hot bun

Everyone has probably experienced this feeling of being pulled in two directions—part of us wants to move forward into the work of change and transformation, but part of us is secretly—or not so secretly—holding on to something that can sabotage our efforts.

Identifying those obstacles is critical. Sometimes they are personal—related to emotion or psychology. Sometimes they appear in the form of advisers or managers concerned with controlling an image or public perception. They may arise from fears, founded or unfounded, about the possible consequences of admitting to having done something wrong. In cases related to harm done at the collective level, obstacles to confession may appear as concerns about the bottom line, differences of opinion among powerful stakeholders, or structural barriers. But regardless of the nature of the lizard, it must be dropped to continue further. Truly being ready to change—to be different and to make different choices—is a critical, nonnegotiable part of the process.”]

I Will by Mitski, a Scum Villain animatic [VD under cut]

go on an aimless bike/ride/walk - move your body, do it for as long as you feel like it, discover new places near you weather that is a frog or a cafe

watch a new movie/read a new book/listen to a new album - get inspired, excercise having opinions and longer attention span, break out of consuming content and make a choice about what you want to expirience

create something in a medium i haven't used in a while - get out of a habit, rekindle a flame you haven't been upkeeping, making a friendship bracelet counts

go have a fun new drink/snack - arguably most important, have a little treat without rush, slow down and focus on physical sensations, treat yourself in a way that isn't landfillcore

meet with friends and/or go to a place where you meet strangers - human connection is good for you, (maybe some casual sex if you like that/try something new with your partner)

make some bad art - create for the sake of creating without any expectations

play an instrument - this can be anything that makes you reach a kind of flow state

go see something you haven't yet - get to know the cultural/geographical map of your area, this includes events, places, or just anything that makes you go out of your way to expirience something new, can be like a viewpoint or it can be a museum exhibit, anything you find cool

V.E. Schwab's advice for creating memorable characters - works for both protagonists and villains

It also ties neatly into the simplest version of the formula for getting people emotionally engaged with your characters: or how to build the moment in which your character starts moving from their initial state to the state in which they'll start changing their own lives.

First, you figure out the one important thing the character believes that they're wrong about. There's usually a core misperception that they haven't examined. Once they're forced to engage with it, it'll start to change everything about their perception of the world they're inhabiting and/or the people in it.

Then, as V.E. says, you identify the character's great desire and their great fear: the thing that character wants more than anything, and the thing or situation that terrifies them, and that they'll go to any lengths to avoid.

And having identified these two objects or situations, you build a situation in which the two forces will be in close, direct opposition to one another... then drop the character down in between them, and squeeze. Those two opposing forces become the jaws of a vise... and you crank the vise more and more tightly closed until the character has no choice but to acknowledge those opposing forces, and start (even in a small way) to deal with the pressure being exerted and push their way through.

This does not have to be, initially, a great climactic moment. In fact, it works better if it's not. It's more effective if your character has a brief low-intensity brush with these conditions-in-conflict early on. That way, when your big resolution scene comes along about two-thirds or three-quarters of the way along through the story arc, you'll have set up a resonance between that earlier hint or intimation of what's to come, and the really big blowoff. Your readers will recognize the resonance—the throb of tension between the two occurrences, like the vibration of a plucked string—and will find satisfaction both in the true resolution having been partially telegraphed earlier, and in how it's now being experienced and resolved in full.

This approach also allows you to set up more minor resonances between the realization of the conflict and its final resolution. These can serve to bind the structure of the work more closely together: to make it look (and be) less like a series of loosely strung-together plot events, and more like a unified whole, in which ripples of story business flow backwards and forwards, interpenetrating and influencing one another, and hinting at the big one to come.

But none of this can happen until the paired and opposing what-do-they-most-desire, what-do-they-most-fear axes have been defined. So that's a subject it's smart to spend some while thinking about (and for all your characters, not just the major ones), to be sure you're getting it right.