#santoelle

Read your work again. You see: does, goes, places, etc. Red, blue, ugly, smelly. Authors often take shortcuts when writing and while it gets the job done, it doesn't give the power that it should. Sometimes, the word count is sacrificed for the greater good.

He ran to get her He lunged to steal her, or He charged to catch her

Once you have that, maybe you're still not writing creative. You can use synonyms, it's the easiest path to do. Yet, you can rephrase for a more unique sentence. Walk =/ strut. Do =/ act.

It smelled of decaying bodies Your smell soured of death's traces, or The air soured of death's traces

Describing things doesn't need to be flat either. It's a struggle to describe certain things—hair, eyes, height, posture, rooms, walls, etc.

The room was extremely red The room drowns her with fever-inducing red, or Every surface imaginable bleeds my eyes with red

(This is a great question for her! Hard for her to answer in character, though haha. We'll see how this goes.)

Nic: My favorite childhood memory? Why do you want to know that?

Nate: It's just a game, Nic, it's not that deep.

Nic: What if I don't want to share?

Nate: Then keep it vague. Say, like, working with your dad or something.

Nic: Fine, I'll just say that.

Nate: You're not gonna elaborate even a little?

Nic: Nope.

When you scroll through #writing advice all day and take in as many tips as possible, you're losing potential as an author. If you're easily influenced without knowing how to apply it, then you're at a loss. How so?

1. You're in the wrong genre

Most people wouldn't have this problem, yet a few percentage, including me, will find advices not fitting. Even if it's not genre itself, some advices don't fit certain scenarios

How to show emotions!

Except, your character shouldn't. He's a soldier born and bred to face the dying woman on her knees, begging for her life, and to slay her from this miserable world the two of you live in.

Your theme isn't deep enough

Except, it's not supposed to be. You're writing domestic drama where it deals with the struggles in a marriage life in an apocalyptic world. You're writing a novella about a woman's inability to clean her garden. Some stories are stories meant to entertain to a certain point and it never has to be deep. And if it is shallow, then how you execute it can always bring it to its uniqueness.

2. You throw it to everything

Avoid using said, show don't tell, words to use instead of walk, etc. With this, you limit yourself to the constraints of unable to do anything but else.

"I don't know," he says, because it's the only thing he can do.

He looks at me like we've lost the spark in our love. I know now, I lost him.

He walked to the door, pretending not to see the danger behind.

There's going to be moments where you need synonyms, alternatives, methods, characterization, and others. Though, you take it to heart that you can't bring the basics back to the sea of new things. It's variation. The reason why you shouldn't use this certain word because there's an abundance of it. Once you drown it out in chuckles, whispers, cried, it simply becomes said.

3. The first rule—break the rules

These tips are made from people breaking the standards. That or there's a lack of something. When you take tips to face value without finding ways to make it yours, then you haven't used it to its full potential. Character arcs and development don't all go through the same path; humans don't heal or change the same path.

Once you understand the actual reasoning for a tip, then you can find a way to rework it to make it work with your writing style and your book.

Yes, the title is a reference to none other than Oscar Piastri. Stuff it.

People fear the viewers seeing through veil of your writing and accuse of a copycat. The truth may be that you did take that idea to begin with. Now how do you actually do this heinous crime and get away with it?

Deconstruct, Amalgamate, Rebuild

Deconstruct

There's something in specific you like about the story. Find it, and take it apart even more. Often you find out you like Enemies to Lovers and make it your entire personality without knowing it's already been etched into your personality without you knowing. People can love the same trope for different reasons and different aspects.

After all, not every person thinks the same. It makes the deconstructing part even more unique to each author. Here's some scenarios and deconstructing it properly

OG: Harry Potter is the chosen one

GENERALIZE: The character is given a fate before they were even born

DECONSTRUCTED: There is the inevitability of a path, the character has a choice whether or not to continue that or not—how will they get to the end goal if they continue?

Yes, that's one of multiple interpretations of chosen one tropes. If you disagree on that, then that's your first exercise on how to deconstruct something. Once you deconstruct it, not only do you give the reasoning, but the path and the patterns that make this trope work. With your unique interpretation of your own behaviour as to why you like a trope, it's one step to make your idea even more original.

Amalgamate

The plan that once you have a tried and true trope and running with it is comfortable. It doesn't let you experiment. One of my favourite books, Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk, is a showcase of taking two different tropes into a mix.

The mundane life of offices (though technically not a trope, but a stereotype) and the nitty-gritty of an underground illegal boxing ring made combined with a fight club for boring men with rules they must follow strictly. This idea is done by directly contrasting tropes and finding ways to compliment each other. Something like that can be done with this step.

DECONSTRUCTED: Inevitability of a path. The character has a choice whether or not to continue

COMPLIMENTARY: The villain. It heightens tension and struggles for a supposed prophecy

CONTRASTING: Time loop. The character has all the times to make a choice and nothing moves forward

These two ideas can shape your story in different ways. It can even change the genre. Concepts can work together when you keep trying to mix them; find where they can meet, find where characters struggle to balance it, find the resolve. Your book can change genres depending on how you even execute these events.

Rebuild

This step is the aftermath of your floating concepts, either contradicting or complimenting. Finally, you create your story here. Whether you use a three act structure, a six, a simple outline of "Introduction, crisis(es), conclusion(s)", you finally start the journey of the original idea.

 ✶ ELLE LOCKHART

hi, interbloggers. it's elle lockhart—though i think i'm favouring the name elizabeth mary. i've been an author for a while and it's time where i pursue my life as an author. currently, my targeted novella is a twenty-seven day death. i'm nineteen, though i've written since i was ten. my books often circle around the same thematic formula in different ways, all just to mean the same things.

  desktop site projects texts

THEMES, TROPES, AND NARRATIVES

Love disguised in Violence and Religion

Character-driven plots

Fictional disabilities as a metaphor for societal issues

Mundane life of troubled people

Religion and Blasphemy

Obsession and Detachment and, occasionally;

The act of being Queer

BOOKS&MOVIES THAT MAKE ME

The Dreamers (2003) by Bernardo Bertolucci

The Wasp Factory (1984) by Iain Banks

Sinners (2025) by Ryan Coogler

Fight Club (1996) by Chuck Palahniuk

author of lost yet found ideas / genre? love that consumes

hi! i'm elle—my pen name is elle, at least. i've been writing for almost a decade now and because i've stepped into adulthood, it's time to make that childhood dream continue to thrive. let the heart continue to throb.

i've been on writing tea & tips for a bit giving some advice and help. i even beta'd a little for some for free because i love helping authors. might open beta reading requests again but for now, this blog is about my little worlds, giving short tips, and finding authors to support. feel free to reach out to me and ask to be mutuals! i'd love to read people's stories

QUICK FACTS

eighteen

born in the SEA

girlblogger—mundaneblogger

storyhopper

THEMES

love that consumes

we shouldn't find our solutions by loving each other

you're better than being right

if i don't love you, what else am i supposed to do?

horrible euro-fucking-peans

MAY I INTEREST YOU IN A WIP OF CREAM?

dear boy, hold my heart (second draft)

a child who never grew up and the child who cannot. paramon is the very kind of monster that killed rené's father, and the very kind that can kill him. paramon watches rené grow up and rené never questions it, he's the only type of love he knows.

portrait (first draft)

i've never known religion past my father. barci ruins the life curated by Father, for the twins ruin my life because i cannot remember a day without them. they teach me italian, they teach me algebra, they teach me sins i thought impossible. i can only love them if i can be forgiven by Father

the voyeur (first stage)

can you love someone completely while still needing to preserve them like art? clemence documents julian in fear that love will not last. julian cannot stop acting in front of a camera. their life is not realistic; it's poetic, it's dull, and it's a meteor strike in their own little world. yet, they love still.