#how to write a literary novel

[rozmorris]

Aim to make your book perfect - why it’s worth it and how it’s possible

An online discussion has got me thinking. Actually, snarling a bit. On a forum, an author was taking her first steps to self-publish a literary novel. She’d already worked with an editor, but wasn’t certain the manuscript was ready for publishing. Should she get another beta-read? One member answered: ‘is that a good use of your time? I made the mistake of writing and rewriting, trying to get…

[sunshades]

One thing about canto VI is like. I see so many people predicting it'll be about Fighting Evil Wife or Breaking Codependent Toxic Relationship and I just kinda think that would suck? If the major theme isn't grief AND love and the way both are seen as like Kinda Weird/inappropriate in the setting of the city. Then I'll be very sad.

[gorillaxyz]

ive gotten really into watxhing videos abt insane book twitter indie author drama. ans im so happy i only read classics & biographical work 😭😭😭

[cruelsister-moved2]

"the truth is she did it alone, and remembered it all her life."

[mejomonster]

To get good at telling stories... writing stories... one must... practice by writing stories ;-;

[anyroads]

Posts I've seen in just the last week:

AO3 is one of the most visited sites in the world

It's ok if your fanfic [that you're writing for free in your spare time] is unfinished! You do you!

How very dare these WGA writers not finish writing my stories for me [that they spend full work days every day working on] just because they don't get compensated fairly for their paid labor and decided to go on strike?

Respect unions! Unionize your workplace! Respect picket lines!

Posts I have not seen ever but maybe it's just me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

AO3 would not exist without the paid writers who are currently striking. You would have no stories to write fanfic of. The entire world your fic exists in was created by someone else's labor.

[acotars]

(I have no idea if this will make sense—sorry I’ve had some wine this evening and so I’m rambling)

I think this is a “popular” opinion but not widespread—people need to understand that there is so much nuance to reading. Obviously there’s the “you can like things I don’t like” and vice versa, but also in HOW people enjoy things. Like take Fourth Wing (I know I know), but while I also agree with a lot of the complaints, I still was just like “that was a fun time, I totally ignored all the sex scenes bc I hate how they were written, but I was vibing the whole time.” And I feel like some people would still respond to my opinion like “okay but it was so horrible how did you even enjoy it at all??? Lame”

Like okay Betty, I love high fantasy as much as you, but sometimes I want something that just fucks, okay?

(and not to say you aren’t allowed to not like things, but there seems to be a fine line between “hey! I didn’t like this but that’s okay” and “I hated this and I CANNOT comprehend why ANYONE could find even an inkling of fun from this + I’m going to subtly implicate that I think people who like this are stupid”) (obviously not for books that are objectively hurtful or offensive)

And of course you can go so many different ways than just that example, but it’s a mix of gate-keeping, prejudice, lack of empathy, and a bit of a superiority complex that makes it so hard for the reading community to really be united.

[portersqbooks]

Piera just finished reading the e-ARC of Y/N by Esther Yi, which is a deeply weird literary novel about a disillusioned woman who finds herself, despite herself, in the inescapable throes of Overwhelming Kpop Boy Obsession. The official description begins so:

It’s as if her life only began once Moon appeared in it. The desultory copywriting work, the boyfriend, and the want of anything not-Moon quickly fall away when she beholds the idol in concert, where Moon dances as if his movements are creating their own gravitational field; on live streams, as fans from around the world comment in dozens of languages; even on skincare products endorsed by the wildly popular Korean boyband, of which Moon is the youngest, most luminous member. Seized by ineffable desire, our unnamed narrator begins writing Y/N fanfic—in which you, the reader, insert [Your/Name] and play out an intimate relationship with the unattainable star.

I liked the book a lot - it’s great for a really particular cross section of people who are close enough to kpop stan culture to understand what’s going on, but far enough away that their feelings aren’t hurt by the depiction. Interestingly, I think kpop stan culture and academia are treated with about the same amount of empathy-vs-annoyance here.

Y/N comes out on March 31. Preorder here!

[prokopetz]

"Why does this 19th Century novel have such a boring protagonist" well, for a lot of reasons, really, but one of the big ones is that you're possibly getting the protagonist and the narrator mixed up.

A lot of 19th Century literary critics had this weird hate-boner for omniscient narrators – stories would straight up get criticised as "unrealistic" on the grounds that it was unlikely anyone could have witnessed their events in the manner described, like some sort of proto-CinemaSins bullshit – so authors who didn't want to write their stories from the first-person perspective of one of the participating characters would often go to great lengths to contrive for there to be a Dude present to witness and narrate the story's events.

It's important to understand that the Dude is the viewpoint character, but not the protagonist. His function is to witness stuff, and he only directly participates in the narrative to the extent that's necessary to explain to the satisfaction of persnickety critics why he's present and how he got there. Giving him a personality would defeat the purpose!

(Though lowbrow fiction was unlikely to encounter such criticisms, the device of the elaborately justified diegetic narrator was often present there as well, and was sometimes parodied to great effect – for example, by having the story narrated by a very unlikely party, such as a sapient insect, or by a party whose continued presence is justified in increasingly comical ways.)

[artistnik]

You Asked About Self-Publishing

Peace, this is a long post to answer some questions I’m asked often. Also, info I wish found all in one place. First. Whatever genre you’re writing in, at least peruse books in that genre. Know who the bestsellers are and why.  This is also the first step in finding an agent if you want to be traditionally published. Two. To build an audience research call for submissions on projects in your…

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

Oooh! A great Gavin Finney (Good Omens Director of Photography) interview with Helen Parkinson for the British Cinematographer! :)

HEAVEN SENT

Gifted a vast creative landscape from two of fantasy’s foremost authors to play with, Gavin Finney BSC reveals how he crafted the otherworldly visuals for Good Omens 2.  

It started with a letter from beyond the grave. Following fantasy maestro Sir Terry Pratchett’s untimely death in 2015, Neil Gaiman decided he wouldn’t adapt their co-authored 1990 novel, Good Omens, without his collaborator. That was, until he was presented with a posthumous missive from Pratchett asking him to do just that.  

For Gaiman, it was a request that proved impossible to decline: he brought Good Omens season one to the screen in 2019, a careful homage to its source material. His writing, complemented by some inspired casting – David Tennant plays the irrepressible demon Crowley, alongside Michael Sheen as angel-slash-bookseller Aziraphale – and award-nominated visuals from Gavin Finney BSC, proved a potent combination for Prime Video viewers.  

Aziraphale’s bookshop was a set design triumph.

Season two departs from the faithful literary adaptation of its predecessor, instead imagining what comes next for Crowley and Aziraphale. Its storyline is built off a conversation that Pratchett and Gaiman shared during a jetlagged stay in Seattle for the 1989 World Fantasy Convention. Gaiman remembers: “The idea was always that we would tell the story that Terry and I came up with in 1989 in Seattle, but that we would do that in our own time and in our own way. So, once Good Omens (S1) was done, all I knew was that I really, really wanted to tell the rest of the story.” 

Telling that story visually may sound daunting, but cinematographer Finney is no stranger to the wonderfully idiosyncratic world of Pratchett and co. As well as lensing Good Omens’ first outing, he’s also shot three other Pratchett stories – TV mini series  Hogfather  (2006), and TV mini-series The Colour of Magic (2008) and Going Postal (2010). 

He relishes how the authors provide a vast creative landscape for him to riff off. “The great thing about Pratchett and Gaiman is that there’s no limit to what you can do creatively – everything is up for grabs,” he muses. “When we did the first Pratchett films and the first Good Omens, you couldn’t start by saying, ‘Okay, what should this look like?’, because nothing looks like Pratchett’s world. So, you’re starting from scratch, with no references, and that starting point can be anything you want it to be.”  

Season two saw the introduction of inside-outside sets for key locations including Aziraphale’s bookshop. 

From start to finish 

The sole DP on the six-episode season, Finney was pleased to team up again with returning director Douglas Mackinnon for the “immensely complicated” shoot, and the pair began eight weeks of prep in summer 2021. A big change was the production shifting the main soho set from Bovington airfield, near London, up to Edinburgh’s Pyramids Studio. Much of the action in Good Omens takes place on the Soho street that’s home to Aziraphale’s bookshop, which was built as an exterior set on the former airfield for season one. Season two, however, saw the introduction of inside-outside sets for key locations including the bookshop, record store and pub, to minimise reliance on green screen.  

Finney brought over many elements of his season one lensing, especially Mackinnon’s emphasis on keeping the camera moving, which involved lots of prep and testing. “We had a full-time Scorpio 45’ for the whole shoot (run by key grip Tim Critchell and his team), two Steadicam operators (A camera – Ed Clark and B camera Martin Newstead) all the way through, and in any one day we’d often go from Steadicam, to crane, to dolly and back again,” he says. “The camera is moving all the time, but it’s always driven by the story.” 

One key difference for season two, however, was the move to large-format visuals. Finney tested three large-format cameras and the winner was the Alexa LF (assisted by the Mini LF where conditions required), thanks to its look and flexibility.  

The minisodes were shot on Cooke anamorphics, giving Finney the ideal balance of anamorphic-style glares and characteristics without too much veiling flare.

A more complex decision was finding the right lenses for the job. “You hear about all these whizzy new lenses that are re-barrelled ancient Russian glass, but I needed at least two full sets for the main unit, then another set for the second unit, then maybe another set again for the VFX unit,” Finney explains. “If you only have one set of this exotic glass, it’s no good for the show.” 

He tested a vast array of lenses before settling on Zeiss Supremes, supplied by rental house Media Dog. These ticked all the boxes for the project: “They had a really nice look – they’re a modern design but not over sharp, which can look a bit electronic and a bit much, especially with faces. When you’re dealing with a lot of wigs and prosthetics, we didn’t want to go that sharp. The Supremes had a very nice colour palette and nice roll-off. They’re also much smaller than a lot of large-format glass, so that made it easy for Steadicam and remote cranes. They also provided additional metadata, which was very useful for the VFX department (VFX services were provided by Milk VFX).” 

The Supremes were paired with a selection of filters to characterise the show’s varied locations and characters. For example, Tiffen Bronze Glimmerglass were paired with bookshop scenes; Black Pro-Mist was used for Hell; and Black Diffusion FX for Crowley’s present-day storyline.  

Finney worked closely with the show’s DIT, Donald MacSween, and colourist, Gareth Spensley, to develop the look for the minisode.

Maximising minisodes 

Episodes two, three and four of season two each contain a ‘minisode’ – an extended flashback set in Biblical times, 1820s Edinburgh and wartime London respectively. “Douglas wanted the minisodes to have very strong identities and look as different from the present day as possible, so we’d instantly know we were in a minisode and not the present day,” Finney explains.  

One way to shape their distinctive look was through using Cooke anamorphic lenses. As Finney notes: “The Cookes had the right balance of controllable, anamorphic-style flares and characteristics without having so much veiling flare that they would be hard to use on green screens. They just struck the right balance of aesthetics, VFX requirements and availability.” The show adopted the anamorphic aspect ratio (2:39.1), an unusual move for a comedy, but one which offered them more interesting framing opportunities. 

Good Omens 2 was shot on the Alexa LF, paired with Zeiss Supremes for the present-day scenes.

The minisodes were also given various levels of film grain to set them apart from the present-day scenes. Finney first experimented with this with the show’s DIT Donald MacSween using the DaVinci Resolve plugin FilmConvert. Taking that as a starting point, the show’s colourist, Company 3’s Gareth Spensley, then crafted his own film emulation inspired by two-strip Technicolor. “There was a lot of testing in the grade to find the look for these minisodes, with different amounts of grain and different types of either Technicolor three-strip or two-strip,” Finney recalls. “Then we’d add grain and film weave on that, then on top we added film flares. In the Biblical scenes we added more dust and motes in the air.”  

Establishing the show’s lighting was a key part of Finney’s testing process, working closely with gaffer Scott Napier and drawing upon PKE Lighting’s inventory. Good Omens’ new Scottish location posed an initial challenge: as the studio was in an old warehouse rather than being purpose-built for filming, its ceilings weren’t as high as one would normally expect. This meant Finney and Napier had to work out a low-profile way of putting in a lot of fixtures. 

Inside Crowley’s treasured Bentley.

Their first task was to test various textiles, LED wash lights and different weight loadings, to establish what they were working with for the street exteriors. “We worked out that what was needed were 12 SkyPanels per 20’x20’ silk, so each one was a block of 20’x20’, then we scaled that up,” Finney recalls. “I wanted a very seamless sky, so I used full grid cloth which made it very, very smooth. That was important because we’ve got lots of cars constantly driving around the set and the sloped windscreens reflect the ceiling. So we had to have seamless textiles – PKE had to source around 12,000 feet of textiles so that we could put them together, so the reflections in the windscreens of the cars just showed white gridcloth rather than lots of stage lights. We then drove the car around the set to test it from different angles.”  

On the floor, they mostly worked with LEDs, providing huge energy and cost savings for the production. Astera’s Titan Tubes came in handy for a fun flashback scene with John Hamm’s character Gabriel. The DP remembers: “[Gabriel] was travelling down a 30-foot feather tunnel. We built a feather tunnel on the stage and wrapped it in a ring of Astera tubes, which were then programmed by dimmer op Jon Towler to animate, pulse and change different colours. Each part of Gabriel’s journey through his consciousness has a different colour to it.” 

Among the rigs built was a 20-strong Creamsource Vortex setup for the graveyard scene in the “Body Snatchers” minisode, shot in Stirling. “We took all the yokes off each light then put them on a custom-made aluminium rig so we could have them very close. We put them up on a big telehandler on a hill that gave me a soft mood light, which was very adjustable, windproof and rainproof.” 

Shooting on the VP stage for the birth of the universe scenes in episode one.

Sky’s the limit 

A lot of weather effects were done in camera – including lightning effects pulsed in that allowed both direct fork lightning and sheet lightning to spread down the streets. In the grade, colourist Spensley was also able to work his creative magic on the show’s skies. “Gareth is a very artistic colourist – he’s a genius at changing skies,” Finney says. “Often in the UK you get these very boring, flat skies, but he’s got a library of dramatic skies that you can drop in. That would usually be done by VFX, but he’s got the ability to do it in Baselight, so a flat sky suddenly becomes a glorious sunset.” 

Finney emphasises that the grade is a very involved process for a series like Good Omens, especially with its VFX-heavy nature. “This means VFX sequences often need extra work when it comes back into the timeline,” says the DP. “So, we often add camera movement or camera shake to crank the image up a bit. Having a colourist like Gareth is central to a big show like Good Omens, to bring all the different visual elements together and to make it seamless. It’s quite a long grade process but it’s worth its weight in gold.” 

Shooting in the VR cube for the blitz scenes .

Finney took advantage of virtual production (VP) technology for the driving scenes in Crowley’s classic Bentley. The volume was built on their Scottish set: a 4x7m cube with a roof that could go up and down on motorised winches as needed. “We pulled the cars in and out on skates – they went up on little jacks, which you could then rotate and move the car around within the volume,” he explains. “We had two floating screens that we could move around to fill in and use as additional source lighting. Then we had generated plates – either CGI or real location plates –projected 360º around the car. Sometimes we used the volume in-camera but if we needed to do more work downstream; we’d use a green screen frustum.” Universal Pixels collaborated with Finney to supply in-camera VFX expertise, crew and technical equipment for the in-vehicle driving sequences and rear projection for the crucial car shots. 

John Hamm was suspended in the middle of this lighting rig and superimposed into the feather tunnel.

Interestingly, while shooting at a VP stage in Leith, the team also used the volume as a huge, animated light source in its own right – a new technique for Finney. “We had the camera pointing away from [the volume] so the screen provided this massive, IMAX-sized light effect for the actors. We had a simple animation of the expanding universe projected onto the screen so the actors could actually see it, and it gave me the animated light back on the actors.”  

Bringing such esteemed authors’ imaginations to the screen is no small task, but Finney was proud to helped bring Crowley and Aziraphale’s adventures to life once again. He adds: “What’s nice about Good Omens, especially when there’s so much bad news in the world, is that it’s a good news show. It’s a very funny show. It’s also about good and evil, love and doing the right thing, people getting together irrespective of backgrounds. It’s a hopeful message, and I think that that’s what we all need.” 

Finney is no stranger to the idiosyncratic world of Sir Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.

[rozmorris]

Same old same old – how to write a novel that doesn’t repeat your other novels

I’m starting on a new novel. And I don’t want it to be too similar to my previous ones. Is that possible?   The idea began with a setting. It would be easy to populate it with characters and problems, but there’s a danger they will be very like the characters and problems I’ve told stories about before. Instead, I want to see what happens if I resist my ‘usuals’. What might I find? But how…

[thesiltverses]

A very big thank you

I posted this on Patreon, but really wanted to share it here as well:

Post-show life begins

For a long while now I’ve been getting up at 4.30 or 5am, grabbing myself the first coffee of four, and then coming to sit at my desk.

I open up the assembly cut of the newest TSV episode.

I listen to it, I try and pin down which scenes I need to be going back over today. I try and push through the entire morning without a break because when the momentum stalls, that’s what kills your release schedule. (I also worry endlessly about just how much of my hair is falling out, and how spending 12 hours a day wearing headphones could be contributing to that.)

Today was different. I still woke up early - it’s a hard habit to shake off, and probably a useful one going forward. But I didn’t go to my desk, and I didn’t put my headphones on.

I went to the rocking chair we bought for our son when he comes, and I sat there - gently swaying and trying not to spill my coffee all over it, because for some reason it’s fucking beige - and looked out over the city skyline. 

I slugged back my coffee surrounded by all the stuff we’ve panic-bought for the baby, and I got to take all of it in - washcloths and the changing table and romper suits - with a sudden focus and a clarity and a rising excitement that I really hadn’t allowed myself to feel until today, because until today the work was still unfinished and there was still much left to be done.

All at once I felt very free, and fully sated, and happy and proud for everything that’s coming next.

There’s so much to feel grateful for from the past three years of working on this show. But what’s probably going to sit with me the most is being able to arrive at that moment and those feelings today, - and we have all of you incredible people to thank for that.

Not just in terms of listenership or financial support, although that’s been truly invaluable and a lifeline for us that’s enabled us to actually make the show - but also your enthusiasm, your passion, your jokes and comments and everything that’s helped to keep us motivated and working on it.

So - with as much feeling as words can convey, thank you so, so much for everything.

What’s coming next, in rough order

#1: Parentdom is going to take over our lives for a while! I also want to write the final Patreon episode commentaries in the next few days, while I have the time and the clear memories. #2: The next thing we’ll organise will be the post-season Q&A (we’d also like to do some kind of off-camera cast party if we can make schedules work, just to say thank you to our amazing VAs and celebrate with them). Please do ask us questions! #3: We have long-unfinished commitments to the Patreon which I need to complete: the last two episodes of So Long, Good Luck, and rounding off Sid Wright’s story. As ever, huge thank-yous for your patience with these; they’ve just been impossible to polish off while also working on the main show so much. #4: Something I’ve been thinking about for a long time is the possibility of going back to Season 1 and redesigning it from scratch to try and bring it closer in style to S2 and S3. We have the raw audio files - some of the mic quality will just be rough no matter what, but we can certainly try.  This is something I want to be conscientious and careful about; I very much want to respect the sound design work that’s already taken place, and ensure we’re not overriding anything. But I do know that the initial quality still sometimes puts new listeners off; we were learning a lot about direction and mastering from scratch, and our designers were working with limited budget and a total lack of plugins, so there’s simply a lot more we can achieve now. (This would also be a good opportunity for me to finally rework the transcripts, another fallen hurdle). #5: A few months back, we were contacted by a literary agent in NYC who was interested in us adapting the show into a series of novels. There’s a long road ahead to actually get published, but I'm thrilled to say that I have signed with them and I’m really excited to hopefully start work on the first book once I’ve settled into dad-dom. I’ll need to check what’s possible, but if it doesn’t interfere with any contract condition I’d obviously love to share excerpts on here as it’s written. #6: Then there’ll also be another larger audiodrama project - we’ve spoken about the different possibilities before! Excited to get started on our final choice.

Just one last word about endings

God, endings are scary. Because endings are impossible.

How many serialised stories actually end in a way that’s received unequivocally well?  People yelled at The Sopranos for its ambiguity and open-endedness. People criticised Breaking Bad for treating Walt too sympathetically at the end and relying on a generic mob of snarling Nazis to act as his final foe.

Endings are either too pat and neat, or too inconclusive to be satisfying, or too surreal and dreamlike, or they simply make what feels like the wrong choices for the characters we care about. We’re all caught in that barbed wire, creators and audience alike, weighed down by the baggage of what’s come before and we've already spent so much time anticipating the infinite possibilities of how it could all turn out - it’s like we can’t get free of the story that’s trying to end. 

And the beautiful thing about these longform, iterative works is that they insist upon becoming completely ungovernable. No matter how much of a planner the creator claims to be, how much prepwork they carry out - they were never really in control. There’s spontaneity and surprises and dead ends and beautiful distractions that come spilling out along the way (I was baffled and delighted to learn that people really - at the end of the show, with such limited time to spare - wanted to find out what had happened to Eddie*). 

So they can’t end. Not really. There’s too much wonderful mess in them to ever be reasonably disentangled.

And, of course, for every ending people remember with frustration or dissatisfaction, there’s another hundred endings that nobody remembers at all, because we lost our enthusiasm along the way and it feels better to keep going back to the start and avoiding the slow decline. (Who the fuck remembers how the umpteenth X-Files reboot ended? What increasingly tired post-modern antics was Alan Moore getting up to in the final League of Extraordinary Gentlemen books?). I really just didn’t want the show to end up in that latter category.

All of that probably sounds like I’m warding off criticism about the show's ending, but for me it’s actually been the opposite. 

For an ending which is all about narrative dissatisfaction, and failed potential and missed opportunities, and how we need to come to terms with the lack of existential fairness and certainty and narrative control in our lives and keep ploughing forward all the same for as long as we possibly can, I’m massively stunned at just how positive the reception has been on here and elsewhere, and that’s something I’m actively having to process, because I think I was fearfully anticipating much more pushback.

But, look - the Eskew finale was originally quite poorly-received and then people came back around to it over time. So I’m not going to pat myself on the back too hard, because maybe it’ll ultimately be the opposite with this show, and that’s OK. For 200 years everyone was convinced King Lear was improved by having everyone survive at the end and get married. Endings take time to settle into their final condition.

For now, I am incredibly relieved that the ending we chose seems to have landed for most people, and I’m incredibly grateful for the lovely messages we’ve got about it and for the trust in us that you’ve all shown throughout the story.

So, yeah, let’s end with another thank you, because that’s what I feel so deeply and so forcefully at this point.

Thank you so much again, and speak soon.

Jon

*My take? We’ve established that the guy is in some kind of blue-collar job and has been pushed into constant overtime due to the reduced workforce. We’ve seen that the so-called ‘national holiday’ doesn’t actually rescue workers from their commitments. So I personally imagine that Eddie was working during the parade somewhere on the city outskirts, and is alive and well.

[berryberrytaeberry]

Not to start DRAMA but sometimes the internet says that Lan Zhan wanting to hide Wei Wuxian in Gusu is toxic behavior AND THAT IS SUCH A NO NUANCE TAKE because in ACTUALITY its phenomenal writing.

Not only does it tie into the novel's theme of morality being a consequence of perspective and context, but it's a perfect example of how the people you exalt are just as wounded and traumatized as those you shun. Lan Zhan never saw an example of loving another OTHER than hiding them away (RE: his mother). So don't sit here and tell me that Lan Zhan wanting to protect his Wei Ying from injustice and himself isn't him trying his hardest to love when he doesn't fucking know how (yet). The ENTIRE present timeline arc is Lan Zhan learning that love isn't something you shelter, but something you profess and exude every day no matter what anyone says.

MXTX is a master in literary contrast. Without past Lan Zhan fighting to bubble wrap Wei Wuxian, the final notes showing Wangxian's public affection means nothing. I argue its not toxic behavior. It's a masterclass in character development and a faithfulness to reality.

[queenlucythevaliant]

Honesty hours: I've been working a summer job at a bookstore for almost two months now. Here are the books I will discreetly shake my head at customers for buying. My literary red flags, if you will.

Anything tarot

Particular romance and romantasy novels that I've been told are basically just soft erotica (ACOTAR being the most popular)

Harlequins, which apparently still exist

Colleen Hoover

The Colleen Hoover merch we sell for some godforsaken reason

Heaven is For Real, When God Winks at You, and other theologically sketchy but inexplicably popular books. I'm always internally thinking, "oh honey, no!"

Giant stack of self help books combined with books from the business section. This suggests a very particular type of person. This type of person scares me.

Especially that one book we have about how to become a "superior man" (??)

More than one book by James Patterson. One book is forgivable; multiple suggests you follow him as an author

More than one book by Danielle Steel (same reason)

Parents buying their kids books that are just "Adult Thing: For Kids!" Like we have a picture book that's called "A Day at Dunder Mifflin" or the one adapted from the Dumb and Dumber movies and I'm like. Don't you think your kid would prefer something that's actually for them??

That guy who bought the collected writings of Lenin, the poetic writings of Mao, and a giant, thousand-page biography of Che Guevara all in one go. You okay there buddy?

[writers-potion]

MASTERPOST (PT. 1)

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For worldbuilding, vocab lists, weapons &fighting, and more: MASTERPOST PART 2>>

❤️ Romance Writing Prompts

Meet-Cute Ideas

Reponses to: "How Could You?"

Responses to: "Break my heart." 💔

How would you develop a relationship that’s been constantly one-sided?

Enemies-to-Lovers Dialogue Prompts

List of Relationship Tropes <3

Library Romance Prompts

Arranged Marriage Prompts

Responses to: "I love you"

Soulmates AU Prompts

"I love you but I don't" Prompts

Romance Novel Tropes & Subgenres: a comprehensive list

The Romantic Academic

Forbidden Love Dialogue Prompts

Angry Love Confessions

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☕📜Writing Scenes

Scenes: The Basics🏕️

Structuring Your Fight Scene

Writing Funny (But Intense) Action Scenes

Ideas for Flashback Scenes

Writing The Perfect Kiss Scene

Fantasy Battle Scenes 101

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✧𑁍.ೃPlot Tips & Tropes

A Very Brief Outline of the Three-Act Structure

Plot Type 1: "The Quest"

Writing Text Conversations - follower question

Fairy Murder Method Ideas 

Gossiping Scene Idea Prompts

Child Eating Fairies Ideas + The Mysterious Cave Trope - follower question

Writing Political Intrigue

Comforting a Fire Girl Scene - follower question

Energize a Sluggy Middle

2 Types of Deaths in Fiction

Literary vs. Commercial Plots

Fantasy Tropes that I Love

Writing the Perfect Betrayal 

Writing Strong Opening Lines

Plotting Tips for Romantasy

Dark Fantasy Tropes List

Dark Academic Plot Must-Haves 

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✩₊˚.⋆☾ POV Related

1st vs. 3rd POV For Mad Characters

Emotionless Character POV

🧛🏻‍♀️Character Writing Tips

Redeeming The Bad Boy Character

How to Write Redemption Arcs 

Writing Diverse Characters - Things to Remember

Character Nickname Ideas

How to Write Liars Believably

Choosing the Right Character

Organizing Character Relationships

Writing 1st POV Character Fears 

Introducing Non-binary Characters

Teasing Sibling Dialogue Prompts

Writing A Drug Addict Character

No Redemption Villains

Emotions and humanity for the Non-Human Character - follower question

Writing Gangsters

Characterization: Unforgettable Characters

Human Feelings for the Non-Human Character

The Character Arc: 101

Emotional Mini BIO

Writing Autistic Characters

On Writing Blind Characters

Writing Homosexual Characters 

Establishing the MC-Reader Bond

Writing Child Characters Believably 

Toxic Parent Prompts

Writing Morally Gray Characters 

Writing the "Mean Girl" Character

Writing Introverted Characters

Strong Female Characters 

Fantastical Asian Monsters (Part I)

🕐List of Dirty Character Traits

Dark Backstory Ideas

Good Characer Traits to bad

A List of Toxic Traits for Your Character 

Character Names with Unfortunate Meanings

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MASTERPOST PART 2>>