Ace Of The Green Ajah

back in the dark ages, i was taught (by a guy putting out his 22nd best seller that year) that, back in his day, he was told that a writer needed to write 1,000,000 words of crap before they'd start to get good -- and the catch was that one never knew where those 1,000,000 words were going to fall. the positive side of that was that most of them were going to come at the beginning so it was best to just get them out of the way by soldiering on and learning on the job.

if you're at this stage, just accept that you're going to be uncomfortable and it's going to be horrible word vomit. that will not be true about it all but you're going to feel that way and you have no idea what a good thing that is for becoming a better writer.

i've been a slush editor. that means first reader of anything sent to a publisher for consideration. i have had in my hands some of the most batshit confident dogshit prose known to humanity and i have sent it back with some polite notes (usually because one of our regular writers knew the perpetrator writer in question) only to have the person either tell me it's perfect and i'm insane or to have them enthusiastically submit...exactly the same kind of dogshit prose while telling me they took my notes to heart. no ability to know that it's bad or why.

find what you did right, stick what you think you did wrong in a time-out folder, and keep going. for fun you can do things like write the end first, write a whole story as a chat log, write it from the point of view of the cat in the room, write it as though it was a news release, whatever you want. the point is to write it, to get good at feeling bad at it, and to learn the difference between what works and what doesn't.

That said, length for the sake of length is just drudgery. Consider these elements:

Have you described the settling sufficiently?

Time of day, lighting, weather

Decorations, furniture, plants, interactive objects

Sounds: mechanical, natural, ambient, jarring

Verb it! Use verbs to set the mood. Does the rain merely fall, or does it lash at the windows? Does the wind whistle or howl? Does the sun shine or glare? Using "is" gives us a static, sterile setting. If you want to have your character dissociating, a lot of short "is" based sentences will do the very blank trick. If you want your character overstimulated, ramp up the severity of those verbs!

Have you described the characters sufficiently?

Upon introduction: today's clothing and hair, general disposition

Ongoing: body language, interacting with the space, where they are in relation to others

Sprinkle these in amid dialogue, tacking them onto dialogue tags as dependent clauses. ("Dunno," she said, fiddling with the stuck door handle.)

To put breaks in the speed of a dialogue scene, stop dialogue entirely for a description break. To speed up the scene, remove description.

Have you juggled plot threads sufficiently? For example, have two plots happening.

Establish Thing 1.

Establish Thing 2.

Focus on Thing 2

Blindside with return of Thing 1

By the time we get Thing 1 under control, Thing 2 is ready to boil over.

Rinse, repeat.

My queen thank you for existing it’s all I ever needed and more

Murderbot: no. we fucking hate each other.

one day villain escapes from hero again, heart hammering, and the moment they think they're safe their body betrays them, starts cycling through faces faster and faster and faster, hair bleeding from black to blonde to red to nothing, eyes shifting from brown to green to gray to gold, skin flickering through every tone they've ever worn, every person they've ever been, and they press their hands to their own cheeks trying to hold something still but their fingers sink into features that are already changing, already becoming someone else, becoming the orphanage bully and the kindly nurse and the hero's mother and the hero themself, faces layering over each other like ghosts fighting for the same body, and they can't breathe, can't think, can't find the off switch because there never was one, there was only performance and survival and becoming whatever kept them alive one more day, and now they're alone in the dark with no audience, no threat, no reason to be anyone, and the faces keep coming, keep blurring, keep cycling through strangers they've used and discarded and forgotten until there's nothing left but static, nothing left but the raw terrified animal underneath all the masks, gasping and shaking and wishing for a face that won't run away from them.

and then, in the middle of the chaos, in the middle of the blur, a thought cuts through like a blade: the hero, the hero who finally caught them, who tore off their mask and saw someone, who looked at them with something that wasn't fear or hatred but confusion, and the villain's shifting slows, just for a second, because they remember how the hero is loved, how the hero is held, how people reach for the hero like they're something worth keeping, and the villain thinks, what if, what if they stopped running, what if they stopped being the monster everyone expects, what if they built a face so good, so bright, so heroic that no one would ever look away, that no one would ever leave, that the hero themself would reach out and pull them close and say stay, and the shifting slows more, settles more, features locking into place one by one, not the face of a stranger this time but something calculated, something chosen, something with kind eyes and a soft smile and the exact bone structure that makes people trust before they think, and the villain looks in a window reflection and sees not a villain, not a victim, but a hero, a face that could be loved, that will be loved, because they will make it so, they will wear it so perfectly that no one will ever know the difference.

and the worst part is they almost believe it themselves, almost feel the warmth of it, almost forget that underneath this beautiful borrowed goodness is the same hollow thing that learned long ago that love is just another mask you put on, another face you perform until the audience stops clapping, and they step out of the alley with their new face and their old hunger and they don't know yet whether they're going to save the hero or consume them, whether this is redemption or the most elaborate trap they've ever built, and maybe, in the end, even they won't be able to tell the difference-

back in the dark ages, i was taught (by a guy putting out his 22nd best seller that year) that, back in his day, he was told that a writer needed to write 1,000,000 words of crap before they'd start to get good -- and the catch was that one never knew where those 1,000,000 words were going to fall. the positive side of that was that most of them were going to come at the beginning so it was best to just get them out of the way by soldiering on and learning on the job.

if you're at this stage, just accept that you're going to be uncomfortable and it's going to be horrible word vomit. that will not be true about it all but you're going to feel that way and you have no idea what a good thing that is for becoming a better writer.

i've been a slush editor. that means first reader of anything sent to a publisher for consideration. i have had in my hands some of the most batshit confident dogshit prose known to humanity and i have sent it back with some polite notes (usually because one of our regular writers knew the perpetrator writer in question) only to have the person either tell me it's perfect and i'm insane or to have them enthusiastically submit...exactly the same kind of dogshit prose while telling me they took my notes to heart. no ability to know that it's bad or why.

find what you did right, stick what you think you did wrong in a time-out folder, and keep going. for fun you can do things like write the end first, write a whole story as a chat log, write it from the point of view of the cat in the room, write it as though it was a news release, whatever you want. the point is to write it, to get good at feeling bad at it, and to learn the difference between what works and what doesn't.

That said, length for the sake of length is just drudgery. Consider these elements:

Have you described the settling sufficiently?

Time of day, lighting, weather

Decorations, furniture, plants, interactive objects

Sounds: mechanical, natural, ambient, jarring

Verb it! Use verbs to set the mood. Does the rain merely fall, or does it lash at the windows? Does the wind whistle or howl? Does the sun shine or glare? Using "is" gives us a static, sterile setting. If you want to have your character dissociating, a lot of short "is" based sentences will do the very blank trick. If you want your character overstimulated, ramp up the severity of those verbs!

Have you described the characters sufficiently?

Upon introduction: today's clothing and hair, general disposition

Ongoing: body language, interacting with the space, where they are in relation to others

Sprinkle these in amid dialogue, tacking them onto dialogue tags as dependent clauses. ("Dunno," she said, fiddling with the stuck door handle.)

To put breaks in the speed of a dialogue scene, stop dialogue entirely for a description break. To speed up the scene, remove description.

Have you juggled plot threads sufficiently? For example, have two plots happening.

Establish Thing 1.

Establish Thing 2.

Focus on Thing 2

Blindside with return of Thing 1

By the time we get Thing 1 under control, Thing 2 is ready to boil over.

Rinse, repeat.

Not as the goal, because adopting fitness habits does not always result in weight loss.

And it's the habits, like building muscle, improving flexibility & mobility, increasing nutrient intake & hydration, and getting quality rest & sleep that actually matter.

If you're successfully doing those things your health is quantitatively improving, no matter what your weight is doing. But if the metric your most concerned with is just loosing weight, you may actually be getting less healthy not more.

Pitää.