#sbrm

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT — Skin. Blood. Heat. Vessels under pressure.

INLAND EMPIRE — Thought, electricity. A mind that arcs and discharges.

LOGIC — This is what you asked for.

LOGIC — He is human.

jean upgraded to a real-hair wig

SBRM Chapter 12: Total Dominion Word count: 2.4k

Summary: The spectre that does not forgive. Does not forget. Does not relent.

You have such a great grasp on conveying dread/loss in scenes :D do you write everything that comes to mind first and then shorten or cut out anything? Or do you thumbnail what the scene is about before writing the scenes themselves? I hope that makes sense and also so happy for you getting a new xpenn! Your art is always such a treat :)

Hey, thank you so much QQ I'll try to answer thoroughly without rambling too much, but truly, sometimes I also feel like a new writer.

Advice: Be obsessed with it. Recognize patterns and follow them until they turn into something else. That’s the whole trick, honestly. With DE, you don’t need to recreate the game’s tone or juggle every single high-concept detail (although I try to QQ), but pick the parts that lodged and start there. If you keep writing, the rest will unfold on its own as you start threading connections. The big ideas- addiction, failure, exploitation, religion, grief, betrayal, hope- are enormous, but! they’re scaffolding. Effective, beautiful scaffolding... The real weight-bearing parts are two mammals, too close, making impossible choices and pretending they aren’t in love.

Something I recommend is spending a lot of time not writing. Sit with the world. Sit with yourself. Ask: what do I believe in strongly enough that I’m willing to write about it? What’s the emotional temperature of that belief? How does it live in my body? Fic starts in the heart, not the mind.

While you’re examining, connect things. Connect sounds to feelings. Body language to emotional impact. Emotions to locations, colours, textures. Think in systems. Think in psychology. Think in pressure points. Think in disco.

How to convey feelings/atmosphere of a scene without becoming too wordy:

I personally don't like to write a lot of physical description unless it pushes meaning, and in the same vein I am easily distracted and tend to zone out when reading them in other works. My current method is to withhold details unless they are relevant for stage guidance or push atmosphere/world building- i had to learn to trust in myself that the reader will be able to concoct a vivid mental image with minimal input. I'm a massive overexplainer and writing 100k (+everything still in the vault) has taught me that having one or two sensory "pressure points" allows the scene to orbit within that threshold without causing things to become too cerebral- the smell of cold cordite or warm coffee, the weight of silence after the fact, the way a detail gleams slightly wrong in the corner of your eye. How hard the mug hits the counter. If a line feels too direct then I bury it in gesture. If a feeling is too big, I try to show what the character does, where they feel it. (ex. in DTHRIH, I used blood on Kim's boots as both a physical descriptor and as an analogy for his state of mind. It comes up again later, to further emphasize where he's at. Tacky vs dry, responsibility/guilt vs loosening up.)

Writing succinct descriptions is a learned skill; my best advice is observe and compare. I spend a lot of time thinking of how one sense = the echo of another, then tie the two together. Metaphors and analogies are an authors best friend, especially when trying not to overwrite due to the fear of not being clearly understood or under emphasizing the core. Everything else is sentence variation and pacing.

Do I write everything and then shorten or thumbnail a scene:

Yes and no to both; I write everything that comes to mind (and then some) but I try to treat scenes less like pushing the story and more like writing towards emotional consequence. I have a pretty solid idea of the plot and the internal machinations, so it's really a lot of letting them loose in the text and seeing how they respond to each other with the growing stakes. Such well written characters as Kim and Harry become very, very real in the aftermath. This is also where the birth of dread circles, which is the precursor of inevitability... loss or change you can feel coming before the characters can articulate it. This is how you make scenes ache before anything even happens.

(My original pitch for chapters 10-13 did not go the way I had planned. At. ALL. All at once, it was like unlocking a door I shouldn't have had the key to and I just had to hope that I was stepping through with the right foot forward because no other way made sense anymore. That's my best example of threading connections as you go.)

I hope this helps in some way <3 My second last advice is don't get bogged down on the stage direction and "he said, she said,"-isms. Those get edited for more accurate verbs during the latest passes for me, and are possibly the most technically difficult to pull off- the flow that contextualizes the dialogue.

LAST last advice; if it makes you nervous or overwhelmed in any way, that's GOOD. That means you care, and nothing happens at all if you dont care. Don't shy away from fear- face it head on, cry about it, talk to friends, take breaks, nerd out to your other interests, listen to music- nearly none of my best ideas come when I'm absolutely losing my shit, but my brain comes online like a faucet when I'm doing completely unrelated things. On that note, Write Everything Down. You Will Not Remember, I PROMISE YOU... yea... you'll wanna bust out that mnemnotech at every opportunity. BE the detective. ARRIVE on the scene.... Become the most ass-toot note taker.

Thank you again for this kind ask!! I'm glad you're enjoying my writings, I truly appreciate it QQ If you have any other questions or would like further elaboration please feel free to blow up my inbox, I absolutely do not mind <3 <3