#in your first drafts and to see revision as a way to refine what you originally wrote as an act of honouring rather than

[coffeeandcalligraphy]

lonan clark google searches: jesus stained glass

[aurinavenir]

Hi there<3 I have a question. I want to try writing, but I know it will suck so I don’t know how to start. I just want to finish a short story about anything. How do I start without giving up immediately?

Hi there! I'm always happy to answer questions! I have three suggestions based on my own experience that might be helpful: 1) On getting started: When I was around ten, my grandmother (a passionate writer and poet) encouraged me to write every day after I told her I wanted to write stories like the ones I loved reading but didn’t know where to start. She suggested starting small—maybe writing a hundred words on the computer or filling half an A4 page each day. The idea was to gradually increase the goal over time. If I wrote more, fantastic! If not, I still hit my target. The important thing was having something written down, and those little goals quickly started adding up. She always said, "success breeds success," and seeing my progress made me want to keep going! 2) On worrying about 'bad writing': First, It’s completely normal for your first attempt at something new not to be your best work—everyone starts somewhere. That’s what practice is for! No one’s first attempt at anything is going to be perfect, and that’s okay. Writing can be a fun and rewarding skill to practice, the important thing to remember is: don’t give up! Second, Jodi Picoult said: “You can always edit a bad page. You can't edit a blank page.” If you look at what you’ve written and think, "this isn’t great," don’t worry! Every writer feels that way about their first drafts in some way, shape or form. That’s what editing is for. The key is to get the basics down, no matter how simple, and then go back and refine it when you’re ready. There's something incredibly satisfying about looking back at your old work/drafts and seeing how much progress you've made! At the end of the day writing is all about rewriting—final pieces are simply the result of revising over and over, not something that was perfect from the start. 3) A writing tip that helps me maintain momentum: Try ending your writing session by leaving a sentence unfinished (though have an idea of how it ends). It might sound odd, but this technique worked for Ernest Hemingway, and it works for me too! I find it much easier to pick up where I left off because the unfinished sentence creates a natural momentum, making it easier to dive back in and continue. I hope these suggestions are helpful! Of course, these are just based on my own experiences, so feel free to take what works for you and leave the rest. I'm sure you have some amazing stories in you that are waiting to be told, and it would be a shame not to put them on paper! Give writing a shot and stick with it—you might just surprise yourself! Happy writing! :)

[gallusrostromegalus]

for the fic writer ask: 3, 13, and 17

3. Describe the creative process of writing a chapter/fic

>Remember an old Special Interest >Hyperfixate >write a few scenes >realize I need to overhaul the entire 38-74 volume Manga series to free it of Shonen Jump Editorial fuckery to The Gay Shit can thrive >Hello Word Processing Software. It's Punishment Time Again :) >Re-outline entire series >in faux-greentext >Major beats first >>hen following the path of individual characters to make sure I'm using the whole cast >Then refine for themes, which have a fun tendency of refning themselves for me (this is when rubberducking the groupchat is most helpful) >Then scene-by-scene to make sure characters are in the correct physical location to do what I need them to >If you have dialouge ideas or turns of phrase put 'em right in your notes >>I AM HERE ON BOTH AEIWAM AND TPOFATGIF >once scene-by-scene outline is achieved (warning: this may be a large enough doc as to crash your wordprocessing software and so you gotta break it in two or three pieces) >commit to the bit >Start writing the scenes more or less in order (easier for me to remember what I was doing), while consulting notes heavily >That Scene is now a chapter. >Let chapter percolate overnight, maybe draw a title card for it, to see if your subconscious vomits up a better way to do that scene before I hit post. >Read final draft aloud. fix lumpy parts. >Send it off to beta-editiors, plural, because I have a US Public Education. Make revisions as needed >Post >Onto the next scene while I wait for comments, to keep the dopamine goblin from panicking

13. what’s a common writing tip that you almost always follow?

Read your chapter aloud to someone (roommate, groupcaht, your beloved Husbeast, the dog) to catch editing errors and improve flow.

17. What do you do when writing becomes difficult? (maybe a lack of inspiration or writers block)

Something else. It's almost always a case of "I have other needs as an organism, like 'food' and 'going outside' that cannot be satisfied by a word processor" so I go draw something or work on the garden or take a nap or make dinner and I stg, the juice is almost always back in 2-24 hours.

[brotrustmeicanwrite]

How do you approach the revision process in your writing

There's a lot more to revision than your middle school teachers told you.

Many writers (especially beginners) think about spell-checking, grammar and potentially fixing plot holes after finishing the first draft when the topic of revision comes up, but there's much more you can do. After all, when we write a text we want to do much more than to simply convey information to the reader. We want to evoke emotions, we want to bring our characters to life and we want to tell their story in a way that does them justice. For that reason I divide my revision process into four parts.

Behold, my overly detailed revision process that includes absolutely everything we could do which does not mean that you have to or even should do all of these, especially with this level of detail (tl;dr at the end for those who don’t need every excruciating detail):

Plot, Characters And Themes

Goals Of The Scene

Emotions Of The Reader

Grammar And Spelling

1. Revising The Pot And Characters

This part of the revision usually starts long before even the first word of the first draft sees the light of day and is technically part of the outlining process.

Before we write a first draft and then have to do it all over again because something in the story changed or because we found a plot hole, it is much much easier to refine the contents of our writing in a much less work intensive medium than a long text. There are many ways to outline a story that each fit different writers and different stories, so I won’t go deeper into that. (I personally do it through a process I call time-lining but that would be its own separate post.) Once our outline is done we can step back and analyse the following aspects of our story (in no particular order; these go hand in hand with each other):

Plot lines

Characters And Characters Arcs

Themes

1.1 Plot Lines

Revising plot lines is more than just revising the story overall but still quite simple. Besides checking the vague concept of weather or not the story goes like we want it to go, we can check isolated plot lines and if

- they start at the best point of the story

- they end or converge with other plot lines at the right moment of the timeline

- they have an end at all or were forgotten about (open ending is a valid ending!)

- the reader can follow the lines or if they get too confusing

- and if the A- and B-Plot are properly balanced.

1.2 Characters And Character Arcs

This part is essentially the same as Plot Lines, except we check the character’s

- personalities and if they stay consistent throughout the story/ change appropriately according to the character’s experiences

- character arcs with the same questions as Plot Lines.

1.3 Themes

Themes, too is almost the same Plot Lines. We again check for consistency and also for frequency. The themes of our story should be brought up often enough that the reader doesn’t forget about/ can quickly remember them but not so often that it annoys them. Additionally we need to keep in mind what demographic we are writing for. Depending on the age of our readers the frequency and also boldness of our themes will vary widely.

2. Goals Of The Scene

A scene itself having goals is something that will probably strike most who are reading this as odd; I personally only came across the concept around 2 years ago for the first time, despite having researched writing techniques for years as a special interest before that. But the goal of a scene being “driving the plot forward” is probably something that we all can understand. However, besides just driving the plot forward there are many other goals a scene can have. For example:

Introducing a new character

Foreshadowing a future event

Getting the reader emotionally invested with a character

Conveying knowledge to the reader that the characters don’t yet have access too

Getting the reader thinking

Giving the reader a moment of peace (pacing)

and many many many more

Every scene should have a goal, even just a small one like giving the reader a break in between action scenes, else it wouldn’t contribute anything to our story. This part can be done both before the first draft and after it, depending on what goal our scene has.

Technical goals like conveying information can often already be achieved by adding a bullet point in our outline that later gets put into writing, while emotional goals often rely on the actual text.

3. Emotions Of The Reader

Being self critical [sic] is for editing, not writing. Writing is when you throw anything at the wall and see what sticks. They are two different practices that should be practiced separately. Write first, edit later.

This is a quote from a post I’ve been seeing on here for a couple days now and it pretty much encapsulates the reason I mentally separate revising the emotions my text is supposed to evoke in the reader from revising structure, grammar, spelling and all the other things I’ve listed. When writing my first draft I try to really get in the headspace of my potential future reader and the emotions I want them to feel. But just like when we later check our spelling and grammar it’s important to step away from our writing for quite some time before we can properly revise it. We need to forget the emotions we felt while writing to be truly able to revise what a reader would feel. Once enough time has passed we can revisit our text. And since we want to focus on just the emotions it’s advisable to ignore most minor grammatical mistakes at this stage (out of experience it’s extremely easy to loose track of what you were doing when you get too hung up on grammatical details).

However we as the writers will always be biased by our own emotions and meta knowledge. For that reason a beta reader focusing on this topic would be extremely helpful. I personally only had the opportunity to work with a beta reader once (since I’m purely a hobby writer) but back then I had asked them to read my text and write down/colour code all of their emotions and related thoughts paragraph by paragraph and even sentence by sentence where it was necessary. The result of that was a document containing not only my text but also a clear depiction of my reader’s headspace, that I could analyse and use as a basis to change parts of my text, where the reaction was too far away from what I wanted it to be.

4. Grammar And Spelling

This one I’ll keep short since that part of the revision process was probably beaten into every single one of us in middle school. The most important thing when checking grammar and spelling is of course to get some distance to our text first, the same way we did with the emotions before, and a beta reader is here too extremely beneficial.

Really the only personal part I have to add here is that I prefer to do this part at the very very end of my writing process after everything else I’ve talked about so far has been done and finished. After all, what sense is there to grammar and spellchecking first drafts.

Tl;dr and to sum up and summarise

When revising a story/text there is more to it than just spellchecking and grammar. I personally divide it into these four categories:

Plot, Characters And Themes

Goals Of The Scene

Emotions Of The Reader

Grammar And Spellchecking

This list shows the rough order in which I work, not a step by step guide on how to revise! Writing can and will be chaotic, at least to some extent, so don’t force yourself into an unnecessarily strict working process. Revise these points whenever you feel is appropriate during your own writing process ,especially since they can’t even be completely separated from each other. Just make sure to focus on one or two of these things at a time as to not get too far off track.

Also please keep in mind that there is no need to go into such extreme detail as I did here with most stories. My goal with this post is to give an overview of everything you could possibly do to revise your writing (or at least everything I could think of over the course of the 3 days I’ve spend working on this.) Use the parts that are relevant to your story and don’t get too hung up on the details.

At the end of the day writing should be fun and tools like these should not get in the way of that!

Happy Writing <3

[qqueenofhades]

Any words of widsom for an undergrad history major considering a phd? I see the burning ships of those before me in the distance and am still thinking about pressing forward 😅

Oof. Lol. Are you sure about this? There are so many other things you could do with your life apart from pursuing a PhD in history, and you should definitely think about them. As you are well aware (viz. the reference to burning ships...) but yes.

I have written similar advice posts before, which you can find in my school stuff tag. It's worth going through that (and sifting out all the posts about the Great Citation Debacle of 2022, ahem) to see what I have said before, but what it comes down to is:

Make sure you get funding (they should be paying YOU to study there, not vice versa) and this funding should be as comprehensive as possible;

Understand what topic you want to work on and the time commitments that it takes, as well as whether you will need access to specialty archives and where those are located;

Research the schools that are the best fit for your topic/specialty and draw up a list of potential advisors, who you can then e-mail to introduce yourself and ask if they would be willing to supervise you/guide you through the process. They might also be willing to work with you to refine a draft thesis proposal and advise how to best meet university admissions requirements. This was how I got into my PhD program; I started communication with the faculty beforehand, we shaped a thesis topic, it went through several rounds of revision, I then formally applied and was accepted;

Understand as well that you're not guaranteed a job by any measure, and whether that figures into whether you want to spend the time, effort, and money on obtaining an advanced degree;

Most PhD students take 4 to 7 years from beginning the program to completion/submission/award of the degree, and as I have said before, it is extremely difficult and will definitely drive you to the brink of madness at least twice, probably more;

If you have to do a MA beforehand, the time commitment can stretch out to 5-8 years;

As noted, you are not guaranteed employment in your first-choice job, or maybe even your second choice job, or so on. You can figure out a way to get into academia anyway, be an independent scholar, or do something else entirely, but yes, the job market is the stuff of nightmares. It might improve by the time you're done, but let's not count on it.

If you read all that and still went, "you know, valid, but I still kinda want to do a PhD in history": welp. Maybe you should indeed consider it. Just know that I cannot be responsible for what happens to you from here.

[writingquestionsanswered]

Hi! I'm the anon who asked about corny writing. Thank you for your feedback. "Corny" is the best translation I got for the actual word in my language, Google also says pretentious and showy, but in my language those do not relate at all to what I meant, so I don't know how else to explain it 🤦🏻‍♀️ One critique partner once said he believes my "draft voice" is corny sometimes, leaning towards YA, but that after revising his notes, the corrections made it better. What I had sent him before was not the first draft, it had been extensively edited, but I definetly could see what he meant. He also said my writing style was for a female audience. He couldn't elaborate and I couldn't understand this point (there's no romance in that story and one of the two protagonists is a man).

There aren't many writing clubs in my country, but I'll try to join another one :) thank you!

These don't sound like great critique partners to me. For one thing, saying that something "leans toward YA" because it's corny is super gross. YA is not inherently corny. In fact, the YA category contains some of the most serious, gritty, well written books of our time. Also, criticizing your writing style because "it's for a female audience" is misogynistic, subjective, and not good critiquing. (And, for the record, the idea that women only read romance or stories with female protagonists is just, ew...)

So, my suggestion is don't take too much of what these people said to heart. They sound like misogynistic, ageist writing snobs to me and someone who critique based on personal opinion rather than writing experience and knowledge. This especially seems true given that they couldn't explain what they meant or provide you with examples of what they didn't like.

The best I can guess from what you've explained is that you may be engaging in purple prose, or in other words overly ornate and dramatic description. Generally, you want to describe things in the most functional and direct way you can. Don't overdo it or lean too heavily on the thesaurus. Sometimes it's just better to say the sky was blue than to say it looked like the cerulean summer sea of an ancient tropical port.

My post The 3 Fundamental Truths of Description (And 5 Tips for Cutting Back) can help with this a little bit.

It sounds like you're already on your way to refining your writing, so keep up the great work! ♥

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[tashakay]

*********This is what I said at first and then it was revised to be the paragraphs above.***********

I am writing a book about the joys of raising millenial women. My daughter and I are friends now and have been since she graduated from highschool in 2006. I am writing this book because I want to share what it was like to be a good mom who was a poor mom. I did not have a lot of financial resources when I was raising my girls. I have started a draft of the book. Can you help me refine it and write more? Here is what I have so far: What else was happening in the world the day it stood still for me? At 11:11 am everything I thought I knew ceased and suddenly there was a new me. I had given birth to a baby girl whom I had dreamt of only weeks prior to her arrival. I am told she was all gray when she took her first breath of atmosphere. I had a gaping holed in my midsection that the surgeon was in a panic to close but he lost count of the gauze he used after he sliced me open. Evidently, I was awake during all of this drama yet I have hardly a recollection of it. I remember they had to bring her to me once I was back in the recovery room. I remember writing in my paper journal given to me by my good friend Anita that I still didn’t feel like a mom.

I learned to breastfeed in the hospital stay at the time that was allowed to be five days. I loved the attention and I really appreciated being heard. so now what? How did I figure out how to make the next step? I do not know. I knew that I wanted to be a good mother. I knew that I want to build a life with her dad that would be amazing. What I didn’t know it that I was the only one of us that wanted to build. I often describe myself as an employee that likes to build. I am a builder. There is the employee that is the maintainer. I am not that. I like to see something that need to be conceived and help bring it about and then I want to be a able to move on the the next new thing. Perhaps it comes from the years I spent working for temporary agencies. Now I am thankful for that work history, at the time I was embarrassed by it and I longed for a solid college education like everyone else and I just wanted a job where I could be for years and years. I used to take her to get her picture taken. I took every picture of her that I could. I still do. She is such a physically beautiful person and always has been. She has sparkly eyes and round plump cheeks and the luscious ribbon like lips that make me cringe with adoration. When she was a toddler I thought she was so cute that it caused me physical pain. She didn’t mean to be my best friend but she was. I was hopelessly unable to take care of her a few times during our budding friendship. Firstly, we were forced to move back in with my mother and step father for the first nine months of her life and when I went back to school she spent far too many days and nights with my parents.

I craved single motherhood at the time where I could work and care for the two of us. I looked forward to showing her off to people as often as I could. She was such a delight with her wit and charm. She took to people quickly which is something that I gave her by accident. I really like people and likely I passed that trait to her. She was short and stout little girl which reflected badly on me at times but I tried to keep other people’s thoughts about my single motherhood out of our bubble. I read the newspaper to her from time to time because I had not caught on to the idea that reading children’s books to your child was the way to go. I read a lot of different things to her. I would read food labels and billboards to her. I remember when she was two and learning the english alphabet she recognized a capital A on a billboard which had the word TAILOR on it. I was startled as I was driving us to some location downtown and we were at a tricky intersection. I do not know how it was that I was driving as I did not have more than a learner permit which required me to have a licensed adult in the car when I was operating it. I was always a nervous and careful driver.There are times when I am desperate to tell her everything I forgot to tell her as she was becoming a woman. There used to be times when I would be brought to tears because of a separation due to travel and school and work. I was terrified that I had missed something really important. I suppose that is why we became such good friends. We used to be so close. We would cry when leaving each other. I remember when she was an undergrad at MSU and I had dropped her off at college and moved her into the dorm. I left to get gas and while at the gas station she called crying because she thought I had left heading back home. I finished refilling and rushed (carefully and nervously) back to her. I was so touched that someone in my life missed me so much that they would cry real tears for me. I am overcome even now remembering that day. And so it was throughout her college years and law school we had terrible separation anxiety. Recently we visited her on the east coast and it was Saturday morning, which was day three of a week long trip and I was anxious in the hotel room about not having enough time with her which we were there to visit her! I had to calm myself down and ease the anxious feelings I was having about missing her after we leave the city. I often find myself having rest in knowing that I am her first love and she still loves me me with all her heart.

[cccrhirdb1]

week 4 independent

task 1

Reflect: Have a look at your responses to the independent study from last week. 

How did this weeks class discussion deepen or help develop and expand your initial understanding? You could write about this in a sentence or two, or you could go back and add to your original notes.

I have already added to my notes already but I will scribble a little more here, I like the concept and I like learning deeper or more about the concept rather than just being told something is tapu. It's really interesting to learn that there is a reverse of tapu (noa) and that it is equally as important for explaining the world around you. Now knowing that something which is tapu has spiritual significance in terms of like (my best relation/thought is karma) makes sense to visualise it, if you forbid (?) break tapu yknow something bad will happen to you - but that is only in certain examples, in other examples doing something that is considered tapu is actually just kind of gross and unhygeineic, which is why the reading was really good for like grounding the concept for a person like me (pakeha centric worldview/lens). Things that are tapu are not just related to spirituality they are also just common sense hygenine in some ways.

Task 2 (2 hours) Self-directed study on your first assignment WRITE and MAKE: Continue self-directed work on your assignment. Refine and revise your writing for your definition and your contextual understanding, bring these to the next class. Begin trialling, testing, drawing, producing samples for your practical component, and make a plan of what you will need to do to complete this component.

i will add my definition here, in class we got shown a couple of examples so I think I am feeling a little better about it, worried about my quotes and if I have enough understanding to be informed enough but I have faith in myself - I will be okay

DRAFT;

Matariki is the celebration of the Māori new year. It is a time to reflect, celebrate and prepare for the year to come. Matariki is the name given to the cluster, depending on your iwi you may see 7 or 9, some even only see 5. 

Communities gather and mourn those we have lost in the previous year, calling their names as the stars rise. believing that as we mourn we release their spirits for them to become stars as well. As you view the stars maori look to see how the year ahead looks, depending on which stars are brighter could mean a beautiful harvest from the sea or from the sky. 

Only is it in recent years that matariki is having a resurgence; 

Renaissance (hit this idea) 

beginnings and endings, coming together, remembrance of the dead, and traditionally, the planning of crops and planting.

The maori use matariki as a way of predicting when to plant crops. As it is a part of the maramataka.

Having matariki be promoted to a public holiday has opened the celebration to anyone all over nz 

believing that as we mourn we release their spirits for them to become stars as well. As you view the stars maori look to see how the year ahead looks, depending on which stars are brighter could mean a beautiful harvest from the sea or from the sky. 

story/myth of matariki 

Māori respect nature and feel a deep connection to the land, sea and forests. They believe the rhythms of Papatūānuku (Mother Earth) can be understood by reading the Matariki stars and phases of the moon.

which help to dictate the maramataka. 

Each of the stars in matariki mean something special (go into this) 

What each of the stars mean  

Find quote on the meaning of the stars or maybe how science is magic. 

Para 2 - the stars as a whole what each mean. 

Each of the nine stars have their own meaning and connection to something on land 

Most importantly matariki was a pointer, it let maori know when to take crops out of the ground 

“in the evenings, you only had the night sky to look at, and stories to tell. That over generatons, stories built upon older stories, certain people with partcularly clear vision saw paterns in the night sky, or notced movements.”

(task 3 is missing)

Task 4 (3 hours)The following three resources introduce you to key ideas and examples about the role of language in shaping the way we see the world.  Choose 1 or 2 of the following:

WATCH: Jamila Lyiscott's discussion about language and the use of language in relation to identity and community. THIS ONE

READ: Tatauing the Postcolonial Body by Albert Wendt.  Wendt peels back the language of tatau in Samoa to show the deep connection between the words and cultural practices and beliefs. THIS ONE

READ: This excerpt from Robert MacFarlane. McFarlane focuses on changes to the Gaelic and English languages, and its relevance to the landscape.

CREATE/REFLECT: While these three resources are from different cultural paradigms, each addresses situations akin to 'upholding the mana of language'. All of these resources are also written in a more poetic register, than what is usually considered the 'norm' in academic writing.  Write a poem, or some poetic prose drawing on what you've learned from the various resources about language this week.

jamila - after having watched Jamila's tedtalk I enjoyed it, its what I think slam poetry is (in a way). I like how she is using her voice in different kinds of tones to convey the different languages she speaks/is surrounded by while always having to speak the same one - english. I find it super interesting how much rasicm (but backhanded/quiet) comes out when it comes to language. seems unfair that just because of how you look you are expected to be inarticulate or unable to speak the same language.

An idea that really interests me is the loss of language through slavery, all of these people who were forced to the states do they remember anything of the language their ancestors spoke before? was it forced out of their communities so they had even less to rely on and share, were they forced to learn another language etc etc until it is lost and thwy have to assimilate to another culture and another language which they choose to make their own in one way or another.

they in a way create a new culture through the language they speak.

Albert Wendt - Just because of his name and not knowing the guy I went most of the way through before realising that he was also samoan and not just some guy who was really interested in tatau. SO after realising it was much nicer to read from a person who's involved perspective - I especially liked his line "What I've just demonstrated by looking at the meanings of the two keywords is to say you have to be bi-lingual (Samoan and English) to better understand post-colonial literature.  You have to know the indigenous language and culture of the writer producing that literature in English".

from him (which is a point I agree with) that in order to understand the topic that involves another culture/language you must understand it in it's first form and then also in english. I can imagine it would help as alot of countries were colonised by england to understand english and depending on your country what english is - how it is spoken. Yknow because in aotearoa we speak with so much slang and dropping of our vowels compared to other countries where they overpronounce consonants.

which really means the only right way to understand how indigenous practices were affected by colonial structures in aotearoa is to understand both english and maori. there is no ability to understand something like te tiriti o te waitangi without understanding both english and maori. Even though we have our two versions they do not mean one and the same.

Anyway I also read this one because I am interested in tattooing and to know more about tatau in an indigenous sense. I am surprised at how intertwined with samoan tatau the idea of pain and managing / surpassing it is. To be tataued is to experience and live through the pain. Yet it seems that beforehand you have to earn the right to be tatau-ed through responsibilities etc.

okay little preface on this I do not do very much creative writing and I have never written prose or poems that are any very good. Because I know poems have no rules I break all of them and then just make bad poems, but notheless i will try my best (just saying don't expect anything exempleary)

prose/poem ::

spanish class

all this reminds me of my high school spanish classes.

we learnt of christopher colombus and the new world

how his discovery brought a language and a regime of christianity to a continent full of indigenous peoples.

all based on the doctrine of discovery

all this reminds me of the demise of indigenous language

Silbo, Quechuan, Aymaran, Tupí-Guaraní, and Mapuche

not gone, still spoken, but missing from the noise of everyday

there are questions in the world about if we all spoke the same language

all this reminds me of what ?

would we choose to speak,

would it all sound the same,

would you choose to understand.

all this reminds me that language is culture

culture is language

language is shared through culture

and culture is shared through language

all this reminds me is that one cannot exist without the other

culture is built off the language you share

the meaning the words have

the symbolism of your words

all this reminds me that

i have the priveledge to learn a language for the desire

I have the priveldge to have been born speaking and understanding

yet when they learn my language they do it to survive

[wordsnstuff]

30 Days of Outlining - October 2020 Writing Challenge (Preptober)

– Yes, I am aware that October contains 31 days, but I take Halloween off to celebrate and give myself a breath before starting NaNoWriMo on November 1st. There’s a bonus prompt at the end, just in case. I look forward to seeing all of your guys’ responses here using the hashtag #wordsnstuffoutline and over on Instagram, where you can tag me @ writingandsuch.

This challenge begins on October 1st, but I thought I would give you guys some time to plan stuff out, because you may need to switch some days around to accommodate your schedule. You’re free to do one day’s challenge on another day if your schedule doesn’t allow enough time to complete that day’s challenge. Best of luck to you!

Patreon || Ko-Fi || Masterlist || Work In Progress

–

☼ Prompt List ☼

What point of view are you writing from and why does it suit your story?

What structure are you using based on your story’s genre and character arcs?

Is your story driven primarily by characters or plot? How do they work together?

If you have a zero draft completed, list what you hope to accomplish as you rewrite. If you are approaching the zero draft, list what you’d like to accomplish in this preliminary telling of the story. *

Where does your story begin and why? 

Where have you placed the climax and how does this aide in the smooth resolution? If you’re writing a series, what does the climax introduce that will not be solved in the resolution?

If you’ve fleshed out your characters, how can you utilize different plot points to show their traits and nuance to the reader? If you haven’t, I recommend the “Character first, plot second” questionnaire.

What details of the plot/characters have you left to discover as you write or revise in future drafts? Why?

Create a “timeline” chart that demonstrates the pacing in your story. Describe the pacing trends and how this serves your story. Are there any points you would like to space out or condense?

Make a five sentence summary of your story. One for each of the major stages of a story; Exposition, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action, and Resolution.

How do you resolve your major conflict, and how does this resolution provide payoff for the built tension?

How do you build tension throughout the plot?

What are the major stakes that persist throughout the plot? How are they answered in the resolution?

Create a three-sentence summary for each of your main characters’ arcs. Where do they begin, what causes a shift, and what is the outcome?

What will your reader notice when they read your story the second time that will make them say “I should have seen that coming”?

How will you incorporate foreshadowing into the plot without giving away the ending or being too subtle?

What are the major themes you hope you incorporate into the plot/arcs and why? 

Where will these themes be placed amongst the subplots, main plots, and character arcs?

How do your themes tie together as a complete work?

Make a simple chart that demonstrates the rise and fall in action, as well as the major twists that occur in your story. How evenly placed is the action and the reaction?

Describe the evolution of the 3 main relationships portrayed in your story, using the Beginning, shift, and outcome structure. 

How do you plan to incorporate time-period and setting into the story in a meaningful/note-worthy way, without info-dumping?

Are there any symbols you initially see incorporating into your plot? Go through your outline so far and note places where you may have room to hint at them.

Describe the evolution of tone in your story. Focus especially on suspense and tension.

List the major and minor events that occur in your story, then describe their consequences, both short-term and long-term. 

How does your falling action effectively bridge the gap between the climax and the resolution?

What emotion do you hope the reader exits your story with? What do you hope they remember most about the story?

What commonalities of the genre have to incorporated into your story, and how have you changed them to suit your original vision?

How do your characters, theme, and conflict develop throughout the story? Does one develop faster/deeper than the others? How can you create or maintain this balance?

Are there any scenes that you are looking forward to writing the most? How can you utilize them to motivate you to continue, as well as get into the groove of the story the fastest?

*Zero Draft: a preliminary telling of the story to get the main ideas and events out of your head to be edited, refined, rewritten, and perfected in subsequent drafts. (A rough, rough draft that is meant for your personal use)

☼ Bonus Challenge ☼

If you’ve already planned your major scenes, go through them and make sure you know how each scene serves the plot, develops the characters, and prepares the reader for upcoming events/information.

☼ Useful Resources To Help You Win ☼

Plot Structures

Useful Writing Resources | Part II

Pros & Cons of Different Points of View

Resources For Plot Development

Guide To Plot Development

Writing Long Stories Without Filler

Novel Planning 101

Tackling Subplots

Outlining By Chapter

Character Driven vs. Plot Driven Stories

How To Write A Story Timeline

Making A Story Come Together

How To Engage The Reader

Pacing Appropriately

Tips on Introducing Backstory

How To Develop A Distinct Voice In Your Writing

Balancing Detail & Development

Tips on Balancing Development

–

Masterlist | WIP Blog

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[letswritesomenovels]

My Revision Plan

I’ve been posting a lot about finishing a first draft of something new. So I thought it might be helpful if I also included my plans about what to do next. 

Step One: Preserve the Draft

I work in Scrivener, so my first step is to compile, save, and preserve my draft. For me, this means I’m:

Capturing a snapshot of the current version of my chapters in Scrivener, so I can keep editing the main ‘manuscript’ files without losing access to the current version.

Exporting and saving the entire manuscript as “[TITLE] - First Draft - July 2020″ so that as I finish further revisions, I’ll always know which version this one is. 

Emailing the draft to myself, saving it in iCloud, and printing it. Whatever it takes to ensure its safe keeping. This way, no matter what happens--if my computer falls into a pool and is destroyed--my entire first draft of this book will be safe somewhere. 

This way, I can revise and edit and generally make a mess of things again without having to worry that anything I do going forward is going to affect the contents or completeness of my first draft. 

Step Two: Second Sketches 

I don’t want to dive into the editing process just yet, so before doing a serious re-read or re-plotting my entire book, I’m going to set about re-sketching my settings and characters. 

In my first drafts, I treated my settings and characters as flexible. When I realized something about them wasn’t working, I changed that thing and kept going. Events changed locations, buildings changed distance from one another, Three of my characters had abrupt job changes in chapter ten, when I realized I could remove an extraneous plot and weave their storylines into a more central plot by doing so. Somewhere immediately after I tell the reader my protagonist has glasses, I forgot to ever mention them again. 

This means my initial character and setting sketches are all--well, not useless, but not quite useful anymore either. Now that I’ve figured out where and what things and people need to be in order to make the story work, I’m writing down new “character/setting rules” to guide me through my first revision. I want to make them consistent. 

For settings, this means I’m going to go through and decide on:

A “map” of the locations of the story and figure out exactly where things are in relation to one another

The layouts of individual settings 

What specific places look, smell, and sound like 

The “rules” of the world 

For characters, this means I’m going to go through and decide on their:

physical characteristics

personality and backstory

relationships both with other characters and the world around them

character arcs: their wants, their fears, their internal conflicts, and how they’re supposed to be growing and changing throughout the novel

And if I decide my protagonist does wear glasses, I’m going to make sure she’s wearing them throughout the entire story. 

Step Three: Read

Writing Advice

In the next few weeks, I’m going to read and reread books and blogs on writing. I am going to soak it all up. I’m going to learn or remind myself about what makes a story good. Refine my knowledge of writing craft. These are the ideas that are going to help me make my revised draft better than my first one.

Fun books!

I’m also going to read for fun, especially the books I was avoiding because they were in a similar genre/category to the one I was drafting. I want to know how good the “competition” is, and also see those “writing rules” I’ve been reading about in writing advice books/blogs in action. 

The First Draft

Finally, I’m going to crack open my own book. 

This is the hardest part of a revision: critically reading what I’ve written so I can prepare to tear it to pieces and rebuild it. 

Oof.

For this, I recommend changing the font, either printing it out or putting it on an e-reader, settling down in your favorite spot to read, and reading it in one go. I’m probably going to print mine out and put it in a binder. This will help me see it with the eye of a reader/editor instead of an author, and hopefully help me put some emotional distance between me and the work I’ve done. 

I’m going to keep a notebook nearby and take notes about things that are working, things that aren’t working, ideas for changes, and other stray observations (like words I’m using too often, or where I’m repeating myself, or abandoned plot points, etc.). 

Step Four: Re-Outline

This step itself has many steps.

Step One: Identify the core idea of the story. In clear terms, write out in one or two sentences what this story is about, English-major style. ie. “This story is about a girl finding the courage to pursue the life she wants, not the one her parents have planned for her. Her struggles are reflected back on her when she encounters the ghost of a princess who cares so much what history thinks of her, she’s letting its opinion turn her into a literal monster.” 

Step Two: Outline the events in the story as it currently exists. 

Step Three: Evaluate how well it conveys the core idea, and how the current structure works. Identify:

the purpose of various scenes (ie. inciting incident) 

Extraneous scenes/plots/characters

Plot points that should be in the story but are missing

Key moments of character arcs

Events that support the core idea

Events that either don’t support or work in opposition to the core idea

Step Four: Rebuild the outline so that the story has a strong structure that supports the core idea. 

Step Five: Share

I know I’m going to struggle with figuring out exactly how to rebuild my story, so I’m going to share both my first draft and my unfinished plan with my writing friends. I’m going to ask them for their ideas and advice. With their feedback, I’m going to solidify my plan for my new outline, hopefully a bit more confident that it’s the right one. 

I know not all people have a group of writing buddies they can easily do this with. If you don’t have a critique group, don’t sweat it. It helps and it’s worth an attempt to try to find one, but it’s not a vital step.

Step Six: Revise 

Finally, I’m going to go through my work chapter by chapter: editing scenes, trashing scenes, and writing new scenes entirely from scratch until I have a manuscript that’s hopefully much better than the first.

If I revise this book like I did my last one, I’ll probably polish the chapters as I move through them, so that when i’m done, some chapters will be on their twelfth drafts, some will be on their second, but overall it’ll be the best version of the story I’m currently able to write. 

--

It’s a lot, and it seems like a very daunting process from my current standpoint, but finishing the first draft seemed daunting too, just a few weeks ago, and I got through that process. With time and effort, I’ll get through this one too. 

[skarsgard-daydreams]

Marie’s Writing Workshop

Part One: Just Keep Writing

We’re going to call this little series Marie’s Writing Workshop, not because I have all the answers, but because I want to collect a bunch of writers in one place so we can talk about what to do when writing isn’t easy. Everyone is invited to comment with their own tips, tricks, struggles, or questions, and my hope is that another writer (maybe me, or maybe someone else) will be able to offer some help and support if needed, or even just say, “Me too.” If you’ve ever been in a workshop before, you know that having a community of writers around you who are experiencing the same struggles helps immensely with the isolation and self-doubt that go hand in hand with our hobby. If you’ve never been in a workshop before, well, you’re welcome to join the conversation.

The first thing I want to talk about is something that is useful whether you’re knee-deep in a multi-chaptered story or you just don’t know how to get started. There comes a moment in every writer’s life when they ask: how do I get the pen flowing? Or how do I get the pen flowing again? You might feel like you’re uninspired or have the dreaded ailment that plagues all writers at some point: writer’s block. It’s something that happens to writers all the time, even the professionals. A lot of ink has been spilled on how to combat writer’s block. At the end of the day, I think the advice boils down to this: write through it.

But how the hell do you write through it? Here are some practical tips. Take what works for you, leave the rest, and share your own if you want.

1. Give yourself permission to write complete and utter shit.

Embrace the fact that whatever you’re about to type into your word processor or scribble on your notebook is going to be terrible. It’s going to be cliché, it’s going to have poor grammar, it’s going to have bad characterization. It’s going to have plot holes and awful sex and purple prose and you’re going to use the words “just” and “seemed” 800 times in ten pages. And that’s fine, because the first step is simply to bang it out. Ernest Hemingway famously said, “The first draft of anything is shit.” Every other writer on the planet who is honest has said a variation on the theme. So, hurl the words onto the page like you’re flinging cooked spaghetti at the wall. When you reach the end of the story, it might look like a dumpster fire. That’s fine. Because reaching the end of the story isn’t the end of writing.

2. Stop editing your work as you write.

This tip goes hand in hand with the first one, really, because part of giving yourself permission to write something horrible is that you shouldn’t try to make it better as you’re working on a first draft. But I think a lot of people, myself included, have the tendency to reread the last few sentences and make a few changes here or there and eventually find ourselves staring at the same page three hours later with only two paragraphs written. I find that I can get away with this at times. However, when I’m not feeling inspired, my inner editor can derail the whole process and prevent me from getting anything done at all. If you see a typo as you’re banging out that first draft, ignore it. If you can’t remember the word for something, or haven’t named something, put in a placeholder. I do this by using brackets. For example, once I was writing a fantasy story and I forgot the word “sheath,” so I literally wrote [sword holder thingy] and kept going. Do this with anything that you’re uncertain about as a marker for yourself. Future you can correct it in revision. 

3. First draft does not equal final draft.

You probably could have guessed this based on my last two tips, but I feel it’s necessary to reiterate. Writing is revision. Yes, there are good days when angels sing as your first draft magically comes together, and you can get away with publishing that baby right away. But every novelist, every short story writer, every screenwriter, every playwright, and every poet will tell you that revision is where the real work gets done. And it’s a vital part of the process if you’re allowing yourself to write shitty first drafts. I like to think of it this way. Writing is like cooking a meal. The first draft is the part where you take all of the ingredients out of the fridge and throw them onto the counter. But revision is the part where you refine those ingredients, taking a whole onion and dicing it into bite-sized pieces, then sautéing it in a pan. It’s the part where you start to combine ingredients and let them meld together. Sometimes you sample a taste of the dish while it’s being cooked and determine it needs a little more salt or a little more time in the oven. Or sometimes you call over your roommate to take a peek in the oven and tell you if they think it’s done yet. So, take the time to revise, going through as many revisions as you feel are necessary for your story to become “cooked.”

4. Give the muse a time and place to meet you.

We all know the rush of getting struck with inspiration. Something clicks in your head and you start chasing a thread and suddenly you’ve written more in a day than you did last week. At other times, it feels like the muse is nowhere to be found. I often feel like I need that flash of inspiration to get my pen rolling, but the truth is that most authors write even when they’re uninspired. One of my favorite writing teachers taught me that showing up to do the work is more important than feeling inspired. For her, that meant sitting down at her desk at the same time every day with a notebook and pen in hand and setting a timer for something like an hour or 90 minutes. That was her writing time, and she could either sit there and stare blankly at the notebook or attempt to write, but she could not get up. She often found that, even though she would begin the session uninspired, an idea would eventually come. One of my shortcomings as a writer is that I don’t keep a schedule like this most of the time. But the times when I am most prolific are the times when I have the house to myself and I go sit in my little corner with a cup of coffee and force myself to focus on nothing but my writing. The muse might take her time and wait to show up until the second or third page, but she usually does show up to these appointments.

5. Shake things up.

This last tip is really a collection of a few more ideas that aren’t big enough for their own paragraph. If you’ve been working on a piece for a while and you’re losing steam, it’s okay to put that on the shelf and work on something else. Sometimes the change of pace will help you return to the previous piece with fresh eyes. In the same vein, I have found that I gravitate toward different mediums for different purposes. For example, I write most of my first drafts of long pieces by hand, in pen. This forces me to reduce the amount of editing I do since it’s limited by the space on the page and what I have already written. I do my revision while I’m transcribing it into a Word document, and often revise several times over again. But I have also found that I like to write drabbles, like the majority of “Sound and Color,” on my cell phone. If I get stuck on one medium, sometimes I will try switching to another to see if the ideas flow better. I don’t know why it works, but it works. Finally, there is a tool that I found in the days of trying to complete National Novel Writing Month that I like to use when I need to break through the wall of over-thinking about every word I put on the page: an app that deletes your progress if you stop writing. I wouldn’t write a story that I cared about within one of these apps, but I have used it as an exercise when I can’t seem to write more than two words at a time. There is an old, clunky app called Write or Die that makes the screen turn red and blares an alarm when you stop writing. If you turn on Kamikaze mode, it will delete one word at a time. There is also a modern, minimalist app that operates on the same principal, except that it will delete everything you’ve written if you stop. That one is The Most Dangerous Writing App. Both are great tools to keep in your writing toolbox.

Now it’s your turn:

What works for you when you’re stuck in your writing? What doesn’t?

What’s your biggest hurdle right now? What’s your next step to try to overcome it?

What questions do you have for me or other writers?

@hausofobsession @stevesharrlngtons @scxrsgxrd @dreamtherapy @grandpa-sweaters @amandalynngraves @dragsraksllib​ @loomiz​

[mjmnorwood]

[I.D. A header image of two pencils on a yellow background, with title reading ‘Redrafting’. End I.D.]

I think redrafting can sometimes be a bit of an elusive topic. I see loads of posts with advice for finishing the first draft (which is fantastic!) but advice for what comes after you’ve finished that mammoth task is less common. Here I’ll be outlining my redrafting process, and you can pick and grab whatever bits are useful for you!

1. Let the manuscript rest.

I love to fixate on my projects (what can I say? It’s a serotonin mine!). This focus is great for finishing stuff, but it can get in the way of redrafting, because you get too close to your work to be able to spot things that need changing. When you finish a manuscript, put it aside for however long it takes for you to be able to look at it with fresh eyes. I find this is usually a month or more for novels. This is a great time to work on other projects!

2. Re-read the manuscript, then outline (or re-outline).

When it comes to re-reading your manuscript, try to look at it with a critical eye (note: this doesn’t mean you have to be negative about it! Just have your editor hat on). Don’t make edits as you read, instead, jot down anything you think needs changing. At this stage, it’s going to be big picture stuff, structure, characterisation, plotting, novel pacing etc. Small details like phrasing come much later.

After this, take your list of changes and think about how they’re going to alter your book, then make an outline based on this new structure. I think this step is incredibly helpful regardless of whether you plotted or pantsed your first draft (I’ve done both). It makes the next stage so much easier.

3. Take your outline, and write the book again.

This is a lot of work, and believe me, if I thought I could get away without it, I would, but I haven’t found anything else that improves my books as much as a rewrite. If you start over from scratch, you’re less tied to what you wrote in your first draft, so it’s much easier to make the big changes that you need to make. This doesn’t mean you have to throw your first draft out, though! You worked hard on that, there’ll be a lot of good stuff there. I like to keep it open in another window while I write the second draft, so I can copy and paste scenes I want to put in the new version (with a bit of an edit).

4. Third draft time!

After letting the manuscript rest again, come back for some editing. Don’t worry, it’s not another rewrite (unless you want to do that again...). This is where more ‘medium-picture’ changes come in, things like deleting unnecessary parts, editing the pacing of scenes, making sure character details are consistent and the like. This isn’t an exact science, you can do small-picture edits to get your prose how you want it (I’d probs advise not to go hog wild on these though, since there’ll be more changes later), or you can do more big edits (I ended up deleting a whole subplot when I was doing the third draft of my most recent book). Basically, the idea of this draft is to make it the best you can make it with only your perspective to go on.

5. Let other people to take a look.

This is where I bring in beta-readers. It’s the scariest part, in my opinion, but so worth it. Other people will spot things about your book you’d never in a million years be able to spot yourself. I like to give my books to about 3-5 people, get their feedback, then make changes based on whatever they’ve said that I think is useful.

6. Rinse and repeat.

Keep getting feedback and making changes until you’re happy with your book! This can be from beta-readers and critique partners, also sensitivity-readers and editors if you can afford those services. The idea is that with each round of revision, your manuscript should become more refined, and the changes gradually get more and more small-scale (though sometimes a reader will throw a curveball that makes you realise more big edits are needed). This is a long process, and it can be a bit of a slog, but you can work on other projects at the same time, and actually, I think the editing process itself can be fun! It's the satisfaction of polishing a rough-cut gem.

And that’s it! I hope you find these steps helpful in developing your own revision processes. Happy editing!

Like this post? Follow for more writerly content! It’ll be lovely to have you along :D

[runicmagitek]

For the writing meme: 7, 18, and/or 24?

But of course! 🥰 many thanks for the ask!

7. What do you think are the characteristics of your personal writing style? Would others agree? I grew up writing a lot of poetry; I found it to be a cathartic way to express how I was feeling without saying "I'm *insert emotion here*". That plus all my time doing theater in grade school and college have made me extra-aware of details from the change in weather to body language to a setting's ambiance and more. It's those little things that transform an otherwise empty stage into an immersive setting. I try my best to evoke these things without being like "It was a city and it was cold and there were people everywhere". Sometimes I get a bit too carried away with the poetics, but yeah. Pretty evocative stories is my brand. I like to think others agree??? I can't speak for my readers, but it does warm my heart when someone leaves a comment about how beautiful my writing was.

18. Do any of your stories have alternative versions? (plotlines that you abandoned, AUs of your own work, different characterisations?) Tell us about them. Honestly, a lot of this gets ironed out well before I even start writing. If it's more than a oneshot, I'll outline (I mean, I outline for everything, but like actually outline and not jot down two sentences of Vibes and Shit) so I know the path I need to take to get to my destination. But I've definitely had One Idea and then it turned into Something Else while I was planning. Like the fic I wrote for you for Yuletide! That was originally supposed to be 100% post-canon, but I kept thinking, "...alright, cool, but what led them to that point?" Something similar happened before I started writing At Your Convenience; I originally envisioned it as a 5+1 fic where each scene was a different day Iori visited the convenience store Ei worked at, but then I decided to make it a single day and the shenanigans that happen throughout. It just excited me more, so I rolled with it. That's what most of my "alternative" versions are.

I will say, however, when I originally wrote Darkness/Starlight, I had two other possible endings in mind. One was open to interpretation, where Celes and Setzer never reunite, but she finds his airship crashed and no body, then abandons her position in a newly established city to go looking for him. The other was a Bad Ending, where she does meet him again, but he's moved on and they've grown apart and thus part ways. It was a more practical ending, considering the directions they went in, but yeah. Not everyone's cup of tea. So I settled with the "Good" Ending, where they do get back together, but it's pretty explicit that shit's going to go down around them, but they're both like "eh whatever, let's just make the most of this". Also, the last 25% of that story? The final fic veered HEAVILY from my original outline. Like everything I planned to happen once it hit post-canon territory DID NOT HAPPEN. It was my first huge fic I plotted out and the railroads dissolved and I was scrambling to make it work lol it was a mess.

24. Would you say your writing has changed over time? Oh absolutely! I've learned plenty of things and have done my best to improve, whether it's during drafts or revisions. I've read some of my older works (like 2016~) and while not up to my standards these days, they still hold up! And definitely hold the general themes and flourishes I continue to use today. I love to see how much I've grown as a writer, but I also love to see what's worked after all these years and how I've refined that into my own writing voice.

[concerningwolves]

Firstly, I'd like to say your stories sound amazing and I wish you all the best with them! Secondly, you might've answered this (or it might be difficult to answer) but how do you go about just starting a second draft? I've got a few first drafts scattered around and I'd like to edit them but... there's just so much and I have no idea where to start and then I just end up not doing it because it just seems like an insurmountable task. Help, please?

this went into my drafts with the idea that i would work on it next weekend, but,,, it has since been several months’ worth of weekends, and i’m only just getting to it 😅

Starting Second Drafts  

For me, the second draft is less about editing what I’ve written, and more about refining what happens. You’ll probably find your own way of working as you redraft more of your stories, but here’s six key points that have really helped me: 

1) PRINT IT OUT & CHANGE IT UP

(I’m assuming here you’ve typed your first draft; if you wrote it longhand, ignorethese next two paragraphs)

Most of writing is just playing mind games with yourself, and there’s nobetter way to do this than change the font and/or text colour from one draft to the next. It gives your writing a new look and tricks your brain into paying attention again, which helps when you’re reading through the first draft and deciding what’s going to happen to it.

Printing it out is a large part of this – having your story in a different format lets you look at it from a different angle, both literally and figuratively. It alsomeans you can make notes and cross out chunks directly on paper, which is avery satisfying process (and as writers, we need to take our satisfaction wherewe can!).

2) SCRIBBLE ALL OVER IT

I think that the reason the second draft seems so daunting it because there’s this pressure to Make It All Perfect, and attacking your first draft with coloured pens and post-it notes alleviates that somewhat. It doesn’t have to be neat; it just hasto make sense to you.

Don’t try to filter your ideas, either – if you think of something that could change, or that you want to add, write it down, even if it conflicts with what you’vealready got. Keeping all your options open will help when you get to later draftsand revisions, and want to look back see how else scenes or plots could playout.

3) FOCUS ON THE BIGGER PICTURE

Following on from the last point, it’s also important to remember that the second draft isn’t about making your prose nice and clean, or about finalising those littledetails like what houseplants your characters keep or what the café they eat atis called. The second draft is still very much Bigger Picture territory, i.e.,getting plot events in the right order or weaving through character growth and subplots.

Here’s a picture of what When Dealing with Wolves’ first draft looked like when Iwas working on it:

[ID: a printed-out manuscript, headed with the titles “Second Draft” and “Chapter One”. I’ve messily written all over the text in red pen, circling large chunks and indicating changes with arrows. /End ID]

And here’s one of draft two/three, for comparison in the editing style:

[ID: a second printed out page, this time with more detailed notes correcting grammar and rewriting sentences. Lots of words and lines are crossed out in thick black pen. /End ID]

In the former, the focus is on moving around scenes or details so that they made more sense; in the latter, I was paying more attention to sentence form and prose, as well as restructuring.

4) REFINE YOUR NOTES

Once you’ve got this lovely scrawled-on mess, you’ll probably want to make some decisions re: what’s going to happen in draft two. Take your scribbled notes from the first draft and decide what you think will work best, thinking about:

Plot events

Character growth

Worldbuilding changes

Subplots

(How detailed these notes are depends on your writing planning style. Whether you do a few bullet points as a vague outline or plan each plot point meticulously is entirely up to you).

5) START FROM SCRATCH

Okay, not quite from scratch. You’ve got all those notes, and you still have your first draft to refer to as well. What “start from scratch” means in this context is “don’t just work directly onto the first draft document”.

What you want with your second draft is freedom to let the story grow, and you can’t get that if you edit straight into the confines of your first draft. Re-typingscenes instead of copy and pasting also makes you think about them,getting your brain to approach any problems in new ways.

And, last but not least—

6) GIVE YOURSELF SPACE TO EXPLORE

I’ve seen this said about first drafts countless times, but it goes for second drafts, too! If you want to write several different versions of scene, do it. Want tochange a character’s name for the sixth time? Go for it. I don’t consider theplot, or even the details, of a WIP fixed until I’m into the final revisions ofthe last draft.

The only thing to remember is always, always keep track of your changes, be that via an Excel spreadsheet, notes in a separate word document, or novel journal entries. That way, if you decide later that an old idea actually works better, you can go back and retrieve it with minimal fuss.

I hope this helps, and sorry for the late reply! 

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[wiseabsol]

3. What is your favorite/least favorite part about writing? 6. Favorite character you’ve written? 14. What does it take for you to be ready to write a book? (i.e. do you research? outline? make a playlist or pinterest board? wing it?) 15. How do you deal with self-doubt when writing? 19. How do you cope with writer’s block? 24. Do you remember the moment you decided to become a writer/author? 33. What’s your revision/rewriting process like? 34. Unpopular writing thoughts/opinions?

3. What is your favorite/least favorite part about writing? 

My favorite part is when you make discoveries about your world and your characters as you write the story down, and when you write something and go, “Oh, there we go, there’s the solution to this problem that was going to come up later.” For example, I recently had an evil mentor toying with a magical item while giving a lecture to his pupils. The magical item was mundane--essentially, just putty that you could mold into whatever shape you wanted, then solidify, then switch back to putty to reshape. And as I was writing that down, I went, “Oh, THAT’S what my protagonist is going to knock him out with down the line. That’s way better than her using a lamp. Excellent.” 

My least favorite part about writing is getting started. Once I’ve cleared the hurtle of the blank page, writing becomes much easier and more exciting. But getting myself to start has become much harder since I developed my editor/critic’s brain.  

6. Favorite character you’ve written? 

In one of the text-based rps I’m writing with my best friend, I’m playing a shapeshifter named Sparrow, who is charming, funny, flirty, politically-savvy, and super vain about his appearance (think a courtesan-type character). He also has one of the most gut-wrenching backstories of any character I’ve ever written, and is struggling with triggers from that backstory. His romance with my best friend’s character is also my favorite romance that I’ve written with her, and it came as a surprise to both of us, since we were just testing out the characters at the time.   

14. What does it take for you to be ready to write a book? (i.e. do you research? outline? make a playlist or pinterest board? wing it?) 

I do a lot of brainstorming and outlining, though my outlines aren’t plot-related ones so much as very detailed character summaries. I’ve honestly been struggling with plot lately, but I’ve been doing better character work, so I’m winging it more now. While I usually have a general idea of how the story goes, the actual writing of it clarifies the details and makes changes to my plans. On the bright side, the results are less stilted than my old work, since they’re not chained to plot outlines, but stem from the characters more organically.  

15. How do you deal with self-doubt when writing?

I’ve started telling myself, “Fuck it, let it be messy, I’ll fix it later.” Letting go of perfectionism is hard for me, but doing so has been helping.   

19. How do you cope with writer’s block? 

Honestly, the best way to cope with writer’s block is to just try something and see if it sticks, or leave yourself a note and skip ahead in the story to something you want to write. However, as I mentioned in an earlier ask, I haven’t been able to do much writing lately. And that’s hard, because I feel guilty for not writing, and I know if I just do it, I’ll feel better. Which is a bad mindframe to be in, especially because this year has been awful. I’ve been telling other writers to be gentle on themselves, because it’s hard to be creative when you’re stressed, but I struggle to take my own advice. So right now, I’m trying to give myself permission not to write, and to instead focus on other things. Editing. Reading. Playing videogames. Baking. Doing house/yardwork. Something to still ticks things off of my to do list, but also things that I can look at and see, “Yes, you did get something done.” It’s not a perfect system, and it does fall into the productivity trap, but it’s what I’m trying. When the stress passes, maybe then I can dive back into writing.  

24. Do you remember the moment you decided to become a writer/author? 

I think it was when I was applying for undergraduate college. I wrote in my application essay that I wanted to write stories that would show my readers that things can get better for them. I was writing as a hobby before then, but I think that’s when I decided that yeah, I wanted making stories to be a part of my future, and I wanted to write stories that I could publish someday. 

33. What’s your revision/rewriting process like? 

Mostly I end up rewriting the chapter or story in question. Draft one is for realizing and getting down the idea of the thing. Draft two is refining it to that thing and losing all of the flab that the story doesn’t need. Often I have another file on the side where I paste in what I’ve cut out, in case I change my mind and want to add it back in later, or in case I can use it in another project. I also save the original messy draft and do the cutting in a copied file. That way, I can reassure myself that the original still exists for me, and I can reread it when I’m feeling self-indulgent, but I’m also only giving the best version to my readers.  

34. Unpopular writing thoughts/opinions?

-- Writing every day is a good idea, and does work well for the writing process, but it’s an unrealistic standard to hold yourself to, especially if you have a day job, kids, and other adult responsibilities. Don’t feel guilty if you can’t write every day. The guilt is just going to make you freeze up instead of returning to the work. Be gentle with your expectations for yourself.  

-- If you’re including triggering or sensitive subjects in your work, and are planning to share that work with others (and ESPECIALLY if you’re planning to profit from that work), you should be doing your research about those subjects, portraying them as accurately as possible, and asking yourself if your story really needs that content to work. It is also a good idea to employ sensitivity screeners for that content, especially if you’re writing from a place of privilege and/or don’t have personal experience with the issues that you’re depicting.

-- Once the work is out there, no one has the right to ban it. They can be critical of it, yes. But not ban it.  

-- Writers of privilege must include diversity within their work, even if they’re scared of getting their depictions of people from other genders, races, classes, religions, and so on wrong. And they will get it wrong. When that happens, just apologize and try to do better in the future. But staying in your lane is a bad idea, for three reasons: 1.) You should be striving to have empathy for others, and you can’t do that if you’re only writing about people who are similar to you. 2.) Writers of privilege have an easier time getting their work published, and so should be trying to push the market/publishing industry into a more diverse direction. And 3.) You should be showing readers of privilege that the world is a diverse one, rather than catering to their narrow worldview.

-- Getting defensive when someone is critical of your work is perfectly natural, but it’s also dumb. It’s so, so dumb. You have made a product, and no product made by human hands is perfect, and every writer has blind spots. So when someone is critical of your work, try to keep this in mind: this is not an attack on you. Let yourself feel the hurt in private, and eat lots of ice cream, and when you’re feeling better, look at the criticism and ask yourself: What led the reader to this conclusion? How can I fix it? What can I learn from this? This is assuming that the critic is working with you in good faith, by the way; sometimes they’re completely off of the mark, or are upset because you didn’t give them the story that they wanted. But if someone is going, “Hey, this is a little racist/sexist/homophobic/ableist/etc.,” sit up and listen. And for the love of god, don’t fight them over it. You’ll make yourself look like an ass. 

-- Don’t workshop your story too early. Try to get a full draft down before you submit something for consideration. For one thing, you’re still figuring out what your story actually is. For another, writing workshops, while useful, have a tendency to pull your work to the middle / make it more acceptable to a general audience. Sometimes this will soften and even kill your bravest writing. Instead, use writing workshops as an opportunity to find writers who understand the themes you’re aiming for and the subjects that you’re discussing. Their input will be what you need.  

-- With the current laws about copyright infringement, getting paid for your fanfic is a bad idea. If you want that to change, then fight to make the laws more lenient. As if it, you’re risking screwing over other fanfic writers by doing that. Does that suck? Yeah. But that’s also the reality we live in right now, and you’re not going to have a good time if a corporation like Disney slams you with lawsuits.

-- Genres like fantasy, science fiction, horror, romance/erotica, and murder mysteries are real literature. Saying they’re not has its roots in classism. 

-- There is no such thing as apolitical writing. 

-- Poets are underrated. Support them. Most of the time, they’re doing braver and more socially-important work than you are, and they’re doing it concisely, too.     

-- Your first draft is going to suck. This is a good thing. You learn a lot more from bad prose than from good prose, more often than not. 

-- Having your work rejected by publishers really is nothing personal. Sometimes it just wasn’t a good fit for them at that moment in time. If they’re interested in seeing more from you in the future, though, keep them on your list and send them something else during their next screening period. They don’t say that unless they mean it.         

[httplovecraft1890]

The Theme of Free Will in Yandere Simulator

So in the past, I’ve speculated at length about what some broad story points might be for Yandere Simulator and while I’ve revised my opinion on the significance of a character like Fun Girl (her statement of “YOU BELIEVE EVERYTHING I SAY. I WONDER WHAT ELSE I CAN TRICK YOU INTO BELIEVING?” feels a bit embarrassing in hindsight) I do think there are broad strokes that can be taken from what I wrote and applied to newer story points that’ve been shared with us since. You can consider everything below a refinement of those original ideas, I suppose. Let’s start by going back and revisiting Saikou Corp. Note: some of this information doesn’t have a specific source other than vague recollections aside from what YandereDev has said on Twitter, Reddit, etc. so apologies in advance.

What, exactly, do we know about Saisho Saikou? If we’re taking Fun Girl less as an actual plot point herself and more as a vehicle to deliver exposition to the audience then we can summarize a fair few things:

He was drafted into the service of the Imperial Japanese Army at age 17 in the closing days of the war. This retroactively confirms his date of birth was some time in 1928, meaning Saisho is 91 in 2019.

Saisho was confined to kitchen duty after being transferred to Okinawa at first. This changed after a bomb tore his dorm apart and he was trapped with the corpses of his friends for hours until he was rescued by other troops. During the attempted retreat after their rescue operation he called them cowards for wanting to fall back in the face of American forces. The memories of being stuck there with his dead friends still haunts him.

After being moved to a bunker, he was under constant stress from air raids and a chronic lack of sleep as well as malnourishment. When the U.S. finally found their hiding spot he tried to pull a pin on a grenade but it failed to detonate; he was promptly captured afterwards.

- From the June 1, 2018 Fun Girl text files We know little of his life after the war at the moment other than in 1946 he was reduced to running the company that would become Saikou Corporation out of his family’s garage (much like the company it parodies, Sony, was forced to do at first in our world by its creators). Given his later characterization I suspect that he probably ruthlessly took advantage of the breaking of up so many of the zaibatsu (large financial or industrial conglomerates owned by specific families; Mitsubishi is an example) by the American occupying forces following the war. In the decades following his country’s defeat Saisho created an enormous megacorporation that makes most of the consumer products seen in Yandere Simulator’s universe. As Headmaster Shuyona later relates to us, once he puts his mind to something he never takes no for an answer. Aside from the obvious wealth aspect that it grants him, though, what else is at work in his mind?

Like so many others, the defeat of Japan in the war simply unimaginable to him and, as far as he’s concerned, even if everyone else surrendered he never did.

The brainwashing and propaganda of the early Showa period never left him; as more and more Western influence began to creep into Japan, the more he began to freak out about it. Progressive politics and democracy are things he utterly despises.

Unsurprisingly, his reactionary politics have a racial component to them. For Saisho, the only people fit to rule the world are the Japanese and that if only everyone else realized it, there’d be a worldwide utopia. Though not outright confirmed, this also goes some way to explaining the almost eugenics-like obsession with ‘purity’ in the modern Saikou clan.

Even so, probably through careful PR stunts and knowing when to keep his mouth shut, Saisho’s worst beliefs aren’t known to the public.

- From the December 1, 2018 build’s Fun Girl files

It’s with some surprise then we know for a fact that Saisho wanted his firstborn daughter to inherit the company after he was ready to retire and only kept his son, Megami’s dad, as a backup. Despite the grueling and inhuman training that each Saikou generation seems to be put through, it seems that Saisho did genuinely love his daughter based on what Headmaster Shuyona confirms in Headmaster’s Tape #1. While this seems incongruous at first with his far right politics I think it’s helpful to see it less as a belief in equality between men and women, but instead that since she was a Saikou, she was inherently a cut above others because of that. Not many fathers would have schools built for their children in their honor if something wasn’t genuine, I think.

Megami’s aunt is a very interesting character at the moment. We know nothing about her other than the fact that she was first in line for the proverbial throne and hasn’t spoken to Saisho in 30 years because of him disowning her after they got into an argument. Fun Girl seems to hint that the conversation revolved around her trying to remember a supposed sister of hers (i.e., her) but this might just be her trolling us all. I think there’s something else very important given that time frame we also need to keep in mind: the date. What’s 30 minus 2019? 1989.

If we assume for a moment that Akademi opening its doors in 1985 was her first year, then following traditional Japanese high school length, it stands to reason her graduation occurred in 1988. The following year, Ryoba’s murder of the girl who was almost certainly Headmaster Shuyona’s daughter must’ve sent serious shock waves through Buraza Town. Megami’s aunt would’ve probably followed the proceedings with a lot of interest and I think a reason she parted ways with Saisho is because Saikou almost certainly tipped the scales in favor of Ryoba during her trial against the journalist. Why? Because of the country’s insanely high conviction rate. It’s greater than 99%. You’d practically need a miracle to get through it all and make the person who tried to take you to court look like a monster for doing so - something we know she pulled off. It’s not something that she could’ve done on her own without money changing hands or judges being properly blackmailed and flipping the media circus around. Headmaster’s Tape #6 also confirms that by 1999 Ryoba had seemingly regular contact with Saisho and Megami’s dad but it’s easy to extrapolate that they must’ve been speaking with one another prior to then; after all, just because Shuyona didn’t know about it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen (it doesn’t help him either that Saisho almost certainly sees him as a useful idiot). Learning a dark secret like this about your own family, coupled with the hell they put you through growing up, would break anyone and I think it’s a good explanation of why she left. If we accept that Saikou Corporation are Ryoba’s and Mr. Aishi’s employers then several things fall into place - why they haven’t ever had to move, why they live in a well off neighborhood, how they can simply up and leave for 10 weeks at a time to a foreign country - and the picture comes into focus. One of the things that Fun Girl seems to confirm is that Saisho’s love for Japan is equally as strong as what Ayano feels for Senpai. Knowing what we know about how the Aishi family curse seems to work, that’s pretty bone chilling. Coupled with every other horrible thing he thinks, combined with his vast wealth and influence, and it’s a recipe for disaster. The question becomes, however, what the point of all of this is. What could a murderous young woman possibly offer one of the most powerful companies in the world? Her body and mind. Stick with me here. Pretend you’re a scientist working for Saikou Corporation and you’re tasked with finding out what makes Ryoba tick; we’ll ignore for the moment any possible supernatural angle that the story might develop to explain their condition. The Aishi ‘curse’ seems to be a psychological condition, effecting the maternal line, that results in its carriers possessing severely stunted emotional growth, antisocial personality traits, flat affects, monotone voices, etc. This begins to alter in the host, however, an intermittent time after puberty in their late teens when, through various circumstances, meeting an individual causes an unknown psychological trigger to occur, acting as a kind of drug that for a time rewires the brain to enter a euphoria-like state wherein they begin to function on a neurotypical level, but only in contact with the source of this change (19 being the median age when an Aishi woman typically marries their victim). What if you could isolate the factors that cause such a thing to occur? 30 years is a long time to study something, after all, and decades’ worth of research must’ve meant some kind of breakthrough. Assuming that Saikou Corporation is like any other megacorporation in fiction then they’re sure to have their hands in medical technology. Imagine taking the research you’ve done on a so-called ‘yandere’ and began to try recreating it. After all, the idea of being able to use certain external symbols or things as stimuli is practically dystopian in its usefulness. Like, say, introducing a corporate symbol and ensuring its customers only felt a sense of satisfaction when buying a certain product.

Let’s go further than that. What if you could engender the same feelings of emptiness, followed by unbridled joy, when looking at something as simple as a flag? Not only could you brainwash an entire nation, but any other place on earth that allows the services you provide as a global company...

From this perspective, the “why?” of Saikou Corporation involving themselves with Ryoba becomes evident. After coming to this piece of speculation, if it is the case, something else also really clicked for me. Two things, actually. The first is that it’d give new meaning to the speech Megami tells you on the Skype chat you can have with her at school:

Is someone there?...Ah! It's you...Why have you come here? Have you come here to taunt me? Do you even know who I am? I know who you are. I know WHAT you are. My father won't allow me to attend school while you are..."active". He has a reason for tolerating your presence at this school. I don't. You are a vulgar creature that is only allowed to exist because you serve a purpose. If it was my decision, then every last one of you would be exterminated. Have fun while you can. If you and I ever cross paths...you're going to have a bad time.

The purpose is to further Saikou Corporation’s knowledge of the yandere condition and to find further ways to exploit it. Megami’s dad is in on this scheme and has purposefully kept Megami off campus while Ayano is on her murder spree as a way to keep her safe. What’s more, Ayano isn’t the only yandere that’s active either. Such a statement is more revealing than you might imagine it to be too. I think it’s pretty accepted at this point that the journalist’s wife was a yandere herself. He tells us as much in Mysterious Tape #6

But as soon as we met, she wanted to spend every waking moment with me. She wouldn't let me out of her sight, and got possessive if another woman so much as looked at me.

I quickly began to depend on her for everything. It wasn't long before I couldn't live without her. I certainly wasn't in any state to take care of myself... I was like an adult-sized baby. Helpless and vulnerable. Who knows...maybe that's what she was attracted to. Maybe she just wanted to experience the sensation of owning a person. Maybe she wanted to keep a human pet.

Isn’t it odd how she showed up in his life only a year after his ordeal with Ryoba in court? How his marriage to her didn’t involve them leaving the town at all? If I were him, I would’ve probably left it behind a long time ago, especially if it brought up memories as traumatic as what he’d experienced (and the fact he was directly threatened by Ryoba too). But instead his marriage and alcoholism caused him to never get out until it was too late. The timing seems... convenient, doesn’t it? Almost as if it were planned.

It wouldn’t be hard, I think, to sic some girl afflicted with the condition on someone either in hopes they’d ‘imprint’ on them or alternatively try to induce that very same response in them somehow. It’s a safe bet, again, considering how long Saikou Corp. would’ve had to pour over the data they’d collected. There surely would’ve been theories on how it happened and they’d be unethical enough to try it on human test subjects. So if they could do that, who might it happen to?

I think that an overarching narrative theme in-game is going to be that of free will. Let’s consider for a moment both Megami and Ayano as parallels to one another. Both are incredibly driven women who will stop at nothing to get what they desire - order for Megami, Senpai for Ayano - with familial histories of treachery and abuse. If Megami’s life has been lain down before her without her having much say in the matter, how does this similar struggle reflect in Ayano? Arguably, Megami could have everything she ever materially wanted in life just as Ayano has in the form of the feelings Senpai gives her but the issue goes deeper. If the price for Megami was having every moment planned out for her, is it not possible that the feelings Ayano has are just as manufactured? I don’t mean that in the ‘love at first sight’ kind of way; I’m questioning if the meeting with Senpai was something that was set up for her to go through, a test to see if this poor schmuck could be the thing that would let them begin to move onto a new test subject to put them through their glorified obstacle course (Akademi). Not to mention the fact that it essentially occurs right after Ryoba and Mr. Aishi leave for America is an immediate red flag. If Megami is trying to stop Ayano, though, then it must mean that she’s rebelling against the wishes of Saikou Corporation itself. After all, they don’t want something that they’ve put years of investment into slipping through the fingers if they can help it. The end game she has in mind is anyone’s guess at this point but I suspect it will be the purge of anything related to the above secret project. As such, there’s going to have to be someone to offer us an alternative to bringing down the current iteration of Saikou - and I think we also have an inkling of who’s going to aid us in bringing her down.

Kencho is emblematic of the status quo. He desperately desires his father’s approval (the one who’s likely continuing his father’s wishes and pursuing this whole endeavor to begin with) and will do anything to gain it. If Megami steps out of line too much, he’s certain to know that means she’ll fall from grace. He’s only been prevented from doing anything about his current situation because he’s only second best and hurting Megami would upset his dad. However, if she were to have an unfortunate accident... well, it isn’t as if he could be ignored anymore. In exchange, I imagine he’ll give Ayano exactly what her mother had: a nice house, a life untouched by anyone who’d take Taro or Taeko away from her, and a way for the two of them to have children if you go the latter route. All Ayano has to do is just give in to being a pawn like her mother did, like Kencho did, and like his father did. Or she can, at last, have the first real choice she’s ever had in her life by siding with Megami and tearing it all down (with Senpai still the promised reward in exchange for her help, certainly...).