#writing adjacent

[bdafic]

Have you played Veilguard? Do you plan to?

If yes, what is your opinion on how Solas and solavellan was handled? :)

I did! I actually posted about it, encouraging people not to read reviews and posts and just play the game for them. I chose not to go into any depth other than I liked it. I'm cool with going into it now, though I want to make really clear to anyone reading that I have zero interest in seeing, inviting, or participating in the "everything must be criticized hard and moralized" discourse. The level of hostility around this game is off the charts and I'm super not into it.

(I am very into being hostile as fuck about layoffs, crunch, and execs sabotaging projects, setting impossible "goals" and whipping up anger to justify dissolving studios though. We can do that all day.)

Anyway, back to your question.

Overall, my feelings on how Solas/Solavellan was done mirrors my feelings on the game as a whole: I loved 85% of it, and the other 15% I didn't so much 'not love' as much as I wished it could've been more. That last 15% felt like being a kid finding out there's a whole other floor of your house you've never explored, and once you finally get all prepped to go spelunking you find it in the midst of being demolished. All those little tantalizing peeks you got are gone or waved off like "you can make do with what you have". Technically that's true. You've got a nice house that's pretty and isn't falling apart and everything connects and has all the right things in it... but you can't help being really sad for the loss of experiences you could've had on the mystery floor.

I loved all the insight we got into the history of the Evanuris, ancient elves, and Solas himself. It confirmed a bunch of theories I'd discussed with others for years -- and that felt awesome! I love it when fans are rewarded for noticing the details and putting shit together. (If you're also into that, go watch Severance). There's so much of what we saw in his memories and experiences that deepen the sense of sadness and loss in his character. It made people who hate him, hate him more, and people who love him, sympathize with him more. I think he's honestly one of the most well-written characters I've ever encountered in any media, anywhere, and not just because I'm a sucker for beautiful tragedy.

I'm happy they didn't shy away from Solas' edges, either. I'd predicted Varric's death at his hands during The Missing's run, though I thought it'd play out differently. I think that and the war crimes were good additions to his story. It reinforced his position as an antivillain to the series. Solas is a living, breathing, 'sunk cost fallacy' of a man. He (almost) says it himself: to stop now would make all the horrible things he'd done be for nothing. He has to keep going.

He was Wisdom, twisted into Pride. He wants to still be Wisdom. It's how he sees himself, though he's smart enough to know it isn't true deep down. The planning, the arrogance, the failures, the devotion, they're all aspects of that change. Of course he keeps failing. Of course he keeps trying. And of course falling in love without any of that being known would absolutely caboodle his noodle. One of the things that first drew me was realizing how much of him was only revealed upon romancing. It makes a ton of sense for his character, and gave him a depth and longing that was incredibly compelling. A character who lays it out for everyone regardless is just an NPC, but that made him feel like a person. It speaks to his loneliness; how badly he wants someone to find a way to change his mind, and how resigned he is to the belief that nobody can. Wisdom and Pride.

I'm very pleased that a Solavellan ending even exists, because that's a pretty big nod to fandom and the impact of his character. Of course I'd have loved to see more -- Solavellan hell is eternal and I'll never escape -- but I can be happy with what we got. And I understand why it felt truncated.

(And honestly, my biggest complaint with Lavellan's inclusion is that we cannot modify her appearance later if we fucked it up. My kingdom for her eyeballs to've worked properly in my first run.)

I am a bit sad about how 'well' a lot of it got wrapped up, not just because of the loss of mystery, but because it's pretty clear that was a reflection of the (rather prescient) fears from devs/writers about the future of the franchise. The game's impact and mood suffered from that sense of impending doom. Edges were shaved off, things glossed over, middles discarded so threads could be tied up neater, and that probably really sucked for the people who have lived and breathed this world for the better part of 20 years. It needed more time. Chill time. And freedom to fuck about. People say that audiences don't like it when things end on an uncertain note, and honestly after seeing the discourse this produced as is I'm gonna say that the things I personally wished were included would've probably started much bigger fires and resulted in much more smoke. (People like to jump in here with, "it was going for ten years" but that's kind of disingenuous. It was ten years between releases. The game was scrapped twice and the final iteration was only going for three-ish, and writers and devs kept getting fucking laid off.)

Anyway, there's a lot of stuff it's clear they wanted to go into more and simply weren't able to. That isn't their fault, and I grieve with them. People forget the writers were the original spelunkers. They're also people who have to roll with punches in a way that fans never, ever, have to.

That was a lot of words to say, basically, that I think Solavellan and Solas' story were handled well, and I'm satisfied. I wish there was more -- I'll always mourn whatever was on the mystery floor -- but that's what fanfic is for. It's in our hands now.

[imbecominggayer]

Writing Advice: How To Craft The Perfect Plot!

For @seekerknight557: How do you go about making good plot? I have a lot of characters, but I struggle with making plot for them. I know to use character motivations and etc, but I was wondering what else I could add in order to make it interesting.

Obviously, due to the multi-faceted nature of plots, this post can't cover everything and won't be applicable to every type of plot. :3

In reality, plots are a sum of writing structure so this post will be going over different structures that you gotta have for plots!

A) Writing Structure: Character Roles

First things first, you have to decide what roles your characters are in!

Characters in literary works are divided into roles that communicate what function they serve in the overall plot. While these roles can change overtime as characters develop, having your initial starting point allows you to understand whose story you are investigating and who is just a side character!

If you are a visual person, you can make a diagram that labels characters! Obviously, not all stories have love interests so these roles aren't always used in every individual story. Bear with me as I give you a good list of different characters roles!

Protagonist (the stories' perspective/main character)

Antagonist (the character that opposes the main character)

Hero(the morally good character)

Villain(the morally bad character)

Love Interest (involved romantically with the protagonist)

Deuteragonist (side characters)

Confidants(your best friend characters and other allies)

Tertiary Characters (characters with little to no screen time)

Oftentimes these character roles overlap. Which is a good thing! It saves you pages by not having so many focused-on characters, potentially subverts expectations, and can lead to more 3-dimensional characters!

The point of learning about this non-exhaustive list of characters roles is so you can start understandin the "functionality" of your world. You now know what characters will be focused on in terms of screen time/page appearance, basic attributes about a character, and who the main star-runners are!

B) Writing Structure: What Is Format Of Your Plot?

Authors across the ages and cultures have worked to find different ways of classifying their plot from the infamous Three-Act Structure or the Hero's Journey!

source: https://kindlepreneur.com/story-structure/

But how do you decide what structure you should follow?

Well, look at the genre of your work! While genre is multi-faceted, understanding the genre can help you understand what plotlines you are prioritizing.

Romance tends to focus on, well, romance! Sci-Fi focuses on technology whether showing how amazing it is or how it's robbing people of their humanity! Horror focuses on horrific things!

While Romance can be set in a fantasy land, the focus of the story is the romance. Fantasy can include a romantic subplot but the main focus of the story is the fantastical nature of the world!

You can read stories that share your genre and overall aesthetic, preferably the short stories, to understand what structure they have!

Or you can read an analysis of that book.

If you don't like the structure, you now have some preference and some dislikes!

C) Wrapping Up - Themes And Genre

So, let's say that you have perfectly mastered everything before right now! What happens at the end of your characters journey?

While I can't tell you the exact specifics of their ending since endings depend on other character's goal and motivations, the main character's goals and motivation, and a host of other factors, I can give you a light at the end of the tunnel.

Overally, whether your story ends badly or has a happy ending depends on the genre, tone, and theme! Let's start dissecting that!

Genres like Horror tend to have bad endings for their protagonists! From the casual killings to the fates-worst-than-death endings, protagonists are put through the ringer and even their "happy" endings tend to either set up a sequel baddie, leave them traumatized, or ambiguous. Meanwhile, Romance tends to have a happy ending where the love interest and the protagonist kiss and all problems are solved!

Is this always universal? No, obviously not. Sometimes horror protagonists do unequivocally win at the end. Sometimes Romance leaves a sour-tasting ending, especially in the Dark Romance sub-genre!

The point of genre isn't to tell you what you need to do but just gives you a sense of what readers are expecting and conventions that sometimes need to be followed and sometimes need to be twisted.

For tone, this one is pretty simple. If your story is hopeful, bittersweet endings where not everything is perfect but hope is present tend to be on the rise. If your story is cynical, sad endings are your endings. If your story is cheerful, happily ever afters are always there!

Of course, these can be twisted. Sometimes stories are happily ever afters for one character while everyone is suffering a fate worse than death. Sometimes you don't really know if you should be cheering or not.

But still tone and genre are the major deciding factor in whether or not the ending is happy, sad, justified, bittersweet, or a "he had it coming" type of ending.

What also assists is the theme aka the message. If this story is a cautionary tale against greed, then the story could have the greed-filled people suffering while the heroic, not-greed-filled people rise.

The story could also be about how greed is always rewarded to the detriment of actual virtue and good by showing the good protagonist being crushed by people whose desire carries them off into the faux-heaven or by having the evil protagonist crush everyone to rise to the top.

Tales where wicked is punished and good rises can give you heavy insight into who gets the hammer of the bad ending and who scraps by!

[vicsbasement]

Not a question but I just read a fic of yours (it was 'light & gold') and I just wanna say I loved it so much i have nothing else to say except it was PERFECT on all aspects, plot, writing style, how you wrote the characters spot on, the flow of the fic and the feelings involved and literally everything. I'm a sucker for this sappy type of fics, def one of my top 3 fics overall (and i've read thousands and thousands), tysm for writing it i'll reread it so many times 🥹

I'm... I'm flattered beyond words, honestly. I got this yesterday (I had a day off and spent it at a friend's house catching up) and to say this was one of my highlights of the day is an understatement. I'm a very sappy writer, by my own admission. I don't know, I'm just a romantic and I can't really write angst (even though I love it as a plot device and I love to read it, too!) because it makes me sad, so I try to balance it out and just write happy endings and happy beginnings and maybe not so happy middles but ALWAYS a love confession, a kiss and maybe more before the end because I'm the puppet master here and my ken dolls are ALWAYS going to want to marry by the end, damn it! LMAO. I think my fics lack depth sometimes because of the (often) cheesy overly emotional/sappy things I write but to find people who enjoy that kind of thing always makes me happy. So thank you for the reassurance, thank you for coming to my ask and telling me you liked what I did with light & gold, and thank you SO MUCH for telling me that it's in your top three. Honestly I don't feel like I deserve it, much more because even though I write I read a LOT, and I can tell you that I've been moved beyond words with so many fics by so many amazing, beautiful and talented authors that our little part of fandom has to offer...

Anyway. I just wanted to let you know how happy this made me, so thank you for taking the time. Sometimes this is all we need to keep the gears going, you know??

[stories-by-rie]

there are false friends that make you go "eh okay" and there are false friends that haunt you every time you open your mouth to speak

[ominous-faechild]

So one of the other Tapas writers rambled about armor in the medieval world in the Tapas discord server, and I figured I should share it with you all because it's some really good stuff!

So depending on the type of armor, how you'd process it for reuse varies pretty heavily. Mail, for instance, is fairly easy to resize for someone else because you can add or remove links fairly easily. Same goes for repairs. A good thrust can bust through even riveted mail, but the damaged links can be replaced easily enough. Well, I say fairly easily. It's a pain in the ass to work with. But it's still cheaper on the whole than plate armor, and it's far more likely that someone who isn't a member of the nobility can get their hands on it. Plate armor can range from a simple cuirass to a full set. A full set is usually bespoke to the person, so you probably wouldn't try to steal the whole thing. It would take ages to remove it from a corpse, and if they ended up dead whilst wearing it, the stuff probably isn't worth the effort to begin with. A chestplate or helmet that's been stoved in by a warhammer isn't exactly a candidate for the "it'll buff out" treatment. Then there's the fact that the previous owner's family might reasonably expect this expensive and time consuming investment of theirs to be returned with the freshly minted corpse. So, take the good bits that you can get off in a hurry, but stripping the whole set is ill advised. You expect a helmet to go missing, but if someone's taking the time to remove, say, the codpiece, there will be questions. Recycling any sort of armor into weapons is probably not the best of ideas. The steel you'd want to use for armor is different than the steel you'd want to use for swords. Swords, especially around Europe, North Africa, etc, were typically through hardened and made to be flexible. Armor needs to be more rigid, so it would go through a different heat treat process and would need different carbon content. Not that medieval smiths knew what carbon was, exactly, but they had their own ways of grading steel. It can be done, but there are a lot of things that can be done that you wouldn't necessarily want to. I can, if I was so inclined, go to the shooting range in a tactical maid outfit. That doesn't mean it's a good idea. Full plate would be the equivalent to rocking up to battle in an M1 Abrams. Cool as hell, but waaaay to expensive for the average man at arms. Just about everyone would have a helmet of some kind, and there were all kinds of variations on armor that were more affordable to peasants pressed into military service. Gambesons, as you mentioned, were surprisingly effective. They could be augmented in a lot of useful ways, too. If you want a really good reference for historical arms and armor, there's an anime called Maria the Virgin Witch that gets a lot of stuff right. Not only in terms of styles and types, but how it was used and how one might reasonably expect to fight against it.

This all was written by Rusty! He's a great writer and has a whole bunch of novels out if any of you guys want to check it out!

(You guys should totally reblog this to help those who could use this information to see this <3)

[knightsofeclipse]

I still desire the ability to subdivide playlists

Hear me out; a shipping playlist with sub-playlists for songs from Character A’s vs Character B’s POVs

OR

A character playlist subdivided into different shipping sub-playlists

[dearly-somber]

Myung Jaehyun is PTV (Pierce The Veil) coded methinks

[rosesncarnations]

And what if I tell you I’m writing actual plot points down?

[last-night-is-a-blur]

Hi

I am planning on writing a novel featuring a female character with autism, and would like some insight into how to realistically portray her autistic traits.

I have done considerable research and plan to do more of that, but I would like advice from others as well.

I am especially interested in how to portray the thought process of an autistic person, since this character is going to be one of the pov characters.

[leesookyungs]

a preview of my piece for @orvwomenzine!! please check out everyone's brilliant work when it releases on october 20th 🎉

[bdafic]

Not everyone has enough experience on the internet to recognize scams, especially as scammers find new ways to make you feel weird for being suspicious. There is no shame in inexperience or naivete, scams work for a reason, so here's a heads up on a recent one going around that targets fic writers specifically.

You'll receive a message or comment complimenting your fic and asking permission to draw a scene from it. Scammers of this type are rarely aggressive. They're hoping to get you into a position where you feel obligated to send them money out of guilt, so they hide under a veneer of politeness and ignorance.

Once contact is established they'll try to pull you into a private exchange where either, A.) a service or product is provided as a "gift", then subject to a bait n' switch after delivery, where they demand payment, or B.) change their tactics and act like you've already agreed to a verbal contract about a paid commission, and so feel obligated to honour it. Payment up front. Either way, the approach is designed to make you think this person made an honest mistake. They misunderstood, maybe they don't speak the language well, maybe they're new, or young, or just don't know the 'rules' yet. You take pity on them, and so pay them for the work.

It works similar to the "donate to gaza" scams that have been proliferating on Tumblr lately: appeal to empathy and shame people for questioning it. We're a pretty socially conscious, leftist, bunch of users on this webbed site and those of us involved in fandom communities tend to go out of our way to support and encourage other creators. It makes for a healthy, welcoming, community and we should keep doing that! The flip side is that it also makes a great hunting ground for these types of scams, so stay skeptical and ask questions.

The first time I got a DM like this I actually assumed it was a ChatGPT bot

however, after this they appeared to talk like a person. On the off chance they weren't being deliberately malicious, just extremely clueless, I pushed a few buttons... and it was immediately clear the intent was to trick me into paying them.

The pitch was generic but their background work could easily scan as legit if someone is just doing a cursory pass. They had a had a bio that linked to various socials. Some more convincing than others

Their ArtStation account, formatted like those "p u s s y i n b i o" Twitter bots, actually had some drawings on it too. All the images look like standard newbie stuff on stock backgrounds with a Photoshop filter applied, which plays into the "young/new artist" persona that some will adopt. All the images were uploaded at the same time: either a week ago, or six months ago. It's all tagged "noAI" but...

I ran a few through AI image detection and the results were anywhere from 60 to 98% likely AI, with one or two 15%'s thrown into the bunch.

This particular thread died after I sent that last message, which tells me that while the cold call may have been automated, the pickup probably involved a real person. Over the last week more have come in. Most are extremely obvious; way less sophisticated than the first try. One of the tricks is to use code to pull the username and a random story from the author's account. If you receive a copy of the messages somewhere the code gets stripped out they'll appear like this:

Whereas on fanfiction.net, it looks like this

This is why you'll sometimes see those random spaces around punctuation. Underneath the hood the opening line might read, "Greetings '=$AUTHORNAME' ," and they forgot to delete the space after the variable or didn't format it well and the punctuation was interfering with code execution.

These types of scams are extremely old, this is just a new way of doing them. There are cases where the whole thing is malicious and intentional from start to finish. There are cases where the people doing it are being forced to. And there are cases of people new to art and commissions who legitimately believe this is the best way to approach someone before they've built up enough of a reputation to rely on word of mouth. I have been on the internet since the early to mid 90s and I have seen all three varieties many, many, many times, in many, many, ways.

If you're not sure, ask a few leading questions -- but never give personal information or move to a second contact until you are 100% positive of who you're talking to. If you've got doubts, you don't need to be a dick about it, just block and move on.

[miscflowers]

i want. so badly. to be able to have names that are satisfying. they mean a lot to me and i get they’re characters and aren’t real but i am frustrated and it feels like i’m making them insignificant or. something.

for the rich/main fam we are using Mkyedise for the last name bc i took it from my d&d characters and there is

Ephraim and Zinnia for parents and Galileo, Caius, Zodiac, Mayfly, and Roisin for the kids.

i’m finally happy with all their names, so it’s time to move on, and now i’m trhing to work on the werewolf family and it’s fucking Hard

not a single one of them has a satisfying name

there’s a mother, father, older sister, and younger son

they’re also rich but it’s less important bc the main character of that family is the son and he’s disconnected from his family

[jaykensteinnslaboratory]

Intro post

this is my writing blog. @jaykensteinn is my main and I have a few posts there but I mainly re blog stuff atp. I wanted to have a blog for writing and easier access to any works I do cuz I realized my links in my master list on my main didn't work (they're fixed now) cuz I've changed my user multiple times since those were posted. idk if I'll re upload those hc posts here or just link them but for now my shit is gonna be hella empty cuz I don't write like that and it'll most likely just bc hc posts like I did on main.

y'all can call me Jay. I'm 20, I use he/they pronouns and I'm nonbinary.,. probably? idk it's none of my business .

I'll basically just write abt what I want but here's some anime I like in case y'all like my other works enuff to wanna request smth

one piece (dressrosa)

dr stone (up to s2)

demon slayer (up to s3)

jjba (diamond is unbreakable)

black clover (s1)

mob psycho 100 (up to s2)

toilet bound hanako-kun

the disastrous life of saiki k

komi cant communicate

soul eater

nana

romantic killer

hxh (chimera ant arc)

fruits basket

ultra maniac

hibikis magic

fairytail (haven't seen it in a while tho, also never finished it even tho I started it way back before I was a teen) (dear god I feel old)

some games I like as well (cuz I did sally face hcs)

sally face (duh)

angels of death

dislyte (currently my top fav)

grimms hollow

a date w death

our life beginnings & always

pheonix wright

obey me swd (I've only played the og)

fnaf

[sleeplesslark]

Under the cut because of mentions of horror and horrifying situations

I enjoy reading those scary ask reddit stories. Like "what's the creepiest thing to happen to you while canping". Something about them makes my brain buzz with happy chemicals. I know most of them are probably fake and if they aren't they're peoples real stories and shouldn't probably be analyzed like fiction but I've had this idea in my brain for a while.

I kinda feel like there's a difference in some of them, something being terrifying vs creepy or even unnerving. I feel like, creepy is a step before real fear. Something is wrong and potentially there's a threat but your brain can't quite tell yet. Puts you on edge.

Like. Human footprints found in the morning circling your tent as you slept is creepy, unsettling, its an encounter that will stick with you for all the what ifs. Nothing happened so there was no threat. Or was there? You'll never get to know.

Creepy lives in that sorta space I feel like. This has probably been put more eloquently, but to me creepy is also worse than scary. Scary is like the relief of the threat making itself know, the tent being torn open with you in it is scary, horrifying, traumatizing. I don't mean to downplay it. In horror stories though creepy just. Sticks under my skin more. There's no catharsis, no ending to the buildup sometimes. Just you and some footprints circling your tent out in the middle of nowhere.

I feel like there's some writing advice in here somewhere. In college another student did this super well. I won't say the scene or what happened but it was this well timed, beautifully crafted scene where a piece of the environment got altered in a space of time it shouldn't have been able to. The main character blows it off but as a reader you know that shouldn't have happened. Thus the main character isn't alone, is being watched, carefully. But nothing happens in scene. Just a lot of buildup to an unsettling realization. I think about that scene all the goddamn time I hope that student publishes the book so people do analysis on it.

[rightwriter]

Ellen Brock again! Might as well just repost her whole channel lol. This is great advice for anyone struggling with Perfect Character syndrome! Make those babies flawed!

[cinnamonsugarteethtwists]

i really wish you could justify your google searches to tailor your results to your needs