i'm back, actually

Stories stall when everyone behaves. Real tension appears when someone:

• asks the wrong question • says something they shouldn’t • notices something uncomfortable • refuses to drop the topic • misunderstands something important • interrupts at the worst moment

They want something REALLY REALLY REALLY bad, but for some reason they can't ask for it -- or can't have it even if they did ask.

They don't notice something that the audience HAS noticed (like in a horror movie when the monster is sneaking up behind the protagonist, or if someone drinks a glass of unboiled water during a cholera outbreak because they don't know about germ theory)

Takes a risk (or otherwise does something they "shouldn't" do) which the audience has to sit through for a prolongued period of time (e.g. slips away from the party to go into the host's private office and rifle through their papers before the guards catch them)

“Native people used to live in this National Park” No. They still do.

“Native people used to tell these stories-” No. They still do.

“Native people used to use this plant as a natural remedy-” No. They still do.

Another day another Elezen photocard for the Berlin #FanfestWOLExchange, this time with the prettiest & nicest liar of the whole game, Urianger 💜

credit not needed. recoloring welcomed. feel free to edit as you need!

I will grind your bones to dust...

35.What is one essential thing to remember when writing a villain?  OR

76.Did you have any ideas that didn’t make the final cut of eleventh hour?

35. What is one essential thing to remember when writing a villain?

For original works: People don't generally do things that they, personally, believe are unjustified.

Notice I said 'unjustified' and not necessarily 'immoral' because real life and fiction are full of people who do things they 'know' are 'wrong' but justify it to themselves as "making the hard decisions so other people don't have to" (this is basically always wrong, by the way) or as the "lesser of two evils", which is sometimes, though not always, genuinely the best option available to them in a shitty situation.

But people don't generally do things they think don't have a justification. They make justifications up! We're human! We can justify anything! Sometimes the justification is as simple as "I deserve this" or "they're basically asking for it". Often it takes the form of convincing themselves that the other person is the aggressor or at fault in some way--I wouldn't HAVE to keep executing you worthless peasants if you would simply GET IN LINE AND DEDICATE EVERY MOMENT OF YOUR EXISTENCE TO PURSUING MY PERSONAL GOALS. Well if you didn't WANT to be tortured you shouldn't have INTERFERED with my VICTORY. We always have a reason.

For fanfic: THEIR CANON CHARACTERIZATION. JESUS. This isn't even about a character 'going too far'. (Like. Palpatine is 'going too far'? Delilah Briarwood took something 'too far'? Uh, Yeah, I Sure Hope So.) It's about going in the wrong direction.

Like. I fucking despise Genn Greymane, but I've gotten comments on my WoW fics complimenting me on his characterization. Because I don't just go "ugh I hate Genn" and immediately make him universally wrong and unbearable in every scene and give him every social bigotry to ever exist and have him insult and mistreat everyone ever all the time constantly every single line he ever speaks.

Tl;dr if a character is a villain, they are a villain for a reason. If you hate them, you hate them for a reason. Portraying them accurately should be enough. You don't need to make up different unrelated stuff. Make them shitty in the ways they actually are.

76. Did you have any ideas that didn’t make the final cut of eleventh hour?

I did actually! I had a whole mental image for Safia's actual confession--but it didn't actually add anything to the narrative, didn't work for the flow or timing of the fic, and all the emotional beats would have been redundant.

Venmo: @Alex-Anderson-10272

Paypal: paypal.me/alexiskablob

Violence: A Writer’s Guide:  This is not about writing technique. It is an introduction to the world of violence. To the parts that people don’t understand. The parts that books and movies get wrong. Not just the mechanics, but how people who live in a violent world think and feel about what they do and what they see done.

Hurting Your Characters: HURTING YOUR CHARACTERS discusses the immediate effect of trauma on the body, its physiologic response, including the types of nerve fibers and the sensations they convey, and how injuries feel to the character. This book also presents a simplified overview of the expected recovery times for the injuries discussed in young, otherwise healthy individuals.

Body Trauma: A writer’s guide to wounds and injuries. Body Trauma explains what happens to body organs and bones maimed by accident or intent and the small window of opportunity for emergency treatment. Research what happens in a hospital operating room and the personnel who initiate treatment. Use these facts to bring added realism to your stories and novels.

10 B.S. Medical Tropes that Need to Die TODAY…and What to Do Instead: Written by a paramedic and writer with a decade of experience, 10 BS Medical Tropes covers exactly that: clichéd and inaccurate tropes that not only ruin books, they have the potential to hurt real people in the real world. 

Maim Your Characters: How Injuries Work in Fiction: Increase Realism. Raise the Stakes. Tell Better Stories. Maim Your Characters is the definitive guide to using wounds and injuries to their greatest effect in your story. Learn not only the six critical parts of an injury plot, but more importantly, how to make sure that the injury you’re inflicting matters. 

I want you to look at this sandwich basket the exarch made for wol after returning from il mheg

looks delicious right ? now count each of them, if you count everything that makes 14 sandwiches

in this scene wol talks with ardbert (with the screen fading out), then goes to sleep. when they wake up we see that the whole basket is empty: this implies wol ate a basket of fourteen sandwiches in one sitting didn’t even put some on the side of later or anything do you know how hungry you’d have to be to eat fourteen sandwiches like that.