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[writingattic]

Good news, fellow artists! Nightshade has finally been released by the UChicago team! If you aren't aware of what Nightshade is, it's a tool that helps poison AI datasets so that the model "sees" something different from what an image actually depicts. It's the same team that released Glaze, which helps protect art against style mimicry (aka those finetuned models that try to rip off a specific artist). As they show in their paper, even a hundred poisoned concepts make a huge difference.

(Reminder that glazing your art is more important than nighshading it, as they mention in their tweets above, so when you're uploading your art, try to glaze it at the very least.)

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This might be unpopular but I’m not going to use simpler vocabulary in my writing if it’s out of character for the narrator. If my POV character is a botanist, he’s going to call a plant by its name. If you don’t know what it is you can either Google it or move on just knowing it’s a plant of some sort.

I don’t like this trend of readers being angry that not everything is 100% understandable for them. I want my characters to be believable as people and sometimes people use words people outside of their field will not understand. That’s not a bad thing.

You don’t have to understand every word to get the gist of what’s happening. I’m not going to slow down an action scene to describe every weapon because someone might not know them by name. They can just assume it’s a weapon because that makes sense in the context of the scene.

[writingattic]

Anybody else got that Evergiven sized writers block

[writingattic]

reconsuming the source material before writing fic to pickle your brain in the characters' voices

[writingattic]

Mental Crop Rotation

When farmers grow the same crop too many years in a row, it can leave their soil depleted of minerals and other nutrients that are vital to the health of their fields.

To avoid this, farmers will often alternate the crops that they grow because some plants will use up different minerals (such as nitrogen) while other plants replenish those minerals. This process is known as “crop rotation.”

So the next time you find that you need to step away from a project to work on something else for a while, don’t beat yourself up for “quitting” that project. Give yourself permission to practice “mental crop rotation” to maintain a healthy brain field.

Because I’ve found that when that unnecessary guilt and pressure are removed from the process, a good mental crop rotation can help you feel more energized and invigorated than ever once you’re ready to rotate back to that project.

[writingattic]

reconsuming the source material before writing fic to pickle your brain in the characters' voices

[writingattic]

me: *writes fic*

me: great! time to post to ao3-

ao3 summary box: *exists*

me: 

ao3 summary box:

me:

ao3 summary box: 

me:

[writingattic]

This is what happened when a fanfic site is profit driven. Wattpad sucks 😞

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escapist media in general is an ongoing fascination for me. media written with escapism as a main priority typically requires very little thought from the reader - the whole point is to kick back and live vicariously through a fun story, after all. they're narratives written to prioritize reader comfort.

but because they are written to be as unchallenging as possible, they often come with a set of underlying assumptions that can be just fucking fascinating to unpick. like yeah, why IS it assumed to be escapist and indulgent to enjoy colonial wealth without thinking about it in regency fiction. why IS the self inserty female protagonist, who is assumed to be as universally relatable as possible, written to be sweetly naive and sexually inexperienced. why does this "queernorm" contemporary world replicate patriarchial structures exactly but just with Gay People Allowed. why are these ideas assumed to be easy and comforting? can the writers not imagine anything better than the status quo but except maybe with more gay people and poc if you're lucky?

the fact of the matter is that "unchallenging" fiction tends to just simply replicate dominant cultural narratives as a point of comfort. we won't challenge the reader, so we won't think about the way we write certain things. everything we think of as comforting and safe are, of course, universal, and could not be founded on any harmful ideological assumptions. there is nobody who could be alienated by this.

and that's the sticking point to me, in terms of escapist fiction: it's always necessary to ask whose comfort is being prioritized. you've got to interrogate who gets to escape and the mechanisms by which that escape happens. escapism can be good and necessary to survive the current world, but it does not exist in a vacuum separate from the real world, even if it pretends it does!

[writingattic]

Dialogue tips that actually work:

You are not writing a movie (ignore this if you are). The reader doesn't need to know every word the characters say for the duration of the story. Less is more.

Dialogue can happen within the prose. "And they awkwardky discussed the weather for five minutes" is way better than actually writing five pages of dialogue about the weather.

Balance your dialogues. Surprise yourself with a monosyllabic answe to a dialogue that's ten sentences long. Don't be afraid of letting your character use half a page for a reply or nothing at all!

Don't write accents phonetically, use slang and colloquialisms if needed.

Comma before "said" and no caps after "!?" unless it's an action tag. Study dialogue punctuation.

Learn the difference between action tags and dialogue tags. Then, use them interchangeably (or none at all).

Don't be afraid to use said. Use said if characters are just saying things, use another word if not. Simple. There's no need to use fancy synonyms unless absolutely necessary.

Not everyone talks the same way so it makes sense for your characters to use certain words more often than others. Think of someone who says "like" to start every sentence or someone who talks really slow. Be creative.

Use prose to slow down the pace during a conversation.

Skip prose to speed up the pace during a conversation.

[writingattic]

5 Tips for Writing Best Friends

Friendships can make books more engaging for readers than romantic or family relationships. The trick is writing best friends in ways that feel real.

It’s why we love Gideon and Nico in The Atlas Six or Bree and Alice in the Legendborn series.

Here are a few tips to get you on the path to writing an incredible friendship that’s the backbone of your character’s arcs.

1. Make the Friendship Serve Both Characters

We’ve all read books where the protagonist has a best friend who seems to only exist when the protagonist needs something. They’re the main character’s source of stress relief and support, but real-world relationships serve both people.

Make sure you write scenes where the best friend also benefits from the relationship. They might come to the main character for support or call the protagonist when they need cheering up. The most minor moments can mean the most to readers.

2. Give the Friendship a Why

Why is the friendship so important to each of your characters? Maybe they met while experiencing a unique life event or a tragedy. Maybe one helped the other through a difficult time and later vice versa.

The why behind the relationship is key to making readers fall in love with the bond between your characters. Why they met might be the only thing holding them together when times get tough. Establish a clear motive to their solid connection and everything that happens afterward will be more impactful for the reader.

3. Create a Life for the Best Friend Too

Best friends need personality traits like protagonists. As you draft their persona during your planning or writing phases, remember to give them traits like:

Likes

Dislikes

Goals

Dreams

A history

These details shape who people are. They can also be the things that pull your protagonist and best friend together. 

4. Set Up the Occasional Clash

Friendships are stronger when they survive the ups and downs. Turbulent times also make friendships realistic because friends never stay in just happy periods of their lives.

Make your two characters clash to learn through their arguments or mistakes, especially if they’re disagreeing about how to solve/accomplish your plot’s main goal. How they work through their differences and move past them demonstrates each character’s core values and how much they value their friendship.

5. Establish Honesty Early On

Best friends are honest with each other. Setting that up early on establishes a foundation of trust. It also sets up stakes when one character decides to lie to the other for a specific goal or purpose, even if they don’t like it. Without honesty, there’s no reason for the two characters to trust each other or remain best friends.

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Develop your best friends as separate individuals before merging them in your plotlines. You’ll create stronger relationships that pull readers in and keep them thinking about your story well after they turn the final page.

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One under-appreciated breed of fic writer are the ones who hyperfocus on logistics to the exclusion of all canon shortcuts, and thus usually strike upon an awesome way to flesh out the worldbuilding or characters.

Like, I’m not necessarily talking realism here since often it’s still pretty far from realistic, but more like, “someone has to be running spies in this fantasy kingdom, and we’ve seen the whole royal court, so which background character is it? How does that change these three major interactions?” Or “real life historical nobility did in fact have some things to do that were like jobs, how does this human disaster cope with running an estate?” Or “there’s no reason for a sci-fi robot detective to know how to whitewater kayak, where’d she learn?” Or “if this guy is serving the emperor directly he has to be way high up in the space empire servant hierarchy, why is he doing this menial task for someone else? What’s his motive? Does he perhaps have the secret space telepathy?”

Anyway I’m always DELIGHTED to find a fic or writer who asks these questions because the fics themselves are universally bangers.

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You know. Reading is important. Because I'm like always trying to make every line I write this groundbreaking mindfucking art but like. A book is 90% just saying what happened. "I hugged him around the waist." "The chair was brown and overstuffed." "I woke up alone." Etc etc. Like normal ass lines. I just keep comparing my boring, necessary to set a scene lines, with famous authors' absolute best lines and like.... every line doesn't have to shatter the earth. Sometimes someone just sits in a chair and the lines that wreck you come later, one at a time, here and there. It's alright.

[writingattic]

Random writing tips that my history professor just told during class that are actually helpful

Download all your sources or print them so you can turn off your wifi

Give your phone to someone

Just. WRITE. Writing is analysing, you’ll get more ideas as you write. It doesn’t need to be perfect, for now you can just blurt out words and ideas randomly. You can fix it later.

Create a skeleton/structure before writing.

Stop before you get exhausted. It’s best to stop writing when you still have some energy and inspiration left, this will also motivate you to get started again next time.

Make a to do list

Work in bite sizes. Even if it’s not much, as long as you put some ideas on paper or do some editing.

Simple language =/= boring language, simple language = clear language.

Own your words. If they are not your words, state this clearly in the text, not just in the footnotes.

STOP BEFORE YOU GET EXHAUSTED. Listing it again because it’s easily one of the best tips a teacher has ever given me.

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I do have a piece of writing advice, actually.

See, the first time I grew parsnips, I fucked it up good. I hadn't seen parsnips sprouting before, right, and in my eagerness I was keeping a close eye on the row. And every time I saw some intruding grass coming up, I twitched it right out, and went back to anticipating the germination of my parsnips.

But it turns out parsnips take a bit longer than anything else I'd ever grown to distinguish themselves visually. It's just the two little split leaves, almost identical to a newly seeded bit of kentucky bluegrass when they first come up, and they take a good bit to establish themselves and spread out flat before the main stem with its first distinctive scallopy leaf gets going.

I didn't get any parsnips, not that year, because I'd weeded them all out as soon as they showed their faces, with my 'ugh no that's grass' twitchy horticulture finger.

The next year, having in retrospect come to suspect what had happened, I left the row alone and didn't weed anything until all the sprouts coming up had all had a bit to set in and show their colors, and I've grown lots of parsnips since. They're kind of a slow crop, not a huge return, but I like them and watching them grow and digging them up, and their papery little seeds in the second year, if you don't harvest one either on purpose or because you misjudged the frost, so it's worth it.

Anyway, whenever I see someone stuck and struggling with their writing who's gotten into that frustration loop of typing a few words, rejecting them, backspacing, and starting again, I find myself thinking, you gotta stop weeding your parsnips, man.

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Are you Exploring your Concepts to their Fullest?

                There’s nothing worse than getting hooked into a piece of media by a really cool concept—only to be let down through shallow exploration. The entire story I’m distracted from what’s happening by what could have been had they gone more in depth into what they promised.

                The good news is, avoiding this in your own writing is fairly easy as long as you remember to continuously do one thing: ask questions.

                I talk about this a lot, but making room to explore the implications (especially of worldbuilding and events, not just actions) is only going to deepen your narrative and create a more satisfying, well-rounded world. As well, the decisions you make here are going to set the use of your concept apart from the other stories we’ve seen it in.

                If your concept is a character who has lived on a boat their entire life finally hits the shore, think about what it would mean for someone to have never seen land—how would they feel about trees, valleys, mountains, buildings. They would probably be very familiar with stars and constellations, navigation, the dark, swimming, fishing, and danger surrounding the water. They may prefer cramped spaces, sleeping under a low roof, a gentle rocking or white noise.

                If there’s magic in the world but say only some people have it, how does that impact politics, healthcare, parenting? Do people have biases against magic users or non-magic users? Are there laws set to prevent or limit magic use in certain places, or at all?

                You could ask endless amounts of questions about a concept, and you should. If you introduce something big, exciting, and full of consequences—you must also be willing to commit to it, and explore it to its fullest.

                Good luck! If you feel like sharing, tag a concept you’ve come up with and some interesting implications that go with it!