#notes on writing

[mcdbutichangedit]

Aphmau would 100% leave her diary wide opened in a very visible spot of the house.

I imagine she sometimes leaves it on a page with Laurance or Garroth's name on it and they have to do their best not to snoop because, on one hand, "what does Aphmau think of me? Is it possible she might ever feel the same?" but also "I can't look at Lady Aphmau's journal! I am her guard! She trusts me!!"

Garroth chooses the latter nearly every time (for plot reasons he might not one time, who knows 👻). Maybe, he's trying his best to cope after Lilian did the hologram thingy and then he catches sight of Laurance's name and can't help but run away or something.

Laurance teases her about it at least once but never fully pries (he already understands this love is forever one-sided). He also notes how she's spells his name wrong 66% of the time. Maybe he finds her diary when he's blind and gets sad that he can't tease her about it anymore.

At one point, Zoey finds the page opened to something really depressing about how stressful being a mother and lord is or how she was never meant for a full blown war between kingdoms twice their size, etc etc. And Zoey comforts her about it (after apologizing for reading it, of course, something the other two didn't do).

[agirlnamedbone]

C.D. Wright (The Poet, the Lion, Talking Pictures, El Farolito, a Wedding in St. Roch, the Big Box Store, the Warp in the Mirror, Spring, Midnights, Fire & All, 2016)

[violentlyviolettripledecker]

A quick note about youth and virginity

Not that anyone asked, but I've been thinking about it.

In Water and Earth, Mandy is a virgin. She's also pretty young (to me), only 20. I feel like there are compelling reasons for her virginity as far as her characterization goes, but it's not generally a storyline I like to pursue. I'm actually struggling to think of any other fanfiction I have written with a virgin character.

The reason Mandy is a virgin is because when I first started this story, Mandy was a completely different person. I wanted to put someone totally innocent and naive in with the Shelbys and see what happened. Now, I don't want to sound like I'm implying anything about virgins, because I'm not, but the person I was writing about was waaayyy too easy. She was a people-pleaser, and too willing to let Tommy Shelby set the pace. It was just...kind of boring. So when I scrapped it and went back to the beginning, I wrote a totally different kind of person, but still a virgin, as that was something I still wanted to play with. This was a mistake! And one I don't know how to fix now (beyond the obvious).

I also started writing an Alfie Solomons/OFC fic.

It's a crime, an actual crime, that Alfie had so few scenes and was naked in none of them. I had to watch Locke, like, three times to get over how much I needed to see Tom Hardy in a relationship.

Mandy and Tommy were (and are) taking their sweet effing time getting naked - 60,000+ words I've written and I only just wrote the first orgasm. I'm so mad. So the Alfie/OFC fic was sort of like, a place where I could take all of my sexual tension and get SOME resolution.

But I made a mistake. The OFC in this other fic is also 20. She is also a virgin. It just seemed to fit with Alfie. The woman that was too easy with Tommy, a people-pleaser, someone naive and innocent, was actually interesting with Alfie. Not that Tommy isn't chivalrous, but he doesn't have the same nurturing/protective instincts that seem a little more natural to Alfie, at least the version I've written, so the tension just wasn't there.

Anyway, as I say, literally no one has asked me to explain myself, but I feel like I needed to. Maybe just to explain myself to myself. If I write more for the Peaky Blinders universe, I swear I will only write about the sluttiest sluts who have ever slutted (I mean, I don't know, maybe I could write about male virginity, because that's not explored enough). (Side note: spell check has no problem with the word slutted? I'm going to have to find a way to work that particular past participle into conversation a lot more.) I myself do not have a virginity kink, I don't believe that women have to be virgins and that men have to be sexually experienced, and I think the whole concept of virginity has been weirdly fetishized in Western culture and I find it very weird that I have unintentionally become a part of it. What can I say, I was raised in an evangelical household, and even as an adult, I am still working through a lot of that, apparently.

[carinelian]

spent half of my life thinking that i can pressure myself to do it on command AND demand

now the other half is committed to proving that command and demand actually puts all operations to stop

so i had to revisit my life purpose and thoughts about monetization and this capitalist society we live in

[minyicho]

starting a collection of my favourite AO3 author’s notes

honourable mentions

[fromcainwithlove]

author’s notes today: hey guys so just a warning there isn’t 100% explicit verbal consent even though they’re both really into it so remember this is FICTION, also they don’t use a condom :((( but in real life safe sex is important!!! please be safe out there everyone

a/n back in the day: kept thinking about ____ stabbing knives through both of _____’s hands to pin him in place while they fucked so here you go lol =P

[pnglove]

png from this post

[carinelian]

reblogging this so that i never forget!

"I can’t sit down and interview Jane Austin about every little decision she made in Pride and Prejudice but I can look at what we know about her life and the era and place she lived in. I can also ignore all that and look at what the book means right now to modern people. I can compare Austin to writers in her own time as well as writers now. I can speculate on what I think was on purpose and what wasn’t."

loved this line. context always matters, and when doing critical analysis (most especially writing), context is what frames the discussion. it paves the way for conversations, lays down the path that could've been and what isn't, like mapping the areas you could cover and what you could save for a later time.

as a writer, the idea of my work being interpreted worlds away from what i intended to be scares me. like, it scares THE SHIT out of me. once it's out there, it's out there. you can't control what people think or say. but what i can do is make the best of what i got with the time i have, use all the words that slip from my mind and into paper. there will be cracks. there will be faults. sometimes people will put cement over what they perceive as 'flaw', but is a wonderful, blessed accident to me.

sometimes, there will be posts like this. it gives me hope. that at the very least, there are readers and fellow writers who will take the context into hand, the lack thereof, and work with that they've got, the same way i had. critical analysis is tough work, but it's the due diligence and effort that make it worthwhile.

"Reading critically is a conversation between the author, the reader, and the various contexts surrounding both of them."

THIS ESPECIALLY!!!! I HAVE TO QUOTE IT BECAUSE IT RESONATED WITH ME SO MUCH

whether my work gets buried, seen, or i don't know, some secret third thing- there lies the comfort that everything adds up. there are people who will see through the different layers of interpretation that piled up over the years, acknowledge the nuances, and allow them to coexist as everything that makes up your work.

the author will die eventually. the author may turn into a ghost. the work lives on, but the fact that someone made it remains.

When I took my literary criticism theory class in undergrad the professor told us that in modern literary criticism “The author isn’t dead but they are a ghost breathing down your neck”

Basically, the old way of thinking was that the point of literary criticism was to find the true original intentions of the author. Then death of the author was introduced and literary criticism swung hard the other way, saying that what the author thinks and the context they were in doesn’t matter.

Nowadays, it’s somewhere in between. Yes the author had intentions and yes the work had context. But the work also has context right now and a history of people reading it and interpreting it and sometimes an author puts meaning in something that they didn’t realize they were.

I can’t sit down and interview Jane Austin about every little decision she made in Pride and Prejudice but I can look at what we know about her life and the era and place she lived in. I can also ignore all that and look at what the book means right now to modern people. I can compare Austin to writers in her own time as well as writers now. I can speculate on what I think was on purpose and what wasn’t.

A lot of people go on about death of the author like that’s the only correct way to interpret fiction when modern lit crit moved past it years ago. Reading critically is a conversation between the author, the reader, and the various contexts surrounding both of them. Nothing exists in a vacuum but at the same time nobody can anticipate every interpretation their work might present with.

The question of analysis and separating art from artist isn’t a simple cut and dry issue. It never has been and it never will be.

[butchfalin]

the funniest meltdown ive ever had was in college when i got so overstimulated that i could Not speak, including over text. one of my friends was trying to talk me through it but i was solely using emojis because they were easier than trying to come up with words so he started using primarily emojis as well just to make things feel balanced. this was not the Most effective strategy... until. he tried to ask me "you okay?" but the way he chose to do that was by sending "👉🏼👌🏼❓" and i was so shocked by suddenly being asked if i was dtf that i was like WHAT???? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?????????? and thus was verbal again

[mcdbutichangedit]

What if my rewrite was told via journal entries from different people? Like, majority of it would be Aph's of course, but also, some entries from Laurance? Some from Garroth maybe? It is called Minecraft Diaries, plural. So maybe? I doubt everyone would be a devout writer considering all that happens but I can imagine something like Laurance gets told to start doing so after becoming a shadow knight and Garroth and Dante, if not already keeping one, also do out of solidarity (they have journaling time in the guard station whenever they're off patrol and just sit there and write, trust-). Zoey would probably have a diary which would also serve to talk about her time with Levin and Malachi.

If anyone has thoughts on characters who may possibly have journals or just wrote down their thoughts one time, I'd 100% like to hear them

[nodogsallowed]

id: image of a forest, mountains and sky, with text reading: “ to avoid burnout at work, use the 30/30 rule: after 30 minutes of work, quit your job and disappear into the mountains for 30 years”. end id

(Thank you @ghostapop for the image description)

[carinelian]

sometimes it also works the other way around

like lately, my characters are being mean to me

they keep doing stuff AGAINST the outline

and eventually they become kind by doing some weird parallel shit as if to say, "oops, can't kill me off I'm still following THEME"

some supposed npc becoming relevant suddenly? "oops, can't kill me off i'm doing WORK around here"

someone other than male lead rizzing up the mc? "oops, can't kill me! if you kill me you ADMIT i have rizz"

it's been so chaotic

Be mean to your characters.

What do they take for granted? Take it away from them.

The one thing they know for certain? Make them doubt it.

Their worst fear? Throw it at their faces.

Make their plans fail. Make them cry. Make them question things and then learn about them and the way they react in the process.

Be mean to your character. Then be kind to them for a while, because after all that they may deserve it.

[beepboopappreciation]

Is this anything

[hannibal-is-my-comfort-show]

Headcannon that Jason got the headstone from his grave and put it above his bed because it says 'Here lies Jason Todd' (he broke off the good soldier bit ofc) and thinks it's the funniest thing ever, some of the family, of course, are horrified.

Dick, at Jason's before they go out on patrol: Hey Jaybird, make sure to bring a spare respir--WHAT THE HELL?!?

Dick, looking frantically between Jason and the headstone: this is clearly a threat. Somebody knows your identity. I swear to GOD when I find who did this--

Jason, looking up from his phone comepletely unbothered: oh yeah, about that

--------

Bonus:

--------

Tim, climbing through Jasons bedroom window: Hey, its me, dont shoot. Do you have a first aid kit here right?

Jason, getting up from where he was reading in bed: ugh yeah sure, one sec

Jason, proceeds to grab a sticky note saying 'DOES NOT' and jabs it onto the headstone so it reads 'Here DOES NOT lie Jason Todd':

Tim:

Tim: okay that's funny

[nerdyydragon]

Also notable: I rarely see anyone say this about, like, romance movies (at least in earnest; there are soooo many other discourses about romance as a genre, but this isn't one I've seen).

Nobody says "noooo, don't go into the quaint little small-town café, Miss New York Businesswoman Protagonist! No, you're so goddamned dumb for talking to the guy who literally collided with you walking in the door!! You're so effing stupid for allowing him to pick up the papers you dropped!

Nobody says "Character is ridiculous for not trying to avoid freezing to death by huddling for warmth in the cabin!"

Nobody says "but they should know better!" about romance plots, unless it's some "love thine enemy" thing where logically the character should know better than to fall in love with the tragic, handsome villain who just tried to have them killed/kidnapped/dethroned/etc., but even then. The characters in a romance plot don't somehow miraculously know they're in a romance, they just know that they've encountered a [charming stranger] [mysterious rival] [new understanding of their childhood bestie] [any and all trope pairings that apply] and that, as they go about their day, Shit Happens. Compared to other genres it might be comparably low-stakes because nobody's in danger of getting stabbed (maybe, who knows, it could happen), but they don't posses foreknowledge of the events because they're not aware that this sequence of events is something like "A Duke for the Holidays" instead of "just another goddamned Tuesday".

We know.

We're supposed to know.

While part of me rails against an easy reliance on trope marketing, primarily when it supersedes any and all notions of telling me what the gods-damned book is about, as an audience we are, consciously or otherwise, aware of tropes and trends and patterns. We know, as the audience, that in a small-town romance film Miss New York Businesswoman Protagonist is going to break up with her boyfriend who never has time for her and shack up with the hunky father of two who works as a conservationist for a near-extinct, totally-not-made-up species of butterfly that only reproduces every six years under the light of a falling star, or something*. That's how the plot works.

Half the fun is figuring out how it happens.

Half the scare is figuring out how it happens, because horror, like romance, has a pretty defined end (though it isn't always death, but that's pretty clear from the beginning when that's the case).

I'm a spec-fic author. I'm working on a gothic sci-horror novel that, in its alpha stages, has scared the bejesus out of my reader to the point where she thinks the monster is going to appear in her house. She keeps feeling like she's being watched. We're 2/3 of the way through and she's paranoid to the point where she can't actually read the thing for long stretches of time even if she desperately wants to. I also write fantasy, and there are tropes and expectations that I rely on there, as well. But gods, I'm so tired of people (beyond the half-terror under a blanket "no, don't go in there!!!" response, without acknowledging that it must happen) not applying the same logic to horror protagonists as they do to those of other genres. They're not dumb.

Horror isn't dumb.

It's profoundly, utterly human in its terror.

And to the main point of the post: nothing Jonathan Sims (Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London) could have done would have averted the ending to his story. He's a brilliant mind cracking under strain, attempting to wrangle forces well beyond human comprehension that prey on his being a brilliant mind attempting to wrangle them. The Entities, on occasion, give him what he wants. He learns. He grows.

Until he becomes a monster himself.

There are so many versions of the story, littered with alternate choices and voltas and changes in patterns. "No" instead of "yes" that eventually becomes "yes", anyway, because it has to.

A big-city businesswoman, visiting her aging father for Christmas, walks into a coffee shop and runs headlong into her widowed highschool sweetheart after years away.

A gallant knight, stripped of his armour, raises a sword to protect the princess and slay the dragon.

A PI cracks a cold-case that's been haunting the local police for years after they stumble on new evidence, almost by accident.

Almost by a miracle.

A brave starship captain lays down their life to save an entire planet, millions of lives, because it is right, and at the last second is retrieved by advanced technology created by a society that cares.

Jonathan Sims does the best he can with the information he has, and he almost makes it out in the end.

Until he doesn't.

There is no other version of the story.

----

*I was being mostly facetious in this claim but a part of me actually really wants a low-stakes cozy romantasy in this setting. I can't write that type of stake to save my life (even my fanfiction has to have something life-threatening, so no butterflies for me) so if that prompt strikes your fancy, feel free to steal it and modify however needed. Just... let me know if you ever finish it.

JONATHAN ARCHIVIST IS NOT STUPID SQUAD I WILL ALWAYS BE WITH YOU

[linkcharacter]

Some personal design notes I made for comics speech bubbles and on dialogue!

Conclusions were drawn from their dialogue sounds and manner of speech in general in addition to my personal flair and interpretation.

And here's an incomplete list of mental notes on actually writing dialogue for characters:

Curly

expresses genuinely what he feels and what he means, though he's reserved and leaves a lot unsaid

casually playful and whimsical when talking to others or commenting on things

smooth talker

speaks delicately and de-escalatory when faced with a stressful situation

using british slang on occasion, yeah?

Anya

often encouraging or reassuring those she talks to

teasing, witty and playful with anyone not named jimmy

stutters when speaking to those named jimmy but outside of that, speaks smoothly with enthusiasm

speaks with implications, basically says iconic deep meaningful shit in a non-direct way

Swansea

mean, harsh, sarcastic and taunting

like anya, he says some deep shit but in a poetic and direct way

reminds me of Disco Elysium dialogue in terms of vibes

speaks grandiosely

" ain't, goin', el capitano, downstairs longnose, hear hear, ol' codger, rumb-a-tumblin' " very fun to write

Daisuke

unfocused, emphasizes words, informal

speaks at the same time as he thinks, most of his dialogue feels like a stream of thoughts

filler words like, totally like everywhere man

Jimmy

dry, spiteful and bitter remarks, always sounds like he's annoyed at everything

no whimsical or heartfelt comments about anything

uses metaphors and veils his words, spinning them in ways to fit his goals. twists his own words as well as others'

steals phrases from others

persuasive