Mars

I knew that intellectually but it never truly clicked until I opened an old favorite last night to get lost in for the thousandth time. But if you’re a fanfiction author, someone out there is reading and rereading your stories. Someone out there is loving your world and words not just once but over and over and over again.

That’s amazing.

So here’s a shoutout to the readers and rereaders. The commenters and kudosers and lurkers and everyone and anyone who has ever picked a fic up and loved it.

And here’s a shoutout to the writers, in case you need a pick me up or a slight bit of love. Somewhere, out there on a screen under a sky you’ve never seen, your story is coming to life.

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.

So, a funny thing happened on trigun twitter

Update, “this is how you lose the time war” is now #21 on Amazon’s bestseller’s list

Further update!

Time war has reached #7 on the amazon bestseller’s list and is still discounted!

(thread found here: https://twitter.com/tithenai/status/1655613629604016151?s=20)

In addition:

The producer of Trigun Stampede. (No word from Nightow yet, I checked.)

A literary agent. To be precise, the agent of at least one of the authors of Time War.

Slate, posting their article about the whole thing.

A frenzy of mutual adoration and signed hardcover offers.

Other authors want in on the Bigolas Dickolas goodness.

Dongwon again.

Saw this on Twitter and HAH.

Bigolas Dickolas is now Alexander the Great.

trigun, following bigolas dickolas, has also become a trending topic in business and finance

Interview with Bun (or Mr. Bigolas)

Crossover art (https://twitter.com/xxrat__punkxx/status/1656446745088278529?s=20)

thread of semi-current placements on the book

memes

and the situation very much escaping online confinement xD

Time War summary: reached #3 on Amazon overall, #1 (and 2, And 3) in science fiction romance, #3 in lit and fiction, social media presence overseas, and- 

printing with a bigolas dickolas sleeve and so much more

Bridging the two: so many articles

slate article

techcrunch article

insider article

kotaku article

Gizmodo article

tor.com

polygon

and etc

And then on the bigolas dickolas trigun side-

And then after tweeting @ dark horse for a potential trigun maximum (trimax) reprint due to the eng verison being out of print for several years by this point:

so everything can now basically be summed by by this tweet!

(I don’t know if i’ll keep updating this thread considering how many branches there are and idk how much more this can escalate, but I’m keeping an eye on the situation so we’ll see!!)

For those asking what time war is about, per Mr. Bigolas’s post: DO NOT look up anything about it. Just read it.

Hittin’ the keyboard like

Friends comin’ online like

DID YOu SEE tHE THINGg MY GOD