Unrepentant Studio Rat

If you were a reader who came across your finished WIP, why would you want to read it? What about it would make you, personally, excited to read? Don't overthink it. Just be honest with yourself.

Now, can you summarize everything that excites you in a list, or a paragraph, or even a sentence?

Give it a try!

There's generally going to be rooms dedicated to and build for warmth, the living quarters, both for nobles and their servants. This will be the central living tower, or parts of it called a Kemenate (literally 'room with a stove'), the great hall and work spaces around the kitchen. You can put the Kemenate on top of the hall to catch the big fires' and daily living's heat through the wooden floor, but you often can't put wooden stuff on top of the kitchens (that's a fire risk). If you have the money and space, you build a whole separate comfy place for living because you don't have to stay in the most defensible part of the castle all the time. These separate living buildings are also called Kemenate and are often build from wood, cob, brick etc.

People used to wear much more clothes indoors, including while sleeping, and those clothes were much thicker and sturdier than what we largely wear today. Every time you think of how cold those stone walls are, think about everyone wearing a linen shift + two-ish layers of wool on all body parts except hands and head + stockings and shoes + some kind of head-covering. In Ye Old Middle Ages, women are probably wearing a wimple, which is kind of like a modern Hijab in terms of coverage. People wear shifts, socks, and a head-covering to bed.

I think people used to radiators also really underestimate how much a large open fire/tiled stove heats up a room. Also, middle and northern Europe (as well as parts of Northern China) had and to this day have beds and benches build into tiled and cob stoves. Those fuck.

Beds are enclosed so you stay warm in them, either by curtains, in wall niches or with wood. There's also a type of bed that's inside a chest (like a coffin) so you can stuff your stuff inside during the day and put down the lid to use it as a bench. That's also another reason for people to always sleep in groups. Depending on the era, one of the jobs of a lady's maid or a retainer might literally be warming their master's bed. In early times and among servants, people also sleep in large groups in rooms together in general even outside a farming context, often with animals like pet dogs, too, which further warms everything up.

Walls are not bare, cold stone, but covered with a layer of plaster or cob, tiles or wooden panels, sometimes layered, and believe me, this makes such a difference. Source: I lived in a Ye Olde German Farmhouse with 70 cm thick stone walls and flag stone floor and all that converted to modern flats for a while.

On top of that you hang tapestries on the wall, which are not like modern printed cloth but basically wall rugs, sometimes several inches thick, and rugs or rushes (like a light cover of hay) on the floor on top of stone, tile, wooden panelling or a cob floor cover that goes over the heave flag stone. Pillows and blankets on all sitting surfaces, often on top of panelling (in the case of benches build into the stone). The roof of a room is also tiled, panelled or plastered. Upper stories will generally have wooden floors. Stories in a tower heat each other upwards, so the nicer rooms are further up.

The inner stone walls of a castle, even if stone and very thick, will heat up a few degrees in comparison to the outside walls if the castle is continually heated/lived in, and also trap heat inside, and this will make a difference. Inner walls might also be thinner and made of wood, cob or brick. You're defending against the outside, after all.

You put stuff in the windows. Holy shit. Screens of wood, horn, cloth or leather/hide, often treated for extra insulation. Why are these fantasy castles all so drafty.

My issue is that I can’t figure out a good equivalent to that kind of practice with writing ? Like idk. Do I do a bunch of object descriptions ? Do I do a scene with a restricted vocab ?? I don’t knowwwww

Grinding would be word sprints. NaNoWriMo was killer for this before their whole operation went to shit, but the good thing about that is that they never had copyright over the concept of writing fast. The numbers you go for can be a little arbitrary at first as you figure out what specifically works for you, but 15 minutes is usually the average from what I've seen? Maybe you can get 500 words in 15 minutes. Maybe you can only get 200. Either way, you're exercising the muscles that get ideas from your brain out onto paper.

Here's some other ideas I came up with for more specific exercises:

Wordsketching for Settings

Go outside (or stay inside?), practically anywhere. Sit down and angle yourself in a way that lets you get a good view of where you're at, and then pick the first things that jump out to you about the place you're in and describe them in 2-3 sentences. Then, figure out what you're drawn to next and write sentences about that. Make sure you add what you feel in that moment (Is the atmosphere uncomfortable? Is the place hot or cold? Humid?), what the place sounds like (People talking, or cars, or animal noises...), so on and so forth. This is very similar to the 5-4-3-2-1 grounding technique, so you can even work off of that structure if you'd like, but this is specifically to help you get better at describing settings.

As far as fanfic is concerned, I think the genre as a whole skimps on atmosphere and setting a SHIT TON. If you want to elevate yourself, let the pacing of your work slow down for a second and dedicate some time to really orienting your blorbos in a specific space. It does a lot for the tone of the work, and... if you want to play ball with the big boys you need to start thinking about things like tone and atmosphere when writing.

Transcription for Dialogue

This can entail you writing down what your family says at the dinner table like a creepy weirdo, or transcribing movie dialogue or anything of that nature. The purpose would be to get used to how conversation naturally flows between two or more people (turn-taking, interruption etc.), and furthermore getting a sense of how human beings naturally talk to each other. I've written down things I've heard people say in public before for no better reason than thinking "Oh! I could totally see [X Character] saying that!". Whatever hangups you may have over this sick linguivouyeristic perversion are much less important than the tragedy of filling your work with Incorrect Quotes -style unreadable garbage. It's like eating your vegetables.

Wiktionary Challenges for Word Choice

Just spamming the "random word" button on Wiktionary will give you instances in every language Wiktionary has in its database, so this one requires a little more work to be helpful, but in lieu of that you can look through stuff like Categories or Thesaurus Entries!

Let's gather a few fun words to demonstrate.

Okay, this should be more than enough for some sentences describing a setting out in nature! Blunket is making me think this takes place at twilight... And I like alliterating, so let's mash it to make the semi-redundant phrase "blunket-blue" just for some flair.

The copse laid still. On the bank of the meandering creek, the rabbit flattened herself out against the soft grass, her luculent eyes darting back and forth over her surroundings. What she could see of the copse looked mostly the same: Twisting shrubs the color of ash, blunket-blue grasses, an invisible wind brushing over all that stillness and pressing flat everything it could. Her nose twitched. Until the last blushes of rose drained from the evening sky, the rabbit would keep herself fixed in that spot on the riverbank and wait.

Unlike with art, there isn't an organized consensus about them and accepted practice excercises. I've consumed a lot of writing theory and advice content in my life, so I'll do my best to try and make a list of possible excercises based on stuff I learned as well as my own judgement for useful skills.

The most important thing to remember is that writing is the art of communicating your intent. A lot of writing is just figuring out ways to get across the experience you want to create, and so a lot of the excercises are about learning to do that in different ways.

Descriptions

Start out with picking random things and describing them in writing. This is mostly to get used to translating sensory experiences into verbal descriptions. Try describing experiences or things that aren't visual too.

Pick an object. Describe it three different times. Each time you're not allowed to use any of the previous descriptions.

Pick an object. Describe it three different times. Each time create a different connotation for it (an easy trio to start with is good/bad/neutral).

Go people watching. Pick something that's happening in front of you and describe it three different ways. Each time in a different genre.

Play taboo. Describe an object, action or an emotion without naming it or using closely associated words.

Exposition

Play storytelling Mao. Write a scene where the world and characters act according to a weird and arbitrary rule but never explain it directly or indirectly. Try to communicate the rule with only the character's actions, dialogue and environmental storytelling.

Write a scene with conflict and a twist, then analyze it to figure out what information the audience must know in order to to understand what's going on. Rewrite the scene as a mystery, each time omitting one of those pieces of information and framing it as the answer to the scene. This is mostly to practice awareness of what information you're giving the audience and how its presence or lack of it changes things.

Write a scene with an unreliable narrator. The narrator's perception of what's happening is completely mistaken, but the audience must still be able to understand the truth of what's actually going on.

Atmosphere

Write a story with a beginning, middle and end without any dialogue or actions. Use only descriptions to create environmental storytelling.

Pick an object. Describe it three different times. Each time try to evoke a different emotion.

Dialogue

Write a scene with only dialogue.

Write a conversation where the characters never state what they actually mean.

Pick an emotion. Write as many one line dialogues as you can that convey the character is feeling that emotion.

Character voice

Write a scene with multiple people using only dialogue. You can't state any of the characters' names, yet each speaker should be distinct.

Write a piece of exposition for a character to deliver and have a few different characters say it. Analyze how the character's backstory, culture, status, worldview and personality would change the delivery. What parts would they emphasize and what would get downplayed? How would they frame the information? What's their opinion on it? Would they deliver it factually or insert their opinion? How would their mood change the way they deliver the exposition?

Prose

Write poetry (and look up excercises for those as unfortunately I'm not familiar enough to give any).

Write a 1k story. Then rewrite it to be less than 500 words while still telling the same story.

Write a two sentence story. Write a three sentence story. Write a five sentence story. Compare them and analyze the things the extra length allowed you to do.

Pacing

Look up story structures. Pick a story and try to map it to said story structures. (A good place to start is Snyder's save the cat structure and hollywood movies. Most of them use that structure as template).

Write a story using only sentences with 3-4 words. Then do it with 6-7 words, and then with 10-11 words. Read those stories aloud and analyze the differences between how they sound and feel.

Plotting

Go people watching. Pick something that's happening in front of you and describe it in three different ways. Each time add a different twist in the end. What different setup did each twist need?

Write the same story in five sentences, then in three, then in two. What had to remain in order for the story to be the same? What was lost? In what ways did it change the resulting story?

Pick a story and read/watch it all the way through. Then go back and analyze each scene seperately. In what way did the scene contribute to the story?

Use a random word generator. Pick one word for theme, two words for plot and three words for characters. Figure out a way to write a coherent story that includes all of them. This one can be changed with any number of words for any category. The important thing is that there would be enough words you need to use that it acts as a constraint rather than a freeform prompt

Write a scene. Then rewrite it so that it starts as late as you can make it and ends as early as it can.

Character

Look up character arc structures. Pick a story and try to map it to a fitting character arc.

Practice debate. Pick a topic and write as many different viewpoints on it as you can. Try to give each viewpoint strong arguments to support it.

Pick a character. Figure out what plot would challenge them the most and what antagonist would cause them the most trouble.

Pick a character and decide on one trait of theirs. Write a foil character to highlight said trait.

Metaphor and subtext

Pick a couple of characters and have them argue. The argument can't be stated directly in any way and instead must be communicated through metaphor.

Alaric sat next to me without a word; this time, the silence between us was fraught.

That semicolon usage is technically correct: it links together two related independent clauses into one sentence (just like that colon links up the two clauses of this sentence, and the parenthesis turn this last part into an aside!) Technically speaking, there would be no need to change that sentence. If I was doing a straightforward proofread, I'd probably leave as-is. But! Compare to:

Alaric sat next to me without a word. This time, the silence between us was fraught.

That full stop distills the information into a double-punch delivery. First punch: he sits down. Second punch: the silence is fraught. The quality of that silence, its fraught nature, has been subtly elevated from the surrounding text, which emphasises it far more than when it was attached to the previous clause by a semicolon. If you wanna expand more on that silence, you could stick a semicolon back in:

This time, the silence between us was fraught; if it stretched any further, it was going to snap back on me like a suddenly-released tape measure.

That shifts the focus a little more onto the latter clause. Now it's not just about the fraught silence, but the effect that the silence has on our narrator.

You get something similar with the difference between clauses separated by commas, em or en-dashes and parentheses. As already demonstrated, parentheses are the textual equivalent of a stage whisper (sotto voce, if you will). Dashes are powerful tools for creating both on-page and mental space around a specific idea, thought or action.

It looked at me with its eyes – all six of them – then slid noiselessly back into the black water.

Dashes there emphasise the number of eyes. Maybe that's important because it means the water creature is giving the narrator its full attention suddenly, or maybe you just want to emphasise that this thing has six eyes – point is, those eyes are now the focal point around which the rest of the sentence's meaning coalesces.

You could use commas in that same sentence and be technically correct, but the feel of the sentence would be pretty different. Commas create minimal interruption to the flow of information so they don't create the same amount of information. They're like gently driving over a slight speed bump straight to the next thing, whereas dashes make you stop the car for a moment and look at the view. If that's the effect you want though, then commas are perfect!

Generally you unbutton and re-button a suit coat when you sit down and stand up.

You’re supposed to hold wine or champagne glasses by the stem to avoid warming up the liquid inside. A character out of their depth might hold the glass around the sides instead.

When rich/important people forget your name and they’re drunk, they usually just tell you that they don’t remember or completely skip over any opportunity to use your name so they don’t look silly.

A good way to indicate you don’t want to shake someone’s hand at an event is to hold a drink in your right hand (and if you’re a woman, a purse in the other so you definitely can’t shift the glass to another hand and then shake)

Americans who still kiss cheeks as a welcome generally don’t press lips to cheeks, it’s more of a touch of cheek to cheek or even a hover (these days, mostly to avoid smudging a woman’s makeup)

The distinctions between dress codes (black tie, cocktail, etc) are very intricate but obvious to those who know how to look. If you wear a short skirt to a black tie event for example, people would clock that instantly even if the dress itself was very formal. Same thing goes for certain articles of men’s clothing.

Open bars / cash bars at events usually carry limited options. They’re meant to serve lots of people very quickly, so nobody is getting a cosmo or a Manhattan etc.

These events are almost always open bar. They're not trying to make their money back on alcohol. They want you to drink and eat and donate generously.

If there are cocktails, there will be at most two on offer, pre-made in large tubs. You cannot order a different version, it is what it is.

There are two types of events: cocktail style or seated. The first includes roaming hors d'oeuvres or a fancy buffet with tiny plates called a grazing station. For a long night, the roaming food will get a little bigger throughout the evening and have a 'main' at some point based around a protein.

A seated event will usually be more structured and may include multiple courses. Silver service is not in vogue anymore. You are likely to get either alternating meals brought to you like at a wedding, or served banquet style. A good caterer can get a plate to everyone in a 300 person event in about three minutes.

Drunk people are the same no matter how expensive their suits. They still laugh too loud, spill their drinks and slip on the dance floor. They are usually less embarrassed about doing coke in the bathrooms.

A full scale event that starts at 6pm will have staff arriving at noon to begin setup. Earlier if there's a light show or pyrotechnics. Typically venues don't just have 30 tables and three hundred chairs lying around, let alone table cloths, chair covers, etc. It's all rented and brought in on the day. Bands and DJs will be running audio tests in the background throughout.

Most heritage buildings that host these things, like museums and manor houses, aren't really designed for them. They might put down mats so you're not walking in stilettos over two hundred year old wooden floors, the kitchens are weirdly far away, and there are not enough taps. There is never anywhere for staff to sit, so if you open the wrong door you might find half a dozen waiters sitting on upturned milk crates in a room full of million dollar paintings, eating the left over bread.

Really old buildings don't have enough bathrooms, which means the staff will be sharing with the guests.

Clean up starts the second the event ends, if not sooner. Unattended glasses will start to disappear first, then table decorations. When the timer ticks over, the lights come back on and exhausted staff strip the tables, pack up dirty glasses and unopened wine bottles and have to Tetris it all into the back of a van. The venue is booked for that day only, so everything has to be gone before anyone can go home. A large event that finishes at midnight might take until 3am to be cleared away.

What if... writing the “wrong” thing is what leads you back to yourself?

In our newest guest contributor's blog post, Blackbird writes about burnout, creative pressure, first-time fanfic, and the unexpected side quests that can help us rediscover the joy in creating things.

"It's important to find the part of you that's fueled by nothing more than pure self-indulgence, and to give that part of you the space to exist.

Whatever form that takes."

“They’ll kill us…” “I know.”

“We can’t keep doing this.” “I know. But I don’t know how to stop.”

“This is going to get is both killed.”

“We have to go. They know, we have to go right now.” “What? What are you talking about?” “They know! About us! They know!”

“What if we left? Maybe somewhere else we could just… be.”

“Isn’t this thrilling?” “And absolutely moronic? It really is.”

“We don’t owe anyone an explanation.”

“Relax, no one saw me.” “How can you be sure?”

“Is all this worth it?” “You mean being with you? Because for me, it absolutely is.”

We're officially a week into the Summer Challenge!

So time for a check in. How's the writing going?

I hope everything is going great, and you've accomplished a lot this week!

But, what if the results weren't great? What if didn't reach your weekly goal? What if you already feel like quitting?

But! This is why we sent up the challenge with fresh goal setting each week.

So, instead of quitting, use what you've learned this week to make next week better.

Think about what went well, and what didn't.

If you found that doing a daily writing sprint worked out great, but you didn't hit your word-count goal, then the answer is pretty simple, lower your word-count goal for this week.

If you felt too over extended, then set a lower target for this week.

On the opposite side of things, if reaching your goals felt very easy, try setting a goal that's a little more challenging.

Overall, don't treat a single week like it's the end all. Instead, use it as an exercise in figuring out your limits, and use that information to set better goals this week.

When it comes to writing goals, it's all a learning process.

And don't forget to put it in writing, or make a post about it.

And in the spirit of that? The word prompt for this week is Limit.

Write a fic with 6 puns/references/inside jokes in 7 sentences.

Write about the meaning of life, the universe, or everything in exactly 42 words.

Write a smut scene in 69 words.

Write a fic of 101 words that includes at least one dog.

Write a 10 sentence fic about why one character hates another.

Write a 666-word fic about a dark omen.

Write a fic containing substance use that is 420 words long.

Write a fic that's 404 words long about a character who can't find something.

Write a fic with a three-digit word count (100-999) that contains your AO3 user number.

Write a 314-word fic that contains a mathematical concept.

Write a new backstory in exactly 52 words.

Write a 616-word fic that takes place in our universe (for a fandom that doesn't).

Write a dystopian future!fic that is 2046 words long.

Write a fic about an evil government that is 1984 words long.

Write a fic that is 177 words long and contains the number 76 and a reference to football.

Write a fic about a hacker that is 1337 words long.

Hypnotic suggestions from being mind controlled persist after the controller’s death, causing the victim to occasionally take actions to support the cause of a mind flayer cult that no longer exists.

Repeated demonic possession has left the patient with permanent gaps in their soul’s defenses, causing them to immediately get re-possessed if they go outside a consecrated area.

Post-resurrection trauma as the revived soul remembers an unpleasant afterlife.

Curse of bad luck - makes any small illness or injury potentially fatal if not treated with anti-curse in addition to anti-infection procedures

Magical reliance on a magical or nonmagical substance - can have any number of side effects

Repeatedly being drunk by vampires can cause an increase in blood production and therefore high blood pressure and related ailments. Can be treated by blood letting.

There’s a lot of hybridization happening in a lot of fantasy settings, and that’s just asking for a lot of people with weird half-dragon genetic disorders. Works out fine for some people, not so much for others.

Parasitized by (insert creature here). If you don’t take the correct precautions to keep it dormant it will continue to spread and eventually hatch out/transform you.

Repeated contact with the undead has left you open to their influence - leading to hearing or seeing things that other mortals can’t, which can distort or distract from more mundane concerns.

Alternately to being more vulnerable to intrusion, one’s soul can form a scar that makes helpful magic more difficult to take in.

Sleep disorders that make one fall into an impenetrable sleep at a specific trigger, or to do so for years at a time.

Out of phase with 4D space, one’s body not connected to itself or anchored in place/time in the usual way. There could be a consistent two hour gap between the things you hear and what has happened, you might clip into the floor as if it was in a different place for you, or you might slide through the material plane in cross section.

Intermittent intangibility.

Split into two people, each with only half your traits.

the forgotten dread: memory modification magic has caused the subject’s conscious mind to forget some past trauma, but their subconscious still remembers, causing them emotions that they cannot explain or justify ranging from mild discomfort to blind panic when presented with triggers related to the aforementioned trauma. often encountered in cases where the subject has paid an unscrupulous mage to make them forget their past as an ill-advised alternative to therapy.

Psychically Transmitted Memories: the subject’s mind has been linked to another person’s and, although the bond has since been severed, they have retained memories or thought patterns from the other person that are difficult to distinguish from their own.

Negative Life Syndrome (previously “False Life Syndrome”): seen most often in cases when the subject is exposed to dark magic while in the womb, Negative Life Syndrome leaves the subject’s life energies tainted by undeath without making them truly undead. common symptoms include intolerance of radiant magic, aversion to sunlight, and the inability to set foot on hallowed ground; rare symptoms include healing from negative energies, sudden necrosis, and the desire to eat flesh or drink blood of living beings.

lycanthropy

Awareness of too many dimensions makes it difficult to interact with just this one - either to keep track of conversations, or walk to specific locations without ending up on another planet instead

Telekinetic psychosis - delusions tend to physically affect those around you (but HIGH chance for ableism in this one!)

you have flare-ups where your skin tends to slough off and be replaced by some other substance

After sharing life energy with a dying loved one, you’re now both trying to survive off one person’s supply. Like chronic fatigue, but if your loved one gets too big of a bruise you won’t have the energy to get up until it heals

living in reverse

stuck at a certain age

supersenses lead to constant overstimulation

Summer Writing

June, July, August

It's summer, some of you may even be on vacation, and up here in the northern hemisphere it's already way too hot. None of these things lend themselves to a lot of writing time.

But we are writers, are we not? Let's write then.

Summer writing means setting manageable goals, something we can fit in between all the other stuff. This may be a wordcount goal, or to work on the story for a certain amount of time. It may also be something else creative you want to do.

@mareebrittenford is working on a fancy spreadsheet for you, and I'm (@barbex) making a weekly image for you, where you can write down your goals for that week and get a little, optional, prompt for your current project.

We start on the first of June, and until then, I want you to think about what a realistic goal is for you for the first week. Make a post about it and tag this blog. Let's write together this summer.

~barbex

Oh yeah, and don't use generative AI, that would be totally beside the point of writing together. And also stupid.

---

Me when I write for 2 hours: 500 words

Princess: an effeminate and relatively youthful male homosexual or lesbian (1931-4)

Daffodil: effeminate young man (1925)

To throw a fuck into: to have sex with (1919)

Top sergeant: a masculine lesbian (1939) [‘she takes command of the girls’ privates’]

Lily: penis (1919)

Wolf: sexually aggressive man (1847); a homosexual top (1918)

Soul kiss: a deep kiss, involving putting one’s tongue into one’s partner’s mouth (1907)

Tom: a lesbian (1909); [in 'old tom'] prostitute catering to lesbians (1966)

Church mouse: a male homosexual who frequents crowded churches in order to fondle any potential sex partners. (1941)

Discover one's gender: to accept or acknowledge one’s homosexuality (1941) / Lose one's gender: To return to living as a heterosexual

Minty: a masculine lesbian (1941)

Also a lot of early 20th century vulgarity is recorded in Letter from My Father, which is a collection of letters published by a man who's dad was, in short, a major slut and human disaster who wrote about his sex life for his son. It's insane. You can find copies of it online & it's a wild fucking read (literally!) and I think a really interesting look at the life of a person who goes against our stereotypes of what people in the past were "supposed" to be like.

note for writers: these are dated to the first time they were recorded, not necessarily to their first use. I imagine for many of these, they came about naturally through spoken language before they were written down anywhere. This is especially true of more underground slang because it's probably being recorded (in ways we still have) the least. So if you wanna use a term but it's a little off date-wise, give yourself some wiggle room.

also gonna take this moment to highlight two more i found recently:

Best boy: a sweetheart, a boyfriend, a husband. (1893) [w the obvious equivalent term 'best girl']

Honeydripper or honeydrips: a sexual partner (1917)