Witty Prose and Utter Nonsense

I’ve been compiling a smutwordlist and other handy tools, so I thought I’d share them in case they’re useful for other smutwriters💜

Tumblr resources:

The Smut Writer’s Dictionary by @maybeeatspaghetti

Smut Thesaurus [18+/NSFW] by @prurientpuddlejumper

smut guide by @iguessweallcrazyithinktho

A list of terms for smut by @thebleedtheory

Writing Smut 101: Overcoming Smut Shame by @slightlyrebelliouswriter23

🌈Is it okay for a straight writer to write smut for lgbtqia characters? Anonymous question answered by @thatspookyagent 🌈

🌈Gender Identity Resource List by @pocunion 🌈

🟡🟤⚫️Praising Beauty Without Fetishizing PoC Anonymous question answered by @writingwithcolor 🟡🟤⚫️

🟡🟤⚫️The skin tone guide part 1 by @writingwithcolor🟡🟤⚫️

🟡🟤⚫️The skin tone guide part 2 by @writingwithcolor🟡🟤⚫️

AO3 guides:

The Ultimate Guide to Writing Smut Fic by QuinnAnderson

The Fic Writer's Guide to Formatting by AnisaAnisa

The Fic Writer's Guide to Writing by AnisaAnisa

External articles/glossaries:

The Sexy Thesaurus 1

The Sexy Thesaurus 2

The Sexy Thesaurus 3

BDSM glossary

Dictionary of Sexual Terms

How to Write Smut

Here’s Your Everything-to-Know Guide on Erogenous Zones

🌈Gay Foreplay 101🌈

🌈Bottoming 101 🌈

🌈Gay Sex 101: A Comprehensive List of Queer Erotic Terms and Their Definitions🌈

🌈How to Write LGBT+ Characters🌈

TW->Thoughts on the Depiction of Rape in Fiction<-TW

Funny/Lighthearted:

70 Weird and Wacky Words for Vagina

A Definitive Ranking of 30 weird (And Funny) Words for Penis

If you have any recommendations please comment so I can include them!💜🤭

Also, please let me know if any of the sources I use are outdated, not working or problematic in any way so I can remove them or replace them💜

Last updated: October 2025

(a worldbuilding roast. with love.)

So. You’re building a fantasy world, and you’ve just invented: → Three types of ceremonial jewelry → A spice that tastes like cinnamon if it were bitter and cursed → A holiday where everyone wears gold and screams at dawn

Cute. But that’s not culture. That’s aesthetics.

And if your worldbuilding is all outfits, dances, and spice blends with vaguely mystical names, your story’s probably going to feel like a cosplay convention held inside a Pinterest board.

Here’s how to fix that—aka: how to build a real, functioning culture that shapes your story, not just its vibes.

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🔗 Culture Is Built on Power, Not Just Style

Ask yourself: → Who’s in charge, and why? → Who has land? Who doesn’t? → What’s considered taboo, sacred, or punishable by death?

Culture is shaped by who gets to make the rules and who gets crushed by them. That’s where things like religion, family structure, class divisions, gender roles, and social expectations actually come from.

Start there. Not at the embroidery.

─────── ✦ ───────

2.🪓 Culture Comes From Conflict

Did this society evolve peacefully? Was it colonized? Did it colonize? Was it rebuilt after a war? Is it still in one?

→ What was destroyed and mythologized? → What do the survivors still whisper about? → What do children get taught in school that’s… suspiciously sanitized?

No culture is neutral. Every tradition has a history, and that history should taste like blood, loss, or propaganda.

─────── ✦ ───────

3.🧠 Belief Systems > Customs Lists

Sure, rituals and holidays are cool. But what do people believe about: → Death? → Love? → Time? → The natural world? → Justice?

Example: A society that believes time is cyclical vs. one that sees time as linear will approach everything—from prison sentences to grief—completely differently.

You don’t need to invent 80 gods. You need to know what those gods mean to the people who pray to them.

─────── ✦ ───────

4.🫀 Culture Controls Behavior (Quietly)

Culture shows up in: → What people apologize for → What insults cut deepest → What people are embarrassed about → What’s praised publicly vs. what’s hidden privately

For instance: → A culture obsessed with stoicism won’t say “I love you.” They’ll say “Have you eaten?” → A culture built on legacy might prioritize ancestor veneration, archival writing, name inheritance.

This stuff? Way more immersive than giving everyone matching earrings.

─────── ✦ ───────

5. 🏠 Culture = Daily Life, Not Just Festivals

Sure, your MC might attend a funeral where people paint their faces blue. But what about: → Breakfast routines? → How people greet each other on the street? → Who cooks, and who eats first? → What’s considered “clean” or “proper”? → How is parenting handled? Divorce?

Culture is what happens between plot points. It should shape your character’s assumptions, language, fears, and habits—whether or not a festival is going on.

─────── ✦ ───────

6. 💬 Let Your Characters Disagree With Their Own Culture

A culture isn’t a monolith.

Even in deeply traditional societies, people: → Rebel → Question → Break rules → Misinterpret laws → Mock sacred things → Act hypocritically → Weaponize or resist what’s expected

Let your characters wrestle with the culture around them. That’s where realism (and tension) lives.

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7.🧼 Beware the “Pretty = Good” Trap

Worldbuilding gets boring fast when: → The protagonist’s homeland is beautiful and pure → The enemy’s culture is dark and “barbaric” → Every detail just reinforces who the reader should like

You can—and should—challenge the aesthetic hierarchy. → Let ugly things be beloved. → Let beautiful things be corrupt. → Let your MC romanticize their culture and then get disillusioned by it later.

─────── ✦ ───────

📍 TL;DR (but like, spicy): → Culture is not food and jewelry. → Culture is power, fear, memory, contradiction. → Stop inventing spices until you know who starved last winter. → Let your world feel lived in, not curated.

The best cultural worldbuilding doesn’t look like a list. It feels like a system. A pressure. A presence your characters can’t escape—even if they try.

Now go. Build something real. (You can add spices later.)

—rin t. // writing advice for worldbuilders with rage and range // thewriteadviceforwriters

Sometimes the problem isn’t your plot. It’s your first 5 pages. Fix it here → 🖤 Free eBook: 5 Opening Pages Mistakes to Stop Making:

🕯️ download the pack & write something cursed:

Writer: Air shot between the toes, it’ll look like a heart attack.

Serial killer: anywhere from 2 to 30 minutes

Now fast forward a bit and the author has managed to get their first book published, with loving support from the serial killer who helped them fine tune all the murder scenes, and it’s a big hit. Enough so that a detective with the local police department has noticed some disturbing similarities to several active cases, including details that were never released to the press. Obviously he brings this up to his superior and convinces him that there’s something to the theory, but it’s all circumstantial right now. He stakes out the author’s home and is super convinced that the author is the murderer, but they don’t seem to do anything??? Like they literally are at the house all day, that’s it. Most they do is leave for groceries.

“You need to stop seeing them. I think they are a serial killer.”

Terry Pratchett: "!" said the stranger.

These are some lowkey underrated tips I’ve seen floating around writing communities — the kind that don’t get flashy attention but seriously changed how I write.

1. Put “he/she/they” at the start of the sentence less often.

Try switching up your sentence rhythm. Instead of

“She walked to the window,”

try

“The window creaked open under her touch.”

Keeps it fresh and stops the paragraph from sounding like a checklist.

2. Don’t describe everything — describe what matters.

Instead of listing every detail in a room, pick 2–3 objects that say something.

“A half-drunk mug of tea and a knife on the table”

sets a way stronger tone than

“There was a wooden table, two chairs, and a shelf.”

3. Use beats instead of dialogue tags sometimes.

Instead of:

"I'm fine," she said.

Try:

"I'm fine." She wiped her hands on her skirt.

It helps shows emotion, and movement.

4. Write your first draft like no one will ever read it.

No pressure. No perfection. Just vibes. The point of draft one is to exist. Let it be messy and weird — future you will thank you for at least something to edit.

5. When stuck, ask: “What’s the most fun thing that could happen next?”

Not logical. Not realistic. FUN. It doesn’t have to stay — but chasing excitement can blast through writer’s block and give you ideas you actually want to write.

feel free to adjust pronouns / names as needed !

quotes taken from random sources or tiktok. i claim no ownership whatsoever.

❛   i’m supposed to be the one who protects you from monsters. i’m not supposed to be one.  ❜  

❛   if i could make a deal with god, and i’d get him to swap our places.  ❜  

❛  no one heard our screams for a long time.  ❜  

❛   i know so many last words. but i’ll never know hers.  ❜  

❛   there is a home for every departed thing.  ❜  

❛   it reminded me that i will never truly know you.  ❜  

❛   i also buried a part of myself alongside them.  ❜  

❛   after you died i could no longer hold a funeral. so my life became the funeral.  ❜  

❛   you don’t have to be awake to cry.  ❜  

❛   forgive me, for all the things i did. but mostly the things i didn’t do.  ❜  

❛   the human eye is the loneliest creation of all.  ❜  

❛   fairness is for happy people.  ❜  

❛   the things we lost will always be heavier than the things that stayed.  ❜  

❛   perhaps it is the greater grief, to remain on the earth when another is gone.  ❜  

❛   you stain the pages with yourself.  ❜  

❛   tears will not wash away the sorrow.  ❜  

❛   beautiful things grow a certain height and then they fall and fade off.  ❜  

❛    who in all these centuries has had the common humanity to pray for the one sinner that needed it most?  ❜  

❛   i have scars on my hands from touching certain people  ❜  

❛   despite everything, i believe that people are really good at heart.  ❜  

❛   you tried to change, didn’t you?  ❜

❛   you can’t make homes out of people. someone should have taught you that.  ❜  

❛   i hid my deepest feelings so well, i forgot where i placed them.  ❜  

❛   we have no scar to show for happiness. we learn so little from peace.  ❜  

❛   i didn’t leave because i stopped loving you. i left because the longer i stayed, the less i loved myself.  ❜  

❛   at every moment in our life, we have one foot in a fairytale & the other in the abyss.  ❜  

❛   there are too many sad eyes on happy faces.  ❜  

❛   it’s strange, i felt less lonely when i didn’t know you.  ❜  

❛   things change, friends leave. life doesn’t stop for anybody.  ❜  

❛   it takes a lifetime to die, and no time at all.  ❜  

❛   i am deathly afraid of almosts. of coming close to what i want and then falling just a little short.  ❜  

❛   i felt your absence.  ❜  

❛   what do we do now, now that we are happy?  ❜  

❛    you honestly thought anybody would love you? purely and truly love you?  ❜  

❛   don’t stop looking. he deserves to know someone saw his end, that someone noticed him.  ❜  

❛    i can bear my pain so long as it has meaning.  ❜  

❛   i dont have a single friend - not one.  ❜  

❛   i’ve had more than enough pain in my life, what’s a little more going to do?  ❜  

❛    it would have been you if i met you first.  ❜  

❛    i really thought he was going to be my forever.  ❜  

❛    maybe in the next life it would work.  ❜  

❛   in spite of everything, you’re still you.  ❜  

❛   the dead have it easy.  ❜  

❛   there’s an ocean of silence between us, and I’m drowning.    ❜  

❛   there have been countless times in my life when i thought i’d be better off dead.  ❜  

❛   what on earth… have i become?  ❜  

❛   don’t look at me! i don’t … i don’t want you seeing me like this.  ❜  

❛   i wish i could’ve been like you.  ❜  

❛   your fate was sweeping you away, like a flood.  ❜  

❛   the future should know the mistakes we made.  ❜  

❛   of course you have. you feel guilt. you want redemption.  ❜  

❛   i’m here because you can’t accept what you’ve done. it broke you.  ❜  

❛   even now, after all you’ve done, you can still go home.  lucky you . ❜  

❛   you’re all that’s left, and we can’t live this lie forever.  ❜  

❛    prometheus gave us light, and warmth, and eternal damnation.  ❜  

❛   take a gamble that love exists, and do a loving act.  ❜  

❛    i know i ruined your life. i suffer for it every day.  ❜  

❛   don’t let yourself get killed for… for pride. i’ve seen it kill too many folk.  ❜  

❛    you and me, we ain’t decent… but those folk… they were.  ❜  

❛   we’re more ghosts than people.  ❜  

❛   despite my best efforts to the contrary… it turns out i’ve won.  ❜  

❛   i gave you all i had … i did.  ❜  

❛   this whole time, I’ve blamed myself for that decision.  ❜  

❛   do you think even the worst person can change…? That everybody can be a good person, if they just try? ❜  

❛   i don’t want to break their hearts all over again. it’s better if they never see me.  ❜  

❛   please leave me alone. i can’t come back. i just … can’t, okay?  ❜  

❛   no matter the struggles or hardships you faced… you strived to do the right thing, you refused to hurt anyone. ❜  

❛    people like you don’t ever want to be happy.  ❜  

❥ Disarming Humor. They’re the life of the party. Everyone’s laughing. No one’s noticing how much they aren’tsaying.

❥ Laser-Sharp Observation. They see everything. Who’s nervous. Who’s lying. Who would be easiest to break. And they don’t miss.

❥ Unsettling Calm. Even in chaos, they stay still. Smiling. Thinking. Calculating.

❥ Weaponized Empathy. They know how to make people trust them. Because they know exactly what people want to hear.

❥ Compartmentalization. They can do something brutal, then eat lunch like nothing happened.

❥ Controlling Niceness. The kind of kindness that’s sharp-edged. You feel guilty for not loving them.

❥ Mirroring Behavior. They become whatever the person in front of them needs. It's not flattery. It’s survival—or manipulation.

❥ Selective Vulnerability. They know how to spill just enough pain to make you drop your guard.

❥ History of “Bad Luck”. Ex-friends, ex-lovers, ex-colleagues… they all left under “unfortunate” circumstances. But the pattern says otherwise.

I find it very funny that you pick this one, because this is my Dark Carnival story. A bored and frustrated Heero find himself at a newly arrived circus and, needing a break from his own life, offers to work odd jobs around the grounds while they're in town. He find himself entranced with acrobats referred to the rest of the crew as "The Big 4", especially the one Heero thinks is "the Lion Taming Clown". But nothing is quite as it seems.

"Heero's pitchfork halted in the hay. Something charged, a shift in the air. Righting himself, he leaned against his tool and looked around. There was no one, even cages were emptied as the animals were out being exercised and trained. He rolled his shoulder to ease the tension but that only made it worse. The pressure intensified, building against Heero's back until it was a unbearable. Slowly, he cranes his head to look behind him.

Green-gold peered from the shadows a few feet behind him. Heero's heart thundered in his chest as those hypnotic eyes inched silently closer and into the light. There was a part of his mind that shouted at him to move, to run, that he was in danger. Instead he turned to face the Lion Clown, his lean but powerful frame dwarfing Heero.

His skin prickled and hair felt like it was electrified. He was so close, less than a yard away, close enough to reach him. His heart hammered away in hard enough that Heero was sure the other could see it through his shirt.

He wasn't sure how long they stood like that, eyes locked, observing, assessing, waiting for something.

And then a blink, slow and deliberate. Heero felt his head tilt to one side, confusion making it away onto his features. He watched. Another blink, same as before, slow and obvious. The pressure hadn't abated, just shifted nebulously. It felt significant somehow. So Heero did what only made sense, he blinked back.

I would love to talk about M & F Murders.

So would you like a series of murder mysteries in pre-WWI England-esq setting, centered around queer and marginal communities, with a high society black sheep too clever for his own good and highly observant, but very closeted priest who get entangled in local mysteries and solve murders while dealing with aspects of classism, racism, sexism, discrimination, religion and religious trauma at the turn of the century while they slowly call in love with each other?

That's what M & F Murders is.

The current name come from the two main characters Morgan Fletcher and Felix Mulroy. Morgan is the third son of a Lorded family (his father inherited a title), but is closer with his wealthy uncle and cousins than he is with own three brothers. He is clever, opinionated, a little petty and very protective of the women in his life, particularly his cousin Ezbeth, and his goddaughter Ifrita. While not the slightest bit ashamed by his lack of interest in woman, Morgan holds a great deal of guilt over the dragging his cousin Ferdiad to Africa and holds himself responsible for his death. His relationship with rest of his living family is strained to put it mildly. The story starts some year after that with him coming home for his uncle's Archibald's funeral. Felix is the suffering subordinate of the local Priory. He is capable, dependable, observant, and but tends to let himself get walked on by others. He's his mothers only son and loves her dearly, so Morgan's antagonism with his own family his odd to him. He has a strong faith and his deeply devout, but struggles with own sexuality and his feelings of shame over is attraction to men. Thank the Prioress and the Vicar are there to lend an ear when he needs it. At this point I have a few of the stories planned out and am in the character development, fleshing out the other members of Morgan's extended family, the staff of the Priory and the surround villagers. Some of the murder victims, suspects, and murders. Pinning down character designs for Morgan and Felix. And as I've been plotting it out, I don't know if it wants to be a novel, a graphic novel, a visual novel, or a full blown puzzle game. Have a typial exchange between Morgan and Felix "Was it absolutely necessary to incite Mrs. Brandybuck like that?"

"Well no, but if I had listen to her prattle on on her precious "Tabetha" and make back-handed comments about Iffie any longer, I would have said worse about her and her daughter. As has as I'm concerned it was worth to see the old bird turn purple." Morgan could feel Felix's unimpressed glare into the back of his head. He slowed his stride to walk in time with Felix.

"Though speaking of colour, did you see how pale McAlister got when the mill was mentioned?"

Felix hummed and pushed his glasses back up his nose. "I did, I also say look between Mr. Bower and Mr Conroy. They clearly know something, it just might be worth a visit."

"I'll leave that to you then, prolong exposure to Bower give me a headache."

"That's because you can't deal with anyone whose more insufferable than you." Morgan's stumbled as his shoe got the wrong side of stone, breaking is stride with Felix.

This is your reminder that the guy who got into this business just making fuck noises for fun is indeed, a degenerate menace. While there have been plenty of spicy audios in recent memory, none of them really match just how incredibly profane this scenario and script plays out.

I just don't want people being shocked when it becomes clear how this is gonna go down.

Happy National Have A Coke Day!

In honor of Day of the Dead, here’s a repost of my comic about the San Francisco Columbarium and the man who spent 26 years restoring it.

I made these as a way to compile all the geographical vocabulary that I thought was useful and interesting for writers. Some descriptors share categories, and some are simplified, but for the most part everything is in its proper place. Not all the words are as useable as others, and some might take tricky wording to pull off, but I hope these prove useful to all you writers out there!