holdinglines' art & reference blog

one of my worst writing sins is abusing my power to create compound words. i cannot write the sentence "The sun shone as bright as honey that afternoon." no. that's boring. "The sun was honey-bright that afternoon" however? yes. that sentence is dope as fuck. i do not care if "honey-bright" is a word in the english dictionary. i do not care if the sentence is grammatically correct. i will not change. i will not correct my erred ways. the laws of the english language are mine.

Fanfiction is insane. You can write porn so good you make friends.

Something neuroscience-y that helps with prose: attention is selective. A character will not notice everything in a room. They will notice what matters to their goal, fear, desire, training, wound, or obsession. A jealous character notices hands. a hungry character notices food. A soldier notices exits. A lonely character notices pairs. Description becomes character when attention has a bias.

Instructions unclear, my laundry is now folded

THE BOTTOM IS A PAINTING????

also does a really good job reminding the view just how much air quality has improved since we stopped burning coal in every building lol

i DO believe that a good writer can make mischaracterization work. oh there's a character who doesn't normally cry? figure it out!! disect the character. make the situation cryable for them. make that character cry ugly tears even if it goes against their very nature. YOU CAN MAKE IT WORK!!!

A great piece of advice I've seen is "Don't fixate about what the character would never do. Think about the circumstances that would drive them to do this, even if they wouldn't normally."