#writer's thoughts

[northernthiefcranberry]

finding a suitable playlist for your text means writing with all possible inspiration, then starting to sing along, and then hanging out for a few minutes, shaking your head, only to then curse yourself and go on to finish writing.

and if this is not the case, then it’s the wrong playlist at all.

[caffeine-and-computers]

today I found out I've used an em dash more times in my novel than I've used my main character's first name

[akzgaj]

Writer's Thoughts #1

The best ideas for writing appear in the least expected moments - especially when you don't have a pen, paper or phone with you. And usually you forget about this idea, or it gets distorted and doesn't seem the best anymore.

[dawnrider]

*jingles cup at you*

Hello @xanthippe-writes! A great question and one I will try to give an array of answers to. I hope at least one of them is helpful!

Prompt lists: There are a ton of great writing prompt blogs right here on Tumblr that provide frequent, sometimes even daily, prompts that you can use to get juices flowing. It doesn't have to be a whole story, doesn't even have to be relevant to what you're writing, just a way to get the brain working.

Ask for prompts from mutuals or in servers: Sometimes a little community is really what you need. I don't always get to the prompts people have sent in my inbox, but on occasion I can get a lot of inspiration from that. Some of the servers I'm in have prompt channels, specifically where you can look for or request prompts from others, or where people leave ideas that they aren't going to get to for others to use at will.

Write the scene you want: Some people write linearly, as in completely in order of the story. That works for them and that's great. But when you're stuck, and there's that far off scene that you really want to get to, or is the inspiration for the story, it can feel really frustrating and out of reach. Write the damn thang. You can always modify it later if it doesn't quite fit once you build the rest of the story ahead of it. But if that scene is nagging at you, WRITE IT.

Write fanfiction of your fanfiction: Sometimes there are what-if scenarios within your own story that plague you. "What if they DIDN'T kiss here?" or "What if he ends up much more injured than I first planned?" Those can be worth it to explore in a separate document. Maybe you use it, maybe you don't. But it gives you the room to explore the webs of happenstance that are created when your characters make choices... or don't make them.

Let yourself have multiple WIPs: I know this isn't everyone's cup of tea, but hear me out. Sometimes the reason I feel stuck when I'm trying to hammer out part of the plot for say, Your Lying Smile, is because my brain is just not feeling it. But my brain is all over Stealing Home at that time, so I go work on that. And I can get a few paragraphs in, or maybe a chapter. Then I return to YLS with fresh eyes and I can think more clearly about what I want from the story because I feel successful and productive from what I was able to accomplish on a different story. You don't have to have multiple stories you're posting, if that isn't your jam, but sometimes letting yourself work on multiple things allows you to set aside your block on one story and get your juices flowing by working on something else and it doesn't feel like avoidance because you still made progress on something specific.

Brainstorm: This is a community thing again, but a really helpful one. If you're stuck, sometimes some outside perspective can help you get unstuck. If you have a trusted mutual, or a server space where brainstorming is welcome, utilize those resources. I admit to being a bit stingy when it comes to sharing my future plots because there's that part of my brain that insists that no one will want to read what I wrote if they already know what's going to happen. But you can absolutely ask for feedback from other folks, writers or otherwise. Bouncing ideas off of them can help you figure out what you might want to see going forward in your story, and what you don't. (Sometimes those "no way!" ideas are even more important than the "oh, maybe that would work...")

If anyone else has good advice to add, please do!

[brideofcthulhu10]

Hello hello my sweet fang babes! I've missed you all so much and I want to thank everyone for your continous support of my blog despite my lengthy hiatus!

Update: I have started a secondary blog!!

@thebrideofcthulhu

Worry not, this one will still have activity but between my writing I'll be posting my art on a daily basis!! So if you'd like to hop on over and take a look any support at all is always appreciated!

Hopefully my writing will revive here, I've been in between fandoms a lot and finding difficulty writing TLB outside of my ocs. Till then I hope you guys will hang in there with me and Happy New Year's to all my wonderful supporters, you guys mean the world to me!

[gildedgaze]

👸🏼✨

in a lot of my fics, damen and laurent have a daughter, born by exalted's threesome in the vaskian mountains. it's fun to write kidfics cause their fluffier and it's easier to characterize a toddler princess but i am having difficulty cultivating a teenager...would she be spoiled rotten by damen? forced to read for hours a day by laurent? Like so many princesses in media, will her main purpose be to birth a male heir, or is the CaPri world different from that? The clan leaders of Vask are women but she's raised my lamen so how would that work? Is she headstrong and fearless, wielding a sword to scare off boys or sheltered and can barely cook HSJDJDSJA

THIS IS DIFFICULT but i want to capture the best of both damen and laurent in her, Callista (my o.c)

Just throwing this into the void, if y'all have any ideas of what you'd like to see in their child pls let me know!!!! I wanna finish these outlines so i can WRITE.

[caffeinated-multitasking]

I used to write...

Hello,

I'm Nag, I'm 21 and I miss writing.

During the pandemic, I began writing short stories and even an attempt to write a novel, which I finished but I now know that I need to check a few things. Anyway, later in 2021, I stopped writing. I stopped doing many things I used to do, but writing is the one I miss the most. Now, everything went back to normal. I go to school and I feel like I am barely doing anything with my time. I have no creativity and I miss the writer I once was. That is why I am writing this. I want to go back in time to 2020, where google docs was my best friend, where my writing playlist appeared in my Spotify wrapped and where my only interaction with my friends was “Hey, I wrote another story!”

So if you can help me in any way, I’m all ears.

[sadiahakim]

The most disturbing and disappointing thing about society is society itself.

Sadia Hakim ©️

[myheartwrites]

I am a human too.

[saintescuderia]

an open letter in celebration of creative pursuit

(aka: an open letter to thank those who championed me)

dear you,

you are, in fact, many people.

you are the mother of my friend who is seven years younger than me.

you are the best friend that drifted away.

and you are the reader of my old wattpad fanfiction.

firstly, to the mother who always believed in me. you never read my work but you always identify me as a 'writer.' you take it seriously and it makes me feel silly because you take me more seriously as a writer than i take myself. if i have doubts, you unknowingly wash them away and remind me that i am a writer. it makes it all the more real and not a private dream.

now, to the friend who inspired me to write the poems. i won't even forget laying on the mattress in my old yellow bedroom, the phone on loudspeaker resting on my chest as i laid there and listening to you read my poems. your verbal reactions when you came across the ones dedicated to you, the ones about you. the line where your name made its rhyming appearance.

you didn't make me feel silly or stupid. you encouraged me, reminded me about it - like that time in the car with you and your mother when we all went dress shopping for your wedding. we were talking about careers and i was debating degrees to become a teacher or a psychologist. and you said, 'yeah, but what about writing? you want to be a writer.' in that moment, i forgot about it. it was buried deep. and you always were someone to bring it to the surface.

same to him. despite everything and how it ended, he always got offended when i didn't take it seriously. his praise was unlike anything i had ever encountered and i got a little drunk on it. my inner artist thrived at finally having someone have her back and believe that she was good enough, that she should give it a shot.

and finally you. my first 'fan.' you posted, commented and always connected with me. you messaged when i fell off. it was the first time i ever saw someone who i didn't personally know read my stuff and like it. there was no bias. you knew nothing about me but my words. and you liked them. pure objective proof that my niche fic content ideas were worth a damn. that my writing isn't as shit as i think it is. i will never forget you.

the small wattpad exchanges are something i'll carry with me for the rest of my days. it's literally why i do what i do: so someone somewhere can escape into story - the same way i always did. and do. we're all just sharing in the words. connected by them.

you're proof that i can do that. and will only get better at it.

love,

me

[winthorntales]

readers: you made me cry...

me: *beams with pride*

[northernthiefcranberry]

i wonder how difficult it really is now to find readers for someone who writes about the “romance club”?..

i started writing a collection of drabbles, but the number of readers is literally minimal - despite the fact that I'm writing about the most popular love interest of the story.

i understand that I found the fandom at the wrong time, when all the hype had already passed, but are the people on the site where I post fan fiction really that uninterested in new authors?

[caffeine-and-computers]

got into an interesting discussion with another writer and now I need your input. is there a particular way of killing characters that you just can't do because it hurts you too much to write? like oddly specific empathy?

[akzgaj]

Writer's Thoughts #2

Is it just me that when I finish writing a chapter and say, "that's it for today", and I'm already writing the last sentence and entering a new chapter with a title, and after a while I add, "well, I'll write two more sentences". And repeat again.

[azukiel]

A writer's thoughts...

I have been writing all sorts of things since I was 10 years old. My first ever fanfiction was based on Final Fantasy VIII and spanned 30+ chapters back in the day.

I have written a tragic romance tale based around the events before the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, and a Dark Fantasy based around Sauron and his followers in the early second age of Tolkien's lore. Both now on hiatus and have been so for the last couple of years (can still be read on Ao3, though)

Now I am focussing on writing my own original historical romance fiction based in Ancient Egypt, during the reign of Ramses the Great. Apart from my Astarion x Tav (reader) fanfic that I am working on now, my Egyptian story is my main focus these days when writing is concerned. It is my treasure, my 'baby' so to speak. And yet traffic on Wattpad, Ao3 and Insta has been deathly slow as of late. It seems not many people are interested in historical romances or stories based in Ancient Egypt anymore. Perhaps I am not updating regularly enough to keep the algorithm happy... but as it is my treasure, I like to take my time to perfect what I write. On Wattpad, at least, my story always ranks highly under Ancient Egypt and associated tags... but I get so few comments and interactions with it these days. Am I an idiot to feel sad over such a menial thing?? So I lament. The lack of interactions from readers, and lack of comments has made me feel like I am wasting my time writing. Yes, I am writing for myself, but I would also really appreciate other people's thoughts and feedback and inputs. Just having your hard work appreciated and validated makes us writers want to continue with our art. It gives us a sense of self-pride and worth. I knew already that BG3 and Astarion were already popular topics here on Tumblr, aka why there has been a fair bit of traffic to Nightfall Heir here, but I am wondering if I could garner more interest here for my Egyptian story as well. I don't know... it just seems that people on Tumblr are kinder, more invested in their fandoms, and more willing to like, interact and reblog things they enjoy. So, my dearest readers, should I bother posting my Egyptian Historical Romance on here? Would any of you be interested in it? Maybe if I post even just one chapter... I don't want to waste anyone's time... or mine, for that matter

Here is the cover of the story for those whose interest may be piqued.

[comradesbooks]

Fanfiction is underrated tbh

Fanfiction is a written story based off of an existing media, consisting of new takes on the original work, whether it’s meta commentary through characters, alternate universes with different plot beats than the original, or material that is used for the shameless entertainment of reader and writer alike. Producers and consumers of this material know who they are. It’s not necessarily a genre in and of itself, and there is some stigma over fan works as a whole. Personally, I, an active writer of fanfiction, approve of it, and I’m gonna go on a tangent as to why, even though no one asked for it. 

My points will mainly boil down to one umbrella concept; that fanfiction is excellent practice for newer storytellers. 

The best part about fanfiction is that it’s low pressure. It’s not graded, there aren’t deadlines, there are only basic guidelines provided by the original work, and, most importantly, it’s (mostly) anonymous. Unpublished fanfiction authors, such as those on Fanfiction.net or Archive of Our Own, use pen names to protect their identities. An adult writer’s real name doesn’t have to be traced back to the cringey Self-Insert/Levi Ackerman one shot they wrote when they were twelve. Because of that low pressure and lack of deadlines, a newer writer ought to feel more comfortable in getting their feet wet in the writing community.

When it comes down to it, fanfictions, whether they are 2,000 word one-shots or 300,000 word epics, are just works of fiction, and like any work of fiction, need framework. The key difference in the framework between original fiction and fanfiction is that the fanfiction already has the basic framework done. All the fanfic author needs to do is alter and add what they like to the existing template, which is (usually, hopefully) a strong foundation to be built upon. It’s not unlike an artist tracing the contours of a portrait in order to learn how to render colors for a more realistic style. It should never be treated as an original work, but a template for sake of self-improvement, which is perfectly acceptable. Original works of fiction all begin as a blank slates, and it can take a long time to do the worldbuilding necessary to tell a good story. To give a quick and well-known example, J.K. Rowling took over a year just plotting out the foundation for the Harry Potter series, and went on unemployment to do it. In fanfiction, newer writers have the ability to skip the lengthy worldbuilding process, learning by example as they utilize the world that has already been built to their advantage. 

One of my favorite parts of writing fanfiction, especially for a larger fandom, is that there is no shortage of critique, if one knows how to look and ask for it. In this age of the interwebs, ignorance is a choice. Writers of fanfiction don’t have to worry about building a fanbase before they can get any commentary because the creator of the original work already did the heavy labor. All the writer has to do is write their original work, tag it appropriately, and ask for critique, and they’ll eventually get some, sooner or later. With access to so many different viewpoints, thanks to the internet, constructive criticism couldn’t be more accessible. (I will note that some fandoms have some individuals who are absolutely monstrous for a variety of reasons and may not be the most wholesome or supportive sources of criticism.) Critique can be a hot take, especially in the art and writing community where people are known to be a tad sensitive, but no one can improve themselves without a little criticism. Not only do internet-based writers have virtually unlimited access to good, constructive criticism, but they also have access to negative opinions and comments, which will harden them to the real world. Let’s be real here, if you publish a book anywhere, I don’t care how perfect it is. Someone will find something wrong with it and will try to cancel it. 

And that is my extremely informal, blunt, and unstructured opinion on fanfiction that is completely correct in every way. If anyone wants me to elaborate on a specific point, I have no issue with that. I like standing on my soap box because who doesn’t love an inflated sense of importance?