Till Kingdom Come, I Promise

they want that cookie so effin' bad

Body language is one of the most powerful tools you can use in your writing, especially when it comes to dialogue.

It reveals emotion without needing long explanations, and it gives your characters presence long before they speak.

Here are some physical cues you can use to bring your scenes to life:

Crossed arms / defensive stance → guarded, annoyed, uncertain

Fidgeting with sleeves / tapping fingers → nervous, impatient

Lingering touches / brushing hands → affection, tension, desire

Tightened jaw / clenched fists → anger, restraint, frustration

Averted eyes / looking at the floor → guilt, fear, embarrassment

Stepping back / leaning away → distrust or discomfort

Tilting head / raised eyebrows → curiosity, challenge

Shoulders relaxing / exhaling slowly → relief, vulnerability

When should you rely on body language?

When you want to show an emotion instead of naming it

When dialogue alone feels flat

When you need subtext (what they won’t say out loud)

When two characters feel differently than the words they’re speaking

When you want to make a scene more sensory and grounded

Are they really calm, or is their foot tapping like a warning signal? Are they truly angry, or is it just the way their jaw tightens when they’re hurt? Are they saying “I’m fine,” but refusing to meet anyone’s eyes?

Body language adds layers. It tells the truth when your characters won’t. It can add to the rage bubbling on their lips, letting the reader know when they're just about to blow up.

This August, join me for the 30 Days Writing Challenge, #Augustrope✨

In which we have a list of various tropes as the writing prompts. While these tropes are commonly used as recurring plot devices in fanfiction, you can also write your original story with them.

For 30 days (August 1st—August 30th, the 31st is the rest day), you can write anything with a different prompt for each day.

Any ship, fandom, characters, genres are welcome. Be it fanfiction or original fiction, just write it!

★★ 2026 Augustrope's Prompt List ★★

Day 1 — First Meeting

Day 2 — They Were Roommates

Day 3 — Beach Episode

Day 4 — ‌Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics

Day 5 — ‌Domestic Fluff

Day 6 — Two People Love Triangle

Day 7 — ‌5 Times This + 1 Time That

Day 8 — Mistaken Identity

Day 9 — Coffeshop AU

Day 10 — Age Regression

Day 11 — ‌Near Death Experience

Day 12 — Enemies-to-Lovers

Day 13 — POV Outsider

Day 14 — There's Only One Bed

Day 15 — Coda/Episode Tag

Day 16 — Relationship Reveal

Day 17 — Hallmark AU

Day 18 — Amnesia

Day 19 — Body Swap

Day 20 — Potion/Spell Goes Wrong

Day 21 — Everyone Knows But Them

Day 22 — ‌Road Trips

Day 23 — Your-Fave-Movie AU

Day 24 — ‌In Vino Veritas

Day 25 — Elevator Fic

Day 26 — Fake/Pretend Relationship

Day 27 — Mutual Pining

Day 28 — ‌Meet The Family

Day 29 — Non-Human Character

Day 30 — Soulmate AU

🖇️ More info about Augustrope

Feel free to tag your work with #Augustrope (and/or #Augustrope2026) so that I can find them.

If you're on AO3, you can also add your work into the Augustrope Collection (Augustrope2026).

If you have any questions regarding the prompt, you can directly interact with this post 🫶🏻

There are a few prompts that I don't think I can make though (I'm not familiar with the Omegaverse, for example), buuuuut it could kinda work a bit like NaNoWriMo in the sense that it'd encourage me to try and write every day... with the difference that it'd be something new and it'd allow me to explore some ideas that I've been playing around with for a while but never really sat down to write 🤭

If you only read fanfiction, you will not be able to write original stories well.

Reading books does not have to be expensive. It can be completely free. Project Gutenberg exists. So does the Internet Archive's lending library.

If you want to write a novel, you are kept to a pretty strict word range--generally 70-120k words, though that varies a bit up or down depending on the genre. Some genres have fairly strict structural and plot expectations, as well.

A romance novel is a specific thing. A mystery novel is a specific thing. Being able to write a shippy fanfic, even one of the correct length to count as a romance novel, does not necessarily mean that you know how to write a romance novel--because there are different expectations between them.

Fanfiction is often in conversation with other fanfiction, and published fiction is often to varying degrees in conversation with other published fiction--but despite what a lot of people seem to think, published fiction is often not actually in conversation with fanfiction, even if fanfiction is in conversation with published fiction.

One thing that you tend to see with people writing original fiction for publication who don't really read much published fiction in that genre is that they will sometimes approach it with the attitude that they are writing something that nobody has ever thought of before. It is a new, different, groundbreaking approach, with new, different, groundbreaking ideas that nobody else has done and nothing can compare to--

And that simply is not usually the case. Finding comps can be hard, it's one of the worst parts about querying, etc., etc., but in many genres, you are not inventing something totally new. You are not the first person to think, what if this romance novel doesn't need to have a happy ending (spoiler alert: it's not a romance novel). You are not the first person to write queer polyamorous urban fantasy. You are not the first person to write a book with queer characters or disabled characters or non-white characters or non-Christian characters. Your groundbreaking new idea for a sci fi thing that you repurposed from a fanfic, that just feels dated and derivative, because it is, and anyone who knows the genre would know that.

That arrogance and that dismissal of existing publishing history and norms shows in people's writing.

THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINJAY PART 2

Jonathan Bailey as Anthony Bridgerton in “An Unthinkable Fate” (Bridgerton - 2x05)