#writing hack

[magicalwildlifeknittingthing]

My Must-Haves For Fictional World-Building // Wednesday Whatevers

Hello everyone, I hope you’re having a lovely morning, afternoon, or evening! Over the years, I feel like I’ve perfected (more or less) my world/character-building process, so I figured, why not make a post about it? I’m a neat freak as well, which helps a ton. Below, I’ve included everything I do/make to keep track of all my characters, worlds, and their traits as well as other resources that…

[museaway]

After weeks of feeling like I'm drowning in WIPs and never sure which one to work on, despite my pretty digital system in Notion that had been working for a couple of years, I've gone analog.

I assigned an index card to each WIP and put the subject, what event it's for (or if it's a gift), and noted the due date in the top right corner. (My pen is blocking a bang fic that has to stay secret.) There's room for notes on each card if I need them. And when a fic is done, I'll get to remove the card from the stack, which will feel significant!

I arranged the cards by date on the table and easily selected the two to prioritize today. Being able to hold the cards seems to help. I have a better sense of quantity, and I don't have to open an app to check my WIP list (which will inevitably distract me). This is already working better than the paper checklists I've made in the past, and I can stick the cards in a drawer when I don't need them, so they won't stress me out.

[doom-dreaming]

I'm back to be annoying about it. I was doing a lot of thinking today to try to drown out the screaming matches my supervisors were having with each other :)

Imagine, if you will, a scrapbook of the best summer you ever experienced. Imagine flipping through it, looking at each badly-focused, blurry photo and fondly remembering the exact moment it was taken. Glittery stickers adorn the corners of the pages, handwritten notes from your friends fill the space between pictures...

Sufficiently nostalgic? Good. That's the aesthetic I want the Halo University AU to have.

Anyway. As a 'no plot, just vibes' AU (so far?), I THINK what I'm gonna do is just write it as a collection of snapshot scenes that form a loosely-connected narrative, and I was not joking about the Carly Rae Jepsen soundtrack, so each one is going to be themed around/inspired by a song.

(If I had sufficient art skills, I'd make a cute little fake polaroid for each chapter too.)

And! Since it's a fun, no-pressure writing exercise for me to work on when the mood hits, I think it'd be cool to make it a little. idk. interactive? I want to use it to explore dynamics I might not normally think about, so feel free to suggest two or more characters (doesn't have to be a ship) and/or a Carly Rae song and I'll see what I can do with it! I have a FEW ideas already cooking that I'll probably start with but. go wild, if you're interested.

[etjwrites]

By the ways guys, did you know that ctrl + backspace will delete your entire word!? No more letter by letter erasing! 🤩

[cataclysmic-writer]

Unconventional writing hack:

Buy a light-up keyboard.

I'm dead serious. I've been trying to get back into writing recently, and my computer isn't great, so I bought a Bluetooth keyboard for, like, 30 bucks on Amazon. Turns out, it lights up when you type, and goes dark if you pause too long.

Single most organically motivating thing I've ever owned.

[queen-of-the-icemark]

Explaining to my friends how I made a playlist to help me write more:

"So you put on the music and it helps you think of ideas, right?"

No. Ideas are not my problem. Sitting down to write is my problem. The playlist is so that instead of going, "It's not the time," or "We don't have enough time," my OCD now goes, "This is the writing music! We must write!"

If I'm going to be in distress, then it may as well be productive distress.

[omjitskailay]

GUYS I'VE DONE IT I'VE HACKED THE SYSTEM

So my problem with writing papers has always been organization, right? I'll get a strong start, but then once I have two or three pages, the paragraphs blur together and if I want to change anything in the structure of my outline it just feels hopeless and confusing and it gets messed up and my paper is all the worse for it

So... I started colorcoding my paragraphs! And i just have to look at the outline where I have Main Idea #1 in green text, and then scroll down to the paragraph that is in green text and its all right there

It made my writing so much better and I hope it will help you to!

An example from my own writing (its a rough draft i don't want anyone to read it yet)

[the-elusive-soleil]

Also, speaking from personal experience, it can be easier to get work done in a library versus other places once you establish in your brain that library time is “work time”. I tricked myself this way and now my ~3 evenings a week at the library are my most productive.

(With the unfortunate side effect that now I have a harder time writing anywhere else...but I’m working on it.)

Or just go to browse and hang out! I promise it will be inspiring :)

[gay-monke]

And update on my wip. Afther explaining the whole serie to my homie ans failing to write a page in 2 months I finally realised that I could just write like I was explaining the plot to the mother fucking paper and it fucking works!

Wrote more in 2 weeks than I did in 2 fucking months!

[thatsbelievable]

[justsalpals]

And in this moment I became obsessed with G13

what if I was a shitty little oily hacker guy, looking out only for myself. what if I had a small ring of like minded cyber criminals, maybe my friends, maybe willing to stab me in the back at a moments notice, maybe that's what friendship means to us. what if I worked for the feds and the criminals and above all for myself.

what if a world of explosions fell flat with static. what if chosen family spat the same predictable lines. what if I was a hacker, and the world was code. what if.

what if a little old woman fell right into my brain, sweet and useless and real. real real real.

and if I reached out -let the code of my mind fill in her blank spaces- and tasted what it meant to be real.

[disgracefulthings]

Modern Day Platonic Cumplane AU where Shen Yuan meets struggling author, Shang Qinghua. He realizes that Shang Qinghua is the author of his most hated story, and rips into him. After he is done, Shang Qinghua explains how he currently can't afford to write a good story, and Shen Yuan, a rich kid who has done nothing with his life at this point, decides to help fund his story in exchange for being his editor, and Shang Qinghua agrees

After seeing the state of Shang Qinghua's apartment and all of his possessions, Shen Yuan decides 'hell naw', and has Shang Qinghua move in with him (he had an extra room) and replaces all his stuff. They end up becoming close friends, and Shen Yuan learns that being an editor is fulfilling for him

While those two get along, their friends think something else is happening. They believe that Shen Yuan has become a Sugar Daddy, and Shang Qinghua is his Sugar Baby, and they are NOT happy about that

It does not help when they go to Shen Yuan and tell him that Shang Qinghua wants his money, Shen Yuan replies 'I know, that was part of our arrangement'

Hearts are broken and many people want to break them up for their own selfish reasons (whether because they want to be with Shen Yuan or Shang Qinghua, or in Shen Jiu's case, doesn't want his baby brother to date a freeloader)

Meanwhile Shang Qinghua and Shen Yuan are oblivious and are having the time of their lives working on their masterpiece

[militaryapple]

street racer sylus headcanon just so i can get used to writing him . .

— he would totally do illegal driving.. do you see this man? he’s speeding on every street and wouldn’t even take the money! he would probably just to spoil you though.

street-racer!sylus who tells you to get in his car, since you've been begging him to take you to one of the races. why would he be worried about getting you hurt? he's the best racer around town for one, and two, he wouldn't allow himself to get you hurt.

street-racer!sylus who starts to driving to the race, cutting through every space he can, leaving a trail of honking cars behind him as his eyes narrow on the road ahead him, occasionally catching glances at your glowing face, you seemed excited.

street-racer!sylus who arrives at the race, his knuckles turning white as he pulls into the line, ready to speed off. "sylus - " you turned to him sitting back, now confused. "aren't we supposed to get out and talk to people?" you ask, earning you a small chuckle in response. "for what?" he hummed, his foot closing in on the pedal. "I already know I have most of the bets here anyways." he seemed almost bored.

street-racer!sylus who speeds off on the road, making you fly to the back of your seat in response. he turns his music up — making you screaming. "sylus!" your hands gripping on to his arm, with one of his hands on the wheel while the other latched on to the gear. he couldn't help but smile, how cute you were.

street-racer!sylus who grips on to your thigh, squeezing it every time he has to take a sharp turn. “stress relief” he hums everytime you glare at him.

street-racer!sylus who’s hands wander farther down your pants. the thrill only making you drenched with excitement — his speed still fast while his fingers rub against the fabric of your pants. teasing you.

street-racer!sylus who makes you moan while he drives around mid race >__< ! your hands gripping on his arm tighter, whining and grinding your hips against his fingers. how sweet he was with you, and how good he was treating you. your body twitching only for you to cum at his dry-fingering :(

street-racer!sylus who wins as expected, yet he doesn’t care about the money — driving you both into a secluded corner before turning to you. “i won,” he said smugly, his eyes scanning you up and down, how pretty of a mess you were. “now ,i think it’s time for me to claim my prize.”

[samcarpenters]

"It really hurts Deborah's feelings. Deborah really cares about what Ava thinks, and whether or not the show is funny. So, that's where things start to really get tense." — Lucia Aniello

HACKS: S01E06, "New Eyes" / S04E05, "Clickable Face"

[penned-wars-in-my-thoughts]

This is literally how i write in general lmao. Its absolutely hilarious to me that theres a term for it.

I treat writing like i do drawing. I get the very VERY basic outline/skeleton down then go into my sketch/drafting phase which quite often jumps back to the skeleton or forward to details. In drawing i dont do linework much, so my final piece tends to be a cleaned up and detailed version of my sketch. How i write is the same way and its literally because of my adhd.

Stuck? Try junebugging.

I don't know who needs to hear this, but we're 5 days into nanowrimo so maybe this will be helpful.

Do you want the safety and surety of knowing what happens next in your story but can't stick to an outline? Does knowing in advance what will happen suck the joy out of discovery writing? Do you try to wing it through plots but get tangled in plot holes or have a story that runs out of steam because you can't figure out what went wrong? Are you at your most creative when you have a little bit of guidance? Do you tend to under-write? Do you get ideas in your head for random scenes and snippets that drop from the sky without context?

If any of these apply to you, junebugging a draft might be for you!

What Is Junebugging?

Since you're on Tumblr, you might already be familiar with the concept of junebugging as it relates to cleaning. If not -- I think the idea was first introduced to me by @jumpingjacktrash.

The basic idea is that you tackle cleaning by way of controlled chaos. You pick a specific area you want to focus on, like your kitchen sink, and then wander off to deal with other things as they occur to you, but always returning back to that area. You end up cleaning a little bit at a time in an order that may not make sense to an outsider but which keeps you from getting overwhelmed and discouraged.

How Does Junebugging Work in Writing?

OK, so that's great, but how does this work with writing? Well. In my case, the general idea is to jump between writing linearly, outlining, and writing out of order. It usually looks something like:

Start free-writing a scene, feeling my way through it and enjoying the discovery process.

Thinking, ok, now I have this scene, did anything need to happen to lead up to it? Do I need to go back and add some foreshadowing? Does this scene set anything up that needs to be paid off? And then jump forward/back to make those adjustments.

I'll usually have a bunch of disconnected ideas of ideas that have popped into my head, so I'll write those down in a list somewhere and then try to figure out what goes in between them and what order it goes in.

I'll write what I call "micro-scenes" which is where I'll just sketch out a few essential elements of what's going on without worrying too much about details, description, etc. -- just he did this, she said that, the setting was this, real bare-bones script. Then I can come back through and flesh out each of those microscenes into an actual scene later.

Got a story that has a complex structure? No problem. Write through each storyline one at a time and then chop them up and weave them together afterward. Write all the B plot scenes first then come back through to do A plot and C plot. Move the pieces around like legos. No one ever has to know.

This method works for me because I can't "decide" story elements in advance. I have never been able to just sit down and "figure out" what happens in a story beyond a couple steps ahead -- I have to discovery-write my way forward. But at the same time, that gets really daunting. So I zoom forward with micro-scenes, roughing out the beats in the most bare-bones way possible, then when I run out of clear vision for what happens next I backtrack, flesh out those scenes, build in connective tissue, etc. and by then I will probably find more inspiration to jump forward.

It's basically folding drafting, outlining, and revising all together into a single phase of writing, which is chaotic and goes against everything people teach you, but if it works? then it fuckin works.

Anyway, sorry for the jumbled-up post, I'm dashing this off quickly while I heat up a pizza and I'm about to dive back into my WIP -- but I hope this was a little helpful. If nothing else, take this as my blanket permission that it's 100% OK to jump around, write out of order, write messy, outline sometimes, pants sometimes, and do whatever else it takes just to get through the story. You've got this. Good luck.

[stay-close]

Let someone love you the way you are - as flawed as you might be, as unattractive as you sometimes feel, and as unaccomplished as you think you are. To believe that you must hide all the parts of you that are broken, out of fear that someone else is incapable of loving what is less than perfect, is to believe that sunlight is incapable of entering a broken window and illuminating a dark room.

Mark Hack