Here Be Dragons

Squeezing oc like a stress ball. Throwing oc at the wall like a tennis ball. Dribbling oc on the ground like a basket ball. Whacking oc with a club like golf ball. AND OTHER SUCH ACTIVIES THAT YOU CAN IMAGINE.

Writing more weird fiction will fix me

The book community would not be anything w/o our artists, our designers, our narrators and/or everyone else involved in making these books happen. If you use gen AI, you’re announcing your lack of respect and solidarity for everyone involved. So why would any of us buy your book?

I always feel so cheated in stories when characters are walking around with this Big Guilt and then...you find out that the thing wasn't their fault at all. And not in a "they thought they did it but it turns out they were set up" way, or even a "accepting that just because they did A which caused B which caused C it doesn't mean C was their fault", way but where they finally lay out the sequence of events and it's clear that any thinking person would not connect them. Like, fucking commit!!! The character isn't LESS compelling if they actually did the thing! You can't have the haunted brooding meow meow who is...also completely blameless

I don't think Tolkien is a good fantasy writer because he scored the highest at some objective Best Fantasy Book Test that every fantasy writer has to take, I think he's a good fantasy writer because he created a world based on things that he was interested in. I feel like a lot of fantasy writers think that they need to create a whole language for their world because Tolkien did and obviously his books are the best so they have to emulate him, but Tolkien did that because he was a linguistics nerd. I think the lesson to be learned from him is not that you have to include elves and deep history and new languages, but that you have to write endlessly about the things you are a huge nerd about and use those things to create your fantasy world

the hard part about writing is literally writing a banger sentence n then having to be like. do NOT share it. dont share it. dont share it. just wait. its not as good outside of context. just WAAAAAIT. when its like. if i dont get attention right this second im gonna stop writing forever my hands will turn to stone & my brain will fall outta my ears n go rolling around on the floor & down the apartment stairs & out into the cool night air never to be seen again

"it's ok to show (x) in fiction as long as the bad guy gets punished!" the bad guy doesn't have to get punished. in fact the bad guy can win altogether. the bad guy can entirely get away with it. hope this helps

and this part might make some people's head explode but: characters can be written to forgive things you personally wouldn't ever forgive. not everything is written as what you'd perceive to be the right choice. not everything is a self-insert & protagonists don't have to be relatable.

The problem with having OCs is that sometimes you wanna read about your little guy being in situations but unfortunately he is YOUR little guy and no one is gonna put him in that situation but you. Tragic.