Birds Birds Birds

PROPAGANDA:

[Yue Qingyuan]

"The Sect Leader should get pregnant because the Sect Leader should be the picture of fertility and virility both, boost the usage of male child-bearing pills, and because the whole Sect would go crazy trying to find out who's the baby daddy. I think Yue Qingyuan could benefit from having to raise a child of his own instead of managing disciples, because Yue Qingyuan no longer has a family of his own and deserves one, and this way, perhaps he'd be forced to care about another person again. His strong and qi-rich body would also have an easy pregnancy and have a strong and happy child."

[Maes]

"The ultimate family man, the #1 wifeguy, wouldn't it be a joy for him to take some of the burden off his wife when the time comes to grow his family? (And shhh, everything is fine! Canon won't happen if we close our eyes and write fix-it fic instead)."

SV shower thoughts again

Knowing NYY's tendencies to contribute to conversations in the worst ways possible, How much of SJ's "allegations" with NYY came from conversations that went something like:

Peak Lords: "So Ning Shizhi, what do you think of Shen Qingqiu as a teacher?" NYY: "OMG My Shizun loves kids!! He is especially nice to girls! (+ 100 more horribly worded compliments I can't think of) :DDDD"

Peak Lords: ... 🚨🚓🚨🚓🚨🚓🚨????????

I'm going to try it.

First, let me preface this with something very important: you can treat all of this advice as SECOND-DRAFT ADVICE. It is so much easier to rewrite this kind of stuff once you have words on the page. Telling yourself the first draft is totally appropriate and acceptable.

What we’re talking about here are FILTER WORDS (and to some degree verbs of being). Yes, “thought” words are included. But so are “heard, saw, looked, tasted, smelled” etc.—most words having to do with the senses.

This isn’t black and white advice; sometimes you’ll use these words and that’s okay. They’re not WRONG. They’re just weaker. And they’re weaker because they create distance between the reader and the experience of the character.*

If you want your reader to feel like they’re experiencing the story right alongside the character, you want to cut down on filter words.

*This is particularly important with first person and close third POVs. The reader always knows whose eyes they’re seeing through and thoughts they’re privy to. So you don’t need to tell them “I saw X.” Or “I heard X.” Or “I thought Y.” You can just jump into the action/observation as it’s happening.

This is also where you want to pay attention to verbs of being.

you want to pay attention

to verbs of being.

That means that when you read a line like

John saw that the curtains were open.

It immediately takes you OUT of the character's perspective and instead tells you what they experience as a secondhand observation.

You don't have to get fancy or purple with how you rephrase things like this. Not everything needs a ton of breathing room.

You wanna know what's perfectly impactful while keeping a tight POV?

The curtains were open.

Tianlang-Jun and Su Xiyan's Trade Deal.