#writing advice with quilly

[quillyfied]

Please

Please, please, please, please, PLEASE,

When writing fiction

And a character is talking

And a line of dialogue from a different character starts up

PLEASE

START. A. NEW. PARAGRAPH.

We can argue the arbitrary nature of the rules of writing in English all the day long but the truth of the matter is, that is how it’s been done to make reading easier for a long time and if you’re going to break the rule or use an exception, you need to know how to do it, and not just assume that anyone reading can follow along your incomprehensible string of dialogue unseparated by new paragraph breaks.

PLEASE

[aziraphales-library]

Hi! I adore this blog so much!! Do you know any fanfictions with letter-writing back and forth between Crowley and Aziraphale - something including emotions? I die for this trope. Thx!!

Hello and thank you! We have some epistolary fics here, and I’ve got more for you now...

This Is How We Win by edenbound (T)

An archive of letters written between one Crowley and one Aziraphale, spanning a rather unlikely number of millennia.

Pen to Paper by Quilly (G)

Crowley is awoken by something poking him in the face.

My Dear Crowley,... by theycallmeDernhelm (M)

Aziraphale loses himself in writing letters to Crowley during quarantine. He finds himself, too.

Dear Angel, Dearest Demon by shadowintheshade (E)

A series of letters between an angel and a demon during a period of separation, having occurred after an incident neither of them are mature enough to talk about sensibly, both being far too stubborn and obtuse to admit their feelings first.

Sincerely Yours by Mizmak (G)

Talking wasn't always easy--so Aziraphale and Crowley took to writing each other over six millennia, and found love between the lines.

Dear Marje: Ineffable Partners Edition by idealPeriWren (G)

He keeps holding my hand, did I mention we're holding hands now?! Because we are. It’s a thing. It’s bloody fantastic, it is. But you see why I can’t bollocks this up.

Or, the one where Aziraphale and Crowley both repeatedly write to the same problems page for relationship advice. Misunderstandings, shenanigans, and dramatic irony ensue.

- Mod D

[fbwzoo]

Hey, me and my husband are looking into getting a hedgehog after thinking about it for quite a while but we want to make sure we have an ideal housing situation for him/her. Do you have any guides on housing or personal ideas? Thank you!

Hey! :) Sorry for delayed reply. Definitely plan on at least an 8 square foot enclosure as a minimum.

If you’re interested, @hedgehogsofasgard has a write up on bioactive hedgehog enclosures here - http://hedgehogsofasgard.com/faq

And there’s also a Facebook group if you wanna join - https://www.facebook.com/groups/1712848775672889/

Here’s a nutrition group as well, if you’re interested - https://www.facebook.com/groups/1915588522095953/ 

I used https://www.hedgehogcentral.com/forums/ for care when I first started out & modded on the forums for a few years as well. I haven’t been active there for a while now, but I would still recommend them as a good resource for general care & advice. I don’t like any of the hedgehog Facebook groups for advice, tbh. 

Good luck & have fun with your new quilly baby! :) Let me know if you have any other questions. 

[quillyfied]

I am so close to snapping and swallowing the sun if people don’t stop misusing and overusing epithets I SWEAR TO ANYTHING HOLY.

Consider them a strong seasoning that you only use very sparingly and in specific circumstances: if the current story perspective does not know the character’s name, if they are being referred to by certain traits by someone who only wants to identify them by that trait, or in sensational journalism (which is a subset of the previous point tbh).

They are NOT a cop out for clear writing when describing scenes between characters with the same pronouns. They are NOT more interesting than just using the character’s name. They ARE a specific tool that will cause any seasoned reader/writer’s eye to start twitching if overused, because it’s a clear mark of an inexperienced writer and while an often necessary phase to pass through on the way to getting better, it can get tiresome when eight in ten fanfics are addicted to them despite otherwise pretty solid prose.

(Epithets, for folks who are lost: “the other man,” “the blonde,” “the bearded pirate,” “the plumber.” See also actual titles, such as Catherine the Great, but more often just a descriptor used in place of a person’s name.)

[quillyfied]

I’ve been seeing way more typos in fanfic recently, like really strange ones, that I can only conclude are the work of AI based spellcheck options (and in some cases, creative phonetic spellings I really hope are human error bc beautiful).

However, there is one pedantic little quibble that I can present for the next Attack of the Homonyms, and it’s this:

Grisly is an adjective that means horrific or gruesome.

Grizzly means a kind of large North American bear (or, as in grizzled, means grey-haired).

It was not a grizzly murder scene, but it could be a grisly grizzled grizzly bear murder scene.

[quillyfied]

Title: great

Tags: promising

Summary: enticing

Me: oh, cool! I think maybe I’ll—

Summary, at the end: story better than the summary/summary sucks/I suck at summaries

Me: …hmm. No. I don’t think I’ll read, actually.

(The lesson: stop selling yourself short in your own work. In my experience, it’s the mark of a less experienced writer who might still be very talented but more often than not isn’t for me. No pity clicks. I don’t have time for it.)

(Related, but I find writers who also go “best story ever!!” or similar in their summaries also get this reaction from me; stop commentating on your own writing before anyone gets to read it and form their own opinion. Let it speak for itself. Wondering if this is a generational/regional thing?)

[quillyfied]

Google. Please. I am trying to find out WHY English has dialogue followed by a dialogue tag end in a comma instead of a period. I am not looking up HOW to punctuate dialogue. I already know that. But I don’t know why it’s a rule. The most intuitive thing I can think of is that the dialogue itself might be a complete sentence but it isn’t truly a Complete Sentence if it’s followed by a dialogue tag (said and its friends), but WHY. WHY.

[quillyfied]

Guys. Y’all. Auxiliary means additional or supplemental. Stede’s auxiliary wardrobe is his SECOND wardrobe, where he keeps his EXTRA clothes. He has a whole other wardrobe where his daily clothes live. You can see the doors of it behind him when he orders Ed to come with him on the treasure hunt. I am BEGGING fic writers to remember this and stop making the auxiliary closet the only closet he has. Man is so repressed he needed two and only one of them is a secret passage.

[quillyfied]

Today’s Attack of the Homophones brought to you by the letter Q!

“Cue” is a verb or a noun, both meaning a signal or lead-in for the next part to begin. It’s what is usually meant by “X and Y are happening. Cue Z.”

“Queue” is the mostly UK English word meaning a line, as in a thing people wait in in an orderly fashion. Also another word for ponytail, I believe.

“Que” is a misspelling of Spanish “qué”, which means “what.”

[quillyfied]

Today in “that word isn’t pronounced how you think it is”, we have some nautical entries that are going to absolutely drive you insane:

Boatswain is pronounced “BOE-sun.” Also known as the bosun, or the guy in charge of equipment.

Gunwale is pronounced “GUNnel” (though a gunnel is a type of fish and a gunwale is a ship’s upper bits)

Forecastle is often spelled and pronounced fo’c’sle, or “FOKE-sul”, and is the interior fore part of the ship.

Why the spelling and pronunciation so different? That would probably be good old English elision at work again, something slurred so often in speech it sounds completely different now from how it’s spelled. Like how Greenwich is “grennich” and Leicester is “Lester”.

[quillyfied]

Had an interesting encounter with chased vs chaste with someone who isn't a native English speaker. This was at work and I couldn't remember the word modest... I panicked and settled for deliberately unsexy, which is going to haunt me for the rest of my life

Oh, that is certainly a treacherous pair of words if ever I’ve seen one. And deliberately unsexy is certainly one way to make a synonym for modest so I applaud your wordplay! XD

[quillyfied]

Here’s a tough question for writerly types:

Has anyone figured out when fragments or run-ons/comma splices are artistically acceptable and when they are not on any more concrete criteria than just because they sound good? Because I’ve been gumming at this little problem for a while now and can’t really come up with any empirical way to explain or codify it beyond “this line sounds good despite being a fragment, but this line sounds bad because it’s a fragment.”

Sorcery, perhaps?

[quillyfied]

Today in “attack of the homonyms”, some pesky recurring little sneaks that can trip up even the most experienced of writers:

Flare is either a noun or a verb, meaning a widening or burst of something, as in light (sun flare, lens flare) or fashion (flare jeans, flare of a long coat).

Flair is style or panache, or a personal touch. Or something you collected on Facebook around 2007.

Peak is the tippy-top of something, as in a mountain or a finance chart or an emotional experience, and to peak means to hit the top, like being the best you’ll ever be at something or feeling the most you’ll ever feel about something. Usually there’s a connotation of going down after a peak, because of how mountains are shaped. Or how post-high school goes for people who truly believe high school is the best life ever gets.

Peek means to look sneakily with the intent to not get caught.

Pique is a funky one but when used like “fit of pique” it usually means irritation, and when used like “piqued interest” it means to stimulate curiosity.

Homonyms! They’re tricky buggers!

[quillyfied]

Today in “Attack of the Homonyms and Additional Similar Words”, some truly petty and pedantic little numbers that make you feel a little bit like a jerk for pointing out but grate like a grain of sand in a flip-flop:

Bare is usually used in the context of either naked or exposed (bare skin, baring of souls), or lowest/most basic (bare minimum, bare cupboards)

Bear is used in the context of to physically carry (bear the load, bearing a child) or to emotionally handle (more than I can bear); past tense of this word is “borne” (this is not to be borne/I can’t bear this; Dumbo was borne aloft on his ears/Dumbo’s ears bear his weight; I bore this child/this child was borne by me/I bear this child now until it will be born, and have fun with that additional homonymic tangle)

Homey means cozy and comfortable, as in a home

Homely, however, is a vexing trickster: in US English, it means ugly, usually in relation to a girl being plain or unattractive; in UK English, however, it means the same as homey, comfortable and cozy. The horror! The confusion! This is fanny and fanny all over again*!

Where (pronounced “wair”) refers to place or position, usually in an adverbial sense (“this is the place where you said to meet”)

Were (pronounced “wrr”) is second person singular past tense (“you were there”) or plural past tense (“they were there”) of “be.” Easy enough to overlook, definitely a pedantic one to get hung up on, but I did warn y’all this one was a petty episode!

*Fanny in US English means “butt”; Fanny in UK English means “vagina.” Terrible miscommunications have been founded on that cultural gap, I can only assume; the consequences must have been dire and devastating. And silly beyond all reason.

[quillyfied]

apparently I'm becoming an impromptu grammar teacher, but while I have another post brewing about subject-verb agreement that I'm trying to bully into being more coherent than anything my grammar teachers taught me, have another instance of "Attack of the Homophones" that I myself fell victim to and when I realized it I had to go lie down:

Censor is to obscure or remove things. You may know this one from beeps on the TV when someone says a word not allowed by local programming, or new age internet Puritans claiming it's what's needed to protect metaphorical children they don't actually know or care about as a thin veneer to the belief that all media must be pure according to an arbitrary standard of morals that aren't actually universal or even helpful.

Sensor is a device which senses, like the thing in your car that senses when the key is inside of it and attempting to get the engine to turn over so the car will start but it stops working all of a sudden, probably related to sudden bitterly cold weather, and sends you into a tizzy for several days until the mechanic sorts it out and you realize you've been typing the wrong word in texts to your family the entire time.

[quillyfied]

Haven’t done a Writing Advice With Quilly post in a while bc I got anxious that it was coming across as mean-spirited or preachy rather than me sharing about a subject I know a lot about, sooooo. Uh. Suppose it’s going to become more of a “by popular demand” sort of segment, since I can’t convince myself that I’m not being a pedantic bully by making posts inspired by errors I read or make in the real world. Wheeeeee.