#mmwt

MMWT #7: if you’re writing a certain society of people with a theme (such as mermaids) don’t make them use location/species themed slang. One of my biggest pet peeves in fantasy is when people in stories use setting themed slang terms, and usually I find it in mermaid based stories. Please don’t. It doesn’t sound natural. People in real life don’t really do that (which some people could argue wouldn’t apply to a fantasy world but I think you get my point). It sounds like saying “everypony” unironically.

MMWT #4 if you’re gonna write a self conscious character who frequently thinks things along the lines of “oh I made that so awkward omg they probably hate me they must think I’m so weird” PLEASE space that stuff out. I believe this is an instance where readability comes before realism, so sure, someone with bad self esteem/someone with anxiety/someone awkward might worry about almost if not every encounter they have with someone (I’ve been there before, hello) but reading a book where a character thinks that every single time they talk to someone gets irritating. I don’t recommend having every piece of their dialogue be followed by an internal breakdown over how much the other person must be irritated by them or a “why did I say that oh no that was so embarrassing” rant. After a while it gets repetitive and repetitive things can easily become annoying things

MMWT #3 don’t only make your characters blush and/or stutter to convey embarrassment. If you’re working with a big cast it may be easier to focus on using these two in order to save the time of showing EVERYONE’S different reactions but I still think spicing it up is important. Also with dark skinned characters it can be difficult to tell when they’re blushing on first glance because their skin isn’t paper colored so some red in their cheeks won’t show up like blood upon the snow (epic vocals)