eat fruit, be gay, and vote

the "milkman" is a common figure in stories depicting a woman's infidelity and adulterous affair.

this implies that the ability to provide milk would both decrease the likelihood of a man abandoning his wife and children, as it would eliminate the need for leaving to get milk AND would secure that man's marriage, as his wife would have no need to seek milk from an extraneous source.

therefore, all men should produce milk, through various means such as:

- being a cow

- being an almond

- being a woman

- being a coconut

- being in the omegaverse

- being an oat

(list is exemplary and not finite)

Source

For years after 9/11 we were constantly told “NEVER FORGET” and the idea was basically “keep feeling sad and afraid and especially ANGRY forever; don’t let time dull your emotional response like it’s naturally supposed to; continue to justify the injustices by feeling this way all the time.” And the 3000 deaths were constantly pointed to as this huge deal that justified any lengths to go to.

And then Covid hit. And there were several points during the height of the pandemic (because fun fact, according to the actual definitions of a pandemic, *it’s not technically over yet!* ) where we were having a 9/11’s worth of deaths every week or so. And suddenly 3000 deaths were not a big deal at all. Instead of being enough reason to go to war far away and strip us at home of many rights too, they weren’t even enough justification to make people wear a damn piece of fabric over their face.

3000 people died once and now the government can legally wiretap anyone without a warrant, and hold people at Gitmo under suspicion of terrorism (no need for due process)… 3000 people dying every week but we should all still be going out to brunch and concerts and who cares about the disabled and immunocompromised?

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.

Some of this, yes, is about POV distance--but some of it is also about the information being conveyed by the sentence. If you are using a sentence like "John saw that the windows were open" it should be because the information you are seeking to convey is that John saw it.

Maybe this matters because the next time John looks back they are closed, and so he's doubting what he saw. Maybe it matters because he later has to recount information about the room he was in, and it's notable that he specifically saw that the windows were open. The fact and method of his observation is part of the point of the sentence, rather than simply the observation itself.

When we are using sense verbs, it should be because part of the point is the sense. Same with "thought", "felt", etc.: "Mary thought that Susan looked a little thin" is telling us a different piece of information than "Susan looked a little thin."

Contrarily, at least in my opinion, simple telling phrasing like "It was rainy" can sometimes bring us more into a character's head than something showing like "The rain howled like an injured animal." I have read books when a relatively plain-spoken/plain-thinking character suddenly starts having elaborate descriptions of things like scenery or weather, and it is abundantly clear that the author wanted to spruce up their writing and avoid "telling." The problem is that it drags me as the reader out of the character's head and shows me where all of the strings are. I'm suddenly thinking about how the author is worried about being yelled at for "telling" instead of just reading the story.

“And then you show up from the side, and stare at that guy for a couple seconds before attacking.”

“Shouldn’t I surprise attack right away?”

“No no no, you have to give him time to call you a clever girl.”

“Ooh, I do want that.”

Im.. Soft 🥺🥺🥺

Circe's Palace (1907)