Janaina Medeiros
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
#extradirty
we're not kids anymore.
tumblr dot com
祝日 / Permanent Vacation
Today's Document
🪼
Xuebing Du
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
Sade Olutola
Aqua Utopia｜海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
h
occasionally subtle
Love Begins
oozey mess
Show & Tell
YOU ARE THE REASON
seen from Lithuania
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@stardustedswansong
🛠️ Writing Tip: No Scene Is Ever Truly Neutral
Not every scene needs high drama. But every scene should shift something.
A “quiet” moment can still reposition your characters:
– A confidante pulls away
– A threat is implied but not voiced
– A loyalty is tested and doesn’t break… this time
– Someone smiles, but only for show
If nothing changes, it’s not a scene. It’s a pause.
Let each scene move the story forward, even slightly. That’s what keeps quiet moments alive.
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5 Tiny Writing Tips That Aren’t Talked About Enough (but work for me)
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.
What’s a tip that unexpectedly helped with your writing? Let me know!! 🍒
Emotional Walls Your Character Has Built (And What Might Finally Break Them)
(How your character defends their soft core and what could shatter it) Because protection becomes prison real fast.
✶ Sarcasm as armor. (Break it with someone who laughs gently, not mockingly.) ✶ Hyper-independence. (Break it with someone who shows up even when they’re told not to.) ✶ Stoicism. (Break it with a safe space to fall apart.) ✶ Flirting to avoid intimacy. (Break it with real vulnerability they didn’t see coming.) ✶ Ghosting everyone. (Break it with someone who won’t take silence as an answer.) ✶ Lying for convenience. (Break it with someone who sees through them but stays anyway.) ✶ Avoiding touch. (Break it with accidental, gentle contact that feels like home.) ✶ Oversharing meaningless things to hide real depth. (Break it with someone who asks the second question.) ✶ Overworking. (Break it with forced stillness and the terrifying sound of their own thoughts.) ✶ Pretending not to care. (Break it with a loss they can’t fake their way through.) ✶ Avoiding mirrors. (Break it with a quiet compliment that hits too hard.) ✶ Turning every conversation into a joke. (Break it with someone who doesn’t laugh.) ✶ Being everyone’s helper. (Break it when someone asks what they need, and waits for an answer.) ✶ Constantly saying “I’m fine.” (Break it when they finally scream that they’re not.) ✶ Running. Always running. (Break it with someone who doesn’t chase, but doesn’t leave, either.) ✶ Intellectualizing every feeling. (Break it with raw, messy emotion they can’t logic away.) ✶ Trying to be the strong one. (Break it when someone sees the weight they’re carrying, and offers to help.) ✶ Hiding behind success. (Break it when they succeed and still feel empty.) ✶ Avoiding conflict at all costs. (Break it when silence causes more pain than the truth.) ✶ Focusing on everyone else’s healing but their own. (Break it when they hit emotional burnout.)
Why you should write healthy marriages:
1. They aren’t done enough.
2. They help other people understand what a healthy relationship looks like.
3. Fights can last for weeks and still be part of a healthy marriage.
4. Stereotypes. Break all the marriage stereotypes.
5. Soft cute couple moments DON’T stop after marriage.
6. Marriage is completely independent of character arcs. Those two individuals with trauma will still be two individuals with trauma but with gold rings.
7. A healthy marriage is one where people understand that their partners have baggage/trauma/flaws, but love them even in rough patches.
8. It isn’t that healthy marriages aren’t compelling, it’s that people don’t know how to write marriages correctly.
9. Marriages being an end goal often perpetuates that women are trophies to be won.
10. Marriages being an end goal often perpetuates that someone’s “freedom” ends there. Bury this trope, please, I beg of you.
Writing a healthy marriage is a more natural, interesting, and satisfactory progression of romance than undoing progress made in an earlier installment of the series in order to prolong the “chase.” Give your characters happiness; then threaten it for the plot of the sequel, not by having the characters be stupid within the context of their relationship, but by applying exterior stresses that strain untested parts of the relationship, so that the plot is resolved by the couple working together (even when it may seem they are not!) to pass the test of their relationship and also save the day. Nothing is more satisfactory to watch than that. Nothing.
(Detective series do this better, more often, than other genres.)
Things almost every author needs to research
How bodies decompose
Wilderness survival skills
Mob mentality
Other cultures
What it takes for a human to die in a given situation
Common tropes in your genre
Average weather for your setting
yoooo
How bodies decompose
Wilderness survival skills
Mob mentality
Other cultures
What it takes for a human to die in a given situation
Common tropes for your genre
Average weather for your setting
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
Coining a phrase: Period atypical homophobia.
Definition: When the writer of a piece of historical fiction hasn't really bothered to research how gay people existed in a period of time or what terms would have been used to discuss homosexuality positively or negatively. So instead they put the most modern, likely religious terms into the mouth of a historical character to establish that a character is homophobic.
e.g. Having every Victorian character be a religious homophobe instead of having them talk about "public decency" and "discretion"
(massively simplifying here, but some historical homophobia angles to consider~)
A talking point you got in the 1600s-1700s was "selfishness." Homosexual behavior is taking time away from your family/expected legacy. Like it's a vice hobby equivalent to maybe... gambling. A little isn't *good,* but so long as it doesn't effect your wife/family... it's whatever.
And for the Romans, it wasn't so much homophobia as *bottom* phobia, which mostly manifested as a dislike of couples where both members were too obviously masc, or too obviously femme. Also, a belief that men did and should age out of being femme, and therefore age-gap couples were significantly less problematic.
immortality as theft (you have to steal life from something else) immortality as parasitism (there is something else inside You that is keeping you alive and you become less of yourself more and more the longer it stays in you) immortality as violence (everything is trying to kill you because everything is supposed to die and the universe will always try to find a way to right the wrong that is You) you understand
Show, don’t tell
"Show, don’t tell" means letting readers experience a story through actions, senses, and dialogue instead of outright explaining things. Here are some practical tips to achieve that:
1. Use Sensory Details
Tell: "The room was cold."
Show: "Her breath puffed in faint clouds, and she shivered as frost clung to the edges of the window."
Tell: "He was scared."
Show: "His hands trembled, and his heart thudded so loudly he was sure they could hear it too."
2. Focus on Actions
Tell: "She was angry."
Show: "She slammed the mug onto the counter, coffee sloshing over the rim as her jaw clenched."
Tell: "He was exhausted."
Show: "He stumbled through the door, collapsing onto the couch without even bothering to remove his shoes."
3. Use Dialogue
What characters say and how they say it can reveal their emotions, intentions, or traits.
Tell: "She was worried about the storm."
Show: "Do you think it'll reach us?" she asked, her voice tight, her fingers twisting the hem of her shirt.
4. Show Internal Conflict Through Thoughts or Reactions
Tell: "He was jealous of his friend."
Show: "As his friend held up the trophy, he forced a smile, swallowing the bitter lump rising in his throat."
5. Describe the Environment to Reflect Mood
Use the setting to mirror or hint at emotions or themes.
Tell: "The town was eerie."
Show: "Empty streets stretched into the mist, and the only sound was the faint creak of a weathered sign swinging in the wind."
6. Let Readers Infer Through Context
Give enough clues for the reader to piece things together without spelling it out.
Tell: "The man was a thief."
Show: "He moved through the crowd, fingers brushing pockets, his hand darting away with a glint of gold."
7. Use Subtext in Interactions
What’s left unsaid can reveal as much as what’s spoken.
Tell: "They were uncomfortable around each other."
Show: "He avoided her eyes, pretending to study the painting on the wall. She smoothed her dress for the third time, her fingers fumbling with the hem."
8. Compare to Relatable Experiences
Use metaphors, similes, or comparisons to make an emotion or situation vivid.
Tell: "The mountain was huge."
Show: "The mountain loomed above them, its peak disappearing into the clouds, as if it pierced the heavens."
Practice Example:
Tell: "The village had been destroyed by the fire."
Show: "Charred beams jutted from the rubble like broken ribs, the acrid smell of ash lingering in the air. A child's shoe lay half-buried in the soot, its leather curled from the heat."
There are also times when "tell" is preferable. For example:
Transitions. Not transitional words. Transitions in the narrative. I don't want a drawn out description of how the MC walks from one end of their university to the other. This is the time to use "tell" instead of "show".
I think, if we all go over our own writing, we'll see we already do this.
Genuinely 90% of historical fiction would be so much better if more writers could get more comfortable with the fact that to create a good story set in a different time period you do actually have to give the characters beliefs & values which reflect that time period
#even if they share your values they would phrase things differently. ‘I hate to see a man hanged for it’ vs ‘love is love’ (via @aurpiment)
You can research what people actually said in history!
In 1726, when William Brown was on trial for attempted sodomy in London, he didn't say "I was born this way", he said, "“I think there is no crime in making what use I please of my own body”.
In the 12th century, Hildegard of Bingen didn't say, "A woman can do anything a man can do!", she said, God created men and women with different humours and having too much of the male elements will throw society out of balance.
In the 1860s, Millicent Garrett Fawcett didn't say, "Women are just as smart as men", she said, Men get to vote no matter how dumb they are.
In the 1850s, William Craft didn't say, "Africans are just as smart as Europeans and it's bigoted to say otherwise", he said that Africans have thick skulls “to defend the brain from the tropical climate in which he lived. If God had not given them thick skulls their brains would probably have become very much like those of many scientific gentlemen of the present day”
I genuinely like how all of those examples are killer quotes but also represent something that may be considered unkind or overly religious or oddly phrased or straight up untrue today. Excellent job picking them out @sourjen .
Apparently a lot of people get dialogue punctuation wrong despite having an otherwise solid grasp of grammar, possibly because they’re used to writing essays rather than prose. I don’t wanna be the asshole who complains about writing errors and then doesn’t offer to help, so here are the basics summarized as simply as I could manage on my phone (“dialogue tag” just refers to phrases like “he said,” “she whispered,” “they asked”):
“For most dialogue, use a comma after the sentence and don’t capitalize the next word after the quotation mark,” she said.
“But what if you’re using a question mark rather than a period?” they asked.
“When using a dialogue tag, you never capitalize the word after the quotation mark unless it’s a proper noun!” she snapped.
“When breaking up a single sentence with a dialogue tag,” she said, “use commas.”
“This is a single sentence,” she said. “Now, this is a second stand-alone sentence, so there’s no comma after ‘she said.’”
“There’s no dialogue tag after this sentence, so end it with a period rather than a comma.” She frowned, suddenly concerned that the entire post was as unasked for as it was sanctimonious.
And!
“If you’re breaking dialogue up with an action tag”—she waves her hands back and forth—”the dashes go outside the quotation marks.”
Reblog to save a writer’s life.
Thank you
Oh my god thank you. No wonder grammarly keeps complaining about my punctuation when I boot my writing up into word counter
I want to add - if you’re a non-native English speaker writing in English, this is a great primer - but please DO NOT OBSESS about getting it right. More than not is perfectly fine and I say that because I can promise you, with my whole heart, native speakers don’t know all these rules.
Most won’t notice any oops moments either, unless they’re consistently egregious. And even those who do notice them will breeze by them because even professional publishers get them wrong.
It’s always good to improve when and how you can, but don’t let the terror of perfection stop you from getting words on the page and having fun 🥰
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a list of 100+ buildings to put in your fantasy town
academy
adventurer's guild
alchemist
apiary
apothecary
aquarium
armory
art gallery
bakery
bank
barber
barracks
bathhouse
blacksmith
boathouse
book store
bookbinder
botanical garden
brothel
butcher
carpenter
cartographer
casino
castle
cobbler
coffee shop
council chamber
court house
crypt for the noble family
Exploring Character Backstory
1. Start with the essentials: Begin by outlining the basic information about your character's past, such as their family background, upbringing, education, and early experiences. Consider their cultural, social, and economic background, as these factors can shape their worldview and values.
2. Identify key events and milestones: Determine significant events or milestones in your character's life that have had a profound impact on them. These could include positive or negative experiences, such as the loss of a loved one, a major achievement, a traumatic incident, or a life-changing decision. These events help shape your character's personality, fears, and aspirations.
3. Examine formative relationships: Explore the relationships your character has had with their family, friends, mentors, or romantic partners. How have these relationships influenced them? What role models or influences have shaped their values, beliefs, and behavior? Relationships can provide insight into your character's vulnerabilities, strengths, and emotional attachments.
4. Dig into their beliefs and values: Understand what your character believes in and values. Examine their moral compass, political views, religious beliefs, or philosophical outlook. Consider how their beliefs might clash or align with the conflicts they encounter in the story. This will create depth and authenticity in their character development.
5. Uncover secrets and hidden aspects: Delve into your character's secrets, hidden desires, or aspects of their past that they prefer to keep hidden. Secrets can create internal conflicts, fuel character growth, and add intrigue to the story. They can also reveal vulnerabilities or flaws that make your character more relatable and complex.
6. Consider the impact of societal factors: Explore how societal factors such as gender, race, class, or historical context have influenced your character's experiences and identity. These factors can shape their struggles, opportunities, and perspectives. Understanding the societal context in which your character exists adds layers of depth to their backstory.
7. Connect the backstory to the main story: Once you have explored the character's backstory, identify how it relates to the main story. Determine how their past experiences, relationships, or traumas influence their present motivations, conflicts, and goals. This connection will ensure that the backstory serves a purpose in the narrative and contributes to the character's growth.
8. Use backstory selectively: While backstory is essential for understanding your character, avoid excessive exposition or information dumping. Introduce elements of the backstory gradually, through dialogue, memories, or subtle hints. This helps maintain reader interest and allows the character's past to unfold organically throughout the story.
Remember, not all aspects of the character's backstory need to be explicitly mentioned in the narrative. It's important to choose and reveal elements that have the most significant impact on the character's present circumstances and development.
this might be weird to ask, but how do I critically look at another person's writing and implement what I like in their writing in my own writing? I've been having trouble improving in my writing, and frankly Im not sure how to go about doing that, even. It's easy to see what I like about another person's writing, but hard to pinpoint exactly why...
THIS IS NOT WEIRD TO ASK. It is, in fact, the most important question EVER.
How to Read Like a Writer
Re-read. If you get halfway into a chapter and think, Wow this chapter is super creepy–I wonder how they did that. Or get to the end of a book and think, I feel the poignancy of the fragility of human life in an inherently volatile economic system–I wonder how the writer made me feel that way… Go back and re-read that shit.
Read slowly. When you read like a reader, you read pretty fast. When you go in for your second, or third, or fourth re-read of a passage, chapter, or book that you want to know more about, read it slowly. Really. Slowly.
Read for technique, not content. Readers read for content (”In this paragraph, Damien gave Harold a classified envelope.”). Writers read for technique. (”In this paragraph, the writer made me feel curious about the contents of the envelope by giving sensory details about its appearance and weight.”)
Ask the right questions. They usually start with HOW: How did the writer make me feel? How did they accomplish that?
Read small. Did a chapter make you feel sad? Find out WHERE EXACTLY. What paragraph, sentence, or WORD did it for you? Was it a physical detail? A line of dialogue? A well-placed piece of punctuation? Stories are made of words and sentences. Narrow it down.
Practice. Reading like a writer is a skill that takes time to develop. Over time, you’ll get better at it!
How about y’all? Anything to add to this list? I made it off the top of my head so I’m sure I’m forgetting something. What have been your experiences with learning to read like a writer?
Hope this helps!
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The Literary Architect is a writing advice blog run by me, Bucket Siler. For more writing help, check out my Free Resource Library or get The Complete Guide to Self-Editing for Fiction Writers. xoxo
it's hilarious how if you do any amount of research into life or death melee combat the prevailing themes that emerge are that
you're gonna get tired very quickly
tired leads to injured, injured leads to tired, tired leads to—
you're not gonna be as composed as you expect
humans are more fragile than you think and also more durable than you think. both are true and neither stop them from dying of an infection later (DO NOT GET BITTEN)
DO NOT GET STABBED (generally good life advice)
DO GET A SPEAR
knights are faster than you think
Other favorites from history:
Humans are very good at *pretending* to fight each other in hopes that the generals way in the back are buying it so nobody has to get stabbed.
Most of the dying only happened after a side broke and tried to run, because then the rich assholes on horseback got to start running them down.
When you do get a bloodthirtsy force, it gets bad real quick (see the battle of Adrianople, 378 CE, and the battle of Cannae, 216 BCE)
SUPPLY LINES FFS
Uuuuuuuh wow professionalization matters a lot actually
There's a lot of dust actually
Horses Will Not run through opposing infantry, but they will run at other horses
Elephants are not worth it, tbh
Shields matter a lot if you want to not die but good luck finding a balance between being too heavy and not protective enough
Anything is a projectile if you throw it hard enough
Always have a knife
Do Not Fall Down - you will be trampled
The guy with the biggest hat/plume is the leader
Release The Hounds
Valleys are BAD NEWS
Uphill is much nicer than downhill
A retreat route to boats on the sea is only helpful when you're already ready to sail
Forests are torches waiting to be lit
A professional soldier does a surprising amount of sitting around and day labour on massive projects
The army has always been a good place to become an engineer, it seems
Ffs, pleasr listen when the sergeant tells you something. He's always right
If you've got a shit general, make sure you've got a good tactician/strategist
That rich guy really doesn't know what he's doing, huh
Drowning is awful and being in the navy is certainly A Choice, but your wife will not be happy with you
Damn, all this shit is heavy :(((
Attack the baggage train >:)))
Uhhhh, sarge? The battle line broke. I'm going home
Why aren't the enemy running and screaming back at us? They're just ... walking towards us. I will not be sticking around to figure out whatever fuckery they're up to.
Blood is actually really slippery :(
I did not clean my blade and now the blood has dried and glued the sword and scabbard together :(((
Tf you mean we're gonna fight during harvest season. I think tf not.
I Hate This. All Of This.
Fuck me, battle is LOUD despite the fact I can't hear shit in this helmet
You're better to be down an arm than down a leg, tbh
Desertion rates are not as high as you'd think, but if you let the troops starve and get sick, they will abandon you en masse
WHAT MADE YOU THINK CROSSING THE MOUNTAINS WAS A GOOD IDEA?!
The fewer pieces to armour the better is usually is (with the exception of chain and scale)
Skirts and loose-ish clothes actually help conceal the lines of your body in combat
Don't wear too much armour in a hot place because you will be sweating until you pass out and die
CHARIOTS ARE SO COOL
Falling off a chariot is Less Cool
You're less likely to get stabbed than you are crushed or run over
Leather resists slashing damage, silk/linen resists piercing damage and wood/ceramic disperses blunt damage
Ceramic armour is actually so effective at defending its wearer that we still use it in bulletproof vests and tank armour (though once its broken it needs to be replaced)
A blade lodged in bone can actually be really hard to get back out
If your belly is cut open, you're already dead to an infection
Unless they hit a major artery, bleeding out takes a long time
(a) Supply lines. Supply lines. LOGISTICS. Never take your eye off the logistics.
(b) The best battle is the one that doesn't happen. The night before, meet up with the other side's quartermasters and buy up their mercenaries' contracts. (And don't try to get cheap about it. Odds are the other guys know within 10-20% how much cash you're carrying. Get pissy about the terms of the buy-out, and they may decide it makes more sense just to go ahead with the battle and take it all off you for disrespecting them.)
(c) Don't be tempted onto bad terrain. (And [c1]: All terrain is bad in at least one way. Maybe more.)
(d) Maslow is a better guide to the responsible management of armed forces than Kubler-Ross.
(e) LOGISTICS.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
hi I'm from your pseudo-medieval fantasy city. yeah. you forgot to put farms around us. we have very impressive walls and stuff but everyone here is starving. the hero showed up here as part of his quest and we killed and ate him
yeah umm actually everyone kinda lives, inside.. the walls yeah. no yeah theres not any surrounding farming communities or villages to levy taxes from so we're pretty much just in a stone pit all together. Theres a massive stone castle tho! where did the infrastructure for the stone quarring come from? I dont know... Evil wizard maybe?
If you actually want to know how medieval (and overall pre-industrial) cities interacted with its rural enviroment, check out these articles:
This week and next, we’re going to look at an issue not of battles, but of settings: pre-modern cities – particularly the trope of the city,
Last week, we looked at a model for what the countryside around an ‘ideal city’ might look like. Today we’re going to introduce some complic
Long story short, cities weren't islands in the middle of nowhere. If you're a generic fantasy character approaching a city, you wouldn't find a lonely Shining City Upon A Hill (hmm, interesting imagery there, wonder what it means...), but actually a highly populated area of farms, orchards and all that feeds and maintains a city.
WORLDBUILDING RULE NUMBER ONE: PUT A FUCKING EQUATOR IN YOUR WORLD MAP
WORLDBUILDING RULE NUMBER TWO: IF THERE ARE POTATOES IN YOUR WORLD THERE MUST BE AN ANDES FROM WHERE THEY CAME FROM
WORLDBUILDING RULE NUMBER THREE: PUT. A. FUCKING. EQUATOR. IN. YOUR. WORLD. MAP.
WORLDBUILDING RULE NUMBER FOUR: ANY PLACE SOUTH OF THE EQUATOR CAN AND MUST BE AN ARGENTINA EQUIVALENT
To clarify the equator thing; the FIRST thing you should know if you're doing worldbuilding of anything larger than a single city is, at least roughly, the latitude, at least if it's located in a temperate, subtropical, tropical, polar, etc. latitude.
If you're designing a continent-sized scenario, you should KNOW how large it is and how it stretches over a world map, you don't need to do the exact coordinates, even if it's just in a loose way like "it stretches from the equator to the southern temperate zone". To do this, you NEED to put the equator on your world map, or in any case, you should know where it is compared to your main setting. This will help you create a realistic distribution of climates which will serve as a spine for the rest of your worldbuilding, as you can tell where different uses of resources, crops, flora, fauna, cultures, everything is.
Otherwise you get someone like GRRM claiming to be a genius of realistic fantasy while having no idea how big his own fucking continent is or where it is placed on the world.
Also, go read about equatorial and southern hemisphere cultures and enviroments. You don't need every world to be Fantasy Europe and Fantasy Asia. There ARE other continents, you know.
This post is made by Southern Hemisphere gang. We are out here.
Some of the laziest worldbuilding (in this particular regard) is when there's only one big continent pointing north, and things just get warmer the more south you go and it just... stops there. There's nothing else. No equator, nothing. The world just... stops. This is distressingly common. How many settings are just one big contintent which is located on an assumed northern hemisphere (usually with a defined northern frozen land, but an exotic and steamy south) I can count many.
What, you think things just get hotter the more south you go, that's your universal experience? The southest you go, you'll find boiling water? Ancient Greek ass thinking. Literally.
Even the Greeks, however, knew the Earth was round and that there was temperate zones and polar zones in the south. They KNEW the Southern Hemisphere existed. (In fact, two hemispheres separated by a boiling equatorial ocean would be fun worldbuilding if unrealistic)
The south exists too. We are out here.
Okay if you have the Potato Mountains then logically, either dwarves or goblins should eat potatoes. And even more logically, they would definitely discover you can make vodka from potatoes.
No, I did mean Literally Argentina.
