Writing prompts and resources

When you’re stumped and you don’t know what’s not working for your writing, or you don’t know where to go next, take out a rubber duck (or any equivalent friend/inanimate object, I like to use my dogs) and start explaining every single detail as if the rubber duck knows nothing about writing or about your story. Explain out loud what’s going on, what part you’re up to, why you’re stumped, and what you know you need to get to when you figure out how to get there

Great dialogue can come from radical emotional honesty. But in most real conversations, people

dodge questions

answer indirectly

lie (badly)

change the subject

crack jokes to avoid serious answers

lie (convincingly)

say half of what they mean

tell the truth but get so anxious/angry/defensive others now think they're lying

If your dialogue feels unnatural, it might be because everyone is saying exactly what they think, or articulating their thoughts too well. Try letting characters hide things instead.

It doesn't matter if all you did was day-dream about your characters while staring at the ceiling.

Please imagine me gently holding your hands, I am not reprimanding you, I say this with nothing but love and respect, but

If you give a character with no access to antibiotics a wound infection, they are going to die.

If a character is delirious with fever, they are going to die.

Make them lose a substantial amount of blood. For reference: For an adult human, about 8% of their body weight is blood. They can lose around 10% of that without much trouble, 20% will cause serious symptoms, more than 50-60% is generally incompatible with life. These numbers are estimations. The slower this blood loss, the better the body can compensate for it. Losing a significant amount of blood will affect the character's consciousness and take days or weeks to recover from.

Fever and malaise. Injuries are stressful. Inflammation is a natural response to that. Destroyed cells release proteins which can cause moderate fever (too much of that can cause kidney failure which is why excessive beatings can kill people, even when they don't initially sustain any life-threatening injuries). The character will be in pain, they'll feel like shit, they'll need plenty of rest and tender caretaking without their limb rotting off.

If you have to infect them, give them an abscess. That way, the pus and bacteria are walled off and can be drained out (by cutting the abscess open), with lower risk of it getting into the blood stream. It's also risky but much more survivable than phlegmone (diffuse infection of soft tissue).

Drugs. Just drug 'em. Ye Olde Opium/Laudanum will put them in a scarily deep sleep while Love Interest can sit there and hold vigil. Now this might also kill them so use with caution.

Keep. It. Clean. Carefully and gently clean out gross stuff and things that do not belong in there, do not introduce foreign matter, and keep that wound covered.

The body will support Caretaker in this. Exudation is a natural defense mechanism to flush out germs and other dirt. Normal exudate is clear, with a slight yellow tinge, and almost odorless (wounds do have a characteristic smell, but they don't stink). Excessive exudate can form crusts around the wound, those should be cleaned away. Boiled water or saline solution is probably the safest bet for wound irrigation. Gentle mechanical cleaning (wiping with wet cloth) is appropriate.

Wounds want to be kept moist. Ointment can help with that, and also prevent the bandage from sticking to the wound. For a premodern setting, lard (rendered pig fat) is probably not a terrible option. It contains almost no water or sugar, so doesn't grow mold, and the grease prevents the tissue from drying out. Still, Caretaker will probably want to soak that bandage before they remove it.

The bandage should be clean linen. Not wool. If Caretaker has to rip up their clothes for bandages, at least use the undergarment, and the parts of it that are less dirty (sleeves).

A cavernous wound (ie from a drained abscess) might need to be tamponaded, that is, lined with a strip of wet cloth, to keep it open and help with drainage.

Various herbs, honey, spices, etc, have historically all been used to promote healing, some more successfully than others. However, everything is potentially contaminated with germs and fungal spores. Putting mashed plant matter that hasn't been otherwise treated into wounds is always a gamble.

Disinfection is a possibility, but an effective disinfectant will also damage healthy tissue. If Character has their wound bathed with wine or spirits every time the bandage is changed, that wound will become necrotic.

Stitches are likewise a double-edged sword. Pulling the edges of a deep wound together will make it heal quicker and more smoothly, but it also retains exudate in a warm, anaerobic environment, which makes an ideal growing environment for nasty bacteria. Balance risk and reward appropriately.

Some additional thoughts:

Medicine has taken unimaginable leaps during the last ~150 years. Things that would have been a death sentence to our ancestors are barely more than a nuisance to us. As a result, we have a fundamentally different attitude towards treatments, especially invasive treatments. We do surgeries as precaution or to restore optimal function, where in the past, surgery was often a last resort. It was very risky, and ran a good chance of killing the patient, so it would only be done if they would die anyway.

That doesn't mean doctors and surgeons of the past were helpless, there are a lot of amazing and very sophisticated treatments, that are older than you'd think. For as long as we have been human we have tried to heal each other, and were often successful.

Just because we know humoral pathology is wrong doesn't mean it's stupid. It's based on very solid observations of health and the human body. It was the accepted theory for a long time. It makes no sense for a doctor in that setting to reject it.

The human body is at once more resilient and more fragile than most people think. Humans can walk off devastating injuries, a lot of things will sort themselves out. However, once a tipping point is reached and the body can no longer compensate for whatever is going wrong, there's no turning that process around. This is why systemic infections are so dangerous: Bacteria/toxins overwhelm the immune system, everything is poisoned, multiple organ failure, death. It's very difficult to come back from that, even today.

Prior to the 19th century, the Western world had no reliable anesthesia. Alcohol was used & was far from great. If I remember correctly, Abigail Adams underwent one surgery & died rather than going through a second.

If you want some historical medicine texts, look for the following historical authors:

Galen (3rd Century Greek) who wrote on humoral theory.

Hildegard of Bingjn — high medieval German nun who wrote about medicine and other things

Trotula — a collection of three 12th century texts on women’s health

For non-European ideas, consider Tan Yunxian’s “Sayings of a Female Doctor” from the Ming Dynasty for Chinese practices. For India, Ayurveda is still practiced though I would encourage spending time diving into how it may have changed over time.

I don’t have a lot of time tonight, but I have copies of Hildegard’s medical text, as well as Trotula if anyone is looking for something particular.

The interesting thing about Humoral theory, Chinese traditional medicine, and Ayurveda is that they all looked at disease as being caused by a bodily imbalance. All three believed that foods could cause or relieve these imbalances. I don’t wish to overly conflate them — they all are distinct. However if you’re creating a low-science fantasy world, food should be part of how health & healing is approached.

askinggg a question. do you ever plan your fics :00? like of course you said you like daisy dukes because it’s like short stories. but series like… the heartbreaking of harlequin and jalapeño fic… do you ever like plan or make a roadmap? or do you wing it? do you have like the start and the end, and hope for the best in the middle or vague bits in the middle?

or how you come up with the stories? we know you… wrote… a very- very… *sobs* angsty… story with harlequin when you were bored during a class… like did the idea just pop up in your mind or did you just go, ah, i wanna write something heart wrenching and breaking?

would love to know your process! also do you ever listen to music when writing? like the playlists for the characters to get in the mood?

Hi rumiiii!!!!! >_> resting is .....tough....

As for your questions, do I plan out my fics?

Kinda....I have the whole story in my head, how it will go, what certain details will occur. I don't like writing long sagas (like book trilogies and such). Contained stories, at least at this point in my life, are my favorite.

I mostly wing it with the jalapeño fic tbh. I just have a basic idea of where it's going and let my feelings take me away. That's probably not the best way to do it, but it helps me. Plus, again, I feel I know where it's going. When I come across a story however where I have little to no idea what will happen, well, there in lies the challenge.

I have a start, middle, and end for it. Absolutely.

Just as I do for an unwritten Pierrot story that i hope to get out one day!

As for coming up with my stories, short or otherwise, for me it must stem from a NEED. A DEEP desire to WRITE or to SAY something.

In the jalapeño fic's case: i wanted to show an MC who would be able to sass him back. For The Trainman, I had the desire for Pierrot have at least ONE SINGLE FRIEND on his side. The Two Lines of Q stemmed from a real life experience that frustrates me (and at times continues to frustrate me) to this day. The Court Jester and The Circus Archives were about venting IRL things in my life and seeing how JESTER would have handled it instead. Making myself stronger I suppose...

Smaller ideas, such as the soul mate AU or The Root of All Evil, etc. those came from friends suggesting really fun concepts!!! Tazz linked a post about: "It's good to be a villain, to be hated by the one you love, as long as you saved them." Then---I got the idea for The Root of All Evil, and wrote it in less than 4 hours.

Dead Leaves specifically stemmed from a DEEP DESIRE to explore grief and how no matter WHAT good ending you get in the game, it's Dead Leaves that will ALWAYS be the result. You know how the game Deltarune says that 'any choice you make will have the same ending'---that's what I wanted to explore here.

So yeah, I just dig in my heart and my mind for anything I TRULY want to see, and if I'm passionate enough about it? If I want to see this idea come to life SO BADLY, then I write it.

Because.....who else will?

I once commissioned a fic, before I started writing, and while I liked it....the whole time I couldn't help but think: "I would have done it differently." I'm not satisfied commissioning other people, I need to do it my way, and the desire of that is what motivates me to write. Otherwise, I will never be satisfied.

Absolutely. I think every writer hits this Buyer's Remorse-ish thing occasionally, and it's deeply annoying when it happens.

What's worked for me in the past has been (first) to just sit with the issue for a little. Once the realization of something-not-working has turned up, don't get in a fight with it right away! Go forward and do some writing on which you're not having any conflicts. Give the suddenly-annoying thing, or things, a few days or a week to settle down.

Then revisit the troublesome issue and see if it's calmed down at all. If it has, and seems less troublesome now, fine: just go on as you were. This kind of sudden flash of uncertainty or dissatisfaction isn't at all uncommon. They can come and go with great speed.

But it it hasn't calmed down or gone away, and is still kicking up a stink, the best way to get through the difficulty seems to be to make it explain itself.

You do this by putting your Editor Hat on—every writer has one—and writing an editorial-style note to yourself; explaining, in detail, what seems not to be working about the plot point or piece of character business or whatever: and why. Don't be curt or brief with yourself; lay it all out in detail, as if your potential note-reader had no idea at all what was going on. And tell yourself exactly what's bothering you about it. Can't work this issue out immediately? Take a day or so off and do other things, and then come back to it. The ability of the Writer Brain to keep worrying away at stuff in the background while you're doing other things is a never-ending wonder.

My experience with this approach has typically had one of two results. While writing the note (or while considering it, completed, later) I've routinely started seeing ways to fix the thing that seemed wrong. Sometimes the insight has taken a day or two to materialize after writing the note. The plain-language clarification of the details of the issue often seems to help suggest ways around or through them: or to lay increasingly open a sense of what the problem really is, so that a way through it starts becoming clearer.

...At which point you take your own advice: get in under the hood of your plot and start tinkering with the things that you feel you can fix to resolve the problem. (And it's okay to have to flail around a little among the opportunities at this point before finding the fix that works best. Try one and see how it settles in: if it doesn't, pull it out, shove something similar-but-different into the opening and see how that works.)

Or alternately: while writing that note, I've started feeling that the problem in question wasn't actually one that needed to be solved at all—that the original concept was just fine as it was. (This realization has routinely started to betray itself when writing the note about "what's wrong" starts becoming difficult because the reasons I was being bothered by turned out to be just unfocused "plotting anxiety" and weren't really all that problematic to start with.) ...At which point you file your note away (because who knows when you might need it for the resolution of some other problem?) and get on with the work at hand.

I've found this approach pretty useful. In a lot of years of work, I've only ever had to sit down and write a second note about an issue once, and that one cleared things up really conclusively. (It revealed something crucial that I'd been failing to deal with, and eventually required the insertion of a smoked-lamb,-potted-goose-and-white-bean casserole into a key chapter of The Door Into Sunset—a fabulous recipe that turned out to have a lot more in it than fiber. And which I'll post over at the Food and Cooking of the Middle Kingdoms site sometime in the next month or so.)

So I very much recommend this approach. Give it a shot and see how it works for you. Trust yourself.

I'm writing fanfics of the circus members, but I'm too much of a perfectionist and I feel like I'm not representing them well.

Do you have any advice for writing them, something that you always keep in mind for each one when writing about them?

Hey there! most of my advice on how to write them is in my tfc headcanons tag or my writing tag (which you will find both at the bottom of this post). Though basic ways I go about writing them is as follows:

Pierrot: Dangerous, amorous, and naive are the base things to remember about him. He believes in affection the same way a cat does when it brings you a dead mouse: "Why are you upset? I was just showing you how good of a provider I am and that I will kill your enemies.....isn't that lovers are meant to do?" He's sweet, doesn't get social cues, but he is not to be underestimated in his passion/clingyness/strength. He is an artist in his stalking---though his low self-esteem/image means he is willing to change everything about himself to please his love---a problem to be sure.

Harlequin: Every other word is a lie, and every other word after that is the truth. He will NOT be direct in anything he says, even if you were to ask him 'how was your day?' he'd likely answer: "Oh? A little good, a little bad---why so interested? Are you trying to flirt with me?" ---Harlequin loves people who are blunt/genuine especially because he has trouble being that way himself. He responds well to people being truthful, but he hides his own honesty with flirting, sex, and charm.

Doctor: The character simply says how he feels or what it is without always reading the room. He will point out whether or not you're fidgeting, blushing, or nervous and likely make those emotions worse, even if it's far from his intention. Doctor loves cute things, loves learning too! He is sensitive about how big and scary he is, knowing he can't go most places. As such, he prefers solitude---but at the same time he craves a companion who won't judge him for his eccentricities. An example of his dialogue is as follows: "Raining cats and dogs, you say? Strange....I don't see anything out there other than water...."

TicketTaker: Service with a smile that hides his true sadistic nature. TicketTaker has the manners of a 5 star butler, making people believe he is nice and approachable, however....he is not. He is ultimately afraid of humans, HATES them---and is uncomfortable by their mere presence. Bil only respects Jester and he hates chaos. He is a VERY meticulous person, always needing things done or folded a certain way. Bil also is found to adjust the circus member's clothing if it is slightly off---this is his way of showing he genuinely cares. But with humans? He is like that retail worker who greets you with a smile but behind that smile secretly wants to kill every customer who comes up to the register. Bil may find humans beautiful at times, but in the same way you would a tiger; a tiger is dangerous and beautiful, is it not?

Jester: The most complex, arguably, of them all and the most sadistic. His dialogue is that he will start and end a conversation in ONE sentence: "Ah, so you found your way back to our circus, did you? Certainly it would have been best had you stayed at home where it is safe? Let's not make that mistaken again." Jester enters a room and EVERYONE feels his presence. He will not speak to those who do not give him the proper respect, instead allowing his subordinates to handle it if necessary. Jester could talk his way out of a knife fight and leave the attacker trembling in their boots. He enjoys seeing lowly humans shudder under his heel (Bil does as well btw). Jester commands not only the conversation, not only the room, but everyone around him--whether you realize he has or not.

1. Slow down at emotionally important moments.

Big emotions need space to land. If a scene feels rushed, pause the plot briefly to show how the moment affects the character.

2. Add reactions, not explanations.

Instead of explaining what a character feels, show it through physical responses, hesitation, or small actions that reveal emotion naturally.

3. Ground every scene in the senses.

If a scene feels thin, add one or two sensory details—sound, texture, smell, or temperature—to make the moment feel lived-in.

4. Let thoughts interrupt action.

A line of internal thought can deepen a scene without slowing it too much. Thoughts show stakes, fear, longing, or conflict beneath the action.

5. Expand consequences, not events.

You don’t need more things to happen—you need to show what matters. Focus on how events change relationships, decisions, or self-perception.

6. Strengthen setting where emotion peaks.

The environment should echo or contrast the emotion of the scene. Setting is not decoration—it’s emotional reinforcement.

7. Add specific details instead of general ones.

Underwriting often relies on vague language. Swap “they argued” for one sharp line of dialogue or a specific breaking point.

8. Let dialogue breathe.

Short dialogue exchanges without pauses can feel flat. Add beats—silence, gestures, interruptions—to give the conversation weight.

9. Show transitions between scenes.

If scenes jump too quickly, readers feel disoriented. A brief transition helps establish time, mood, and emotional continuity.

10. Clarify stakes early in the scene.

If readers don’t know what can be lost, scenes feel empty. Make sure the character wants something specific and fears losing it.

11. Use the “what are they feeling right now?” check.

After each major beat, ask what emotion is dominant in that moment. If it’s missing on the page, the scene is likely underwritten.

12. Expand scenes that feel “too clean.”