I love your writing. Everything flows together so nicely and everything about it is actual genuine perfection. How do you get so good at writing do u have any tips😢😢😢😢😢 I love rereading cities and I’m planning on starting the green bone saga so I can read ur other fics and understand them instead of rawdogging🥹🥹🥹🥹
Oh my goodness, this was an absolute DELIGHT to receive in my inbox. Thank you so, so, so much for your kind words; you have no idea how many times I’ve reread this message. 🥹💖
To be honest, I don’t know if I’m qualified to talk about writing as I’m very much an amateur hobbyist—and very much still learning. Grad school made me a proficient academic writer, but after graduating I realized I no longer knew how to write fiction (triggering several breakdowns lol). My previous therapist taught me it was okay if I no longer knew how to write; I could simply just. . . start over and learn how to write again. It was kind of daunting at first, and I was scared I would never reach the level of proficiency I’d been at during uni. But treating myself like an absolute amateur saved my writing (and also snapped me out of several bad writing habits).
Here were the things I did those first few years, many of which I still do to this day. Mandatory we’re all different disclaimer, so take what resonates, leave what doesn’t, etc etc:
Read, Read, Read. Read within your genre, read out of your genre, and read actively, by which I mean you try to articulate exactly what you liked and didn’t like in a book or fic you’ve read. Could really be as simple as, “I liked their characterization,” or “I think their prose is pretty.” The more you do this, the more specific you’ll get. (e.g. “I enjoy this fic’s take on this character because their depiction of the character’s anger and reactivity feels very similar to canon, especially in instances X,Y,Z.”) I exclusively write fanfic at this time, and have of course enjoyed hundreds of fics at this point, but I’m a huge believer that there’s no substitute to reading published books/fiction/poetry.
‘Good Writers Borrow, Better Writers Steal.’ (T.S. Eliot) One thing that helped me immensely in trying to reverse-engineer other authors’ works was this thing that’s called copywork exercises. Basically, you copy a passage or page from a book you like, word for word, either by hand or typing it. What it does is train muscle memory for cadence, and sentence and paragraph construction. One of my weaknesses as a writer is over-reliance on just two narrative modes: action and dialogue. Doing this exercise helped me get into the habit of varying my paragraphs and sentences, incorporating more introspection and description, and also knowing when and where to summarize/tell rather than show. Here’s an example of a copywork exercise I did many years ago:
Write, Write, Write. Sometimes you will have to force yourself to sit down. Don’t get discouraged if you can barely scratch 500 words in a whole day; it took me many years to work up to being able to comfortably crank out 1500-2500 words per writing session. You build writing stamina the way you train for a marathon: by increasing the amount or difficulty of what you’re doing gradually.
Be Patient With Yourself. ‘It’s normal to take a while, you’ve just got to fight your way through it.’ (Ira Glass) I spent many, many years churning out subpar writing that didn’t look anything at all like the vision I had in my head; many years feeling discouraged. I wouldn’t say that I’m good at this now, or as good as my ambitions—we’ve still got a ways to go before then, but I don’t feel the despair I did freshly graduated, ready to return to writing, and sitting in front of a blank document realizing, ‘I don’t know how to do this shit.’ Over time, my goals have also changed: rather than being a good writer (nebulous, unspecific), every project I ask myself: ‘What am I trying to say here? Am I able to tell the story I want to tell? Is the vision translating on paper?’ And if it isn’t: ‘Why doesn’t this story read and feel right? How could I fix that? Do I have the skills or tools to pull this off; and if I don’t, how do I go about learning/gaining them?’
Some of my favorite resources on writing:
K.M. Weiland's Secrets of Story Structure Series and Creating Stunning Character Arcs Series;
Blake Snyder and Jessica Brody's Save The Cat! Writes a Novel
Lisa Cron's Story Genius (most helpful resource for me in terms of conceiving of an internal character arc and connecting it to an external arc);
Donald Maass’ The Emotional Craft of Fiction;
Ellen Brock’s Basic Story Structure and Advanced Story Structure Series
I’m not an expert by any means, but I love learning and studying craft, I love reading and good writing, and I love trying to figure out how other authors do it. So if you wanna chat some more about writing and fic, I would love to do that!
Also, just quickly because I know this post is already long enough 😔: Very, very sorry cities ch10 is taking a bit of time. I know I said three chapters before the New Year’s—and believe me, no one is more disappointed by my inactivity than I am—but the truth is I’m just dealing with some irl bullshit at the moment that’s making me sad and unmotivated to write (or do anything else, really). I am still writing daily, though not at the level or speed at which I usually do, but I promise I’m on it and will try to update my tracker more frequently.
And I’m glad to hear that about GBS! It’s a very different world and story from TPW, but it’s SO good and well-done, with excellent characters and world-building. Whether or not you get into my specific ship, I highly, highly recommend it. I’d stumbled upon it because Kuang recced it herself, so I knew it was gonna be good. 💚 My GBS fics and ship have a very different vibe from cities and Rinezha, and I enjoy being able to work on them together because they scratch very different itches for me.
Ily, thank you so, so, so much again for this ask, for your kind words, and your love for cities, it’s genuinely made my entire month. 💖🥰🤗
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never be good at your job. it's a trap. they'll just give you more and harder stuff to do and it'll pull you away from your true passion of writing gay fanfiction for people on the internet
It's hard to say this without sounding like a right wing dickhead, but the thing about progressive spaces is that they may naturally attract people who are always on the lookout for excuses to start a fight. Like you can find yourself faced with someone whose political outrage is totally justified, and whose humanitarian ideals are right on the money, but simultaneously they are carrying a ton of psychological baggage about being wronged and getting revenge, and they will exploit literally any opportunity to live out this psychodrama with anyone in their line of vision. I have thought of several related anecdotes since I started typing this post, but I'll limit myself to the thing that inspired it, which is that I just visited this ultra-lefty cafe/bike shop/community gathering space where I've heard that the proprietor is constantly in a fight with everyone around her. When I paid for my stuff I noticed that there was no tip option, but I thought I had heard something about this, so I snuck away to look at the website and it made me really glad I didn't ask! I think there should have been a really enticing and exciting way for her to say "I've decided to be the change I want to see in the world, so I'm paying my baristas a full living wage, I'm making sure EVERYONE feels welcome and comfortable here, and I'm selling products I believe in!" -- but instead all the web copy sounded more like "You're either with me or against me, you're a fucking piece of shit asshole if you can't handle the inclusive atmosphere here, and by the way tipping is for fascist cavemen and if you ever try to tip someone you are refusing to relate to them authentically and you are enforcing a dangerous and evil power dynamic that should be purged from human society (so therefore I pay my staff well)." Like everything she stood for was totally agreeable, but why did she have to put it like it was directed at her worst enemy, rather than at the kinds of people she wants to attract? If the word on the street is to be believed, the reason for this posturing is that she spends quite a lot of energy making as many enemies as possible, and she probably likes it that way. I guess I'm just reminding myself, and perhaps others, that while one might think of "politics" as being broadly social and theoretical, no individual can fully separate the political from the intimately personal. Even somebody who seems to want to uplift and protect their fellow humans may be getting some perverse inner satisfaction out of that valiant crusade, and you may never realize it until you find yourself in a confusing fight with them.
I ran a LARP for a few years explicitly aimed at being queer friendly and accessible, and eventually cut it short mainly for this exact reason. You wouldn’t believe the amount of abuse my staff and I took for reasons that felt genuinely insane. I got called ableist for telling someone they couldn’t be invincible in my game of make believe, more than once. Defended myself, multiple Jewish players, and a conversion student from accusations of antisemitism based on alleged lore we’d never written / suggested / that simply and plainly did not exist in game. Had a staffer try to talk to someone about how a joke she made was uncomfortable only for this person to retaliate in epic proportions full white woman crocodile tears style, trying to get this staffer removed and eventually escalating into a full public hate campaign when she didn’t get her way. All that’s still just the tip of the iceberg.
Progressive spaces are naturally populated by traumatized people, and unfortunately trauma makes people more difficult. (I’m not excluded in that. No one is.) Running a progressive space is doubly difficult because a lot of left-facing trauma was inflicted by authority, so you’re setting yourself up to be the windmill that someone tilts their displaced rage at. I don’t really know what the solution is, but I do know that this is one of the huge reasons it’s so hard to find community: the people with a bone to pick can’t reach the ones who actually hurt them, but they’ll sure find you along the way, and the safer they feel around you the safer they’ll feel coming after you.
Once again I am begging everyone to read Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It by Chris Voss.
Voss spent 25 years as a hostage negotiator, meaning that his job was to talk to guys on the phone who had literal guns to innocent people's heads. He KNOWS how to compassionately de-escalate a conflict and have productive, constructive conversations with people who are highly activated and reactive.
Especially if you are neurodivergent, read this book. The communication tools are specific, concrete, easy to implement, and will dramatically reduce the psychic damage you're taking just from trying to navigate the conversation.
Adding the book Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg. Rewired my brain and also changed how I communicate with myself, if that makes sense.
And there is an additional problem, which is that leftists are often uncomfortable being authorities themselves and acting like it. (Not saying this was true of any previous posters! It is simply a common Thing.) Leftists like being inclusive and being relaxed on rules. But the only way to make a truly safe space is to protect it, and that means having someone who is willing to say “no.” People feel safe when leadership has their back.
Sometimes you have to tell that woman that if she keeps picking fights she won’t have any allies to fight them. Sometimes you have to tell that guy that no, really, you have to shower sometimes, and the Stink Cloud is why people don’t want to hang out with you.
It’s okay to be the adult in the room. It is something to be done compassionately and authoritatively. I would probably drone on more in this post but my cat is headbutti g my phone out of my hands
this is meant positively by the way. sometimes you love the character so much you end up putting a piece of yourself in it to learn how it is to love yourself without realising and thats ok.
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i feel like a lot of fandoms pride themselves on being gayer than the source material but have they considered being less racist and less misogynistic than the source material as well . could be revolutionary
I genuinely wonder if people realize how many projects get abandoned because the readership "wasn't there", when in reality, the readership just stayed silent. It's a big thing in trad pub that book series get discontinued because readers pirate the books or wait until the series is finished to buy a copy, leading the publisher to think that nobody actually wants the book enough to continue the series, but it happens with indie creators too.
I've discontinued a lot of free, online series because it's not worth putting 3-5 hours a week into posting a project for no readers. Sometimes I finish the series for me but just never post it again, other times I don't finish it at all because it feels more worthwhile to put my time into other things. Sometimes I hear from readers who are sad or upset that I didn't finish something they were liking, but the *reason* it never got finished is because I didn't know anyone liked it. If you like something, tell the creator, tell your friends, make some noise about it. If you would be sad if a story never finished, make that interest known because one of my biggest considerations before discontinuing a series is "will people miss this? Will I be letting people down" and 9/10 times, I come to the conclusion of "no, it doesn't even seem like anyone's reading this" only to learn after I've moved on that apparently someone was.
I've said this before in a different way, and this post said it so well. With real examples.
If you like something, tell people.
If you want more content from an artist or author, if you like their stuff, tell them. It will give them creative fuel to keep going. And often it gives them other resources as well.
Recommend a work to other people. Leave a comment or a review. It doesn't have to be long, just genuine, a sentence or two.
Not many people know that a book's success is judged by book reviews as well as sales. Review the book on Amazon or another site to help it pass the metric of success and be recognized by publishers and retailers.
If you're writing anything involving cons, scams, heists, or morally questionable characters who are very good at lying, here are some free resources I've been using for research. Saving you the "why is this in my search history" anxiety.
1. The FBI's Famous Cases & Criminals archive (fbi.gov/history/famous-cases) has detailed breakdowns of real fraud cases, Ponzi schemes, and confidence operations. The language they use is clinical and precise, which is perfect for getting the procedural details right.
2. The FTC Consumer Sentinel Network publishes annual reports on the most common fraud tactics in the US. Great for understanding how modern scams actually work and what makes people fall for them.
3. The Smithsonian's American Art Museum has a free digital collection of forgery case studies. If your character forges documents or art, this is gold.
4. Court Listener (courtlistener.com) is a free legal database where you can read actual court transcripts from fraud trials. Want to know how a real con artist talks under oath? This is where you find out.
5. The Internet Archive's collection of old newspaper crime sections. Search for "confidence man" or "swindle" in papers from the 1920s through 1960s and you'll find incredible real stories that would feel too dramatic for fiction.
Bonus: The Psychology of Fraud section on the Association for Psychological Science website has accessible articles about why people trust, how deception works cognitively, and what makes someone a convincing liar. Essential reading if you want your con artist characters to feel psychologically real.
Reblog to save for later. Your WIP will thank you.
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The test for allyship isn't how you treat an oppressed person who is your friend, family, spouse. It's how you treat an oppressed person you absolutely can't stand who is vile and loathsome in every way.
Do you gender trans people correctly even when they're being absolutely terrible people? Do you refuse to use the r-slur against someone who suicide baited you but is neurodivergent? Do you refuse to snark at a mentally ill person who is being genuinely unpleasant, "go take your meds!"
Do you allow members of marginalized groups to be terrible people without judging their entire demographic for it? One of the most invisible yet vital forms of privilege is the right to be terrible people as an individual rather than as a group. Do you acknowledge that there are bad people in every group, that it doesn't make their group less worth fighting for? Or do you shake your head if you happen to get mistreated by some who belong to a group and insist the entire group is awful and not worth your allyship?
Oppressed people can see how you treat those of us you like, but do you still treat the worst of us with the basic dignity you treat the worst of other groups with?
If empathy is a muscle, this is how you get SWOLE. This is how you grow BEEFY. I’ve got stacks of empathy muscles. I’ve got an 8pack of empathy and love for humanity’s flaws.
Once upon a time I felt I was a useless pit of a person who did not deserve to live. To fight this voice, I found the “””worst””” people I could and defended them in court regardless of what charge, what they could pay, who they were. I wanted to prove to myself that everyone is worth defending, because if everyone is worth it, so am I.
Pleased to inform you that everyone is worth defending. Human rights are worth defending. Humans are worth helping, even though a lot of them fail and fall even with help. And it’s worth it standing up for oppressed people always always always.
there will never be anything as funny as the mutual disbelief between long form and short form fic writers about each other's style.
short form writers look at people writing 100k+ fics as though this is some sort of talent given as part of a fae bargain, that the commitment required shows some sort of ungodly mental fortitude.
meanwhile long form writers look at people writing 1000 word one shots like god I would cut off my left nipple to be able to say anything concisely. i would love to play with multiple ideas. free me from the shackles of this child I have birthed. i love them but I now must take them to t-ball and doctor's appointments and they're going to destroy everything I own.
as the 100k person i genuinely wish i could be as concise as the oneshot people. when i’m writing it always feels like i’m trying to pull a scarf out of a hat but then theres another scarf tied to the end of that scarf and then another and then another and i’m still pulling all these scarves and it’s TOO MUCH AND IT’S NOT STOPPING I JUST WANNA WEAR ONE SCARF. some of my favorite fics of all time have fallen under 20k wordcounts. in most cases i can’t finish a single chapter without hitting 20k. it’s a curse. a clown-car curse where you wanna write a fic so you open the door to the car but then a hundred clowns (ideas) start falling out. set me free.
*giving you a tour of my tumblr dashboard* well that’s my mutual who posts beatles rpf and that’s my mutual who posts gifs of tv shows i haven’t watched and that’s my mutual who posts pictures of animals frolicking in fields or cool buildings or things like that and that’s my mutual who posts various images of men having sex. sometimes women too
the best fanfiction you've ever read was written by a woman in her 40s before she made dinner for her kids. it was written by a teenager after school when they should've been studying for a history test. and a barista came up with the idea while they cleaned the espresso machine and busser fact-checked it on their break and the post-doc edited between writing grant proposals and the nurse apologized for typos in the notes after a long shift and behind every drabble and one-shot and multi-chapter fic there is a person with a wonderful and interesting and chaotic life and it is such a privilege that we get to be apart of it because they decided to do this thing we all share, for fun.
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when i was a kid i was so mad all the time bc i thought someday i'd have to be somebody's wife i didn't know it was optional. is everybody reminding the young girls in their lives that it's optional.
is wanting to be a wife and mother a requirement for being a woman?
why might OP be annoyed with replies assuming that this post is about being aroace or transmasc if a woman doesn’t want to be a wife or mother?
are there reasons unrelated to sexuality and romantic interest that might make a woman not want to be a wife or mother?
are there reasons unrelated to gender identity and expression that might make a woman not want to be a wife and mother?
core concept: what is gender essentialism?
is it gender essentialism to imply that all women inherently want to be wives and mothers? could this be what OP is critiquing?
look at the notes OP responds to. is it gender essentialism to imply that being a wife and mother is so affixed to womanhood that to not want to be those things means you’re incapable of sexual/romantic feelings, or not a woman?
what trait are you perpetuating when you assume that women who do not want to be wives and mothers must be aroace or trans? is it gender essentialism?
