⊹ ⋆ﾟ꒰ఎ ໒꒱ ⋆ﾟ⊹

˖࣪ ♡ ∗ Chapters: 1/1

˖࣪ ♡ ∗ Fandom: 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS

˖࣪ ♡ ∗ Rating: General Audiences

˖࣪ ♡ ∗ Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

˖࣪ ♡ ∗ Relationships: Taekook/Kookv

˖࣪ ♡ ∗ Characters: Kim Taehyung | V, Jeon Jungkook

˖࣪ ♡ ∗ Additional Tags: Royalty, Prince Taehyung, Prince Jungkook, Goodbyes, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Separations, Last Kiss, Waltzing

Summary:

One last waltz encompassing the faint cries of soon-to-be separated hearts; two princes bid a longing farewell in the uncertainness of their future.

I know it’s been said before, but the advice that you have to treat every character like the main of their own story is essential. I realized that today because I realized that possibly the #1 reason i’ve been putting down books is flabby side characters (or flabby characters in general.) 

When a side character exists only to prop up the main story, and doesn’t have a conceivable life outside of the role you’ve planned for them, it makes the entire story start to seem cardboard. We try to develop side characters, but we don’t develop as their own protagonists. And they really should be. They should have dreams, fears, goals, and conflicts like the main character. 

We might only see their story in pieces and bits, but we should know the rest is there. We see the main character’s story in full, but we have windows into the others’ stories as well. Imagine taking an outline of all the MC’s conflicts and taking out a few pages. Those parts of the whole are what should be visible in a supporting character’s life. Because otherwise, your side characters are not whole people. 

“HOW DO I PLOT?” is a really common question/struggle/panic of writers. I have all these ideas, but how do I plot. My plot is full of holes., help?? 

And writing advice will often tell you that the answer is to ask, what does my character want? 

Which is really solid advice, but look what happens a lot of times when we try to apply it practically. 

What does my character want? Well, what she really wants is acceptance. Or, she wants to avoid her painful past. Or, she wants to be loved. These are all very legitimate “wants” or motivations for your character to have. But, in the thick of a story, they are like 0% helpful. 

Because these things are abstract. They can’t be DIRECTLY pursued by the character. The main character may not even be fully, consciously aware of what they want. Not all or even many of us in real life have that kind of self awareness. And that’s why I wrestled with this advice (and my plots) for so long. Because I always knew what my character wanted, but it was always too abstract to help. 

Instead, you have to get really nitty gritty and specific and tangible about your character’s wants. 

So no. Not acceptance. Your character wants to make this specific person like them. They want to get invited to this particular party. They want to be included in this particular conversation. They want to change the behaviors that label them as “weird.” They want to behave like or mimic this clique of people. Try to dig into and get more specific with even THOSE things because then what you’ll have is a rich hoard of things your character can do, things they can choose. So, maybe your character starts downplaying their geeky interests to seem less “weird.” Or is trying to convince their mom to let them shop where the “popular” kids shop. Write out the argument between parent and child. It fits into the story because it’s just a trickle-down of your character’s larger motivation. 

So: Not to avoid their past. To move out of the house that reminds them of what happened. To avoid a specific thing that triggers them. To change their identity. To cut off contact with this person. Write about their relief as they rip posters off the walls and paint over the scarring left. Get VERY SMALL. 

You’re only onto something helpful until you can state your character’s desires as a concrete verb, that is, something specific and tangible they can DO. Split these things down as far as you possibly can and extrapolate and explore them. Maybe your character wants to feel free from their grief (not “inner peace” or something”).WELL. Figuring out what your character wants and getting in the way of that isn’t just for big things. It’s for the tiny things too. I mean tiny things. Maybe your character is coping with their pain using comfort food, but the brand of ice cream they used to enjoy with their lost loved one is discontinued?? Sounds like a minor disappointment, but not while it is tied into much deeper things. You could have them have a breakdown over the ice cream and it will fit perfectly into the story.

Literally every action you take in life is toward *some* goal. You normally don’t think about how your desire for good grades is due to your underlying desire for self validation (just throwing something out there.) But think about the actions and feelings you take and have in connection to this. You might skip out on movie night with friends because you are stressed about a test. You might neglect self care in favor of studying. You might feel better and friendlier when your grades are good, but if you get a C in something, you might feel less passion for your hobbies and not want to talk to anyone because you feel depressed. 

If you wrote “self validation” as a motivation for your character you wouldnt have the least idea what to do with it, but “to obtain good grades” is getting closer and “to come up with an excuse to skip on movie night” is even better because it’s very immediate and specific. 

Don’t say it was “delightful”; make us say “delightful” when we’ve read the description. –C.S. Lewis

I found this great piece of writing advice from C.S. Lewis on twitter today.(courtesy of @thatboycanteach)

I know the phrase “show don’t tell” confuses a lot of people who are new to critiquing/workshops, because all writing is telling… isn’t it? 

But this is exactly what writers are talking about when they use that phrase. 

This is also why, when critiquing your work, writers might tell you to remove adjectives and adverbs, or why you might hear that those two types of words are “bad writing.” It’s not that you’re never allowed to use an adjective or an adverb, but that–like Lewis says–it’s much more preferable to be terrified, than to be told something is terrifying. 

Spite

Inspiration

Hungry for Validation

Make readers go “Wow!”

Make readers go “Oh!”

Make readers go :’((

Horny

Dragons

Whom else is going to write this if not me??

They Gave Me a Keyboard and Cannot Take it Away Now

I Invented Several Languages and Must Use Them Somewhere

These characters are REAL and have things to do

I Like to Suffer

I like to be gay and unhinged but in a productive way

I care about my OCs and so must you now

I have issues I need to project on SOMETHING

Love is not fake and here is why, an entire book

got on computer, looked at document, was like “fuck this shit” and got off

wrote like 150 words that consist of bloating the existing useless conversation or scene even more

wrote SO MANY WORDS but it was because you were so desperate to escape the Bad Part

wrote SO MANY WORDS but it was because you were so desperate to get closer to the Good Part

got on your document, ran into research issue, spent like an hour on Wikipedia, ah shit

the somewhat satisfying “fixing everything I hated about the scene I wrote the day before” session

decent amount of progress that took like 3x longer than it should have because you were repeatedly distracted

In The Zone and completely absorbed, just BLAZING through a few thousand words, probably close to the ending, probably listening to playlist

Not actually a writing session, just listening to playlist

the session where you write like a paragraph, suddenly realize the unfixability of your current plot predicament, and cry

that weird session where you don’t have much time and you’re super tired and you write like a page but you reread it the next morning and holy shit these words came from the fingers of god why is it so good

that session that is purely just navigating the boring shit of getting from one scene to the next and it sucks but you leave off on the cusp of something interesting and it feels good

the satisfyingly exhausting session where you write the Good Part and you’re confident it came out pretty well and you’re full of thoughts and stuff about where things are going next but you need to let them rest