#it's pretty wordy

[rampantram]

So, I just binged all of your Ewe AU content and I have to know- you mentioned how long it took for Lamb and Nariander to get together- were they together when they found Ewe? If so, how long was she trapped for? I probably just misread something, but I do love me some angst.

Thankfully for you, my friend, loving angst is something you and I both have in common.

Narinder and the lamb were indeed together when they found Ewe! Happily married for a few years, in fact, after some drama and strife during the lengthy time that you mentioned. As for finding Ewe, it started with a key that the lamb had found with seemingly no match (they tried doors, chests - anything and everything with a lock - with no luck). At a loss, Narinder recommended asking the Mystic Dealer, partly due to the key’s winged design.

The Mystic Dealer confirmed it was a special key that could only be used if you already knew where its matching door led, which happened to be a sort of…”pocket dimension” (usually used to hide and stow treasure or any number of valuable things). On the other side of the newly-formed door was a lush-looking clearing, surrounded by woods similar to Darkwood, with a storehouse at its center.

This place was untouched by time, but time still seemed to pass. And that is where Ewe had been waiting, unable to escape, starve, grow old, or die. She fell into a catatonic state, already worn by the devastating sight of all her fellow sheep being dragged away to unknown fates, convinced she was doomed to reside in her prison for all eternity.

[cometrose]

one of my favorite things about zhongli is that he doesn’t shut up like i know we like to compare him to neuvillette and alhaitham but zhongli is like inverse of their signature traits. social awkwardness? quiet and reserved? zhongli does not care he will talk like he understands liyue’s social customs very well he just does what he wants. like yeah he’s calm and reserved but he’s not quiet and he enjoys socializing with humans like it’s one of his favorite things to do. the people of liyue describe as someone who is a little odd but very helpful and knowledgeable so he understands people and he seems pretty good at reading their intentions and behaviors so yeah he’s weird but he’s very popular cause he’s always doing shit

tldr zhongli is a yapper he will talk about anything and everything if you give him a chance he does not care if it’s weird or socially unconventional

[quicksilversquared]

One of my students has perfected the art of writing a lot of words while saying absolutely nothing at all.

One entire freaking page of talk about "distinct growth patterns" and "notable growth trends" (the trend was no growth, the patterns were also no growth) and how one experimental group "mirrored the control group" (also didn't grow), then the whole thing over again in another section, just worded slightly differently. It's a pain in the butt to try to sift through everything to find the actual elements that I'm looking for.

[skitskatdacat63]

“Amore et Timore” - King Fernando I “El Animoso”

[musashi]

so wack seeing everyone put "i dont like franmaya" as their unpopular ace attorney opinion on these ask games as if franmaya is popular literally at all

[cynassa]

I strongly disagree that Jason's post-resurrection behaviour is because he thinks Bruce doesn't care for him. He's not stupid, he knows Bruce cares for Jason on his own terms. And Jason does (any person does really, but especially children) have the right to say that that's not good enough, especially when the results are this terrible.

What Jason needs is an acknowledgement that his death mattered enough to have changed something. It didn't. It's not stupid of him to look at that truth and think that he's going to make it matter.

[massyworld]

I was reading through the poetry book that Tom Hiddleston gave the writers and the composer as inspiration for the season - T.S. Eliot's 4 Quartets, it's about man's relationship with time.

I'm really ill-equipped to parse through it myself, but these excerpts were interesting 👀

[thyfggfy]

Me after creating a mental list of my favourite characters from certain medias :.... I may have a type

Female characters that constantly have to prove themselves cuz no one believes in them and there is always someone who surpasses them get behind me.

[muspeccoll]

Wordy Wednesday

Gauffered edges: A form of tooling that is applied not to the cover but to the edges of the text block. It is typically done after the pages have been gilt and involves applying a heated metal tool to the edge of the paper. It had its heyday in the 1500s, especially in Germany, and eventually fell out of favor in 1650, but was later revived in the late 1700s and in the 1800s.

(via Facsimile — Gloss · Rare Books: A Glossary · Special Collections and Archives)

[wordycheeseblob]

stares at you with my big eyes and flaunts my sharp teeth.

[horizon-penblade-art]

[not-poignant]

Your dialogue is incredible, do you have any advice on how to write like that? Like the actual process you use to arrive at what's on the page. Do you write a ton of dialogue and then cut it down to the gems? Or does it just come out like that when you write? The characterisation in the dialogue is superb, and somehow it never feels overwrought or unnatural. I guess I'm just hoping it's a carefully-honed craft you can give practical tips on, rather than something you can just innately 'do' 😂 xx

Hi anon,

So firstly, I'm so sorry anon because this will probably piss you off: I do find dialogue extremely easy to do, which is why all of my stories are so dialogue heavy. I don't sit there writing a ton of dialogue and then whittling it down, and it just comes out as I write. At most I sometimes just have to double check tone continuity on certain characters (i.e. 'would Augus / Dr Gary / the Raven Prince use this exact phrasing or would they use something else')

When I daydream about my stories, I daydream about the dialogue first. I 'listen' to my characters and the things they say. When I write it down, I don't sit and think 'what would they say' I just write what they'd say. But...I've been doing this for like a long time now, and I do believe there are things that can be done to build the skill.

I feel like throughout my life, I've done things that at least some other people don't do, which makes dialogue easier for me.

But firstly, down to mechanics, here's a link to a post I've made before on things to focus on re: honing dialogue as a skill.

What some folks don't realise is that constructing a vocabulary or tone for a character is like constructing a character. A character's voice says so much about them - how much money they make (or if they're nouveau riche in some cases), where they live, if they were popular or unpopular in school, if they're shy or extroverted or charismatic, if they care about how they come across, if they're a precise or messy thinker, etc. Each character you have, you need to be spending time just thinking about elements of their voice and dialogue if you're not used to doing this already.

The best place to start with this, honestly, is by rewatching some of your favourite shows or rereading some of your favourite books and noting down things about the dialogue that are unique to each character. (Ideally this will be in stories that have very unique dialogue patterns lol). This is actually fantastic for fanfic because you can end up with a cheat sheet (which I've also written about) that will instantly make your character's dialogue sound 'true to form' without having to overthink it.

And the rest I'm putting under a Read More because it's literally just me rambling:

Another place to research is simply by listening to conversations. Listen to the people around you talk, and write down the things that are specific to them. How do they agree or disagree with something? Are there sayings they're using particular or specific to where they live? Do they use a lot of slang? And if so, is it generational? Who are the overspeakers? The underspeakers? the ones who deflect? The ones who shut things down? When you're listening to people talk, think about the words they use, the pitch, if their voice is croaky or smooth, confident or shy, what makes it shy? Is it soft? Do they hesitate? If it's confident, what makes it confident? Is it loud? Do they almost never say 'um' or other words of hesitation?

Think about how these people's voices might differ from place to place. How do they talk to a waiter vs. customer service on the phone vs. a best friend vs. a family member vs. a teacher? Think about the changes you make in those circumstances.

Over time, this knowledge comes to you more instinctively. I've spent my entire life being very interested in the way people talk (I'm neurodivergent, and chameleon-like, and I will adopt other people's patterns of speaking unconsciously in order to 'blend in' - but it gave me a pretty good knack with dialogue! As did 'practising conversations' in my head growing up, lol.)

A really good place to look at character voice sometimes is also in actor interviews. Go and check out like... the Hot Ones interviews or something on YouTube, and you'll see a ton of extremely distinct character voices that are right there to research. How Jack Black talks vs. someone like Tom Hanks vs. someone like Nick Offerman vs. someone like Tom Holland shows huge variation in what makes dialogue unique from person to person.

Your characters don't need to sound like caricatures, ideally they will feel things and embody things strongly enough that this isn't really a problem (even Benoit Blanc sounds like a genuine person despite sounding like a cartoon character because of the emotion / feeling he can get into that voice). Your main goal, imho, is to make sure that all your characters don't end up sounding like carbon copies of yourself. I think this is a problem even people who write natural dialogue can stumble into (that I've been guilty of too), it flows naturally because they're just writing how they'd think/react to something, but it's 6 characters and you realise 'hang on, I'm just reading 6 versions of the author.'

This is where researching the distinctness of character voice is really important, and making a cheat sheet to check when you're going back through a chapter can be invaluable.

There are little things I do fairly naturally these days, to use Underline the Black (or Underline the Rainbow more generally) as an example. Temsen says things like 'Goodness!' instead of 'oh my god.' He can still do the latter, but he's far more likely to be quite sort of formal when he's surprised or shocked by something (and Kent has picked that up, so he does it too, lol, which makes sense - because they work together and people adopt each other's speech patterns when they get along).

Efnisien is very comfortable with swearing, he's got 'juvenile alpha who had to fight with Gwyn all his life' throughout his dialogue. Gary is quite formal and talks in complete sentences almost always. He very rarely hedges or restarts his sentences, and as Efnisien observes: He speaks like someone who's about to go onto a podium and confidently deliver a lecture. He's very self-assured. Efnisien on the other hand hedges a lot, shuts himself down, doesn't finish sentences, and bites back some of his words. Dr Gary doesn't use endearments in general, and can be extremely sarcastic. His humour veers towards deadpan.

Caleb is very forward, bold and confident. He uses endearments like 'baby' and 'sweetheart.' He's flirtatious, and he doesn't talk too much. His voice when he says something tends to fill the space - he has the respect and attention of the people around him. He speaks in complete sentences that are generally quite short (but not short-tempered) and to the point. He comes across as someone who's looking for a good time, but he's not obviously emotionally available when he speaks.

Nate (in Underline the Blue) is people pleasing and generally obsequious (but his inner dialogue indicates there's a snarky voice waiting to get out). He hedges, but ultimately tries to be pleasing. A lot of 'what do you like best? What do you want?' He redirects with questions and tries to avoid talking about his personal life. His voice is quiet in tone, and also quite lacking. He sounds like someone who hasn't had the opportunity to enjoy conversation for its own sake. He shuts conversations down rather than opening them up. He almost never initiates any dialogue at all.

I can do this across all my characters because I have their mental cheat sheets relatively memorised. Whatever book or story you're focusing on, it's a good habit to be able to just mentally know a paragraph or two about your character's voice. Checking in with that mental knowledge (or cheat sheet until you learn it) before starting writing any chapter can help guide you.

The way a character talks determines how the story flows. Nate doesn't start conversations, so he needs to be paired with someone who does. This means if Nate starts a conversation - he's going to be more anxious than usual most times, which creates many opportunities for angsty scenes.

Efnisien is hostile and combative, especially when he's afraid or upset, which creates a lot of opportunities - simply through the way he talks - for increased chemistry with a more calm but still incisive opponent like Gary. Once you start to get a handle on dialogue, how your characters speak alone will create flow through the plot, and also create ways to get through a plot or reach certain points. I know for example that Efnisien's verbal response to the directives softens Gary towards him. Or I know that Gary's softer coaxing voice when he's soothing Efnisien will genuinely soothe Efnisien - even against his will. That's a powerful thing to know about my character's voices!

You're gonna pick this up in no time, anon. You might even have really good dialogue instincts and just be over-thinking it. But I do think in general, sit down with whoever you like to listen to - your fave YouTubers, people on TikTok, your favourite shows etc. and then just...listen to the dialogue. Be wary of subtitles in this case, because they can sometimes erase or hide the actual unique details of a person's voice to make it more 'generic.' Some are better than others.

And then just write down the things that feel unique to those people. Especially notice turns of phrase that you don't use yourself. (Which also means thinking about the kind of cheat sheet you'd write for yourself! Tbh that's probably a good place to start lmao).

Definitely click on the links I've put in this post, the first one in particular breaks down all the details of dialogue more specifically. And doesn't take like 4000 words to not actually make much of a point, like in this post sdlkfjas

If I'd posted it as dialogue we wouldn't have been here for so long but anyway tl;dr I find dialogue stupid easy but that's because I've been observing dialogue and what makes it unique all my life and there's no real short-cut for that but if you start doing it now you'll find writing dialogue way easier really soon.

[musicprincess1990]

Jesus... I didn't just open a can of worms, I kicked the damn thing and sent it through the roof!

I've started listening to an audio book of The Fellowship of the Ring. It's my first time getting past the first few pages (ADHD and Tolkein don't easily mix), and while I'm enjoying it, I'm surprised at how different it is from the movies. And y'all know I love those movies!

Today, I foolishly thought it was a good idea to post on the LotR subreddit, asking people what they thought about the movies. Man, it's been 20 years since Return of the King came out, and people are still triggered! Violently so! There are a few people who have said they still like the movies, but the majority seem to relish the chance to shit on them and curse Peter Jackson's name.

...I regret making that post.

I will always love the movies. It's too early to say if I'll grow to love the books more than the movies, but even if I do, the movies are spectacular. It's taking all my strength not to defend them, but I know it would be pointless to argue. Nothing some stranger on the internet could say would change their mind.

Still. I'm really enjoying the audio book so far. 😁

[wanderingmind867]

I'm bad at speaking in brief sentences. I'm always so verbose. It's bad in person when I'm around my dad because I always want to give context for the things I say, and I go on tangents. It might be worse online however, especially since I tend to write 50 words when 10 will do. It's a real problem. I never get to my actual point because I go on tangents and end up writing nearly 1,000 words.

[thnxforknowingme]

[cowboyvillainz]

whew i worked so so hard on this, I never do refs (especially for humans) cause I’m so particular and perfectionist but I’m actually quite happy with this?? my guy is here you can look at him!!