Writing: An Excuse For Everything

The US Government is currently trying to pass an incredibly dangerous national law for trans youth called HR 2616.

This bill would ban all Federally funded schools from teaching about gender identity or sexual orientation, prevent teachers from using the correct pronouns and names for trans students, remove books with any trans representation in them, and even go as far as to prevent teachers from acknowledging trans identity AT ALL.

Any school that does not follow this will lose all federal funding. This bill would also require teachers to forcibly out trans students to their families, which would be fatal to any trans student with a transphobic Family or just hateful family in general. Trans people are already a group that already has some of the highest rates of being victim to suicide, domestic violence, and sexual assault.

This bill actively makes teachers put those innocent children at such a big risk. This bill has rapidly passed the house this week with support from all 209 republicans, as well as 8 democrats. But, it's still being voted on in the senate, which means there is still time to help stop this.

To help stop this, you can visit 5calls.org (look up 2616 in the search bar), one of the most top issues filed Oppose Attacks on LGBTQ+ Students. Once you put in your general location, it will pull-up contact information for your senator, and give you a script for calling them.

If you are a minor and/or do not feel comfortable doing this, PLEASE repost this on here, or any other platform you are on/can find! This needs to be heard and fought against.

Thank you for reading this, my lovely people!

Head hopping is where, in a 3rd person POV, the narrative point of view (or the head we are in) jumps between characters within the same scene or paragraph. This is primarily a thing in closer 3rd person POVs where we are more in a character's head--we are getting their thoughts, feelings, and experiences directly.

Here's what head hopping can look like (two excerpts from the book Sacred Fate by Eressë Belley):

Imcael sighed. Tyrde had his work cut out for him. He wondered if his youngest was up to the challenge. It was some time before Rohyr rejoined his consort. Not an offensively long time but it was clear to astute observers that here was no love match. Even Rohyr’s attire bore testament to his lack of enthusiasm for the occasion. He was clad in the customary nuptial colors of cream and gold but there was little of the resplendence expected of the ruler of a great realm. Only the heavy collar of white-silver links and square-cut adamants marked him as royalty. And in lieu of his crown or even a ceremonial coronet, he wore a plain gold circlet. But the most telling sign of all was the way he periodically twisted the wedding band of entwined gold and white-silver on the middle finger of his right hand. Not in the manner of one unused to wearing a ring on that finger but rather as if it were too tight and he wished he could remove it. After a few minutes conversation with Tyrde, Rohyr scanned the hall until he spotted Lassen. His leman was seated at one of the far tables. Engaged in conversation with Eiren Sarvan and Reijir Arthanna’s brother Keiran, he showed no sign of unease though he must have felt it at a feast celebrating his lover’s marriage to another.

In the span of four consecutive paragraphs we go from Imcael's head to a vaguely omniscient POV to Rohyr's POV, with no clear transition between them. Just a few paragraphs before this, we had been back in what might have been that vaguely omniscent POV, which had this rather jarring transition:

If it galled him that said correctness was born out of protocol rather than true amicability toward Rohyr’s betrothed, he held his tongue. After all, they did not know Tyrde. For now, all his son could command was deference to his office to be. Loyalty would come later.

The shift from the vaguely omniscient POV (which includes a speculation of Imcael's feelings) directly into Imcael's head happens mid-paragraph, making the reader jump from having no direct insight into Imcael's thoughts to being in his thoughts with no transition.

My goal is not to pick on this book in particular (I chose it in part because I had already talked about its head-hopping-ness in my April/May reading challenge update) but to show some of the issues that can arise with head hopping:

It can be confusing or hard to follow and make for a jarring reading experience. The reader can end up never quite sure whose head they are in.

It makes the story more disjointed. A POV switch is often a natural transition point in a story and forces the reader to recalibrate for the new POV, and rapid switching breaks the story up at unnatural break points.

It makes it less clear who knows what and/or what information is true. As with the sentence that I quoted above, we shift from speculation as to Imcael's thinking directly into Imcael's thinking in one paragraph. As a reader, I would generally take speculation as something that can't be assumed to be wholly true--but immediately being in Imcael's head makes it seem as though it must be true. But it was speculation from a vaguely omniscient POV--were we in someone's head? Whose head? It may not always be clear the literal sentence when the POV switch happens, leaving the reader unclear whether information in any given narration happened in one POV versus the other.

I am thinking about making a passionate defense of the passive voice just to cause trouble on purpose

Warning: Passive voice can be used for evil! Do not do it! Do not write sentences like "The man was shot by police." No! Do not hide state violence in sentence structure!

You should use active voice when:

1. You introduce new information

2. You take or assign responsibility

Active voice is key for clarity when the sentence doesn't have anything to refer back to. If you have to put "by (person, organization)" at the end of the sentence, it should have been active voice. Ex:

Our company fucked up the project and we're sorry

NOT

Regrettably, the project was fucked up by us/on our watch/by one of our teams

But here's why passive voice is great: because it collapses who did a thing and centers the fact that it happened. When you are referring back to something the parties already agree upon, it puts the result up front.

All project review will be completed by 18 Never 2029.

NOT

Kyle | Mark | us Arch | itects, Jim's Construction, the Statesonia Department of Endangered Hummingbirds, the Federal Bureau of Staying the Fuck Out of It and like twelve other people will complete their reviews by 18 Never 2029.

No! Bad! The completion of the action matters, not the parties involved. And no, "The parties will complete their reviews" is absolutely not clearer, because it requires the same knowledge.

In fiction, passive vs active refocuses a sentence towards what you want the reader to pay attention to. Active:

A fog covered the city

Passive:

The city was covered by fog

Nothing wrong with either of them. It's just what you want the reader to think about. Bonus round: the sentence feels more natural if you put the bulk of the description in the second half, so you can add more without making it impossible to follow. Active:

A fog covered the quiet, unsuspecting city as it slept

Passive:

The city was covered by a terrible, choking fog that crept through the silent streets

These are different sentences, but nothing's wrong with either of them.

"The man was shot (by police)" and "The project was fucked up by us" are bad in serious contexts and actual writing.

But you can have a lot of fun with things like:

"My boss has been described in impolite terms."

"Alice's boss has been described in impolite terms by someone who wishes to remain anonymous."

"I have been vilified, demonised, slandered, calumnied, scapegoated, lied about, written horrid pamphlets about, unlistened to, and reputationally walked all over."

"The priceless crown jewels known as The Fanciest Rock Ever, insured for 100,000,000 billions and entrusted in our care by HRM the Queen of Fancyland, were found to have been misplaced this morning and have not been located at this time."

"He was separated from his head."

"He found himself divorced from."

What I mean by that is that, just as you are trying to accomplish something with any given scene you are writing (whether that is moving a specific part of the plot forward, accomplishing a specific emotional feeling in the reader, revealing some information, etc.), you are trying to accomplish something with your sex scenes. Or at least you should be.

Are the characters connecting emotionally in the sex scene? Are they having sex to avoid connecting emotionally? Are they doing something they haven't done before, sexually? Does that mean something to their relationship? Are they having sex out of habit? Out of obligation? To accomplish a purpose? Does the sex go well? How are they feeling after it?

Whatever you are trying to accomplish with a given sex scene should impact future (sex and non-sex) scenes in the same way that a conversation or a fight scene or any other type of scene would. Sex scenes do not (or at least should not) sit outside of the arc of the story, but rather are part of it.

I know this is rich coming from someone who spends a lot of time writing characters who don't even have names. But...

It feels like a lot of people smush in popular tropes likes 'Who hurt you" and "only one bed" and "don't touch them" regardless of it actually fits the characters or not. All the bad boys are bad in exactly the same way. All the girls are designed to have just enough personality that you can project on them.

Would they actually react in that way? Would they actually say it like that? Do they actually care about sharing a bed based on their backstory? This isn't a criticism of these tropes, I love them too, but when every romance at the moment has these exact same beats they kind of lose power. (For me, anyway). Because it stops being their love story.

Maybe it's because I'm ace/probably aro, but I just find it so frustrating compared to the more complex specific romances we could have. The ones where it feels like the author has actually thought about their specific characters, and why they might fall in love with each other, and what that means for their desires. They're not in love because it's a romance and that means they must be in love by the end of the book.

My absolute favourite love stories could never have the serial numbers filed off, you know? It could only be them. That's what makes it compelling. That's what makes me obsessed with them.

I don't know.

E.g. enemies for more institutional/structural reasons like 'we are each on opposing forces in someone else's war', we are in two rival families, our species have historically be enemies' whatever. It's not personal, so it's an amazing way to focus a story on overcoming one's own biases or examining the structures that paint other people as monsters or why. This nation is made of savages blah blah, I've seen you cut people open on a battlefield. But you're so gentle when you kiss me? The contrast! The juxtaposition!

E.g. personal emnity. We are mutually obsessed with taking each other down and you are the centre of my world is very different to I hurt you once but I am a different person now, trying to be better, can you love who I have become and what does that mean for the hurt before? Is very different to 'we are the same, and I hate that we are the same, does embracing the love also mean loving or accepting parts of myself?'

E.g. I view you as an enemy, but you don't view me as one. You are the devastatingly seductive vampire lord who needs a bride or whatever, and I am the tool. What does it say about personhood when you fall in love with something you were just supposed to use? Can you still do what you need to do to survive?

How does literally consuming you change our relationship? Were we in love when you were still human? What does that look like now that you are something else?

E.g. everyone has always raised me to think of you as a monster, but I quickly realise you are not, so it's not fully an enemies to lovers story but people will often market you as that, and still great. What does it mean to find the place you belong in something that people have labelled as monstrous? Pretty sure a lot of people who have been othered by dominant society can relate.

Johnson's Dictionary Online (thanks @yellowbelliedtoad!) – 1755 and 1773

Green's Dictionary of Slang – 1300s to today

A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – 1788

This is not to say that you need to love every second of every part of writing to be a good writer, but I find people who dislike the actual act of writing don't usually make good writers.

I think that this is, in part, where the AI stuff comes from--people who like the idea of writing but don't like (or know how to do) the mechanics of writing choose to rely on AI because they see it as handling the mechanics, which they see as the less important part.

But the mechanics are a huge part of it. The plot, the characters, the world, the idea--all of that is important. But writing is also about the paragraphs and the sentences and the words. It's about playing around with wording or sentence structure or phrasing to see what works best. It's about literally writing the sentences--all of the sentences. It's about choosing where the paragraph breaks are, where scenes end, where chapters end.

And if you hate doing the mechanics of it--if you hate putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard or however it is you draft--you will hate writing, and you will come to hate your writing. Because you will resent the actions required to do it. You will hate having to sit down and do the writing, because you hate actually writing.

There's nothing wrong with not enjoying actually writing. You can tell stories in other ways. Record a podcast. Sing. Tell stories to your friends.

Or teach yourself how to enjoy writing. Figure out what parts of it you do like and make those a bigger part of your process. Is text to speech easier? Do that to start. Do you not want chapter breaks for your first draft? That's fine.

someone accidentally slipping further into a facade than they intended . someone purposefully retreating further into a facade . someone accidentally dropping their normally impeccable facade for a moment . someone purposefully letting their facade down as a taunt or mockery or in a genuine way because they're finally in a situation where they don't need the facade anymore . someone whose facade really is just a tool that they have complete control over and it never falters or fails . someone whose facade is the opposite and they're having a really bad time trying to maintain their facade or trying to maintain their true self under the facade . many such good options. all fun.