ur problematique fave

Dear diary this list came to me in my dream! Looks like AU-gust 2026 is here...

What is AU-gust? It stands for Alternate Universe August, and it is a creative challenge for everyone. Writers, artists, fans; anyone can join! Be sure to check out our FAQ for more answers! Join us on BlueSky, AO3, Discord and under the tags #au gust and #au gust 2026.

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I love this saga so much I can't even put it into words

hi! thank you <3 i’ve done a lot of thinking about this ask... one, because i think stillness can be good! it’s a different prose style with a meditative quality... i don’t necessarily think it’s something you need to “fix”! if you’d like to bring more flow into your writing i’d encourage you to think about balancing that with your stillness! (i sound like a yoga instructor.....) 

two, plotting is hard for (probably almost) everyone, but pacing has always felt pretty instinctive to me... but i realized there are some weird things i do especially between prose and dialogue. 

1) a good dialogue tip is to try reading some screenplays, or thinking about the writing when you watch TV or movies. one thing that screenplays do with much ease that is harder when you’re a prose writer is the [beat] thing. screenplays write in time for both the character and viewer to pause and digest. that both mimics how people actually behave and allows for non-dialogue elements like the scenery or the actor’s physicality to put us in the place. when i feel like there has to be a beat of digestion within dialogue, i try to use the beat for something the way they would in a movie. what is the character doing/feeling? what might they notice around them? that way you get to mix your prose in with the dialogue, and the dialogue is paced the way people actually talk and react. basically, think about the pauses that may come in natural conversation. can you fill in those pauses with prose? 

2) you need a lot less space than you think you do to say what you want to say. just getting across what you need to is really, truly enough! i often start writing a story from the top and then i write the pieces throughout where i know what happens and put a [ TK - what has to happen here ] between each piece. i usually write the hardest parts (which are usually the dialogue-heavy conflict parts) at the end. i always get really stressed about these pieces and think, these need to be like thousands of words of storytelling... but they often don’t need to be! they need to get the thing done and that’s it! 

3) can you write dialogue with movement? this is my go-to cheat haha... characters talking while driving, walking, etc... that way, the scenery keeps changing while they are speaking, so you have that excuse to keep weaving prose into the dialogue. that also interrupts the “stillness” with literal movement!