any writing advice you want to share?

Don’t worry too much about what other people will think about your writing. Write whatever you like and so you build an audience that likes that as well.

Take your time. Don’t pressure yourself or force yourself to write when you don’t want to. If you don’t feel like writing, but you have ideas please write them down. I hate how many times I’ve lost ideas because I didn’t do this.

And listen to music! Music can set the mood to writing and it’s magical.

Just be you. Don’t be anything you aren’t, it won’t work in the long run.

Thank you once again! This was fun :)

3 notes · View notes

davidfarland · 5 years

Text

Read until the end for updates on upcoming writing courses and a special preview of my Serpent Catch series Book 1.

***

I often say that “Writing is easy, but writing beautifully is hard.” At least for me, I can sit down and put words on paper quickly and enjoy myself, but when I’m really working at telling a story on multiple levels, when I’m writing something that I know will be read by millions of people, when I’m struggling to be original and break out of cliché actions and wording, then the writing gets hard.

Yesterday I was working on a screenplay. Now, I haven’t written a lot of screenplays, but when you’re working on a project that you know could have millions of viewers and you’re struggling to launch a new film series, it really can slow you down. If you have that problem, here are some ways to speed up your writing.

Learn the basics of your medium. A person who is unsure how to use quotation marks or doesn’t know screenplay format will be more hesitant. Words and punctuation are the tools of your trade, so you need to learn how to use them.

Know where the story is going. If you understand who your characters are and what incidents are going to happen—in other words, if you’re prepared—the story itself seems to create its own energy and will hurry you along.

Make writing a habit. As Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, “That which we persist in doing becomes easier, not that the nature of the task has changed, but our ability to do has increased.” As you write on a daily basis, your brain forms new neural connections that let you craft your work more quickly, almost automatically, while your subconscious begins to focus on the task even in your sleep, so that when you sit down to write, you’re ready to write.

Focus on the work, not the distractions. Find the writing conditions that work best for you. For example, I have a favorite writing chair, a favorite laptop, and even a couple of spots in the house that work best for me. I know what kind of drink I want next to my writing chair, and I know which background music will distract me and which might energize me.

Eliminate fears. Don’t set your heart on winning awards and don’t worry about what critics will say. Many critics seem to speak out of jealousy. Extremely popular writers tend to get savaged. I recall when Stephen King got his first big deal and I heard some horror writers talking about how he was undeserving and “couldn’t write his way out of a paper bag.” So I read his work and felt surprised when I found him to be excellent. I heard the same criticisms against J.K. Rowling, John Grisham, Stephanie Meyer, and others. My message to young writers who criticize others for having the same kind of success that they wish to enjoy: Get your stupid butt in gear!

Remember that your first draft is just that, a first draft. Give yourself permission to get it done quickly. You can worry about perfecting your prose in the rewrites. Don’t compare your first draft to others’ finished drafts.

Stay in focus. Give yourself reasonably long blocks of time to write. Some people write at lightning speed, but most people find that it takes a bit of time to get warmed up.

Keep it fun. Stressing out just slows you down.

***

Sign ups for my online classes, the Advanced Story Puzzle and Writing Enchanting Prose, are now available at MyStoryDoctor.com. Both classes are $449 each and include weekly conference calls and I will also be giving feedback on your writing. Classes start August 24th which is also the last day to register. Each course will run for 10 weeks.

I recently spoke on the Legendarium Podcast, and discussed "Enders Game,". If you are curious about it, you can listen to the podcast here.

The Serpent Catch Book 1 will be available for $.99 on Amazon Kindle for the next 3 days only. You can read chapter 1 here as a special sneak peak into the series. If you are interested in reading more, you can buy the book on Amazon here.

Chapter 1: Night Watch

Tull felt teeth pierce his ankle, each tooth as sharp as flint, and heard bones crunching. Dimly he realized that it was dark, that he heard the growl of a great lizard. He kicked at the beast, struggling to rouse from his slumber.

“Yaagh,” he called. Most dinosaurs in Hotland were afraid of men, and he hoped that his shout would startle whatever had seized him.

Fully awake, he realized that it was only a strong hand that held his ankle.

His good friend Ayuvah laughed at the joke. “Shitha!” Get up, Ayuvah said in the soft-nasal language of the Neanderthal, or Pwi, as they called themselves. “Tchima-zho, sepala-pi fe.” I finish gladly, and take joy in my coming sleep.

Tull looked up into Ayuvah’s face and blinked to clear his vision. The great moon Thor was up, a green-blue monstrosity in the sky, and though it was only a quarter full, Tull could see the young Neanderthal man well in its surface.

The warm night air around camp smelled thick with the scent of leatherwood honey. Tree frogs whistled in the darkness beyond the edge of the Neanderthals’ little wooden fortress. Out across the plains, two male blue-crested hadrosaurs, with their long necks and duckbills, bellowed challenges to one another as they vied for a mate. The dinosaurs had been going at it solid for three days now in the valley below.

It must have been their calls that disturbed my sleep, Tull thought, and made me dream of predators. He felt glad that the honey harvest was almost finished. The hadrosaurs’ mating challenges had drawn a tyrannosaur into the valley earlier in the day. Ayuvah had killed it with his spear, but more would follow. Soon they would hike to the ship and sail back home to Smilodon Bay.

Tull pulled off his blanket and stretched. Ayuvah handed him the telescope, along with a war horn made from the horn of an aurochs, then went to pick at the stew beside the fire.

“Adja, I fear,” Ayuvah warned quietly. Because he did not say how much he feared, he meant that he was afraid of something unspecific. Seven other Pwi slept quietly around the camp, none of them snoring. The fire had burned down to red coals that glowed like malevolent eyes.

“What do you fear?” Tull asked softly.

“There is much movement in the valley tonight. The hadrosaurs are mating, and I saw two sailfin carnosaurs come up from the swamp. Many smaller dinosaurs are milling about, creatures that have been flushed from the woods. And I saw something else, I think,” Ayuvah said, thoughtfully. “I believe I saw a lantern shining down by the wide spot in the river. But it was far away—and after a minute it went out.”

“Perhaps it was only a will-o-wisp,” Tull said hopefully. The swamp gases along the river sometimes vented at night.

Ayuvah shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“Egg raiders?” Tull asked.

Only humans or Neanderthals would make fire, and few dared travel in this part of the world. Many young Pwi crossed the ocean at one time or another to steal dinosaur eggs in Hotland. Back on their home continent of Calla, the sailors paid well for the eggs, then sold them in distant ports to those who were foolish enough to hatch them just to see what kind of monster came out.

Ayuvah shook his head. “It is too late for egg raiders. Autumn will soon be here. I do not think that they would be Pwi. My kin will be going home to take in the harvest.”

The Neanderthal was right. Only Scandal the Gourmet, with his love for leatherwood honey, paid men well enough to work in Hotland in this season.

“Besides,” Ayuvah said. “Egg raiders would not hunt at night.”

Tull hesitated to say his next word. “Slavers?”

“Maybe,” Ayuvah said, nodding. “Twenty Pwi down from Wellen’s Eyes went out on egg raid last spring—and none returned. Slavers could have captured them.”

“I’ve never heard of slavers coming to Hotland,” Tull said, but he wondered. Over the past several years, the predations of the Craal slavers had increased. Some Pwi even said that it was time to flee Calla to make a new home in Hotland, where the slavers would hesitate to follow.

Because Ayuvah’s words made him nervous, Tull put on his war gear. He pulled a lacquered leather vest made of iguanodon hide over his naked chest, and sheathed his kutow, a double-headed battle ax, at his belt. He took his wooden spear and war shield, and slung the aurochs horn around his neck.

The fortress here was hidden. It was little more than rocks and a few poles bound together among some trees near the edge of a small pool.

His guard post was halfway up a large dead leatherwood tree, its ancient branches just high enough so that a man, resting in their gnarled crook, could survey the valley.

From the tree, Tull could see the plains all around. Though vegetation was trampled and sparse, a herd of two hundred triceratopses, each forty feet long, fed on shrubs in the dark grassland to the north. Leatherwood forests covered a row of hills to the east, and upon one hill two miles away, a small fire burned in a tree at the edge of the deep woods. Tull pulled the telescope from its case and studied the tree.

Denni and Tchar, two fourteen-year-old Neanderthals camped by the hollow leatherwood, smoking the honey bees into a stupor. A brazier hung beneath a hive by a chain. In the firelight, Tull could see blond-haired Denni coaxing the fire while Tchar slept. Good boy, Tull thought, to be so diligent. I’ll have to remember to congratulate him in the morning.

Iguanodons, huge and gray in the moonlight, feasted near the boys on the last of summer’s leaves. They were herd animals, large enough to scare off most smaller predators, alert enough to warn if something truly dangerous approached.

Good, Tull thought. The boys will be safe so long as the iguanodons stay near. Tull turned his spyglass off to the west, down to the wide spot in the river. Ayuvah was right. The brush was thick with movement. Too many dinosaurs were out, and they milled nervously through the brush, spooking at the smallest sound.

Tull studied the area. If someone had been down at the river carrying a lantern, then he might have seen the boys’ fire burning in the leatherwood tree when he came round the river’s bend. If the man were a slaver, he would then douse his lantern and sneak along the brush line like a wolf in the dark.

Tull wondered: if a dozen men crept through the brush by the river in the moonlight, would they scare the dinosaurs this much?

He wasn’t sure. A dozen allosaurs on the prowl, that would certainly scare the smaller animals into the open. If passing men made a lot of noise, they might scare the smaller animals, too. Tull turned a full circle, studied the plains carefully. In the moonlight, with his telescope, he could see well enough to feel secure.

A dozen small oviraptors broke into the open, scurrying from the brush near the hills. He focused on the spot, but could see nothing in the trees.

Tull hissed through his teeth, fingered his war horn. Whatever had frightened them was close to the boys. Tchar and Denni were young, and if they got into trouble, they might not have the presence of mind to get themselves out. Yet Tull could not blow the war horn without revealing his position.

Should I warn them, he wondered, about something that might be nothing? Anything could have scared the oviraptors.

Below him at the pond, the tree frogs abruptly quit whistling as someone stepped into the water. Tull flinched, looked down. Ayuvah’s younger sister, Fava, stood in the moonlight not eighty feet outside the fortress wall.

Fava was pretty, with sandy red hair. Her green eyes, uncommon among the Pwi, were set shallowly beneath her brows, which made her look more human than most deep-browed Neanderthals. Fava was a rarity, a purebred Pwi, not of mixed blood, like Tull.

Fava’s bare legs were decorated with colored ribbons, symbolizing that she was still a maiden. Bending over, she untied the ribbons, as if she would bathe.

Tull’s heart pounded, and he looked away as she began to strip off her summer tunic. He wondered if she knew that he was in the tree. How could she not know? he wondered. We always have a guard.

Fava gasped as she splashed into the pond. The water felt deliciously cool against her skin. Distilling honey was hot, sticky work, and Fava relished the thought of feeling clean again, clean like the night sky that caressed the moon’s cheek.

Fava dunked her head beneath the water’s surface to soak the honey smoke out of her hair. She rolled her head from side to side, letting the current ripple like fingers through her tresses. Fingers, she thought. Would that they were Tull’s fingers instead of the river’s.

He watches, up there in his tree, she thought. She pushed off against the rocks and silt of the pond’s bottom and took in a breath before she stretched out to float on her back under Thor’s blue-green light.

Fava shared her smile with the moon. Let him watch, she whispered to Thor. If Tull watched, perhaps he would see that she was a woman grown, a woman who offered potho ha-chima, the love that opens like a rosebud, instead of the simpler friendship of a childhood playmate.

For Fava was a girl no longer. Her goals and desires had evolved from the toys and games of a child into the larger world of kin, village and hearth. Like all Pwi women, she would take a mate once and forever, joining her spirit with his the way bark is bound to pith.

The water lapping against the shore offered a soft chuckle in response to Fava’s thoughts, so she splashed.

What if Tull didn’t want her? What if his heart yearned after some human woman, just as hers yearned after him? Tull’s father was human, so perhaps Tull aspired to a human life, a human wife. The thought unsettled Fava, so she dove beneath the surface again to wash the thought loose.

Surely, Tull could see that a strong Pwi woman like herself was better than the wilting flower of a human girl he’d chased after as a boy. Well, if he couldn’t, Fava would do her best to make him see.

She rose to the surface and stole a glance at Tull’s guard post over her bare shoulder.

Tull dared a glimpse toward the pond. He could see little. Fava’s pale flesh shone softly in the blue moonlight, and she swam with the grace of an otter. “Fava,” he whispered, “what are you doing?”

“Bathing,” she said. Fava was a sweet girl who seemed mystified by the world and always spoke with a strangely intense inflection, as if trying to convey how odd everything was.

Tull’s face burned with embarrassment.

“Mmmmm,” she sighed, splashing water. “I’ve been boiling honey for three days. My clothes are sticky, and they smell like leatherwood. Tell,” she said, speaking Tull’s name as well as her Neanderthal lips would allow, Even my skin smells-fondly of honey.”“

Tull blushed and looked away. Fava teased him from time to time, yet it seemed like a game. Tull was not sure if she really wanted to catch him. For Neanderthals, all objects, all people, all places held kwea, the emotional weight of past associations. Tull felt drawn to Fava, but she’d always been like a little sister to him. The kwea he felt for her was friendly, the kwea built up from good times spent together.

He could not think of her as anything but the little girl she had been, someone to protect. But lately, the kwea was changing. She teased him often, and he felt a craving for her—the desire to treat her as a lover.

Yet he didn’t dare make such a move, afraid it would spoil their long friendship.

Besides, why would she want me, a halfbreed? Tull wondered. Not many women would want a half-human, half-Neanderthal for a husband. Fava could surely do better. No, she is just trying to embarrass me.

Tull breathed slowly and forced himself to watch the grasslands, but he could not concentrate on them with Fava swimming in the pool, the sinuous waves rippling away from her like silver ribbons untwining from her legs. She kept at it for half an hour, then climbed out to dry herself in the warm night air, shaking out her long, red hair with her fingers.

Tull struggled to keep his eyes averted. Several small dinosaurs had gathered in the valley to scavenge the carcass of the tyrannosaur Ayuvah had killed earlier in the day. Perhaps that was what had so many of the smaller dinosaurs, kavas, as the Pwi called them, on edge. The smell of a tyrannosaur, mingled with blood and offal, was sure to cause some alarm.

Once Fava had dressed, she entered the fortress, shinnied up the tree, and stood on the gnarled old branch beside Tull, one hand resting on the trunk of the tree.

She was tall for a Neanderthal, yet Tull looked down on her, for like many halfbreeds, he was taller than most Neanderthals, and broader of chest than any human.

“Tull, will you comb my hair?” she asked, standing precariously.

“I’m on guard,” he said.

“Everyone else is asleep!” Fava insisted.

Tull took the ivory comb she proffered. She turned her back and leaned against his thigh while he brushed her long, wet hair.

“I’m eager to get back home,” Tull said as he combed.

“Why?” Fava asked. “I thought you were happy to come on this trip. You said you were bored with picking fruit and hauling hay.”

“I fear,” Tull answered, and he told her about Ayuvah seeing a lantern.

“It would be a shame if the slavers come here,” she said. “Tsavathar’shi.” This place, too beautiful. She stood gazing out at the moonlight over plains. It was still an hour before dawn, and a quetzalcoatlus with a fifty-foot wingspan soared overhead, hunting for carrion. As Tull and Fava watched, it began to circle the dead tyrannosaur down in the valley.

Tull finished combing Fava’s hair, then tied it into a ponytail and patted her shoulder.

“Did I get the honey off?” she asked matter-of-factly, playing the part of a little sister again.

Tull leaned in. Her hair smelled of mountain spring water. “I think so, Friend.”

Fava turned and looked up at him smiling. Tull could not read her expression: Anger, desire, mockery?

“Friend?” she said, “are you sure that is all I am?” She leaned her head back.

Tull breathed the sweet scent of her neck. Her clothes still held the fruity, flowery scent of leatherwood honey, and somehow it made him dizzy.

Tull felt unsure how to answer, for if he told her the truth, she might go down and bathe again.

Suddenly he stopped worrying about it: on the hill far away, he saw a torch swinging in the darkness. Tull pulled out his telescope, gaze riveted on the honey tree: Two miles across the plain, Denni was swinging the brazier.

For a moment, Tull noticed nothing else, then he spotted men dressed in black boiling out of the brush. Denni was trying to drive them off with the brazier. Swords flashed in the moonlight.

“What’s happening?” Fava asked.

“Slavers!” Tull said. “Pirates from Bashevgo, I think—at least they are dressed in black. Denni is holding them back.”

“How many?” Fava asked. Tull heard fear and bewilderment in her little-girl voice.

He counted. “Ten or twelve that I can see.”

“Denni can’t fight so many. He is swinging the brazier to warn us!” Fava said. She grabbed the war horn from Tull’s neck, pulling it so hard that the leather string broke.

“No,” Tull said, “you’ll warn the slavers that we’re here.”

Fava put the horn to her lips and blew, letting the deep bellow add to the mating cries of the blue-crested hadrosaurs on the plain below.

Tull watched through the glass as slavers turned as one toward the sounding war horn.

Fava’s little-girl voice turned hard. “Now Denni and Tchar know we are coming. And the pirates know they have a fight on their hands!”

#writingtip

12 notes · View notes

momo-de-avis · 5 years

Note

Do you have any writing tips for someone that is definitely not a writer but wants to be better at writing anyway? That might be too vague so I'll say this, I have a lot of trouble getting an idea that isn't either something really small that doesn't make a narrative or something gigantic and complicated that I dont have the will to take on. No middle sliders in my life.

You have an issue my boyfriend has, he has great ideas but either believes they’re just something too small for a long narrative or so long and complex he doesn’t know how to plot them.

I can’t tell you what the right way is, because everyone is different of course, but I think there’s two ways you can go about it to try and figure out which might help you best.

First of all, take notes on every idea you have. I’m serious. However small it seems, just write it down. Even if it’s something as trivial as ‘man eats an apple while staring at a tree’, whatever. I find that, when something really tiny like that pops into my head with that thing of ‘dang, I need to write this’ but it just seems way too trivial for me to care, it’s because of how I’m visualizing it. I’ll tell you this, this one time I was having a cup of coffee near the library after a break and I saw this woman in the gardens looking at a tree, and that’s what gripped me in that moment. It was really stupid, but the thing I saw was what made me explore that for some reason. I thought she looked sad, I don’t know why, it just looked really sad, and it looked like that sad woman just casually looked up at a cypress tree like she wanted to see something pretty on a shitty day. Later on, must have been years, I was trying to write a scene where a character was supposed to compose a text for school about why she mattered and the only thing that came to mind was that woman looking up at that tree. I’m telling you this because the littlest thing can really help. If you get that unexpected pang of ‘damn, this is cool’ or ‘wow, this is really pretty’, take the chance to write down the what and why at least. Because you never know!

Now, as for development, there’s two ways to go about it that might help you. You can explore the character-driven side of narrative, or the plot-driven. These are, I’ll be honest, two things I have a hard time distinguishing but I mostly follow character-driven.

Plot-driven stuff generally has people planning beforehand (hence why I suck at it lmao). Some people follow the 3 Act structure, or other ways to go about it with planning (this is a good place to check out a few). As the name says, the plot is the star. There is a narrative you want to develop. There’s a central plot with probably very little sub-plots, but that one plot is the main goal. Most likely, one protagonist or two, both with goals that they will achieve or not at the end.

Character-driven, though... the characters make the story. It’s really hard to explain, so I’ll explain how I do it. I essentially have to have the characters very well established. Who they are, psychologically. Once I know them, I let the story flow naturally.

This has helped me a lot because most of the times I have a premise, not a plot, and on my first draft (not even a first draft, more like preliminary exercise lmao), I just try that approach to try and understand who these characters are or what I want them to be, so that they can move the story. Eventually, what happens is I have the inciting incident settled, the lowpoint as well or just something in the middle that is a plot device, and the ending established, but as I progress, since I know the characters, new things emerge like, completely new conflicts and reactions that just occur to me as I progress. But this is my method, it’s how I work.

For me, personally, sitting down just TRYING to find a plot, or an extra for the already existing plot, is tiresome and it drains me. So I just go ahead and do something and see where it goes. I follow the character instead of the plot (ask stuff like “what would she do if a stranger bumped into her on the subway, what should do if she witnessed this or that, what would she say if someone asked her this and that”, and go from there).

Another thing is: find your voice. I mean mostly style. I find that most of the times people struggle with this because they are struggling with finding their style, because once you get your voice established it might become easier in developing your story. For example, I always loved bullshitting my way through stuff if it involves words lmao, and when it came to creating long stories, I had an issue with planning. I remember at school my teachers would have us write a detailed plan of our story before the actual story, and we were forced to turn them both in for grading, which fucking sucked, because I don’t plan.

Then I read Virginia Woolf and learned about this neat little thing called ‘stream of consciousness’ and thought, fuck you, 9th grade teacher. Stream of consciousness is essentially a style where the author focuses on one small detail, seemingly trivial, and then develops an entire fluid string of throughs that interconnect with each other however contrasting they are (why the sentence “Mrs. Dalloway thought she’d buy the flowers herself” is so remarkable, because for the WHOLE BOOK, Woolf debates about many things, seldom being flowers. Hell, one of my favourite short stories is her meditating on a fly that lands on a bowl of milk).

So what I learned with this was: bullshitting your way out of purple prose has an academic word for it! Great! This also validated a lot my lack of planning, meaning that every time I drivelled instead of following a step-by-step plot I was actually building something worth a damn, because that exercise of developing a string of thoughts that are born from one shitty thing is something that can happen inside a novel.

So you see, finding my style, in this case, helped me find my voice and it became very easy ever since to juggle my methods with my ideas. This is my experience, of course, and it’s worth what it’s worth, but this little thing is what helped me establish that, I might have an idea, but if I let it flow, it might grow into something.

Of course, there’s that last advice: read more, watch more TV shows and movies within the genre you’d like to explore, etc etc, but I think it always goes without saying.

And one more thing: no story, for me, is too small or too long. It has its own natural length. Sometimes, we have ideas that are naturally shorter. It just means they’re short stories, or novellas, or novelettes. When my boyfriend told me he had that same problem -- that he had ideas he just didn’t know how to develop into full books -- I told him: then they’re short stories. And that’s fantastic.

The thing is, being a writer isn’t like something immutable, you’re not the same always, you know, you’re not always in this place, with this style, writing about this thing. You keep changing, keep finding new voices, keep exploring new angles, just continuously growing, as with any other artistic field. So maybe right now, those might be short stories, but who knows in the future?

I was reading American Gods and Neil Gaiman apparently republished it a second time, a much longer version his former editor had told him to cut down, and at the beginning he quotes Stephen King on why he did it: cause there were small bits in it, sub-plots if you will, editors are keen on thinking they don’t add to the main plot, but they build the story as a whole, paint the colours needed for the setting, the ambience, the narrative outside the main plot, and both authors felt their concepts, their ideas, weren’t complete without them.

My first advice when someone has an idea is always this: write it down, however it is, with whatever you have. It might be one paragraph. It might be 400 pages. Whatever you have, it’s just a first draft, and the goal of a first draft is getting it down on paper, not turning it into the finished work. It’s the first step.

And if it’s gigantic? Make it gigantic. This is Miss Only Writes Gigantic Shit speaking. I mean monstrous. Especially first and second and even like, third and fourth draft (man I have a lot of drafts), it’s so brutally long I seriously have to take a step back and think “bitch, slow down”. Eventually, I chop down stuff. Scenes that don’t add anything, repeated stuff, scenes that establish what is already established -- just stuff that misses the eye.

Just to say, let the story have its natural rhythm in the beginning stages. Writing is like baking, as I say: you need to set it aside and let it settle for a while, and then when you come back to it with a clear head, you’ll be able to compose it better. Eventually, it drives you down misery road and actually have to do the dreadful thing of leaving stuff out -- it’s sad, I won’t deny, looking at this one character and saying “goodbye, you were a good one, but I have to put you into the Unused Character Pile, maybe one day you’ll find your light, but not today, and I’m so sorry, but where you are right now, you’re useless lmao”. It’s a step that comes eventually, but it’s not needed in the early stages.

But in the end, it all comes down to motivation, I think. So first and foremost, I would say... find your motivation to write whatever you have. You could read more into the genre you’re thinking of, or you could try and write small vignettes of the story you have in mind (just pick a scene and try writing it down, just to see). You could try a challenge of sorts, like picking up a concept, a word, a sentence, and try developing it. Create a habit too -- don’t mind that “write every day” stuff, do it whenever you feel like it, whenever you get that tingle of ‘damn I feel like writing’, just answer that call. And always believe in your ideas, and I say this because I find that a lot of lack of motivation comes from ‘my idea sucks’ or ‘it’s been done before’. Your ideas are yours alone, so explore them as much as you can.

I used to have a website saved that I lost and this is the closest thing to it I found, but try this out for like a first plot, or just to generally get an outline of your idea. It has HELPED ME TREMENDOUSLY when I have a new idea that just makes me think “Great! now what the fuck do I do with it?”

I hope this helped, anon!! And sweet, sweet writing, my friend!

#Anonymous

5 notes · View notes

onebighumanheart · 5 years

Text

11/11/11 Tag!

Well, looky here. My first tag game of my Tumblr career(?). Huge thanks to @hyba for considering me for this after us just having met! I deeply appreciate it.

Without further ado.

#1: If you could choose one character (one of your OCs, but you can choose another character as well) to hang out with for a night, which would it be?

Any character... Temperance Brennan, Bones. We wouldn’t be doing much in the way of having fun, perhaps, but she could teach me all her anthropological ways. Maybe then I could finally decide whether that’s the career I want to pursue or not!

#2: When did you get the idea for your WIP(s)?

This is assuming I have a WIP—I don’t, really. That said, though, for each of my stories’ prompts? My best friend whipped up a list of them for me, one word a day for a month. If you check out my blog, you’ll see that they’re real inspirational! I’ve come up with the best stuff I’ve ever written from the words they gave me.

#3: What’s the one thing you want to accomplish in your life?

I want to change a life. One way or another, I want to have been influential enough on this planet to have improved somebody’s life, however small or however long-lasting. Make somebody’s day better, keep them smiling through the week, give them the strength to make it through the month. Maybe even to live another day, with my work.

#4: Where do you go when you need to take some space away from whatever is frustrating you (your writing, or anything else)?

I don’t have a place I go, no. When I’m frustrated, I usually just stick it through. Is that healthy? No, probably not, but I’m not the kind to stand my ground by stepping away. When I do, though, it’s usually to my room, where I’ll just lay there, contemplating.

#5: What’s the funniest book you’ve ever read?

Funniest book... Probably Counting by Sevens by Holly Goldberg Sloan, my second favorite book of all time. It tells the story of an orphaned and adopted gifted child entering middle school who ends up losing her pair of adoptive parents, too. It’s poignant, touching, but also hilarious. If you haven’t heard of it or haven’t had a chance to pick it up, do that. Give it a read, it deserves it.

#6: Of all the characters in books that you have read, which one is your favourite?

Look. I’ve never actually read the book, but Howl’s Moving Castle means the world to me. It’s my favorite movie of all time since my older cousins first showed it to me when I was younger along with My Neighbor Totoro (I just love Ghibli, man). Sophie Hatter is one of my favorite characters of all time, a well-written woman who regains and maintains her strength despite (and, perhaps, because of) her affliction. If movie Sophie’s anything like book Sophie, I’m swooning.

#7: Have you ever abandoned a story/book for over a year and why?

I abandoned writing in general for many months before these two weeks of immersing myself in it again, for personal reasons. In the general sense, putting words on a paper (or, more accurately, on a screen) felt... wrong. I’m trying to break through that the best I can lately, and I feel it’s working.

#8: If you could be anywhere in the world right now, where you would be?

Canada, no second thoughts. Why? Beats me. I haven’t ever been, I hardly know anything about it, and it’s cold enough to freeze my nose off up there. Do I still love it as if it were my home country? You bet.

#9: Name one writer whose writing and style have influenced you.

Is this basic? You tell me. Stephen King. My favorite book of all time is It, after sifting through a PDF version because What Teenager Has Money To Pay For Books. (I’d like to, but a guy has to economize. King probably wouldn’t mind too much.) I’ve tried to take his level of description and tone it down a bit for my own writing, for I’ve had many run-ins with the ill-fated Purple Prose!!!. That aside, though, his pace and tone set up for the onl book that

#10: Do you have an end in mind for your WIP(s)?

N/A, for the time being. But again, in terms of my short stories, I usually begin with a loose idea and flesh it out as I start writing, letting things come to a stop wherever they do. Then I prune a bit before showing them to the world.

#11: Which WIP have you enjoyed writing the most so far?

My favorite story of mine so far is the deity prompt with Renata and Ludo. I feel it’s one of my stronger pieces thus far. A friend even said it sounds like something out of a fanfiction.

I’m going to tag a few people I’ve seen around the writeblr community. If you’re uncomfortable with being tagged, by all means, send me a message and let me know that’s not something you’re up to! I won’t mind one bit. @akingsleywriter @francestroublr @writer-jessicac @iannicellis @kidsarentallwrite @push-the-draft

Have some questions of my own!

1. What’s the scene in a book or movie that’s most memorable for you?

2. If you have a WIP, who’s your favorite character in it? Why?

3. What inspired you to start writing? What continues to inspire you to keep writing?

4. List five of your favorite things.

5. What genre of content do you most enjoy? (Books to read/write, film, video games, etc.)

6. Setting goals is the biggest way to make your ideas a reality. What are some of yours?

7. Describe your closest friend.

8. What time period do you most write in? Why?

9. Do you have any other hobbies? Let’s hear them.

10. Is there anyone in your life who inspires or influences your writing? How so?

11. What makes you happy?

#11 questions #tag #tag game #writeblr #writer on tumblr #write #writing #questions

38 notes · View notes