#i keep wanting to revise my draft for the note but no. i told myself no overthinking

[number-1-crush]

feeling so incredibly sapphic tonight

[bettsfic]

Betts,

Would you be comfortable in showing us what your messy first drafts look like? Not for a whole story but maybe an excerpt and noting how it changed in revisions. I’ve been looking for first drafts by writers and either found they look almost identical to finish printed version or I can’t find them at all.

i can show you what a messy first draft looks like but i don't think it'll be very illuminating. for me, the down draft is mostly about developmental work. i'll write ten scenes and the final draft will be chunks from six of them. so on a small scale it looks like i don't do much editing, but big picture i write over twice as much as i end up keeping, and what i keep has usually been completely rewritten. so if i do a side by side comparison of a scene, what you're not seeing is the stuff that didn't make the cut, or all the ways i wrote in the wrong direction for a long time, or the hours of research i had to do for a single detail (an example of which you'll see below).

i wrote an issue of my newsletter about my drafting process, so that might be more helpful. i also answered an ask recently about ways to develop a scene if you're stuck.

unfortunately i don't have the brainwidth to do all the research here, but the new yorker published an early draft of raymond carver's "what we talk about when we talk about love" which as originally called "beginners," and somewhere there's a detailed comparison of the two and the changes his editor, gordon lish, made.

but! you asked to see a draft comparison. so here's a draft comparison.

so this got a little crazy and i ended up making a gdoc for scene 2 so you could see them together. see link at the bottom. conclusion: comparing drafts is very hard and i don't think this probably helps at all but i tried.

"final" draft

these are the first two scenes of a short story i wrote called The Group W Bench. we begin in 1970 and then move into present day-ish. i've bolded the small things that were actually big things, and i'll explain why they were big things at the end.

"final" is in quotes because there is a different final draft of this story that goes in a completely different book.

scene 1: past

They didn’t hand out 4-Fs in St. Louis. Supposedly it was the worst draft office in the country. I didn’t know anyone who’d gotten out of it, but in my hometown they didn’t seem to want to. Most everyone was proud and eager to get shipped off.

My number was 66 and it’d been pulled just after I turned nineteen. On the bus to the induction center, I tried to come up with a plan. My only options seemed to be mutilating myself or flat-out running. I was too much of a coward for the former and I couldn’t wrap my head around the latter. There were only a dozen of us on the bus and I had my whole seat to myself. Out the window, cornfields blurred past; it was August and the stalks were head-high. I tried to imagine myself out in the jungle holding an M16, but I couldn’t. I’d graduated high school with a C-average, only kissed one girl one time, was raised by parents who’d had no parents of their own. My mother grew up in an orphanage. My father rode the rails. They fucked up my brother Tommy, did a little better with Wyatt, but by the time I came along, they’d given up. Sometimes I felt feral, raised by wolves.

Across the aisle, a guy was playing the harmonica. He had shaggy black hair and stubble around his jaw, big nose bent at the bridge. He caught me staring at him and I looked away quickly. He crossed the aisle and sat beside me. 

“You look like you don’t want to be here,” he said.

He didn’t sound like he was from Missouri. He sounded like an actor on TV, all hard Rs and round vowels. I didn’t respond to him. For all I knew he was a plant, some kind of spy trained to sniff out potential defectors.

He ran his thumb over the shiny surface of the harmonica. The movement reflected the sun into my eyes. “Buddy of mine got his arm blown off.”

“My brother died,” I told him. I’d been the one to answer the door that day. I was only sixteen and the boy who delivered the telegram couldn’t have been much older. He handed it over, touched the brim of his hat, and said, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

There were no remains. Nothing to bury. Just a bit of yellow cardstock telling me Tommy was dead.

“Sorry to hear that, man.” He held out his hand. “Jack Ward.”

I shook it. “Birdie Mills.”

Jack smiled, a deep dimple carved into each cheek. “Hell of a name, Birdie Mills. Where you from?”

“Here. Couple hours north.”

“California. Riverside.”

“What’re you doing here?”

“Just got out of film school. Can’t get student deferment anymore. So I started bouncing around, you know, changing my address. They finally pinned me down.”

I hadn’t thought of that, transferring draft centers, delaying as long as possible hoping the war would finally end. It was a relief to meet someone as reluctant to go as I was. I felt crazy sometimes, surrounded by men who wanted nothing more than to die for their country. I couldn’t imagine loving anything so much I’d be willing to give my life for it.

“You have a plan?” I asked.

“Nope.” We turned into the induction center lot. “I’m gonna wing it.”

early draft

according to my document, i wrote this on november 8, 2022, so almost exactly a year ago. at that time, this was one chapter of a novel that had alternating POVs in third person. i had about 90k of this novel written. which turned into a short story. which turned into a different novel.

scene 1

Birdie’s number was 257 and it was pulled shortly after he turned nineteen. His draft office was in St. Louis, notoriously one of the worst in the country. There were no 4-Fs in St. Louis. He didn’t know a single man who’d gotten out of it, but then again, they didn’t want to. Most everyone in his town was eager and proud to get shipped off. 

On the bus to the induction center, he tried to come up with a plan, but nothing came to him. Out the window, cornfields blurred past; it was August and the stalks were head-high. He tried to imagine himself out in the jungle holding an M16, but he was just a coward from Missouri who graduated high school with a C-average, who had only kissed one girl one time, who was raised by parents who’d had no parents of their own. His mother grew up in an orphanage. His father rode the rails. They fucked up Tommy, did a little better with Wyatt, but by the time Birdie came along, they’d given up. Sometimes he felt feral, raised by wolves.

Across the aisle, a guy was playing the harmonica. Birdie couldn’t pull his eyes away from him. He had shaggy black hair and stubble around his jaw, big nose bent at the bridge. He caught Birdie staring at him and kept his gaze, some recognition in his eyes, and a moment later he was slotting the harmonica into his jacket pocket and coming to sit next to Birdie.

“You look like you don’t want to be here,” the guy said.

Birdie didn’t say anything. For all he knew, the man could be some kind of spy trying to sniff out defectors. 

“Buddy of mine got his arm shot off.”

“My brother died,” Birdie admitted.

“Sorry to hear that, man.” He held out his hand. “Jack Ward.”

Birdie shook it. “Birdie Mills.”

Jack smiled, a deep dimple carved into each cheek. “Quite a name, Birdie Mills. Where you from?”

“Here,” Birdie said. “Couple hours north.”

“California. Riverside,” Jack offered. 

“What are you doing here?”

“Just got out of film school. Can’t get student deferment anymore. So I started bouncing around, you know, changing my address. They finally pinned me down.”

Birdie hadn’t thought of that, transferring draft centers, delaying as long as possible hoping the war would finally end. It was a relief to meet someone as reluctant to go as he was. He felt crazy sometimes, surrounded by men who wanted nothing more than to die for their country. 

“You have a plan?” Birdie asked.

“Nope,” Jack said, pulling his harmonica back out. They were turning into the induction center lot. “I’m gonna wing it.”

changes and why i made them

lotto number 257 was pulled in 1970 but only numbers under 125 were drafted. it took an entire afternoon to figure out how the selective service lotto even worked.

turning this into a short story, the sentence "They didn’t hand out 4-Fs in St. Louis" was a stronger opening.

as a chapter in a book, at this point the reader is familiar with birdie and knows him only as a scoundrel-type character seen from the perspective of his son who despises him, and his daughter who reveres him. so in the old version, it was satisfying (or intended to be) to get to his POV and see him from his own perspective. as a short story, i tried to organize the opening in such a way that you get grounded pretty quickly and see birdie as a scared kid before you get to the scoundrel days (see below).

the brief "my brother died" flashback was the first part i wrote in his POV, and that was back when the structure of the narrative was a series of short, titled vignettes. so on one hand i was glad i got to keep it but sad i had to shoehorn it into a different scene instead of allowing it to open the piece.

the novel was written in third person but when i tackled it as a short story i decided to change it to first person because i like first person better, and birdie is a very fun narrator.

the "I couldn't imagine..." sentence was added in the short story version because in the present timeline, birdie's about to get shot to save his daughter while they're robbing a bank together. so in one sentence, i managed to condense an arc that before took a VERY long time to establish.

this got kind of out of hand. i tried to do the same thing with scene 2 but it was hard in the text window so i did it side by side in a google document. if you want, you can add comments asking why i did certain things and i'll answer you there. i'm sure i missed stuff.

sorry if this isn't helpful!

[maddiebiscuits]

i don't know how to phrase this any other way so i hope you don't find this rude or anything: you are (imo) a very skilled, very prolific art toaster. it's great quality artwork obviously, but your turnaround is wicked crazy fast to me. what does burnout look like for you? how do you manage to toast so many arts? what dark magics must you employ??

The hard truth is I worked in journalism for two years between 2010-2012 and customer service/hospitality starting at 16 years old in 2007 all throughout my life until 2022 and I don't want to go back to any of it now that I'm almost 33 - that's the main motivator to keep my freelance gig career doing art commissions going as long as possible. Fear and loathing of going back to that work environment keeps me focused.

In action...I'm not quite sure if I ever experience 'burn out'? I do experience art 'block' in that I can't think of anything to draw on my own or feel really unsatisfied with my work...so I just goof off with my canvas or do studies, but this doesn't interfere with doing commissions where I am told what to draw.

I just enjoy the physical act of drawing. Sometimes when I'm bored and restless and going for a walk doesn't help, I just draw more. When I was a kid I would just come home from school and draw crap between playing Gameboy/N64/Gamecube or browsing Elfwood/Newgrounds/DeviantART/Gaia Online, so it's literally just a habit now. If I don't draw for a long time I feel anxious and unwell. Somehow I just programmed my brain to think that art = leisure fun time, even if it's for work. I also tend to get into a "zone" sometimes and just put on video essays or music and a few hours later I'll have worked through some commission stuff.

I have three 'task lists' for my workflow:

A public trello board organized by work order types (N/SFW link)

A personal trello board organized by type/date in chronological order

A coloured tagging and folder system in my emails where I can just see the actual dates/timestamps of my last correspondence with a client so I know exactly who in my taskboard needs to be prioritized for their next WIP update

I hold myself to a standard of sending a client a WIP in stages:

rough draft (1-14 business days)

revisions (1-5 business days)

line art (1-14 business days)

revisions (1-5 business days)

final render (1-14 business days)

tweaks (1-2 business days)

So ideally, the client gets a finished commission in 3-6 weeks, so about 1-2 months. For larger projects I send more WIPs and the process is obviously longer. For simpler stuff like chibis, it's rarely a full six weeks. Over holidays I add an extra two weeks to my noted turn-around to account for IRL time off. On all my terms of service I have a maximum four months turn-around, essentially doubling the time I know my work flow is just in case there's some sort of medical or equipment emergency in my life that I need to account for that gives me a buffer (I also notify all clients)

Monday to Friday I wake up usually...late morning/early afternoon? I do anywhere from four to eight hours of artwork, broken up by walks, stretching, eating, cleaning, cooking, hanging out with my partner, etc. I look at my personal trello taskboard and emails to see what must be done and what can wait. I try to get at least 1-2 things done in a day though, be that sketches/line art/renders/revisions.

Right now I am looking at my email and task board, and the client with the highest wait time chronologically is someone who is waiting for their final render (sketch and line art already revised and done for them). Last email correspondence with them on the email says 9 days ago (so 7 business days, I'm supposed to take Sat-Sun off). Their order was paid in full and confirmed by me on November 9 and it is currently December 13, so I'm at about the 5 week mark (not accounting for delays in clients getting back to me of course) and I am very much On Course for my work load, no one has been without contact from me for 14 days or more so I'm pretty ahead of my game right now! I could take tomorrow off if I wanted, or only do 3-4 hours of work if I feel like it.

However the more work you finish and post, the more you show prospective clients your ability to finish orders and show your audience more art for engagement, so ideally I always like posting stuff when I can, it just creates a cycle of positive production and income.

[monstersinthecosmos]

Kacy! 29, 30, and 48 for the fic writer asks please and thank you ❤️

(writing asks!)

29. What’s your revision or editing process like? !!!!!! I try not to ever edit as I go because I used to be really bad about tinkering and not moving forward, so I kinda like CHARGE AHEAD and get the story done, and if I think of something I want to go back and add, I write it down for an editing note. It also helps to give me fresh eyes when it's time to edit, because if I haven't reread the WIP it kinda helps if my memory is fuzzy and I can be a little more objective.

I also don't do heavy editing because I do the big moves inside my plot outlines. It's very rare that I change my mind on something huge that I have to go back and revise. I'm just constantly using the outline to sketch the story out so when I'm actually writing, all the structural stuff basically is done right the first time. I edit for like typos and flow and stuff. So the process is something like this

Copy editing notes into my notes app on my phone so that I can full screen the story but have the notes available on the littler screen

Change the font! So that your eyes are ON ALERT and the text doesn't look the same as it's looked for weeks while you were writing!

Pick the correct MUSIC TO EDIT TO because I always have songs that are integral to the emotional core of everything I write, so I need to play them while I read/edit as a vibe check to make sure the tone is correct. I always want the reader to feel the way the music makes me feel! So editing music is really important to keep the tone!!!!!!!

JUST START REREADING AND LOOKING FOR STUFF. I am a sloppy typer so I always have a million typos. I look for typos and like, if I reuse the same word/phrase too close to each other.

I do a separate read through for smut scenes to just double check that everyone's limbs are accounted for and no positions got flipped.

I do a ctrl+f for phrases like "a little" and "for a moment" because I know I overuse them lol.

I double check my editing notes in case I forgot something in the moment.

THEN I copy it into Google Docs (I write in Scriv lol) and run the gdocs grammar check because it helps catching sloppy lil mistakes. It will overcorrect you on stylistic choices so don't let it correct everything, but it catches a lot of typos for me.

AND THEN!!!!!! I copy it into https://hemingwayapp.com/ which wiLL READ YOU FOR FILTH AND TELL YOU YOURE STUPID so do not use this tool too seriously. I also often use passive voice ON PURPOSE sometimes so SUCK IT HEMINGWAY but I like to use it to check for dense sentences and just basically skim over and see if anything looks super sloppy.

THEN I POST IT ON AO3 and read it again because I always find more typos after it's posted because the pressure of it being public gives me better vision.

AND FINALLY once it's on AO3 I also have the screen reader read it to me out loud because that lady finds some more typos LOL. Hearing it out loud catches what my eyes don't.

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

I very rarely share rough drafts! I usually make my WIPs available to Discord friends to get some cheerleading but I don't publish them. Occasionally I'll share like a WIP Wednesday passage or something if I get tagged or asked but otherwise I keep it TO MYSELF! 48. What do you look for in a beta?

bro I don't use betas lol. My mom Anne Rice told me not to let people edit my work.

Occasionally I use a beta because I need to like for a zine (like you beta'd me once for the horror Sheith zine!) but that's the only times I use one. I just want people to like, be constructive, and I want to be communicated with beforehand so that I know what they're looking for and I can tell them what type of criticism I'm willing to listen to vs. what's off limits.

I don't want to sound dramatic LOL but I had a really traumatizing experience in my first zine where I got beta'd without warning/permission, when they said they'd just be checking for typos, and I got absolutely fucking shredded. Like not a single paragraph in my whole fic was left alone, and the beta had like, rewritten sentences, rearranged sentences in the paragraph, erased stylistic choices, added exposition that I didn't write, and removed a bunch of references I had laid down throughout the story as a motif. It was genuinely like so demotivating and made me feel so fucking terrible about my writing and really fucked me up. I still haven't shared that fic on AO3 because I can't look at it without thinking I'm an incoherent fuckup. AND ALL THAT, AND LIKE ONE SINGLE COMPLIMENT LOL. Like one single thing in the whole fic that the person thought was nice. ashdkjglasdg . Lord I almost packed it in after that lol.

So anyway I don't look for betas, on principle, but if I do ask someone to beta I try to be clear like "Find typos and tell me if something didn't make sense." I don't need someone to like shave down everything that makes the story sound like me or add extra fucking sentences, like. Bro no. lol. And give me lots of compliments so I don't feel like I did a bad job because I don't want to feel like I'm being graded on my homework :(

[angst-in-space]

december '23 writing progress (and yearly wrap-up!)

december progress:

words written: 19.4k

most words written in a day: 1.8k

least words written in a day: 0

yearly total: 187.2k

projects worked on:

ya sci-fi book rewrites

misc notes

works published in december:

none

december goals [i did not complete a single one of these LOLOLOL]:

write ~1k a day (except on holidays)

write like 100ish words of other projects a day (fics, planning projects, etc.)

write about 33k total (to meet my yearly wc goal of 200k)

finish…..ya sci-fi book rewrites… please….

finish editing ch 10 of sylvix dreamscape (idk if i’ll be able to post it by end of the month/year but… maybe lol)

finish edit letter for friend

january goals:

sigh. finish ya sci-fi book rewrites. please. please i'm so fuckin tired.

start working on line edits?

work on query package

errrrm maybe send out like. one query. just for funsies.

edit sylvix dreamscape fic ch 10

WRITE FANFIC!! HAVE FUN GODDAMMIT

finish edit letter for friend

maybe work on outlining adult sci-fi wip again

notes:

well uhhh uhhh i did not meet a single one of my december goals. so that's....not great! i had really hoped to finish my ya sci-fi book rewrites by end of the year but alas, i still have 9 chapters left *sob* (i thought i only had 7 but recently realized i need to add two more chapters. cool. cool cool cool coolcoolcool.) but it's fine!! it's fine!!! i rewrote about 14k of my book in december and i'm finally entering the final arc so AAAAA. IT'S HAPPENING.

that is still gonna be my main priority for january (rewriting my book, that is). i'm hoping i will FINALLY finish but then again i've said that for like the last six months so we'll see lmfao. and if i DO finish rewrites, hoping i can delve into line edits woooo!!!

i'm hoping to also start doing a bit of querying prep this month (*screams internally*) by which i mean i just wanna at least start refining my query package—i technically have one already that i used to apply to mentorships and whatnot, but it's badly outdated now so uhh need to fix that! i had told myself i'd start querying by end of this month (even if it's just like, sending out One Query for the heck of it). not feeling like that's very likely but... who knows!

but also....i've been so burnt out on my book lately, i really just wanna write at least SOME fanfic this month. i want to write things for fun again, i miss it. :(

2023 wrap up:

total words written: 187.2k most words written in a month: 25k (november) least words written in a month: 9k (october)

works published/updated:

"are we going somewhere" ch. 2

"you're a dream, i'm never waking up" ch. 9

"altea rising" ch. 15

other wips:

ya sci-fi book rewrites

adult fantasy book

sylvix pacific rim au

mathablossom bedsharing fic

red skies ch. 8

altea rising (editing ch. 16 and writing ch. 19)

planning sapphic princess/pirate book

planning adult sci-fi space western dads book

kazurei post-canon fic

2023 goals:

write every day

write at least 200k words

finish more drafts of my ya sci-fi book

send ya sci-fi book to betas

start querying ya sci-fi book

make progress on adult fantasy book (possibly try to finish a first draft)

outline another book

finish editing/posting sylvix dreamscape fic

finish editing/posting renga fic

finish writing altea rising and maybe start posting the unpublished chapters

start working on red skies again

work on sylvix pacrim au

work on at least one of my wenzhou fics

finish at least a draft of matchablossom bedsharing fic

keep working on twiyor practice kissing fic, maybe finish a first draft?

a huge maybe but perhaps start sylvix 50s/spy au if i have time/energy

notes:

*scratches head* well uhhh damn i did not really...do anything i wanted to get done this year.... LMFAO. and even the few things i checked off are things i like barely worked on/started. so, ouch 😅

in my defense... i did not foresee how much work i'd have to do with my book revisions this year. at the beginning of the year i thought i was going into line edits—but around april i realized i needed to do a full rewrite. so i essentially had to start over, and rewrote *checks notes* roughly 83k of it so!! as you can imagine...that was rather time consuming and i did not have much time to work on anything else.

but... i'm trying to look on the bright side: the reason i started over is because of how much i've learned about writing from my mentors and my critique group etc. and looking at my draft from last year vs. this year, i can see a huge improvement! there is still a lot of work to do on this book—but i do feel like in 2023, i fell more in love with the story and characters than ever before (like to the point where i essentially have brain rot for my own ocs... LOL). and i feel like after 2.5 years of hard work, i am starting to see the "real book" starting to emerge from the chaotic mess it was before. so, that's very exciting!!

which brings me to: i'm hoping to maybe....MAYBE...dip my feet into the querying trenches in 2024. i had kinda hoped to do this by end of 2023 but...once again i grossly overestimated how ready my book was at the beginning of the year lololol. but i do feel like once i finish this big rewrite, i'll have less structural/overarching things to fix and more scene-level and line-level edits which (fingers crossed) hopefully will not be quite as involved as, yaknow, rewriting my entire book word by word! SOOO i may be sorta sending out the occasional query as i work on line edit-y stuff (esp bc querying is so slow nowadays haha) so yeahhh haha *sweats profusely*

there are a few other original projects i hope to make progress on this year. firstly, i'd love to continue working on my first draft of my adult fantasy arctic monster wip (maybe...finish a draft? i kinda doubt it but maybe!!). i also hope to keep working on planning a couple other projects, including planning sapphic princess/pirate wip and space western dads wip—both of which i'm very excited about. :)

AAAAND I WANT TO WRITE FIC AGAIN!!!! i really neglected my fic writing in 2023 and i miss it terribly. 😭 i have a lot of wips i want to continue/finish—but i think main priorities will be editing/publishing the last chapter of sylvix dreamscape fic, trying to finish posting at least one of my other ongoing multichapter fics, working more on sylvix pacrim au, aaaand... finishing a draft of one of my other wips perhaps? i don't know, i'm trying to be gentler with myself since i think i had too many specific goals for 2023 and could not meet any of them haha. sooo re: fic writing the general goal is "just have fun and see what happens."

here is to more progress in 2024!!!! 🥳

2024 goals:

finish ya sci-fi book rewrites/edits

work on query package

send out at least one query

start a writing blog/newsletter

continue first draft of arctic monster wip

finish outlining space western dads outline (and start a draft?? maybe?)

continue planning sapphic princess/pirate book

post last chapter of sylvix dreamscape fic

update one of my other ongoing multichapter fics

work on other misc. fic and JUST HAVE A GOOD FUN TIME!!!!

[ichigopanhpff]

Translation: Story, Character, Fashion Reading Unexpected Facts After One Another?! Compelling Secret Story to the Birth of Tokyo Revengers!

Wakui Ken-sensei Interview

from Tokyo Revengers Tenjo Tenge Character Book

Any words in [ ] are my translator notes. Please keep in mind the translations may not be 100% accurate. Enjoy!

How did the serialization start?

Wakui-sensei: The editor in charge came to me and said at the beginning, “Draw a delinquent manga.” But once I came to the conclusion that I didn’t know anything about the younger generation of delinquents nowadays and told the editor this; he then said “Can you draw something about a time period in the past you do know of and the main character can time leap through it?” I think that’s how I came to start drawing it.

Ehh! That’s how it started…?!

Wakui-sensei: The time leap development was originally for the sake of finding the villains who killed Hina in present day. Mikey wasn’t there. If I recall correctly, it took Takemichi 2-3 chapters to return to the present development where Akkun was dead and Takuya killed himself. We planned it with a strong mystery and suspense-like feel to it.

It starts out heavy, doesn’t it?

Wakui-sensei: It does. When I debuted as a manga artist in the seinen [young adult] publication Young Magazine, I didn’t realize how tragic my stories gradually became. That heavy atmosphere changed when I came up with Mikey.

It started with Mikey huh?

Wakui-sensei: When we were mid-discussion with some heavy topics ahead of time and talked about holding off on how he’d commit suicide, I had this thought of him as a “fearless and invincible commander in front of a crowd of people.” The scene where all of the gang members bowing their heads down at him was interesting and I found myself suddenly drawing a rough draft with him as a new character. That was where I envisioned Mikey and Draken appearing together and they got a really good reception from the editors in charge. When we were chatting about this, I heard he remembered an event that happened during an athletic meet in junior high.

Editor in charge: You’re talking about this…? It’s so embarrassing… I was shocked when I first saw Mikey and Draken.

Wakui-sensei: Tokyo Manji Gang was supposed to start out as a bad gang in the past. There were traces of it with Kiyomasa being in it as a bad guy; this hasn’t changed from the first chapter on. We then talked about Takemichi going undercover to find the secrets behind everything. It was dark, heavy and didn’t seem like it’d be interesting. But after Mikey’s character was brought to life, the story suddenly then became “Toman was a cool gang in the past, so how did it become such a great evil?” There was a drastic revision to the shape of the story on top of that. The moment Mikey was born, Tokyo Revengers came to be what it is now.

So that’s how that happened! How were Mikey and Draken brought to life together?

Wakui-sensei: There’s a joke that gets people every time in delinquent mangas with Weekly Shounen Magazine that “the smallest guy is the strongest” with Mikey. I was wondering how to intuitively make the design feel cool in the collective group. Mikey’s prominent feature is his strength and thought it’d be great to have this stern looking guy beside him; that’s how Draken floated in and was born. The scene where Mikey and Draken physically appear together encompasses their simultaneous creation. That’s how we went forward with the serialization.

Takemichi and Hina’s struggle?!

Is there a character within the story you have trouble drawing on occasion?

Wakui-sensei: Takemichi was really hard to draw compared to Draken’s design, who came out really well. I had a lot of trouble drawing him at the start. In my last work, Desert Eagle, I went overboard on the whole “shounen manga-esque” feel. It was a little empty after making the rounds and I didn’t want to do that with Takemichi.

What do you mean by “shounen manga-esque”?

Wakui-sensei: The image I have of that is a cool, strong, and simple-minded guy. My childhood dream was to be like Goku from Dragon Ball growing up.

Ahh, I see what you mean.

Wakui-sensei: The main character would win every single time but there wasn’t anything they were particularly good at. I thought the readers wouldn’t have a sense of excitement with someone like that. When the serialization to Desert Eagle ended and I started working on Tokyo Revengers, the editor told me, “It’s okay for the main character to lose more. He’ll win at the most crucial time.” I continue to feel out the coordination between the victory and defeat conditions.

What about characters like Mikey and Hina?

Wakui-sensei: I decided Mikey would be drawn handsome. With each line I draw and connect for him, it’s a different tension compared to drawing Draken and Takemichi. The work I draw during then becomes motivation because the tough part about this is the character’s response. Even though I say this, I always draw Mikey in a relaxed manner, with things like his behavior and dialogue.

Hina is… To be honest, drawing cute female characters isn’t my strong point… I can draw a lot of cool looking girls, but I can’t draw heroine-like heroines. That’s why I’ve continually had trouble drawing her. She had long black hair at first and went through a lot of design changes; her hair was changed to short. Immediately following the serialization phase, I was doing her revisions during every briefing session while the editors read through the manuscript. In any case, heroines need to be cute, right?

The aspiring tokkoufuku [gang member jackets] from childhood!

So what do you think about a character’s visual aspect?

Wakui-sensei: I don’t really remember who I had the most trouble with in regards to a delinquent’s physical appearance. There were reference questions I had, like whether or not certain hairstyles existed in 2005. I ended up going with visuals that looked like it was from that year.

Did you create fashion senses [in the series] based off of real life delinquents?

Editor in charge: I think Wakui-sensei’s character designs are genius. Manga artists worry tons about their character designs. They’re in charge of discussing things like what kinds of patterns should be drawn at the introduction. Wakui-sensei has never once done that. The only thing he’s changed the most is probably Hina’s first design. With the exception of new characters, he’ll come up with a rough draft on the spot sometimes and that’s so cool. There hasn’t been a time where his designs were rejected.

Wakui-sensei: Speaking of which, what did you say about Hanma when he first appeared? (laughs)

Editor in charge: Ahhh (laughs). At that time, I heard things like, “Wait. Why are there tattoos of “Sin” and “Punishment” on the back of his hands? This can’t be real, right?” Wakui-sensei then said, “Eh? There’s a lot worse guys here. This is me holding back.” They gave up on saying anything about it after (laughs). [I completely pictured Editorial straight up throwing their hands up in defeat, all "Wakui gonna do what he do." ROFL]

Speaking of being fashionable, a lot of well designed tokkoufuku make an appearance.

Wakui-sensei: I have an obsession with drawing tokkoufuku and want to make more! I aspired to squeeze into a Tokyo Manji Gang jacket when I was a kid. I remember thinking the people who wore the black tokkoufuku with the gold embroidery and their sleeves tucked up with the sash [he’s referring to the white sash Toman captains wear in big fights, like the Valhalla one] and headbands during the festivals I went to were so cool. I remember doing a bit of embroidery and adding my own taste to it was stylish. That’s how Tokyo Manji Gang’s tokkoufuku was born.

I thought it’d be good to give the gang jackets some design variations. For example, Black Dragons’ is military-like with a pea coat as its foundation. The tokkoufuku for some reason gives it a yakuza-like silhouette. I basically put in what I felt like with Toman. If it’s okay to include things from the 8th volume [of the manga] on, I like how Tenjiku’s (volume 14 appearance) jackets also have that yakuza-like feel… If I had to say which tokkoufuku is my favorite, I’d say any one of them (laughs).

Osanai’s whole red tokkoufuku had a very strong impact.

Wakui-sensei: I drew Osanai’s and Moebius’ jacket designs uncool (laughs) since they’re Toman’s first opponent. Moebius’ uniform is white against Toman’s black. Red was used to mark Osanai’s commander jacket. I was aiming for the first dispute to be easy to understand.

Speaking of Moebius, at the time of the 8/3 Conflict (volume 3 chapter 22), Smiley and Mucho played an active role in the 8th volume. Were you foreshadowing something there…?

Wakui-sensei: I wanted to use those characters then for something in the distant future. I introduced them like that for the time being to gauge the editor’s response in whether or not it felt like I should go ahead and use it. When I casually introduced Mitsuya in the rough draft of the 8/3 Conflict, I was wondering what to name him because he was so cool. I thought if he [Mitsuya’s character] was able to get a good bite [from editorial], I’d add his name into the manuscript. Even though I had all the confidence with him, the editor wasn’t into it at all no matter how many times I forced him... (laughs).

How do you decide the details timing how these characters show up in the setting of the story?

Wakui-sensei: I don’t really decide that myself. I was surprised when I read interviews of other manga artists deciding on the little details like that and thought how awesome that is (laughs). I wouldn’t be able to draw if I had to do that. I generally determine things like [character] designs, roles and official positions. The exception to this is I establish it at the start and then get to drawing. If I decide too much before establishing a character, the degree of freedom narrows and feels unfair to developing their character depth. I can explain my reasons for influencing and organizing the story development on a blank canvas. This also helps with setting aside character depth creation.

Thank you very much! Would you mind giving a final message to the fans of Tokyo Revengers?

Wakui-sensei: I can’t help but feel extremely grateful and thankful to everyone who’s supported this work! I want to keep making cooler and more interesting drawings of “Toman”! Please continue supporting Tokyo Revengers from here on!

[sohotthateveryonedied]

You Gotta Fend for Yourself

Read here on AO3!

Summary:

Bruce is Tim's emergency contact. He gets a call to meet Tim at the ER.

“I’m looking for a patient.” The woman behind the ER desk looks bored as she eyes Bruce, takes in the pressed suit and diamond cufflinks. The way he fidgets, drumming his fingers on the desk and trying very hard not to look as anxious as he feels. It’s easier to reign in his worry when he’s wearing the cowl. “Name?” “Tim Drake.” “Give me a minute.” She types his name into the computer, and Bruce can’t help but wonder how she manages to type with such long fingernails. “Your son is in bed eight. It’s over there, against the far wall.” She points him in the general direction. Bruce considers correcting her on the fact that Tim is certainly not his son, but he doesn’t need to tell this complete stranger that. Let her think what she wants. He thanks her and goes where directed. His chest loosens when he finds Tim sitting on a medical cot, neither bleeding out from a gaping wound nor missing any limbs. Instead he’s playing some sort of racing game on his phone, indifferent to the bustling emergency room around him. An oxygen mask sits beside him, forgotten. He and Bruce should really have a conversation about the importance of listening to medical professionals. “Hey, kiddo.”

Tim looks up and his eyes go wide. “Bruce. You...actually came?” His voice is hoarse, like he’s been gargling sand. “Of course I did. I am your emergency contact, after all.” Tim blushes. “I told them not to call you. You really don’t need to be here if you’re busy, I can get a cab home. And I’m sure I can talk the doctors into letting me check myself out without an adult, so—” “It’s okay, Tim. Really. You actually saved me from a board meeting.” Tim doesn’t look at all reassured. Bruce sits on the side of the cot beside Tim, who moves over a few inches. “Your teacher told me you went into anaphylactic shock in the middle of geometry.” Tim rolls his eyes. “I got a candy bar from the vending machine and the wrapper forgot to mention there were walnuts in it. It’s not that big a deal.” “Oh, sure, not that big a deal. You just stopped breathing for two minutes. Totally normal.” “I’m breathing now, aren’t I?” Tim takes an exaggerated breath. “See? I’m fine. And, for the record, it was the teacher’s fault. I had my hand raised for a whole minute trying to tell her that I couldn’t breathe, and she didn’t even look at me. Eventually I just passed out.” Bruce blinks. “You raised your hand? While your life was in danger?” “I didn’t want to be rude.” Lord, beer me patience. “I’ll get you an EpiPen to carry with you from now on.” “I usually have one, but I used it up a couple months ago and kept forgetting to ask my dad for another one.” A shrug. “Don’t you keep one in your utility belt?” “That’s for civilians.” Bruce’s eyebrows crease. “It’s for keeping people safe, not just civilians. You’re a person, so I want you to use whatever you need to keep yourself from dying in the middle of class. Got it?” Tim nods, a little sheepishly. “Yes, sir.” “Good. Now, how are you feeling?” Tim flicks the IV tube. “Cortisone and a shot of epinephrine earlier. I’ll be fine.” Even so, Bruce can’t stop himself from checking Tim over anyway, just to be sure. He needs to see that Tim is okay with his own eyes. He feels Tim’s throat for any residual swelling, checks his pulse. “Can you breathe okay?” “Yep.” “What about your mouth, does it feel numb or tingly? Any swelling?” “No and no.” “Are you dizzy at all, nauseous?” “You do realize we’re in a hospital, right? Surrounded by actual doctors?” “Yes, and I don’t trust a single one of them unless their name is Leslie Thompkins, Alfred Pennyworth, or Bruce Wayne.” “You’re insane.” “Good. Maybe then you’ll stay alive long enough to see the new year.” Bruce takes out his cell phone and drafts the beginning of an email in his notes app. “I should call the school and give them hell for not looking after you. Or at least for not being more aware of their vending machine snacks.” He knew Tim never should have been allowed in a public school. That’s like locking the most perfect, innocent kitten in the world in a cage with rabid coyotes. Completely irresponsible. “You’re overreacting, B.” “You could have died.” Tim scoffs. “Stop being so dramatic. This isn’t even the worst allergic reaction I’ve had. My parents were terrible at remembering to tell the nannies about my walnut energy, so there were a lot of close calls.” Bruce should be more surprised at that information. After he sues the school for the wrongful almost-death of a student, he should sue Drake Industries just for the hell of it. “Where are your parents? Are they on their way?” Jack Drake is as disagreeable a man as disagreeable men get, but he’s always revving for conflict. Bruce will definitely be able to sway him to his side of this matter. They can bring it up to the board of education, draw up new regulations for the school’s allergy protocols. Tim scratches absently at the rash on his neck. Bruce swats his hand away. “Dad brought Dana on a business trip to Philadelphia. It was only supposed to last the weekend, but they decided to stay a few extra days.” “A few?” “Eleven, to be exact.” Yikes. Big yikes. “You at least called them, right? They’ll want to know you’re safe.” “I called Dad when I first got here, but he didn’t pick up so I left him a message. I’m pretty sure he got it, because Dana keeps texting me to make sure I’m okay and asking if they should come home early. Dad still hasn’t said anything, but I’m sure he’s worried too.” Even as Tim says the words, it’s clear he doesn’t believe them. Never mind, fuck Jack Drake. Bruce can find another parent to start an alliance with—one who actually cares about their kid. Maybe Crystal Brown is free tonight… Bruce flags down a passing nurse. “Can I get some discharge papers for my son, here?” Might as well throw that in, give himself some extra authority. Whatever gets them out of here quicker. “Thank god,” Tim says. He plucks out the IV and swings his legs off the bed. “I’m sick of this place. You can just drop me off at home and I’ll be all set?” “Drop you off? You’re coming home with me, Tim.” Was that part not clear? “It’s cool, really. I’ll be fine after some rest. You don’t have to look after me.” “I know I don’t have to. I want to.” Bruce thanks the nurse who brings over the discharge papers in record time. People really don’t appreciate nurses enough; he should donate a few million to boost their salaries. He pushes the clipboard into Tim’s hands. “Here, fill these out and we can get going. I’ll call ahead and have Alfred make supper.” “And then I can go home?” Bruce shrugs, eyes fixed on his phone screen as his thumbs fly. “You already have a room made up at the manor, so I don’t see why you can’t stay over tonight. Besides, I’d like to keep an eye on you, just in case.” Anaphylaxis can be a tricky thing. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re a mother hen?” “Once or twice.” “Well, they’re right.” Bruce snorts. He works more on his email draft to the school, making a mental note to censor out the swear words during revision. He’s getting flashbacks to years ago when Jason had a close call with some shrimp at a party for a museum opening. Bruce nearly decimated the catering company for not putting out warnings for potential allergens. “Tim?” “Hm?” “How come I’m your emergency contact?” Tim freezes. He doesn’t look at Bruce and twiddles the pen, quiet for a moment. “I don’t know. I guess I didn’t know who else to put? I figured it would never actually be needed, so it wasn’t like you’d ever find out about it anyway. But don’t worry, I’ll change it tomorrow so you don’t need to do this again.” “No,” Bruce says, a little too quickly. “Keep it. It’s...more logical for it to be me. And I really don’t mind.” “You sure? You don’t have to.” “I want to. Partners look out for each other, right?” Tim’s cheeks are flushed under the allergy-induced redness, but he nods. “Right.”

[imaginedxlan]

Champagne & Shackles; Beta Part Two (Fred Weasley)

a/n: i’m SORRY i’m terrible at time management, school is kicking me ass. i had no idea so many of you had the same affinity for the brothers of the beta fraternity as i do, this is for all my frat rats out there i love you most. this is an ode to my very favorite date party theme: champagne and shackles. in which you and you’re chad or brad of a date are candcuffed together until you finish a massive bottle of champagne between the two of you.

weeks after the infamous beta darty, you can’t seem to pull your thoughts or presence away from the ginger boy who made your heart skip a beat. That is, until you’re invited to the beta champagne and shackled date party.

y/f/n: your friend’s name

warnings: cussing, alcohol, mentions of sex, modern!fred, and also very typical frat boy lingo stolen straight from the mouths of frat boy i associate myself with

disclaimer: while they’re semi-drunk in this they’re still coherent and stable enough to know what they’re doing. nothing that happens in this is coercive or decided under an incapacitated mind. king freddie would never take advantage of a girl like that.

part one

consumed.

You have been completely consumed with the the thought of a certain red head for weeks now. Since you kissed him goodbye on your front lawn, the image of Fred Weasley has yet to leave your brain. While you’ve been at the same school for almost two years, you’ve seen him more in the few weeks following the beta darty than you have in the 18 months you’ve spent on campus. Lines in coffee shops, the terrace at the union, the corners of the library you’ve inhabited for years. He’s everywhere. Not that you’re complaining.

The grin that plays across his lips every time you catch his eye sends your heart into overdrive. You’ve spent countless nights awake in y/f/n’s bed analysing every text, every snapchat, every story. You replay the day in the beta backyard at least once a day, yearning for the feeling of his touch on your skin. You’ve hardly returned to the brick-faced mansion, however. You’ve of course been invited through Draco and the countless group messages that flood your phone the nights leading up to a beta party, but you want him to invite you. You want him to want you there.

Of course he wants you there. He spends hours in that filthy basement he calls home every weekend searching for you among the dozens of drunk girls, hoping you had decided to turn up this time. But you’re not there.

Y/f/n mentioned date party to you this past weekend. Draco being social chair of the fraternity, he’s been planning the function for weeks. Champagne and Shackles. A fan favorite among every sorority girl throughout the school. Mixing together handcuffs and a massive bottle of champagne would have nearly anyone begging for an invite. You decide not to get your hopes up, constantly reminding yourself that while he is the boy that made you feel like you were the only two people in the world while you were surrounded by hundreds of drunk college boys, he’s still a twenty year old beta boy. It’s hard to stray from the hook up culture that he’s been practically bred into. Nevertheless, there is still a glimmer of hope in you that you’ll be cuffed to him this Saturday night instead of another girl he’s probably found on greek row.

He’s been drafting this text in the notes app of his phone for three days now. He’s changed the wording, the punctuation and the amount of details in his intended invite to you one hundred times now. George and Oliver groan every time he stops their studying or game of Call of Duty to read them the revised text he’s come up with this time.

“My god, Weasley, you’re acting like you’re writing your vows.” Oliver jokes, setting his xbox controller down on the makeshift coffee table in the twins room. “Just send it, you know she’ll say yes.”

But that’s the problem, he doesn’t know that.

“Wood we’ve thrown six times in the past month, she’s come once.” Fred reminds him of the painful fact that it seems like you’re just not that into him. “If I was sure she was gonna say yes I would have done it by now.”

George snatches his twin’s phone from his hands, copying the now final draft of this overly thought out text asking you to his date party. Before Fred can spring up from his bed, George has already got the message pasted into Fred’s text chain with you and hit send, making the color drain from his twin’s face.

“Are you fucking serious, George.” Fred finally reaches his younger brother and tackles him to the ground. “I barely read through it she’s gonna think I’m a fucking weirdo.”

George is able to shake his brother off of him, bursting out laughing with Oliver at Fred’s crazed state. George knew Fred had feelings for you, well practically every who spoke to a drunk him for more that ten minutes knew, but it was still comical to see his twin get so worked up over a girl he hadn’t even slept with yet.

“Fred you’ve been reading the stupid thing for an hour now,” He points out, Oliver nods his head in agreement. “What’s the worst that could happen? Huh? She says no and you ask one of the eight hundred other girls who fawn over you every chance they get. I know you like her Freddie but this isn’t a life or death thing.”

As Fred caught his breath from his outburst, he knew George had a point. He wouldn’t drop dead if you rejected his offer, but it sure help like he would.

hey idk if you’ve heard but our date party is this saturday and i was wondering if you would want to come

Your phone lights up just as you sit down to eat dinner with a couple of your friends. Once you see the name fred weasley next to the notification your heart stops. Taking y/f/n’s hand in yours, you turn the screen so she can read it. Her lips turn up in a grin as she squeezes your hand.

“I told you he would ask you,” She squeals, shaking her shoulders in her little ‘happy dance’ as she likes to put it. “Draco won’t stop talking about how tweaked Weasley’s been over some stupid text. I knew it was about you, I just knew it.”

You laugh at her imitation of her boyfriend, knowing it’s not far off from how he actually sounds. You reread the text probably thirty times, feeling even more giddy over such a simple and honestly not very personal text, but you don’t care. He asked you.

You spend far less time crafting a response than Fred did writing the initial text to you. If what y/f/n said is true and he really mulled over this for days, you may pass out.

i’d love to :)

The love seemed a bit overboard in your opinion, but y/f/n convinced you that it was a perfect response. You didn’t allow yourself to start looking for possible dress options until he really asked you, afraid you might jinx it if you bought a dress prematurely. Now, however, you’re on a time crunch. Someone in the house had to have something you could borrow. That night you try on at least ten dresses, all the girls on your floor flooding your room gushing over the fact that the Fred Weasley is taking you to his date party. He’s someone nearly everyone knows, and if they didn’t they were probably a geed, or lived in sophomore slums.

You finally land on a dark blue, spaghetti strapped sequin dress that clung tight to your curves. While nearly every dress you tried on felt like it might work, this is champagne and shackles after all, you have to dress to impress. Y/f/n won’t stop talking about what Fred will do the minute he sees you in the dress, praying she gets to watch his jaw drop. The two of you stay up late into the night again mushing over the thought of the two of you being swept off your feet by beta boys, the same boys you could hardly think about a month ago without becoming nauseous.

pregames at the house, malfoy and i will come by yours to grab you and y/f/n at 6:30

The text comes in Friday night. You can hardly contain the bubbling feeling in your stomach. As much as you feel like you’re sixteen years old again, you don’t care. You’ve finally joined the ninety percent of girls on greek row in one category, you’re crushing on Fred Weasley.

As the day finally rolls around, Fred is surprisingly back to his calm and collected demeanor. As much as the boys, and to be honest he himself, expected him to be bouncing off the walls over a slew of what if’s regarding the night ahead of him, he was rather calm about it all. He’s one half of the coveted Weasley Twins after all, he has a reputation to uphold.

The same cannot be said for you. As you curl your hair and apply your makeup to perfection, you can’t stop your knee from bouncing under the vanity counter you’re sat in front of. What if he secretly thinks you look bad in your dress? That you look like you tried to hard? As much as y/f/n tried to remind you of the fact that he was the one nervous about asking you, nothing seems to ease your growing anxiety. The hours tick closer to six-thirty and you sit patiently on your bed, completely ready and aimlessly scrolling through your socials to keep your mind off of the fact that in only twenty minutes Fred and Draco would be at your door to take you back to beta. The actual date party would be at one of the satellite houses, the penthouse of a nearby apartment paid for by betas massive budget.

Y/f/n takes your hand and forces you to look at her.

“Y/n,” She begins, now holding both of your hands between hers. “You are the hottest bitch this campus has ever seen. No one, not even Fred Weasley, deserves to be blessed with the absolute vision you are right now, but I guess he’ll have to do.”

You laugh at her attempt to hype you up in ten hopes that the knots in your stomach fade away. They partially do, but part of you is still in shambles over the thought of seeing him. He probably looks like even more of a greek god in a suit. Y/f/n’s phone buzzes with an ever so poetic ‘here’ text from her boyfriend and she gives your hands one more squeeze before dragging you down the staircase of your house. The boys are waiting just beyond the lawn, the same one you kissed Fred on weeks ago. The two of them have their hands in their pockets, looking like they’re deep in conversation, not even noticing that you and y/f/n are standing walking toward them.

He’s wearing a dark gray suit with a white button down with the top three buttons undone. His hair is perfectly messy. You didn’t even think it was possible for him to get any hotter, but here he is.

The boys turn their heads and immediately stop their conversation. The blonde’s face turns up in a smirk as his eyes trail over y/f/n’s body, but Fred is standing perfectly still with his mouth slightly agape as he watches you come closer to him. His cool and collected affect quickly runs out of his body as he watches your dress glitter under the street light.

“Told you.” Y/f/n whispers in your ear before she drops your hand to meet her boyfriend.

Draco greets y/f/n with a kiss and Fred pulls you into a hug. You melt at his touch. Even in the heels you borrowed from y/f/n, he still towers over you, his chin resting on top of your head.

“You look...” Fred trails off, trying to find the words to describe the sight in front of him. Heavenly, goddess like, like he might just skip the date party and get down on one knee. “...incredible.”

You muster up whatever confidence you have in the midst of your imposing anxiety to give him a somewhat composed reply. “You don’t look half bad yourself, Weasley.”

That heart-melting, mind-scrambling smile returns to his lips before the four of you begin walking what to the beta house. Fred keeps his hand on the small of your back the entire walk, desperately trying to keep you close to him.

The ungodly amount of alcohol you consume at the pregame seems to overtake any remaining worries in your body. Fred never leaves your side, as if you’re already cuffed together before you even arrive at the function itself. You talk with George and Oliver again, and meet some of Fred’s other fraternity brothers like Lee Jordan and Theo Nott. They all seem to know who you are before you can even introduce yourself. It would be difficult to not know your face after watching fred gawk over your every instagram post. Any sort of reservations you once held about the beta boys melt away. They may be wildly intimidating to a stranger that passed them on the street, but watching the boys sing along to whatever song is blasting through the speaker while dancing like they’ve just learned to walk shows you that they’re like every other boy you’ve met.

The walk to the penthouse is short, but it seems to take forever to reign everyone in everyone once in a while. Fred is continuously checking up on you, grasping your hand or your waist, making sure you aren’t cold in your dress. The second you make it to the penthouse you’re immediately cuffed to the red haired boy and handed a comically large bottle of champagne and told the rules.

No unshackling until you’ve finished the bottle.

The party is far more cramped than the one in their backyard. You can’t bring yourself to care about the occasionally bumps from someone in the crowd or the growing smell of alcohol around you. You’re completely consumed by the angelic giant dancing with you. Even with the handcuffs, Fred’s fingers are still intertwined with yours as his other hand is holding you close to his body, roaming from your waist to your back and over your ass. Anytime you go to open the bottle you’d been given at the door to continue on feeding the buzzed state you’ve been in since you arrived at the beta house, Fred stops you. He still grabs you drinks from the makeshift bar and pulls you into the ‘shot room’ to send copious amounts of burning liquor down your throat, but the bottle stays off limits.

“You have no idea how much I’ve been thinking about you this month, y/n.” Fred hiccups his way through his confession as his lips are pressed close to your ear to make sure you hear every word he says over the loud music. “You do something to me.”

You know whatever you try to say will come out slurred, so you do the next best thing you can think of to tell him that you’re feeling the same way. You wrap your free hand behind his neck to press your lips to his. He immediately pulls you closer into him like he was a dying man grasping onto his only source of oxygen. Again, with your lips tangled in his, you’re suddenly the only two in the room. This moment is one you know will occupy your thoughts until the end of time. Held by the boy you’re completely enamored with as the world seems to stop around you. In every sense of the word, it is perfect.

When you pull away from each other to gasp for air, you move your lips to his ear.

“Why can’t I open the champagne?”

He leans back to look you in the eyes. The colored led lights changing on his face make him somehow even more breathtaking. That same smile appears on his lips before he leans down toward you again.

“I don’t want to finish it,” He yells over the bass of the speaker. “I want you to be stuck with me for as long as possible.”

Without a second thought, you pull your hands together to take the bottle from Fred’s free hand to pop the cork off the top before he can stop you. You bring the freshly opened champagne to your lips and take a swig before offering it over to him. His brows furrow in confusion, wondering if maybe you do want to be unchained from him.

“Freddie, if you think it’s going to take an empty bottle to get rid of me you’re wrong,” You try to shout, even in all the noise he hears you and his chest tightens. “Cuffed or not, I don’t want to be anywhere else.”

He doesn’t reply, he simply takes the bottle from your hand and begins to chugs the fizzy drink, spilling over his face slightly. Watching him fumble over the liquid you know isn’t easy to take in large amounts, you can’t help but laugh at the sight in front of you. The words of Kid Cudi’s Pursuit of Happiness flood yours ears and you pull yourself right back against Fred’s body. He pulls the bottle from his mouth and hands it back to you before bringing his hand to your cheek to meet your lips once again. You’re sure you’re perfectly done hair and makeup is a wreck by now but your mind is continuously pulled back to the impossible reality that you’re kissing Fred Weasley. Of all the girls in the party, on this campus that flock to his side any chance they get, you’re the one that Fred Weasley suddenly became nervous around. The one he spent days wracking his brain to craft the perfect image of himself to.

His hand entangles in your more than likely sweaty hair, keeping you held exactly in place against his body as his hips sway against yours. His lips move from yours to your jaw, placing quick and light kisses across the skin. Something that would under any circumstance feel sexually driven feels lighthearted, pulling numerous giggles from your lips. His hand wanders down to your side and in a swift motion begins to tickle you through you dress. You laugh only become louder as you try to keep from doubling over.

“Fred!” You squeal through the stream of giggles. “Freddie stop!”

When you begin to snort, Fred loses it. He can no longer contain his stoic face he had on when he began to tease you. You’re eventually pulled from the party, Freds hand clasping yours as he discards the empty bottle in some corner of the penthouse and brings you to be unchained from him by the pledges standing by the entrance. Even with the cuffs off your wrists, you’re still chained to him as if you’re forced to be. 

Before you can leave the apartment, Fred’s jacket is shrugged from his shoulders and placed around yours. You pull yours arms through the sleeves that are obviously too long for you. “What a gentleman.”

“Can’t have you catching a cold,” He replies, holding you by your waist as you walk back to the beta house. You’ve never seen it so empty or quiet, no one around with the exception of a few boys studying in their lounge. You return to the bedroom you were in only hours ago, it’s a mess from the pregame but you’re able to make out Fred’s bed from his brothers. Massive movie posters and stolen items from various sororities hanging on the walls around his bed, the Good Will Hunting poster above the bed with the blue comforter being a dead giveaway that it belonged to Fred. He told you it was his favorite one night.

“You don’t have to, but you’re welcome to crash here,” He asks, beginning unbutton his now stained dress shirt, revealing his toned abdomen. It’s a sight you don’t think you’ll ever quite get used to. You stop yourself from nearly drooling and shake yourself back to reality. “You can borrow some clothes, probably be pretty big on you but they’d be better than that dress.”

He already has a tee shirt and boxers held out for you. He’s secretly hoping you’re too tired to walk back to your own house so he can spend a little while longer with you. Taking the clothing from his hands, you begin to slip the straps of your dress down, signalling Fred to immediately turn around to give you some privacy. You mouth a quick oh my god to yourself before continuing the change into the boy’s clothing.

“You can turn around,” You tell him and his eyes meet yours once again. He gives you a quick once over before his lips break out in a smile. “What? What are you so smiley over?”

“I like you in my clothes.”

Immediately your heart begins to hammer in your chest as your cheeks begin to heat up. Exhaustion washes over you, the lack of sleep you got in the past week due to your constant overthinking finally catch up to you. After switching off the lights, he pulls back him dark comforter to let you slip into the warmth of his bed. As soon as your settled you turn on your side to face him. You’re both quiet, wordlessly taking in the sight of each other.

“I like you, y/n. A lot,” He finally breaks the silence. You can’t help but wonder if he’s drunker than he’s let on. He’s not, he knows exactly what he’s saying and means every word. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt this way about anyone before.”

You reach over to trace your finger up his defined cheek bones before resting your palm on the side of his face. His arm is lazily slung over your waist, absentmindedly keeping you close to him. You lean in further, pressing a soft kiss to his lips.

“I like you, Freddie, more than you know,” You confess. Your heart has never felt more full, you’re sure this whole month has been a dream and every second you’re terrified to wake up without even knowing Fred Weasley like you do now. “Thank you for taking me tonight.”

He softly chuckles, his hand moving up your body to stroke through your hair. Even in the dark you can see his bright smile, you’re new favorite sight. “I should be the one thanking you,” He tells you. “You have no idea how nervous I was that you wouldn’t come.”

You continue to shift closer to him, trying to expel the practically nonexistent space between the two of you. You nestle your face into the crook of his neck, finding his steady pulse quite calming. “Wouldn’t dream of it, Freddie.”

“I like it when you call me Freddie.”

You hum a response, suddenly becoming too tired to even speak. The warmth of his body radiating against yours mixed with the rhythm of his heartbeat lull you further into a deep sleep. His arms return to being wrapped around your waist, drinking in this moment and silently praying in would last forever. He presses a soft kiss to the top of your head before whispering, “Goodnight, y/n.”

Hours later George, Lee and Oliver stumble into the room, all with slices of pizza from the late night shop down the street and are met with the sight of you and Fred tangled in the sheets, light snores coming from the red haired boy. They wish they could find something about the moment that they would tease him about later, but they come up short. The image laid out in front of them looks like it was taken straight from a movie.

Needless to say your constant thoughts of the beta boy are soon replaced by his presence anywhere and everywhere you go. You aren’t sure of many things in life, but you’re certain that he was made for you and you for him.

tags:

@justmesadgirl @greyspilot @sunflowerdarlingx

[into-the-daniverse]

Miriam x Valerius | DRAFT

Gonna start formatting these lol

This takes place during the year right before the game, when Portia was hired at the palace, Nadia was still asleep, and Valerius was staying at the palace handling most things

As most fics are with Val, this is in his POV—I really don’t know why I end up writing for him more than my other OCs when he’s in a fic

Not scrapping this one, but it needs revision bc now that I have the D’Oria established Valerius wouldn’t be opposed to their wine, but he’d definitely still be an ass to Miriam about what she serves him

“Cheap tricks like that time you kissed him in the wine cellar?” One of the servants smirked, and Portia gasped loudly, grabbing onto Miriam’s arm.

“You what?!”

Miriam groaned, putting her head in her hand. “Really, I’ve told you to stop bringing that up. I don’t even remember it myself.”

Valerius did. He remembered it well, and often, much to his own chagrin. One night he had ventured down to the wine cellar on his own and found her there, draped over a table with a half empty bottle of strong wine in her hands.

“The hell do you want,” she slurred, and he took the bottle from her grasp with a grimace.

“Did you drink the rest of this?” He held it up to the flickering candlelight and sighed. It was a good bottle, and he might have even taken that one for himself.

“What’s it to you?” She tried to take the bottle back from him, but her hand missed. “It’s one of my family’s. You wouldn’t want it anyway.” She pouted; cheeks flushed. “Give it back.”

He studied the bottle and gave it a sniff, letting the notes float over his senses. Oh, whatever. He took a sip and tried to look displeased, but it was hard. It tasted very good. “I think I’ll hold onto it for now.”

Her mouth hung open, and she laughed loudly as he crossed his arms in front of his chest. “You like it, don’t you?” She reached out, her hands landing on his chest, fingers grasping at his collar. “Admit it. It’s good. Hits the s-spot.”

He didn’t move away, glancing down at her hands for a moment. “You must be drunk to even think of touching me.” He tried to sound annoyed, but as her fingertips brushed against his neck, he felt the facade hard to keep up.

“I don’t need to be drunk for…” she sighed, her glassy eyes trailing down his body. “…to think about touching you.”

He leaned down, putting his hands on the table on either side of her. “Hm, really?” He chuckled, and watched her blush deepen. “That’s surprising.”

“Is it?”

He hummed in response, shifting one of his legs in between hers. Her breath hitched, and a certain darkness flashed across her eyes before she suddenly tugged on his collar, bringing his lips down to meet hers.

She tasted like the wine but stronger, overwhelmingly intoxicating. He pressed against her hungrily, bringing one hand up to cradle her face. Slowly, she moved with him, her hands still holding onto his collar as tightly as she could. She moaned as he tilted her head back, deepening the kiss.

A clatter from the stairs stopped them cold, and Valerius turned in the direction of the sound to see another servant, red-faced and stammering apologies. They ran back up the stairs and he sighed, pulling away from Miriam.

“V-Val…?” she whispered, her eyes still half-closed, and he stood up, pulling her with him.

“It’s late. You’re going to have an awful hangover in the morning, and I don’t feel like dealing with it.” He helped her up the stairs and walked her to her room, overly conscious of her weight pressed against him with every step they took. He left her outside her door and made his way to his guest room with a strange warmth in his chest.

“Kissing is putting it mildly,” the servant said with a rough laugh, bringing Valerius out of his memories. “Mary said you were two steps from taking each other’s clothes off.”

[goatsandgangsters]

do you have any writing tips pls 🥺🥺

Ohhh big question! I’m flattered that you want my writing thoughts, anon!

So. Are we talking about tips on getting through writer’s block/sitting down and actually writing? The mechanics of writing itself, the individual sentences and word choices? Developing a plot? Characters or dialogue? Drafting and revising? If there’s a specific part of the process that’s angsting you, let me know, I’m happy to say more on that. For now I’ll try and touch on as much as broadly as I can.

Writing is a process, a craft, a practice. A joy and a trial. The act of hitting some keys with your fingers but also making something out of nothing. Which is to say—it comes with practice, it can be frustrating, it can be rewarding, and however you’re feeling about writing, you’re not the only one.

Inspiration/actually sitting down to write:

I find that writing is like exercise. Yes, in the sense that it takes practice to build up those muscles, but MORE IMPORTANTLY writing, like exercise, makes me groan and go “but that’s haaaaard I don’t wanna doooooo it, what if I just siiiit here insteaaaad.” And then I grudgingly get started. And I start to get into the rhythm. And then “oh goddammit. This DOES feel good.” I’ve still never experienced a runner’s high, but I have experienced “no I don’t wanna write. well I guess I’ll write. oh hey I’m writing. oH HEY!! I’M WRITING!!!” Sometimes you just need to push yourself through to start.

That said, sometimes you don’t need to push yourself to start. Sometimes it’s better to let something sit. It’s okay to pivot to another project if you’ve stalled out on one. I saw a post once that called this “crop rotation” and I think that’s true. Sometimes the challenge is getting started, but even when you can’t get started, the time away can be valuable, because it allows you to return with fresh ideas and fresh ideas.

I love using Fighter’s Block for when I can’t get started. It curbs my perfectionist tendency to write the same first sentence over and over again by forcing me to write consistently and quickly without refreshing tumblr between every sentence. Once I’ve got a paragraph, I’ve got enough of a rhythm going to keep writing on my own. You can use it for longer stretches of time, but I find a couple rounds of 200 word count goals is enough to get me through the inertia of getting started.

Read a lot:

Reading makes you a better writer. You will absorb aspects of the craft in the process—sentence structure, rhythm, plot beats.

Then think about what you read. Think about what works. Think about what doesn’t. Notice sentences that you love—not by meaning but by sound. Think about how the story is told, how the plot elements come together, how the themes operate, how the narrative is structured. Did the flashbacks works or were they superfluous? Did you love the metaphors and descriptive language, or did it feel vague and unhelpful? What parts grabbed you, what parts didn’t?

Being able to identify what does and doesn’t work in someone else’s writing will help you apply it to your own. It will also help you craft your own voice and style.

Use writing tips as a challenge, not a rule:

We’ve all seen those “writing rules” like don’t use adverbs, don’t say feels or thinks, don’t say said. Never listen to writing “rules”; instead, see them as a writing “challenge.” You don’t need to jettison every single adverb or permanently strike certain words from your writing. Sometimes, an adverb is the best word. And sometimes it isn’t.

These tips are useful, but not as hard-and-fast rules that must be obeyed every time under every circumstance. Instead, use them as tools to challenge you to think about your writing in new ways, to see if there’s a better way to say something (and maybe there is and maybe there isn’t), and to bring a freshness to the process.

I actually do really like to challenge myself to minimize feels and thinks. “He feels sick to his stomach” will pretty much always be less powerful than “His stomach lurches.” But sometimes feels and thinks work better, either because I need quick exposition or because it specifically emphasizes a thought or a feeling as perception. Again, it’s not about rules. It’s about challenging your habits to breathe new life into your writing. 

Revising tools:

if you’re a tactile person and you own a printer (which I am but I don’t), I like to print out a draft and sit on the floor with a pen and a highlighter and highlight anything that sounds clunky or that doesn’t quite fit. Then I massage those specific sentences, looking for other ways to say them, and narrow in on those parts rather than trying to edit everything overall.

The hemingway app method (as long as you know you’re allowed to disagree with it) can be good to catch certain things. Sometimes I use it and think “yeah that sentences IS too long and awkward, I should rephrase it” and sometimes I think “nah, that sentence is long but it’s controlled and it works.” Sometimes it’s useful in pointing out that I used the word just way too many times; sometimes I’ll keep my adverbs thanks.

Retyping the entire thing in another word document is another revising trick. So is reading the entire think out loud to yourself (your actual ear will catch awkward rhythms or typos that your inner voice glossed over).

(Note: I don’t do all of these all the time. I revise with whichever method I happen to be feeling at the moment)

Character interactions:

Overly expository character interactions are probably my #1 writing pet peeve. People don’t say what they mean. They don’t calmly and carefully and eloquently articulate exactly what they feel. If your characters are conversing in well-practiced monologues where they’re able to objectively analyze and express their exact feelings, it’s not believable. It’s also not fun for the reader, because Explanations of Emotions are being used as a stand-in for actual emotions.

Example: You don’t have a breakdown because you’re stressed about losing your job and you had a fight with your sister and you’re also the protagonist who has to save the entire world. You have a breakdown because you can’t find your fucking pen. It was here a moment ago, you know it was, you put it THERE because that’s where you PUT things but now it’s gone and the pen is gone and you can’t even find the fucking pen so how are you going to save the world and everything is going to SHIT because you can’t FIND your goddamn pEN.

Your character is probably not even an expert on their own feelings, let alone able to objectively explain them to someone else. There are things we can’t make ourselves say out loud. We deflect. We put all the big feelings into small things. We squeeze someone’s hand and say come on, let’s make dinner because you can’t say everything is going to be okay I promise you and I love you so much and one day you’ll see that it’ll all work out.

What are your characters saying with their body? What are they saying with what’s left unsaid? And when are they saying something Else that’s really about Them? (“You did what you had to do,” character A assures character B, because character A’s own guilt weighs on them. They’ll never say this out loud. They don’t even need to specifically think “just like my own guilt, which weighs on me.” We know it by what they say, about other people and about other things, because these are the times when you’re really talking about yourself)

Also, the size of the emotion displayed does not translate into the size of the emotional impact on the reader. A big sweeping declaration of I love you shouldn’t be used as a stand-in for real chemistry or a moment of love that is specific to those characters. An absolute sobbing breakdown isn’t inherently more tragic for its size. You don’t need torture porn to evoke angst. Emotions are a lot more subtle than that. Using a caricature of emotion in the extreme often cheapens the emotion for the reader, rather than enhancing it. 

Other assorted tips:

Write notes! Sit up at 3 AM and write down a snippet of dialogue in a note on your phone! Jot down the plot idea for later! Note the phrase you heard someone say that sounds like it would be a good title.

If you can’t figure out how to end your story or your section or your chapter, it might be because it’s already over and the story has finished telling itself. If the beginning doesn’t feel right, if it feels slow and clunky, it might be because your starting place is too early. If the character interaction feels wrong or the scene isn’t going right or you can’t make that line of dialogue work, the problem is probably about 5 or 10 lines up where you took a wrong turn.

An em dash—like the one I used here—separates out a part of the sentence that couldn’t be a sentence on its own. Semicolons join two independent sentences together; this is an example.

The dialogue tag is part of the sentence. Correct: “I love dogs,” he said. or “I love dogs.” Incorrect: “I love dogs.” he said. or “I love dogs,” He said.

That’s everything that comes to mind immediately. If there’s another part of the process that you want me to focus on, let me know! I’m happy to go more in-depth on specifics! 

[nouveauweird]

bullshit-free guide to actually fucking writing your wip

disclaimer: this isn’t a fool proof method. when it comes to writing advice and techniques for productivity I say keep an open mind, but take what works for you and leave the rest. 

disclaimer 02: this is more or less for people who want to eventually publish, but there may be elements in here that benefit hobby-writers.

Where & When You Write

Some people will tell you that your writing routine needs to be sacred. I don’t quite believe that. You can absolutely curate a space for yourself that you aim to write in, but at the same time, focusing very strongly on the ritual of writing makes it hard to create an adaptable habit. 

The Writing Zone: 

Your desk or table should face away from your bed, my mother always swore by that and it stuck with me. If space doesn’t allow for that, consider putting furniture or some partition up so you can’t see your bed. For some reason, this makes focusing easier. 

For those of you who may be bedridden or have limited space, a good bed-desk is absolutely just as acceptable (I am actually planning to get one). 

If you have a space separate from your bedroom, the follow applies as well: 

Eliminate as much distraction as possible from your desk. Your experience of distraction is unique so do what you gotta do to eliminate it. 

Make sure your space is well lit. Background light is essential to avoid eyestrain when staring at a screen.

Your chair should be comfortable, and support your back. Scoot your ass all the way to the back of the chair and try sitting on your thighs as much as possible to take strain off your lower spine (my chiropractor told me this).

The Writing Time: 

You need to make time for your writing. Summer means the sunshine is waking me up at 5:45 AM and it’s too hot to doze comfortably so my ass is up and writing or reading until 7 AM when I gotta start getting reading for the day. If I have to catch the 10:15 AM bus, I’ve for about 4 hours to work with between waking up and leaving. 

I finished July 2019 Camp Nano by writing in the morning. And I’m not even a morning person, I swear.

Make time for you writing. If you can make a routine you can stick to, excellent, if you have a handful of 5-10 minute time-pockets— also okay! The 30 minutes your dinner is in the oven is just as good a time to write as any other.

How do you learn how to write in tiny time pockets, you ask, well here it is: Micro Writing Sprints and Macro Writing Sprints. The former applies to pockets of time under 15 mins, while the latter applies to pockets of time over 20 mins. All you have to do is set a timer and challenge yourself to write as much as you possibly can. 

Another thing to keep in mind is knowing your personal limits. If your attention suffers and you start to wander after 15 mins, keep your sprints to 5-10 minute blocks, and give yourself 5-15 min breaks where you get up, drink some water, move your body and then come back to your writing. 

How to Write More, Faster

You have to kill your inner editor. Or at least subdue them. You can fix a typo or whatever but that’s really it. The idea is that you need to allow yourself to get into a mindset where you’re only focusing on the writing, your prose is allowed to be a mess. Insecurity and doubt have no place here, only writing.

Your first draft doesn’t need to be clean. You get to clean it up when it’s done. Stephen King says you write your first draft with the door closed, and the second with the door open, and I like that saying a lot. The revision process is actually way more fun than I thought it would be. I get to make fun of myself for my weird writing quirks— every single one of my “most common errors” in my Grammarly report is about misusing commas!— and restructure and improve upon the foundation I laid with the first draft.

If you come up with something that changes something significant to your story, write a note about it, and then continue on with your draft like it’s been that way the whole ass time. Do not go back and change things. Just keep writing.

Learning how to do Writing Sprints allows you to quickly get into the habit of putting everything down as fast as you can without overthinking it. Because the real thinking is for later, when you’re revising. Essentially these Sprints enable you to get into the writing zone much faster, so feasibly you could write in small time-pockets at the bus stop, in a waiting room, on the bus—anywhere.

Outlining will make you write faster.

Yes I am pro-outlining, please don’t click away because of that, because I also still think that you need to use what works for you, and if you’re reading this something isn’t working, so please keep your mind open.

The very least you should try is preparing or pre-planning what you need to write for your writing session (no matter how short). You will write more and faster this way. Most of all, you will be less likely to “wander” around. 

I wrote out a small fragment-filled paragraph of what needed to happen in the first few scenes of my July 2019 Camp Nano project and got them out more easily and faster compared to when I didn’t. I wrote sustainedly in 30 minute time-pockets with a great deal of focus when I prepared my writing before actually writing.

Your WIP Outline

What if your outline was also actually super connected to your character sheets? Libbie Hawker makes this sound so easy in her book “Take Off Your Pants” in which she broke down some very interesting ideas on how to build your characters and your story that I hadn’t previously considered. 

What I ended up with was something like this: 

CHARACTER NAME Character: write down the basics; age, career, small relevant facts Flaw: what problem do they have that hinders them External goal: the thing they want that they can’t get unless they overcome their ‘flaw’ Ally:  who pushes the character toward their goal when they stray Antagonist: who has same or aligned goal, but with different motives and execution Events:

Opening scene

Inciting event

Character realizes external goal

Display of flaw

Drive for goal

Antagonist reveal

Thwart 01

Revisiting flaw

New drive for goal

Antagonist attacks

Thwart 02

Changed goal

Ally intervention

Renewed Focus

Battle

Death

Outcome

End: success or failure or neutral result with regards to overcoming ‘flaw’

The stuff under the “Events” category is stuff everyone has seen before in narrative charts, and it won’t be the last time you see it either. You can use or discard or repeat them however many times you need to. I still think this plot chart that I made it great for figuring out pacing, so check that out if you need some help there.

You can also apply these to series, where the character’s “Flaw” and “External goal” change as the narrative progresses. 

All of these parts are explained in Libbie Hawker’s book, but I’m happy to explain if you DM me! 

I applied a central idea for my WIP “Hyacinth Stalks” and all the central characters share a common idea with regards to their flaws. Hawker recommends filling in this information for all central characters, and working in which events which characters will interact in. 

The common idea is that my characters are “holding onto the past to feel more in control in the present”. Juliet Shain maintains habits of maintaining a “perfect athletic body” in the same way she did as a dancer five years earlier. She can’t exercise that same control over her mental health, which she struggles with, because of questions she has pertaining to the accident that lost her her leg remaining unanswered. 

Juliet’s ultimate goal is closure about the accident, which she won’t be able to access unless she stops holding onto the past and in turn the idea that the accident “ruined” her. 

I can apply the same things to Alana Murdock, another central character in “Hyacinth Stalks”, who, because she could only rely on herself after her sister’s murder while her parents grieved and her brother cut all contact, rejects her brother’s attempt to reconnect in order to protect herself in the present despite the stress of the upcoming 10th anniversary of the Hyacinth Killer’s disappearance. Her goal, would be to make it to the Olympic Volleyball team, which she won’t be able to do unless she stops isolating herself.

I can now approach the Events sections with more clarity because I know what the characters’ goals are and what their hindrances are as well. I can apply the same ideas to the other central characters, as well as the Serial Killer and weave their stories into the narrative as well. When you have a strong character arc, you can build a strong story.

When you can answer the questions about your character(s) you can fill in those Event sections with far more ease, and begin to break those sections down into chapters, scenes, or beats, with as much or as little detail as you want. Libbie Hawker’s method involves writing out paragraphs worth of scene details before actually getting to the writing. She says this isn’t necessary, but that for her it eliminates “wandering” and any doubts about what needs to be put on the page. 

Personally speaking, I lie somewhere in the middle, wherein my scene outlines involve small paragraph or bullet points for what needs to happen. 

Hawker has written books in 21 days, so there is definitely some magic in her method. In her book, Hawker details that creating her outline took 4 hours. When I outlined “But a Monster” it took a week (5 days), and despite not having had her method then, the existence of the outline made writing the novel much clearer and focused, which my writing had not been prior to admitting I needed to give outlining a chance. 

All writing advice is a tree of wisdom

Take what benefits you most and leave the rest. 

I have fully taken the advice that I have attempted to explain here. I read in “5000 Words Per Hour” by Chris Fox and “Take Off Your Pants” by Libbie Hawker and felt incredibly inspired and motivated, but some of what they say or eschue doesn’t resonate with me or my craft. I have to do what works for my writing, and if I’m happy with the pace the work is going at then alright! 

What I’ve written here is meant to give you new ideas on how to be more productive. I read the books that helped me come up with this because I felt like something was lacking in my writing routine and I had my eyes opened. I hope I have opened yours too and that your work benefits from this.

[nenya85]

for the writer ask game: 13

Thanks for asking!

If anyone has a question, the link to the Writer’s Ask Game is here!

13.  Describe your writing process from idea to polished.

I want my stories to read as if they flowed naturally in one unbroken thought without the need for editing or planning.  I want to convince people that I write as naturally as I breathe.

Except I don’t. 

For me, it all starts with a question.  The question doesn’t have to be deep.  It doesn’t even have to make sense.  What if Kaiba was a cat?  What kind of cat would he be? (”Hello Kitty Kaiba”)  Sometimes the question is obvious.  Twice now, I’ve come to the end of Yu-Gi-Oh! canon and asked myself, “What happens next?”  (The results were, “The Newly Revised Book of the Dead,” and “A River in Egypt.”)  

Then, I start writing notes on what I think the story will be about.  Not in terms of plot or even character development… it’s more a matter of figuring out what I want to explore and say – and why it’s worth taking the time to write a story to do it.   

Outlining is where I figure out how to tell the story. Can I get from the beginning to the end in a way that makes sense?  I try to think of everything that needs to happen and write it down in bullet points without worrying about putting them in the right order or caring which bullet point will fall into what chapter. Then I sort out what has to happen first, what will lead to what and where I need to add some more bullet points to bridge the gap.  And if there's a bullet point that doesn’t fit anywhere, I ask myself if it belongs in the story at all.  If it does, the outline has to be re-written until I understand why the story couldn’t be told without it.   My outline isn’t a static map, though.  I’ll often find myself juggling the bullet points and adding new ones as I go along. 

Editing is my security blanket.  My first drafts are written in the spirit of flinging spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks.  These early drafts are full of what I call, “placeholder words” – the words I put down while waiting to find the words I want.  And knowing that these words are temporary, that I can fix things later, makes it easier to write anything down at all.

I really love the precision of the English language.  I love how many words it has to describe different shades of the same thought or feeling or action.  As I write, I keep asking myself: What am I trying to say with this sentence or paragraph or passage or chapter?  For me, polish happens in that moment when I feel satisfied that, like Horton the elephant, I’ve meant what I said and said what I meant.  (Because a fanfiction writer is faithful, 100 percent!)

[yamayamawrites]

Wishing You the Best - TodoDeku

Hi friends! As a birthday present from myself to you, I’m coming back from my month-long break to give you....a TodoDeku pen pals AU! I’ve been very busy writing this past month and trying to start and finish fics before posting them (I say, as I post the first chapter of an unfinished fic). This one is kind of different from my normal stuff because it’s shorter - each chapter is only 1-2k words long. I have something else in my drafts that should be coming out shortly that I’m really proud of (100k+) so please be aware that’s coming, too!

Anyways, this one is a university AU in which Midoriya and Todoroki (and the rest of class 1-A) are university students! It has a little hint of coffee shop AU vibes, but for the most part it’s just a university AU. Hope you enjoy this first chapter!!

Week 01

Izuku’s never been a fan of English classes. He’s not bad at speaking the language; in fact, he’s quite good at it. The problem is that it’s not nearly as intriguing as some of the other courses he’s taken. He’s more interested in science and math classes, in solving complex problems and studying the way the world around him works.

Which is why he’s so nervous about these three words written in sloppy English on the board in front of him.

‘PEN PAL PROJECT’

He drops into his seat with a huff next to Ochaco, who has already arranged her notebook and colored pens in preparation for note-taking. Izuku has English and Chemistry with her, and they sit together for both; naturally, at the end of the day they trade notebooks – Izuku takes her English notes and she his Chemistry notes – and they review and fill in holes where they missed them. It’s an effective system, and Izuku especially likes looking at Ochaco’s neat handwriting.

Ochaco tosses a friendly smile over her shoulder at him and he returns it, wide and a little winded from sprinting the campus to get here. It’s a nine in the morning class, and his alarm clock has a habit of not going off in the morning. Izuku sometimes gets the suspicion that Kacchan, his roommate, has some part in that. “Morning, Deku!” Ochaco chirps, then returns her attention to writing today’s date at the top of her notebook page. She’s deciding on a color scheme for her notes.

“Morning!” Izuku replies, bright and chipper. “You should go with blue and red today.”

“You always say that,” Ochaco laughs, but still she settles on her blue and red pens. “What do you think this is all about?” she nods vaguely at the board, and all Izuku can do is shrug and open his mouth to reply before their professor is proudly proclaiming his entrance into the classroom.

“Good morning!” Professor Yamada is shouting, and he really doesn’t need to yell because the classroom is relatively small but he does anyway. Some of the less awake students wince at his voice, but Izuku’s come to expect it, having been briefed by a few friends who have had Professor Yamada in the past. “Welcome to English one-oh-six!”

He’s speaking English right now, and Izuku’s taken enough English courses in middle school and high school to know most of what he’s saying, but it does take him a moment to piece the number together. He uses context clues to assume Professor Yamada is talking about the class number and he nods his head once, glad to make a connection like this so early in the morning and without any caffeine. (It’s not something he should be as impressed about as he is.)

Yamada switches gears and begins going through the plans of the day in Japanese. “Let’s talk about the Pen Pal Project,” he claps his hands together as he finishes going over basic syllabus information. “For the next semester, you will be exchanging weekly letters with a pen pal in English. It’s much easier to learn a language when you write in said language and communicate with others in that language. I’ve assigned each of you a pen pal from the other sections of English one-oh-six, and you’ll be expected to write them a note each week for class.”

The class around Izuku is convoluted. Some are whispering about how they think this is a childish lesson, others are excitedly chattering with their friends at the possibility of getting to write letters back and forth with another friend from a different section of this course. Ochaco leans over to Izuku, and she appears to be part of the latter group of students. “Isn’t this exciting?!” she whisper-shouts. “Maybe I’ll get to write letters to Tsuyu!”

Izuku hums, taps his pencil on the desk. He doesn’t know many people at this university yet – he really only knows Ochaco, Kacchan, and the acquaintances he works with at the on-campus café. “I think it might be fun,” he decides finally. He’s always been a friendly and outgoing person, and while his English isn’t perfect, he doubts the person he gets paired up with will judge him for it. In all, it seems like a creative way to teach a class, and it really does seem like a nice change of pace.

***

“He’s still doing that stupid pen pal thing, huh?”

Kacchan is leaning against the counter of their kitchenette while Izuku works on drafting his pen pal note at the island counter. “Mm,” Izuku hums his affirmation.

“I had him last semester,” Kacchan grunts, turns back to the microwave where he’s waiting on his ramen. “Thought that assignment was kinda fuckin’ stupid.”

“Who was your pen pal?” Izuku asks, tilting his head to the side in curiosity. He’s drafted his first letter three times now, trying to make sure it has as little errors as possible while also trying not to have scribble marks and pencil erasings.

“Some guy named Hitoshi,” Kacchan shrugs. “He wasn’t all that good at English. I could barely understand what the hell he was trying to say half the time.” He peers over the counter, eyeing Izuku’s paper. “You used the wrong tense there,” he points after a moment, and Izuku groans and throws his head down.

“Why don’t you write it for me?” Izuku whines, turns his cheek so it presses against the counter and he can stare up at Kacchan with big puppy dog eyes. Kacchan just grumbles under his breath and turns away, irritation in his voice even when his words are unintelligible.

“I’m not doing that stupid ass project again,” Kacchan gripes. “Who’s your pen pal or whatever, anyway?”

Izuku blinks to try and focus his eyes on the paper that is much too close to his face to be able to read. Finally he sits up and rubs his eyes, glares down at the name he’s written at the top of the paper. “Todoroki Shouto,” he says.

“Oh, that guy?” Kacchan keeps his eyes on the microwave as it ticks down. “Should be fuckin’ delightful to talk to,” he teases.

“What’s wrong with Todoroki?” Izuku asks, means not to sound defensive but he always seems to get this way when Kacchan acts abrasive.

“I had him in my Japanese lit class last semester,” he explains with a wave of the hand. “He’s just like, the exact opposite of your type.”

Izuku’s ears redden at the tips. “I’m not looking for a relationship,” he says quickly, his voice jumping up a few pitches. “It’s a school assignment! Why would you think—”

“Deku,” Kacchan interrupts, stern and a little intimidating. “It’s been months. You’re getting irritable.”

“Am not!” Izuku shoots back, then covers his mouth. Kacchan just smirks, knowingly, as if those two words have proven him right, because they kind of have.

“Whatever you say,” Kacchan grunts, opens the microwave just before it beeps and takes out his bowl of ramen noodles. He grabs a set of chopsticks from the drawer and migrates to the couch in their tiny living space. The television drowns out whatever Kacchan’s grumbling under his breath, and Izuku doesn’t quite care to ask him to repeat himself because honestly, he’s a little scared of the answer he’ll receive. So he returns his attention back to the page in front of him.

It’s a simple note. Professor Yamada has given everyone a topic for their first letter, ordering the class to talk about what they’re going to school for and what classes they’re taking this semester. He’s told everyone it needs to be around fifty words long to get full credit, and that they’re not being graded on English accuracy so much as on participation. Izuku knows he doesn’t have to put as much thought and effort into it as he is right now, but he can’t help himself; he wants to sound smart. That’s his downfall, is that he doesn’t want his first impression to be terrible.

Dear Todoroki Shouto,

Hi! My name is Midoriya Izuku. I am just turned twenty and this is my third year attending Yuuei University. I study natural science, chemistry, and modern history also with English. I major in Engineering, but I do know not what I want to do with that degree. I live on campus and have one roommate. It is nice to meet you!

Wishing you the best,

Midoriya Izuku

By the time he’s finally settled on his letter, it’s nearing ten at night. He knows he’s taken a lot more time on this than probably anyone else has, but that’s just his personality – he never puts less than a hundred percent into anything. “Kacchan,” he calls through the dorm; he heard Kacchan get out of the shower twenty minutes or so ago now and he really needs someone who’s better at English to revise for him.

“Fuck off, trying to sleep,” Kacchan calls back, his voice muffled through his bedroom door. Izuku sighs, wonders if Ochaco is still awake.

She must be, considering when he grabs for his cell phone that he’d put on silent just before he began working he sees sixteen new text messages, the most recent of which being from eight minutes ago. He exhales and decides that, rather than responding to all sixteen messages, it might be easier to just call her, so he scrolls through his contacts and hits the button to video call.

She picks up after two rings. “Deku!” she cries, but she doesn’t really sound angry, which is unusual when Izuku’s missed so many of her messages. “You got paired up with Todoroki Shouto?!”

“Ah, yeah?” Izuku’s beginning to wonder if he’s the only one who has no idea who this guy is. “So what?”

“So what?!” Ochaco repeats, her voice shrill with the question. “So, he’s like one of the hottest guys on campus!”

Izuku flushes. “I don’t really see how that—”

“You totally need to get with him! You’re getting irritable, Deku!”

Izuku feels his ears reddening again. Is it really that obvious? he thinks hopelessly. “I’m not,” he replies, tries not to sound as irritable this time when he says it.

“Are too,” Ochaco sing-songs.

“I don’t even know what he looks like,” Izuku whines finally, throws his head down on the note. “Who did you get paired up with?”

“Iida Tenya,” she says after a moment. “Do you know him?”

“Yeah,” Izuku sits up again. “I work with him. We usually have the same shift at the café.”

“Oh! The tall guy with the glasses?”

Izuku nods, grateful that his topic change has been so successful. Ochaco seems to notice what he’s done a moment later though, because she’s scolding him in mumbles and all Izuku can catch is “you can’t fool me, Deku”.

“Can you help me review my note?” Izuku asks, remembering now his main reasoning for calling in the first place.

Ochaco sighs and rubs her temple in a gesture that’s meant to be teasing but feels almost genuine. “Sure, sure,” she says with a fatigued smile. “But only if you’ll help me with Chemistry.”

[bettsfic]

hey betts! can you give us any insight into your new drafting process (the one you mentioned on Twitter?) those results have me green with envy

sure! this is going to be a fairly quick run-down because i have to start planning my classes here soon.

(anon is referring to this tweet)

required reading

shitty first drafts by anne lamott, which is where i modified my process from

on fear by mary ruefle, which talks about procedure and i may have taken the wrong meaning from the essay but basically, my entire process is about mitigating the fear innate in writers’ block by having a procedure in place to counteract it

tools

google docs (or some other word processor)

google calendar (or some other calendar app; i wrote about my scheduling process here)

toggl (or some other timekeeping app)

airtable (i’ve also used trello, but i like airtable better. ps big thanks to @electricalice​ for introducing me to it! it’s a lifesaver)

pre-writing

so first you need an idea. whenever i have an idea, even if there’s 0 chance i’ll end up writing it, i add it to my airtable, plus any notes or details i come up with. i also copy and paste any text convos i have about the fic, like if i headcanon something with a friend. (i used trello for this until recently; it works just fine and is a bit easier to use. airtable also has a kanban function though, along with other formats, so it’s a bit more flexible)

airtable is a project management spreadsheet software. i’m sure there are others out there, but i started fiddling with this one and haven’t looked back. it takes a little while to figure out, and you might have to google some things you want it to do that aren’t terribly intuitive. 

my fanfic table, filtered by ideas, looks like this:

(you may have to expand to look at it, also note that the pretty colors are a Pro feature of the app and i’m still on my trial)

the idea here is to have space to store my ideas. let’s say i hang out with a friend and we started talking about fic, and i bring up i have an idea for a endgame coda but i’m not really sure where to take it, so we start headcanoning back and forth, and now i have a few scene ideas. i made my endgame coda card already right after i saw the movie, so all i have to do is open the app and jot down the main points of my headcanoning. now when i go home and start working on it, i can easily pull up our brainstorming session.

narrative outlining

i have never been an outliner or a planner. i’ve always been a pantser. i have a premise and i run with it, and that worked for me for a long time. pantsing has a lot of benefits: your story always surprises you! you can get really immersed! it’s certainly the more whimsical writing process.

but what i found was that i would often write myself into a corner, or lose steam once i realized what should have been a 10k fic was actually going to be 80k and i didn’t like the story enough to sit with it for 80k. i also spent a long time thinking about future scenes and writing them down but losing them later, or forgetting about them.

so i started doing narrative outlines, which are just me going “and then THIS happens” repeatedly and sometimes inputting “and something causes this other thing” until eventually i have the whole story written out. the goal of the narrative outline is pacing. all you have to do is get the major beats down. it doesn’t have to be good. no one is going to see it (unless you want them to).

ideally my paragraphs will be all around the same size. those are going to become my chapters. if a paragraph is significantly shorter than another, it’s likely that i don’t have that beat fleshed out yet. i call chapters “beats” because to me, each one should have its own arc, and end at a high or low point in the story.

in my fanfic airtable, i have a table for chapters. all chapters of all multi-chap wips go here, and i can filter out ones that are complete later. 

the beauty of the chapters table is that it can connect to your ideas/wip table and vice versa so everything is kept together. i had 7 paragraphs in my narrative outline so i made 7 rows. 

notice i also gave myself a due date. i don’t really like due dates, but i’m trying them on for now and seeing how it goes. 

i copy and paste the chapter paragraph as i go into the “summary” field. then, as scene or line ideas come to me, i toss them in the “scenes/lines” field. I was in a car for 8 hours and coming up with scenes all over the place, and i needed somewhere to put them. if i didn’t know where they went, i put them in my idea table instead, and filed them later.

you’re still idea-ing, you’re still outlining, but now it’s time to write.

gauge

i make a folder for the fic and open a doc and label it ch1. then i copy and paste the narrative outline paragraph into the doc and separate it out by scene with an asterisk between each one. 

here’s where the timesheet and calendar come in. i have a reminder on my calendar to schedule the following day, and on that schedule i put my writing time. when it’s time to write, i start the toggl clock. at the end of each week, i put in my time in my personal timesheet. 

the first chapter or 10% of anything i’m writing tends to take longer than the rest, because i need to get into the story, and choose the voice and tense and tone and things like that. so i take however long i take to make what i call a gauge. in knitting, a gauge is the thing that determines the size of the piece. if you’re knitting a sweater, you knit a little square to make sure the sweater comes out the size you need it to be.

so i write the gauge and it takes however long it takes. sometimes i rewrite it a few times, test out POVs and tenses and description and whatever else. what i like best, what seems the most sustainable, is what i choose. i wrote 3 chapters of a novel in present tense and a childish tone before i decided it needed to be first person reflective and i rewrote the whole thing. 

don’t get frustrated with yourself if your gauge doesn’t work. that’s what the gauge is for. you’ll know you’ve chosen the right voice if, by the end of your gauge, you’re really eager to keep writing. 

down draft & punch list

so now you’ve got a pretty gauge to follow, and the rest is going to be an absolute mess. the down draft is exactly what it sounds like – you get the idea down. i personally believe you need to tell the story to yourself a few times in order to get good at telling the story, or to know what the story is. you’ve told yourself the story once in outline form, and now you’re just breaking out the scenes a little bit more. 

the key to the down draft is not to self-edit. i’m not talking about going back and tweaking typos and shit, that’s fine, whatever. i mean doubting yourself structurally. like, oh shit, you forgot to mention that they took off their clothes and now they’re naked.

here’s where the punch list comes in, which is yet another table. (i’ve also used google tasks for this, because it pops up in a side window. either works!) a punch list is a to do list. instead of fixing things, you put the thing on your punch list and save it for the next draft. a down draft is all about speed and figuring out where all the pieces go. revising during the down draft only slows you down. 

the punch list is my solution to the contrived advice “you can fix it later!” to which i always say, “BUT I WON’T REMEMBER TO FIX IT LATER I HAVE TO FIX IT NOW.” as soon as you think of something to fix, put it on the table. it may seem like it’s faster to fix things as you go. it is not. i promise.

this is all my punch list notes for all fics, which i then connect to my other tables/filter as needed. put everything in your punch list. it’s better to make a punch list item that you don’t end up implementing than forget an important revision note. if you end up putting the project down for a while, you’ll want to know what you’d intended. 

up draft

in the up draft, you clean up the down draft. here, i take each document in a new window, put it on the right half of the screen, and open a new document to put on the left. 

then i rewrite the whole fucking thing. i pull up my punch list and fix all the things as i go, to the best of my ability. here’s where the writing gets pretty and fleshed out. but still, it doesn’t need to be perfect. you have more revisions to go. it’s important to remember during this entire process that everything can be changed. nothing is permanent. you’re not writing in stone. there’s no cost to words or documents, so you can revise as much as you want.

it’s also worth noting that the longer your project, the more sectioned out your story will be. sometimes you’ll have a chapter on a down draft and another chapter on an up draft. sometimes you might down draft out of order just to make sure you get your ideas down when they occur. whatever works for you. the idea is that you’re constantly building spaces in which to put your stuff that can be easily found and implemented. the creative process is messy, so you need to make clean spaces to put the mess in.

while you’re up-drafting, you’re still idea-ing and outlining and down-drafting and punch-listing. maybe you don’t have the answer to a problem yet, but you might later. decision fatigue in the creative process is real. this process is designed to mitigate decision fatigue. there are only ever so many decisions to make at once when you expand out your process like this one.

and sometimes, sadly, the solution to a problem never happen. that’s okay. what you write might be flawed. in fact it should be flawed. flaws are what make things beautiful. all you can do is the best you can do, and if it’s not good enough for your tastes, you can learn from your mistakes and try again. 

beta

sometimes i have a beta and sometimes i don’t, depending on how confident i am about the work. when i have a beta, this is the stage i send them my stuff. sometimes i tell them specific things i’m looking for, like just line edits, or cheerleading, or whatever else. sometimes i have questions about whether or not something is working. i tell them what date i intend to post and when i would like edits to be done by, and if they don’t get around to it, that’s okay. i can just hustle a little harder in the next revision.

dental draft

here’s where, per anne lamott, you check every tooth. i implement my remaining punch list items and beta feedback, fix pacing issues, typos, unclear sentences, etc. sometimes i do the side-by-side window thing for chapters that are particularly messy, and sometimes i just fix the existing doc. by now your story should be looking pretty good, or the best you can get it.

final read-through :) or additional revisions :(

for fic, this is the point where i hit it and hope. i copy and paste the chapter/fic into an ao3 shell with the tags and summary i’ve kept in my airtable, and do a final readthrough. i don’t do it in the original doc because seeing it in a new font and format usually makes me notice things i’d missed before. 

for ofic, here’s where you might need more feedback and more revising if your piece isn’t working yet, or if you’ve submitted it a couple dozen places and haven’t had it accepted. while this process is thorough, sometimes pieces still aren’t working for whatever reason. don’t throw anything away, though. keep it, file it, log it in your airtable, and maybe one day while you’re driving an idea will pop into your head and you’ll be able to come back to it. 

this was a really really quick run-down of an extremely long and complicated process, but it works for me! i probably wouldn’t have been able to do this even a year ago. it’s taken me a long time to cultivate this kind of discipline, and i’m still a work in progress. so if it’s too much or too structured for you, that’s fine. maybe you can take one or two things for yourself and try them out. 

[ioverthoughtthiswaytoomuch]

chapters: 1/1 title: between the lines of fear and blame fandom: none (original work)

This short story was originally written for a class assignment, but it's whump-y enough to pass as a work for Whumptober. Technically, it's still a draft, but the other stories I wrote for Whumptober weren't revised or edited, either.

@whumptober2020​

~

It was all dark. I couldn’t see a thing. My lungs were burning, and my muscles weren’t doing any better. Tears were falling out of my eyes, streaming down my cheeks. I’d run into at least five branches from five different trees, and I could feel blood seeping out of the cuts on my face.

I couldn’t look back. I couldn’t fall behind. I couldn’t trip, I couldn’t falter. If I slowed down, got any slower than the speed I was running at, he’d catch me. And he wasn’t too far behind.

I could hear him advancing on me. I tried to run faster, but there’s only so much a nonathletic, clumsy teenager could do to avoid an infuriated, football-playing teenager with a vengeance. Especially if that nonathletic, clumsy teenager happened to be running through a forest that she wasn’t familiar with. At all. Oh, look: the nonathletic, clumsy teenager that got herself into a huge mess was me. What a surprise.

And then the forest wasn’t a forest any longer. It was a clearing. No, it was a cliff. A dead end. And I was currently falling off of that cliff. Thankfully, there was a fairly large body of water under the cliff that I conveniently landed in. I had successfully survived jumping off of a cliff. The only other problem was that I didn’t know how to swim.

I opened my mouth, searching for air, and I could feel the water invading my aching lungs as I struggled to fight my way back up to the surface. I pulled myself up eventually, gasping and sputtering while coughing out the water in my lungs.

I turned to look at the cliff I had jumped off of. Logan came to a stop at the edge of the rock, scanning the water. I risked a glance at the shore. The gravel beach to my right was too far away for me to attempt to swim toward without drawing attention to myself, not to mention almost drowning. So instead I opted for moving as little as possible in the freezing water and hoping he couldn’t see me.

Luckily for me, it was too dark for Logan to see anything, and my dark hair blended in with the dark water. He gave up after scanning the water two more times, but before he turned and stormed back into the trees, he called out to me in a dark, threatening voice that made chills run down my spine.

“I’m going to kill you for what you did to my little sister!”

I bolted upright with a gasp. My hand found its way to my chest, rising and falling at uneven paces, and I could feel my heartbeat pounding in my ears.

Still alive, I thought, blinking away tears. You’re okay.

It was just over a week ago that I was running through a forest being chased by a girl’s protective older brother, but I remembered it so vividly. Every night since then, I had relived the same experience over and over, each time startling myself awake in my sweat-soaked bed. I could still hear his voice, cutting loud and clear through the windy night, shouting a threat so gravely, I was beginning to think maybe he meant it.

“I’m going to kill you for what you did to my little sister!”

I shivered, though I was anything but cold. I pushed the covers off my body and laid back against the pillows, trying to calm my breathing. As I closed my eyes and tried to go back to sleep, I could only think one thing.

What did I do to his little sister?

I slept dreamlessly for two hours more after my nightmare, but when I woke up, the question was still etched into my mind. I couldn’t remember doing anything to Lexi Ackerman. I didn’t even know the girl! The last time I interacted with her was when I partnered up with her for a science project in the sixth grade, and I doubted she would remember it, much less Logan; that was four years ago, and the project wasn’t anything special.

So why did Logan blame me for something that happened to a girl I didn’t even know?

I shook my head, clearing it. It was Friday, and I had to go to school.

I tried to keep myself busy during school, but I caught myself wondering if I should confront Lexi or Logan. No, I told myself, that would only make it worse.

I managed to keep my mind mostly on school for the rest of the day, but there was nothing to keep my mind on when I returned home to my empty house, and my thoughts began to wander.

My father left before I was born, as my mother told me, and my mother was always distant. It was almost like she was always hiding something, but I knew that was unrealistic. She was always working, which must’ve been why she was so remote. I didn’t mind much -- I liked being alone -- but sometimes I wished I knew my mother a little better.

The Ackermans probably knew their parents well. As far as I knew, Logan and Lexi’s parents were still married, living a happy life together with their two excelling kids. And they were probably spoiled, too. Logan thought he could just accuse anyone of doing anything and make death threats without consequences, but he was wrong. I would not let him kill me, and I would prove to him that I didn’t do anything wrong.

But as I was planning my detailed, step-by-step process on how to prove my innocence, the lights shut off, breaking my train of thought. Where I lived, it got dark fairly early, so I was relying solely on the lights on the ceiling for brightness, but with the lights off, I couldn’t see anything.

“Power must’ve gone out,” I noted aloud. Normally, when the power goes out, it didn’t take too long to come back, but it was cold, and the heater had stopped working during the outage, so I was shivering and I couldn’t see.

I paced my room to try and warm-up, my arms folded tightly across my chest, but I was having trouble avoiding all the obstacles laid haphazardly across the floor that I never got around to picking up.

“And this, people, is why you clean your room,” I muttered to myself, and then I stepped on another shirt. I wasn’t getting any warmer. I was about to sit down again when I heard a knock on the door. I thought I was just hearing things, because why would someone be at my door, but when I heard another knock, louder the second time, I knew it was real.

I maneuvered my way to the door and looked through the peephole, but I couldn’t see anything. I flicked the light switch on to try to see who was on the other side before remembering that the power was out and trying to turn on the lights was pointless.

I didn’t want to open the door if I didn’t know who was outside because, contrary to popular belief, I was not stupid, but the person on the other side must’ve gotten impatient and started banging on the door rapidly.

“Alright, alright,” I said, frustrated, as I unlocked and opened the door. “What?” I said impatiently. The person, who I assumed was a man, was taller than me, and he was wearing a varsity jacket over a grey hoodie. When I readjusted my gaze to look at his face, I gasped as the man’s cold blue eyes met my dark brown ones.

“L- Logan,” I breathed out. The man, the myth, the legend. “Wh- uh, what are you doing here? It’s late, isn’t…” I faltered when I caught his harsh glare.

“I warned you,” he said in a low voice. “I told you what would happen. And now… now, I’m going to kill you.”

I chuckled nervously. “Uh, there’s been a, um, misunderstanding. Why don’t you… come… in…” I weakly stepped aside and opened the door a little wider, and Logan trudged in, keeping his eyes locked on mine the whole time.

“Look, I just want to make sure you know that I didn’t do anything to Lexi,” I said as I shut the door.

“Lexi?” he roared. “This isn’t about her! This is about what you did to Liz.”

I shrunk back, and before I could stop myself from saying it, I blurted out, “Who the heck is Liz?” I slapped my hand over my mouth right after it came out, but the damage was already done.

“My sister. The one you killed.” His face held no emotion as he drew out a silver knife that gleamed in the dim light.

“Woah, woah, woah, hey!” I stuttered quickly, throwing my hands into the air in surrender. “I- heh, there’s, ah, there’s gotta be a mistake! I didn’t kill anyone, I promise!”

“Then explain to me,” he said as he tightened his grip around the handle of the knife, “why my little sister is dead, and why I saw you kill her.”

“I- what? No, listen, I didn’t even know your sister existed!” I protested, which was admittedly the wrong thing to say. I cringed in fear when I heard the low growl at the back of his throat. “You must’ve, I don’t know, saw it wrong or something! Because I swear, I have never killed anyone in my life. Really!”

All he did was step forward. If looks could kill, I would’ve already been dead, but that wouldn’t’ve made much of a difference now, would it?

“Please,” I whispered pleadingly, but if he could hear it, he didn’t react. He stepped closer and closer, and I retreated farther and farther back until I hit the wall, and I had no place else to go. He was slow, menacingly slow, and I knew I was trapped. Tears began to slide silently down my face, retracing tracks that had formed over the past week. “Please,” I begged again, this time silently.

“This is what you get. What you deserve. If anything, I’m doing you a kindness, putting you out of your miserable life,” he spat.

And he lunged forward, knife in hand, aiming for my neck.

I dodged. His knife had caught a few strands of my hair, pinning them to the wall, but I couldn’t care less as I dashed to the side, effectively ripping out those strands of hair, and ran to my room, locking it.

“Calliope, I know you’re in there!” he shouted aggressively. I winced as he said my name so harshly. He jiggled the doorknob, and he yelled angrily when he realized it was locked. I thought he would call out to me again, telling me to open the door, or maybe, and it was a stretch, but maybe he would leave. But he didn’t say another word. And I relaxed for a second, thinking I was saved, but I jumped when I heard him slam into the door. That wasn’t supposed to happen. And then another time, and another.

And with the next, he came barreling through the door with his quarterback muscles that I really should’ve accounted for. And he did not look happy. He had pried his knife out of the wall, and his fist clenched around the handle so tightly, his knuckles had paled.

I shrieked, and in my panic, I threw whatever was closest to me at him, which happened to be an old sweatshirt. And then I regretted it the moment after because all he got was even more pissed.

If he wasn’t enraged before, he sure was now. He grabbed onto the sweatshirt and threw it angrily at the floor.

“What. The. F-” he began, but I cut him off by throwing the next thing, an empty plastic water bottle. He sputtered, most likely shocked at my stupidity, but I just took it as a chance to continue to chuck all my miscellaneous belongings at the homicidal maniac with a knife.

With my bad aim, I didn’t expect any of the objects to hit him -- I was trying to stall him, keep him distracted while I came up with a probably stupid escape plan -- but he was dodging all my blows, and somehow, as he sidestepped, my school binder from last year filled with all the extensive paperwork my teachers handed out nailed him straight in the middle of the forehead.

He fell onto the pile of clothes on my floor, probably knocked out. I approached him slowly, sticking two fingers of my right hand out, and knelt beside him, trying to find a pulse on his left wrist, the closest one to me.

I guess I should’ve expected it when he opened his eyes.

His right hand, still holding the knife, swung toward me so quickly, I didn’t have time to move, and the sharp blade of his knife embedded itself deep into the side of my neck for all of five seconds, before Logan ripped it out roughly, watching as the thick, crimson liquid spilled out of the wound.

I fell heavily to the ground. I gasped, but I got no air. I screamed, but I made no noise.

“Please,” I choked out softly, clutching my neck, but the rippling current of blood flowing out of my carotid was too strong for me to stop.

Everything was blurry and spinning, and I could hardly make out the abstract shape of a boy standing over me. My eyes searched the hazy field of vision wildly, trying to focus, before my heavy eyelids closed over them and I felt my grip become weaker.

Please.

--

Logan watched Calliope stumble and fall onto the ground. He watched her claw at her neck and plead for him to save her. And he stood helplessly above her, apathetic to the dying girl in front of him. After all, she did kill his sister. She deserved it.

“Wow,” a voice called from behind Logan. He whipped around and saw a woman in the doorway. “I didn’t think you’d actually do it.”

“Who- I- wh- who are you?” he stuttered. The ceiling light in Calliope’s room lit up, exposing all of Calliope’s possessions she had thrown at Logan. The girl’s limp body lay in the center of the room, the still wet blood seeping into the carpet.

“My name’s Pandora,” the woman said, “and I’ve been wanting to get rid of Calliope for years.”

She stepped into the light, and Logan gasped.

The woman, Pandora, was wearing studded black biker boots that went up past her ankles. Her skinny jeans were black and ripped at various places along her thighs, knees, and shins. The white shirt she had on was tight, and the front of her shirt was tucked into her jeans loosely. Over her shirt was an unzipped motorcycle jacket made of black leather. Her right hand was tucked into the front pocket of her jeans, and her left brushed a strand of her long, wavy, dark brown hair behind her ear, and her face was the exact same as Calliope’s.

“Y-You’re- What?” Logan stammered. “How…”

“It’s a long story.” She brushed Logan’s implicit question off nonchalantly, checking her black acrylic nails.

“I’ve got a whole lot of time,” Logan replied in the same cool tone, seemingly pulling himself together.

“Don’t you have a funeral to get ready for? For… What was her name, Alyssa? Eliana? Oh, that’s right -- it was Elizabeth.”

Logan clenched his fists. “It was you,” he growled. “It wasn’t Callie who killed Liz, it was you!” He drew his knife again, not caring that it was still dripping with blood, and lunged at Pandora, but she sidestepped his attack and used his momentum to push him against the wall. Her left hand bent Logan’s wrist into an awkward position until he dropped his knife, and she swiftly caught the weapon as it fell, keeping her right arm pressed forcibly against the back of Logan’s neck the whole time. She brought the knife up under his chin and pressed slightly -- not enough to cut his skin, but enough to make him feel the pressure of the bloodied knife against his trembling chin.

“Yeah, and what’re you gonna do about it?” Logan’s eyes widened as he stared at the knife used so expertly in Pandora’s grasp. “I killed your sister, and I have no regrets about making you kill mine. She was always the lucky twin, the one who didn’t have to grow up with the alcoholic flake of a father, and she took it for granted. Didn’t even know what she was missing out on. Well, karma’s a real pain, isn’t it?” she hissed bitterly into Logan’s ear.

“So, what, you killed her? No, you made me kill her because you were too much of a coward to kill her yourself,” Logan retaliated. He barked out a sharp laugh, void of any emotion other than annoyance. Pandora tensed beside him, pressing the knife further into his skin. Logan was well aware of the stainless steel up against the artery in his neck, but he continued to provoke the girl anyway. “Coward,” he snarled again.

Pandora’s face scrunched up. “I am not a cowa-”

Logan knocked his head back, successfully hitting Pandora in the forehead and avoiding the blade of the knife in her hand. Pandora stumbled back, raising her right hand to touch her bruised forehead, and Logan took her distraction as an opportunity to tackle her to the ground, wrestling the weapon out of her grip.

Pandora let out a guttural cry in anguish and determination through her clenched teeth as she fought back against Logan, hitting the back of her head against the wall in the process. The two struggled for dominance, pushing each other into the ground and grappling for the single knife. It was a blur -- one second, Logan was punching Pandora repeatedly in the jaw, and the next, Pandora had her hands wrapped tightly around Logan’s neck.

Logan and Pandora battled viciously for what seemed like hours, matching each other’s strengths and weaknesses to make for a fair match. They let out grunts and screams, glaring at each other with the intent to kill. Punches, kicks, and whatever other blows they could land were exchanged, and the only thing on the fighters’ minds was victory, fueled by their tenacity.

And then came the knock at the door. It was loud and singular, but the noise resonated throughout the house. Logan froze from his position hovering over Pandora, but Pandora just smirked. She took his hesitation and flipped him, swiftly grabbing the knife and stabbing it into his chest, and then she pulled it out and inserted it into his abdomen.

As she stood up, she tore the blade out of Logan’s body, shrugging before wiping the blood off on his mangled varsity jacket. She flipped the injured boy onto his back as his breathing became more and more labored, and she promptly dug her boot heel into his neck, satisfied as she heard the brilliant snap of his neck.

She dug her pointer and middle fingers into Logan’s neck, feeling his pulse slow until it stopped altogether.

“And then there was one,” she said, a smirk stretched across her face as she admired her new knife. She stood up, and spun around as she heard a gasp behind her.

“Calliope?” the woman who had walked through the door uttered.

“Mom!” Pandora hastily replied, pleasantly surprised. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

Calliope’s mother peered behind her daughter and spotted the disfigured corpse of Logan Ackerman. She sighed.

“I have much to teach you, Pandora.”

[a-third-attempt]

Raising Bell (pt. 1)

 * * *

Defamation, Libel. 8 cts: First Presbyterian, Chittenden County &c. (see Appendix C)

 * * *

“We’ve got her”, I said.

“Jason. I’ve told you a million times not to barge in here after— Who?”

The boss’s desk is big, but he makes it look small. Tall and fat, he always wears a dark brown coat that somehow makes him an even more imposing presence. You'd never catch him during working hours without a cigar in his mouth, and even then you’d never catch him for more than a couple seconds at a time. He wasn't the easiest guy to get along with, but the only reason this operation was still in the black was because that man worked around the clock to make it go. At the moment he was busy with paperwork, a task that he never started until 7:00 at the earliest, because “the real work goes on when the sun is up, kid!”

“Dorothy,” I said.

“Dorothy McAdams?”

“Dorothy McAdams.”

His eyebrows raise and he offers a breathless “Dorothy McAdams...” in reply. “How the hell did you manage that?”

“She came to town because of her brother, and the word on the street is that she’s sticking around for a year or two. Besides that,” I smile broadly, “I suppose it’s just to your credit for hiring such a charming talent agent, that got her to call you back before St. Anthony.”

He grunts. That was a little too showy for any other day, but with Dorothy in my pocket he’d damn well better cut me some slack.

“How much did it cost me?”

“Well, sir...”

“Snap it out Jason, I haven’t got all night.”

“Sorry, sir. Salary isn’t worth writing home about, double what the other four-in-handers get. And no signing bonus, just a condition.” I pause. He removes the cigar from his mouth and waves it in a circle, annoyed that I'm talking so slow. “We have to take on a kid named Timothy Courtson.”

“Who the hell is Timothy Courtson?”

“Does it matter?” I say, confidently.

“It might,” he snaps back. I guess he's right. Could be an arsonist, he always says. That sure would be bad for business, you know. I glance down at the file in my hand, and swallow hard.

“It doesn’t.”

“He any good?”

I’m sure the millisecond of silence was answer enough, but I answered him. “He can play C and D4.”

He puts the cigar back in his mouth and smirks. “So, no.”

“Positively dire, sir. But it’s no bonus with the kid; 2.5 without.” A second of silence is all it takes to get the words spilling out of my mouth. I spent too much money on her and if I lost the cash back… “Look, we just double up Karen and shift down the bass. The kid can sound like a dying cat and nobody’s going to know the difference down there. Garrett can teach him to mart properly and he’ll get the rest in the extra lessons from Tanya.”

He waves away my explanation. “Yeah, yeah, Jason. You made the right call. Good work.”

I bow my head, and take the opportunity to collect myself, knowing that the goodwill won’t last long. “There— sorry, there’s another thing. Louis told me to give you this.”

I hold the file out to him, and he recoils. “Does it look like I've got the time to read this thing?”

“Please, boss. It's important.”

He snatches the file in one hand, and with the other he grabs a pair of comically undersized glasses. Plopping them on his nose, he opens it and starts reading. It takes about three seconds for the color to drain from his face and his mouth to twist into a bitter scowl.

“What the SAM HELL is this, Jason?” I shrug. Could have been worse, if we're being honest.

“Just a list of notes that Louis kept when he had her, and everything he could find about her past behavior.”

He starts to shout at me again, but thinks better of it and rubs his temples. “Jesus Christ.”

“Language.” It’s instinct, but I know it’s a bad idea from the instant the word comes out of my mouth.

“Jesus Christ have mercy on this woman’s soul,” he snaps back. “But judging by this rap sheet, there’s not much chance of that.”

“She’s a genius. Every genius has some quirks.”

“Hell with quirks, Jason. This is a problem.”

The words hang silently in the smokey air of his office. He tosses the folder to the side and turns away from me, looking out the window at the view of nothing, just a few yellow streetlamps and the broad side of the next concrete building.

“You still want her, though, right?”

He’s quiet, still facing away from me, but there’s no hesitation. “Yes.”

“We’ll just have to keep a tighter leash than Louis did.”

“Take your good-for-nothing file and get out of here,” he grunts softly, and I oblige. As frightening as Boss can be when he’s a swirling rage, I know he’s much scarier when he gets that quiet.

 * * *

A/N: As usual, you can see the entire writing process below the break.

==========

==========

Second Draft

See savefile-1 for suggested edits. I don’t think we need to do a full rewrite of this, but if you get inspired, this would be the draft to do it. I think the original was pretty inspired, though, and it went though a lot of revision with all the retellings.

 * * *

Okay, I’m just going to let this one go through on the second draft. It’s fine and I’m too drunk to do real edits. Maybe if I can stay sober for a whole night I’ll make it work, but fuck Coronavirus, amirite?

==========

First Thoughts

Okay, let’s do the first person thing.

What does Jason notice in their narration? They notice Boss, first and foremost. Boss is tempermental and demanding, so this is a survival mechanism. And with such sensitive information that he’s bringing, he needs to be hypervigilant. 

What does he miss? Emotions, for anyone except Boss— and even then, only as they’re written in his face and serve as tells toward his behavior in the immediate future, or things that he does(n’t) want to hear.

Also, it’s not that he misses it, but he’s not going to wax too poetic about the office; he works there, and he works long hours too.

From all these outbursts, especially with Boss— forgivable because of the situation, but not ideal— we can tell that Jason doesn’t have much impulse control. Even though I don’t like the ‘not even for’ line, this characterization might not quite come through without it. Play around.

Dropping the F bomb feels just a little off. It's not about the “Language” outbust (that's part of what makes the joke); it's just that Boss is someone who commands enough respect that they don’t have to lash out to get what they want. And yes, this McAdams’ rap sheet is pretty wild but it just seems like he would say it a tad more eloquently.

You should probably, at some point, actually draft this rap sheet. For the extended version I can easily see each chapter starting with an item from the sheet, when the chapter is about shenanigans in that regard.

If we’re going to call this Chap 1 instead of Prologue, I could easily see the line item here being:

Defamation, Libel. 8 cts: First Presbyterian, Chittenden County &c. (see Appendix C)

I mean obviously I’m making this citation style up wholesale, which is okay because the real citations are in the appendix, duhhhhh. Also obviously I don’t need it to be Chittenden County, Vermont; but wherever it is, is presumably where Louis runs his empire.

==========

First Draft (written over multiple sessions)

“We’ve got her”, I said.

“Jason I’ve told you a million times not to barge in here with— Who?”

[Exposition]

“Dorothy,” I said.

“Dorothy McAdams?”

“Dorothy McAdams.”

His eyebrows raise and he offers a breathless “Dorothy McAdams...” in reply. He looks up at nothing in particular, visions of fame and fortune surely filling his head. “How the hell did you manage that?”

“She came to town because of her brother, and the word on the street is that she’s sticking around for a year or two. Besides that,” I smile broadly, “I suppose it’s just to your credit for hiring such a charming talent agent, that got her to call you back before St. Anthony.”

He grunts. That was a little too showy for any other day, but with Dorothy in my pocket he’d damn well better cut me some slack.

“How much did it cost me?”

“Well, sir...”

“Snap it out Jason, I haven’t got all night.”

“Not even for Dorothy McAdams?” Probably shouldn’t have said that; my wit got the better of me. He glares.

“No.”

“Sorry, sir. Salary isn’t worth writing home about, double what the other 4-in-handers get. And no signing bonus, just a condition.” I pause. He removes the cigar from his mouth with his hand, that he then waves in a circle, annoyed at my slowness. “We have to take on a kid named Timothy Courtson.”

“Who the hell is Timothy Courtson?”

“Does it matter?” I say, knowingly.

“It might,” he snaps back. I guess he’s right. He always is.

“It doesn’t.”

“He any good?”

I’m sure the millisecond of silence was answer enough, but he’s clearly not in the mood for games. “He can play C and D4.”

He puts the cigar back in his mouth and smirks. “So, no.”

“Positively dire, sir. But it’s either 0 bucks with the kid, or 2.5 without.” He doesn’t answer, and my words start spilling out. “Look, we just double up Karen and shift down the bass. The kid can sound like a cat on meth and nobody’s going to know the difference down there. Garrett can teach him to mart properly and he’ll get the rest in the extra lessons from Tanya.”

He waves away my explanation. “Yeah, yeah, Jason. You made the right call. Good work.”

I swallow, knowing that the goodwill won’t last long. “There—there’s another thing. Louis told me to give you this.”

I pass over the file. He grabs a pair of comically undersized glasses, glaring sarcastically at me. Putting them on, he opens it and starts reading. It takes about three seconds for the color to drain from his face and his mouth to twist into a bitter scowl.

“What the SAM HELL is this, Jason?”

“Just a list of notes that Louis kept when he had her, and everything he could find about her past behavior.”

He starts to shout at me again, but thinks better of it and rubs his temples. “Jesus Christ.”

“Language.” It’s instinct, but I know it’s a bad idea from the instant I say it.

“Jesus Christ have mercy on this woman’s soul,” he snaps back. “But judging by this rap sheet, there’s not much chance of that.”

“She’s a genius. Every genius has some quirks.”

“These aren’t some fucking quirks, Jason.”

The words hang silently in the smokey air of his office. He tosses the folder to the side and turns away from me, looking out the window at the view of nothing, just a few yellow streetlamps and the broad side of the next concrete building. I look at him. He doesn’t move.

“You still want her, though, right?”

He’s quiet, but there’s no hesitation. “Yes.”

“We’ll just have to keep a tighter leash than Louis did.”

“Get the hell out of here,” he grunts softly, and I oblige. As frightening as Boss can be when he’s a swirling rage, I know he’s much scarier when he gets that quiet.

==========

Who needs Brainstorming or Freewriting?

What actually is happening here is that I wrote this almost four months ago so the writing process looks a lot different than I’m trying to do now. But I really wanted to get this polished up a bit, so I committed to posting it soon.