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When your story is ready for rewrite, cut it to the bone. Get rid of every ounce of excess fat. This is going to hurt; revising a story down to the bare essentials is always a little like murdering children, but it must be done.

Stephen King (via writingdotcoffee)

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hewwoooo from 3000

hi new followers! here’s a little about me if you’re interested~

my name is Liv!

basically, the summer after my graduation i found this freakish glowing crack in the sidewalk in my local park aaaaand sooo i picked it with a stick cuz who wouldn’t…

……and got sucked through a portal to the year 3000 🙃🙃🙃

it’s u h mmm. extremely weird and unsettling!!! it hardly even looks like earth. i’m talkin’ like… trees with eyes that cry green slime, toxic lakes, mutant creatures, old TVs that spy on people, VANILLA DORITOS AND CUCUMBER KIT-KATS…….. it’s wack.

anyway, portals to other dimensions appear here all the time, apparently. and the people and things that come out of them are technically not legally supposed to be here (even though the government uses extra-dimensional stuff for their own gain all the time…but whatever…)

SOOO the day i arrived i went to a pet store to check out the creepy pets CUZ WHY NOT and i used my EXTREMELY VINTAGE dollars to rent a cat. (her name is agent spaghetti by the way, she’s soooo cute!!!)

the dude in the back noticed i’m not from this dimension and reported me to the neighborhood watch. but the cashier, Alix, helped me outrun them!!

i now live in his living room (with his MANY FREAKISH PETS!!!) he pretends he doesn’t want me living with him but I know he secretly likes the company :)

there’s so much more to say, i don’t even know where to start. i’ve been here for almost a year now. still trying to find a way back home… but honestly, I’m enjoying my time here! as creepy as it is and as many near-death experiences i’ve had, ya girl loves an adventure.

i’ve even made some new friends! this is Gunnar and Faye. they’re brother and sister. though… I’m preeeeeetty sure Faye is from another dimension. haven’t gotten around to asking her about that yet…

OH!!! and my best friend Natalie from 2020 sometimes comes to visit me as a hologram!! so i can still annoy her even with 980 years between us :))

as fun as it is… sometimes i get the feeling i might be in danger. maybe even not just me. the government here is up to something, i know it. they have all these weird programs and institutions in place, and the president, Mr. Prez (i know, genius name) and his assistant Clanca seem to have a larger goal in mind…

maybe i’m just being paranoid. who knows. but i’m determined to find out.

you can mainly find me on instagram! That’s where you can stay up to date with my latest posts and discoveries! it’s also where you can engage in comments and IG stories and help me do things like escape government custody or choose a cool outfit for me to buy :)

but! if you don’t have IG, i’m on tumblr now! i’ve started posting all of my IG posts here from the beginning, so you can start to stay updated here as well. check my #story tag to read in order.

thx for joining me on my adventure 💖

xo, Liv

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10 scene ideas for any genre and any story

1. A scene where the character’s biggest weakness becomes their saving grace.

A paranoid character brings the thing that protects them, a gossip shares information about someone which allows someone else to save their life, an impatient person forces someone to leave before tragedy hits. This can be used for as many characters as you have.

2. A scene where their greatest asset becomes detrimental to them.

A loyal person ends up following someone who’s toxic, a brave person ends up getting into an accident, a neat person ends up throwing out trash which was incredibly important. Again, can be used many times.

3. A scene where a character receives a gift.

This is good for any number of things–characterization, plot movement, showing relationships in motion. It can be directly relevant to the plot or symbolic of something else. Make it a genuine but bad gift, make it an amazing but insincere gift–the possibilities are endless.

4. A scene where they give a gift.

Same as before. Good gift or bad gift, it can reveal intentions, move the plot forward, create symbols–this is such a versatile scene type.

5. A scene where a child needs help.

Lost in the store, stuck in a trap, fell while playing–it shows something very simple about your character that you can’t show in any other way. There’s a simple grace to helping a child that you don’t know, and how you handle it is more telling than how you’d help a child that you do know.

6. A scene where they wake up from a nightmare.

Now, I love dream symbolism as much as anyone else, but the conscious actions they take after having a nightmare (and the physical actions they take while they’re still asleep) are just as interesting, if not more. Do they fall back asleep? Eat? Call a friend? Draft a letter? Do they remember the dream at all, or just the fear that went along with it?

7. A scene where worlds collide.

Maybe a character’s friends come into where they work, or they run into people who they’re no longer friends with. A family member brings home their S/O to reveal it’s someone that the character dislikes. Two different parts of their life now meet. How does the character react? How do they consolidate the different versions of themselves?

8. A beach scene

Any TV show that has a beach episode is an anime, right? Well, regardless, swimming is pretty much universally beloved–which means your characters would probably love it too. (And if you don’t believe that this can work in your story, then get creative! It doesn’t have to literally be at a beach, but humanity loves swimming.)

9. A scene where a character gets new clothing.

They have to go shopping, sit through a fitting while their parents makes them a new shirt, rummage through the remains of society in a post-apocalyptic world. Unless you’re writing about nudists (and who knows, you might be), they need to get their clothes somewhere, and seeing how they respond to that, what clothes they pick out, and what the process looks like in this world can be incredibly telling.

10. A scene where plans fall through.

Spice up conflict in your story or just show how characters react when things don’t go their way. Chances are, your characters will make plans at some point in the story, and making them go wrong is a great chance to thicken the plot and make your character more relatable or dislikable. (Or both. Both is good.)

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people who willingly use semicolons are so sexy

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Happy slightly belated NaNoWriMo!

Good luck sticking with and finishing your project to everyone who’s started, and a reminder that it’s a completely fair choice if you haven’t! Either way, enjoy yourselves this month and good luck with whatever writing project you’re working on!

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I don't know who the original artist is, but you have a talent for truth.

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I saw this meme in a post I reblogged a while back and my hand slipped, whoops

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Pacing in your Writing

So I realized I might have a semi-unique way of handling pacing in my writing that might help some other people.

Imagine your story as a TV show. 

It’s up to you the length, whether it’s a bunch of thirty minute episodes or a mini-series with episodes longer than an hour.

Once you have that, consider the following: 

Where do you see the first episode ending? Did you just spend half your novel detailing what would be considered the first episode? You are probably pacing way too slow.

Do you have a bunch of parts that would be considered different “episodes” but they take up only a a tenth of the book? That means it’s time for adding more into the story.

What about the characters? How are they being introduced throughout your “TV series”? Are too many being introduced in one episode? Are there new characters even in the final episode. 

Is each episode interesting? It doesn’t always have to be a high stakes plot episode (you can have your “beach episode” for instance), but will it keep someone entertained?

So how do you do this though?

Outline your story based on major points. This could be three episodes, five episodes, whatever you see fits your story and its overall pacing. The TV show in your head might vary as well compared to others. A thirty-minute episode series will be much faster paced than an hour-long episode series, for instance. 

It’s an overall very subjective process, but it helps to put your story’s focus into perspective. Every episode counts, every part of the plot counts.

So don’t spend too long on the first episode because the rest of the TV series awaits. 

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bonus points if someone comes in and interrupts you and you have to start all over.

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Hi. Sorry to bother you! I tried browsing through the Answered Asks but didn't see something similar to this 🥺I have a character who is the kind of person where she seeks an eye for an eye... But I accidentally made her too aggressive... How should I (show, not tell - this is hard) that she is someone who doesn't forgive easily yet a character that readers can relate to? -- Anxious Anon

Helping Readers Empathize with an Aggressive Character

Hi! It’s always a little hard to answer character development questions when I have limited information to go on, but one way you can make readers empathize with an intense personality trait is to give some relatable backstory. Why is this character so slow to forgive? What happened in their past that they feel it’s necessary to quickly seek revenge? My guess is that they are protecting themselves from a past hurt, and explaining that can rouse sympathy for someone who otherwise just looks like a big jerk. You can also show the ways they do love, care, have loyalty, etc. and where, and why, they choose to draw the line. Then they become a character with a personal moral code they stick to, which gives them integrity, rather than being a random aggressor. Hope this helps!

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AUTHOR DID A SHIT TON OF RESEARCH FOR THIS!

author did about 2 seconds of research on the science and then gave up after an incoming headache

I belong to both categories