#wordcraft

What is “pace” at the sentence and paragraph level? It’s a measure of how many words you use to cover story events. Words take a moment to read, and that gives the reader a natural sense of passing time. The more verbose you are, the slower the story unfolds.

Prose pace can be much too slow or much too fast. But even a happy medium pace can get monotonous if it never changes. Adjusting the pace is an essential part of making the narration fit the story.

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List summary: Account, accountancy, aide-mémoire, alibi, amplification, analysis, anatomising (also spelled anatomizing), annotation, apologia, argument, assay, assessment, breakdown, briefing, caveat, clarification, commentary, confession, construction, contextualisation (also spelled contextualization), and counsel.

of much

about myself.

So if words are all

I have

then I am rich indeed.

They thrust a dagger into my chest

pain splintering into my

bones

and instead of blood

out pour thick black letters.

I do not have much

beyond this ink-dark

form of

BY COREY VAN LANDINGHAM

Why not climb up the mountain             of delight? To this world’s thin

meridian, why not be not elsewhere, not cellaring the sulk and brood, pores cavernous

                        and visible, the rustling aspen portentous, the sorry

            unsaid. This world. Hello.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/162248/asmr

"My energy is drained now... now that I understand wordcraft (writing magic) I realized I've basically been doing a beginner version of it... so I just did something a little more... intermediate I guess... I just put a curse on [redacted] 🙃 the curse is basically the more the employees suffer and the company fails to treat them as human beings and not easily replaceable machines the more the company shall lose in terms of profits and sales until they go bankrupt and fail unless they adjust"

For context, it's a method from Lisa Marie Basile's "The Magical Writing Grimoire" where I started writing things I held in and wish I told the company. After that paragraph of info dumping and rage and went into writing a very detailed curse in the form of a warning to the company and ended with "so it is written, so shall it be". The company will not receive this letter as it is in my personal journal. The letter therefore serves as a spell cast upon the company. I even signed and dated it.

I highly recommend the book for learning wordcraft and all forms of writing magic. I got it as a form of reference to research the writing magic section of my book for creative witches.

Happy crafting and happy holidays

Please tell me a little more about your writing process! I hope to one day write even half as good as you.

(Also I need you to continue the Elvis x Godfather AU fic, kthx. Pretty please? I will even help you with Italian dialogue, lol. I'll do anything for it. Here, take my firstborn. :P )

Oh my darling, this is a downright humbling ask. Between insecurity and imposter syndrome, it’s a wonder I manage to keep enough words from being deleted that I’ve actually got series of fics in progress. 🥶 So truly, I’m astounded and touched by your compliments and I adore chatting writing, so let’s see if some rambling of thoughts will be of any aid to you. 🌹 I just snuck a peak at your current fic (forgive me that I’m not in a season where I am reading much, it’s nothing personal, just business that is currently keeping me from exploring more) and I was immediately sucked in by how gorgeously you describe action? It’s poetic yet not overburdened, the way you write people’s movements and elements moving, makes me envy you that. I often feel my descriptions are quite Spartan most the time, so hearing it mentioned as transporting is always a surprise. I don’t think of it as my strong suite. I’ve no real notion how to write a kiss, for instance. Ha.

So, stories…They come to me usually as intriguing beginnings, with an occasional outpost of a stellar scene or two in the middle, and then the muses sit back and cackle like malicious banshees as I beg them for an ending. So, most of my stories are started in faith, often abandoned halfway through, as no clear ending comes. But so far in this fandom I’ve made the most progress and due to the help of this community of friends, I actually have a plot end for both my works. I know some people think of an end and concoct plots around them, and for some it all seems to come at once. And then there’s me with the beginnings and no road map. Which camp do you consider yourself to be in? 😃

And then there’s the work of plotting and outlining which I wish I was better at, as it appeals to me. But the minute I do it, all creative force dies within me. So it’s all buried in my lil noggin for safe keeping until the time comes to write the chapter. What I do plan out, however, is an emotional arc to a story, and a redemption/devolution plot for each main character. Knowing what growth I want to happen when, and what setbacks occur at what times has given me the strangest freedom of settings to accomplish it in -often none I would have plotted out intentionally. But that way I’m not forcing my relationship to grow in the confines of my plot, but rather my plot is the vehicle for the relationship to form and grow. I adore motifs, and I try to pay attention to how they appear in real life. I believe life is very subtly cyclical and the stories that ring truest to me are likewise.

I have a nasty habit in real life of observing everything like it’s witting material. Long before I started writing, I used to feel rather like a detached observer of other people’s reactions to life. It made me notice types of people, and while you can’t peg folks (much as I find personality tests a rather fun attempt) I do hold fast to the fact that in a story, if someone changes for worse or better, if they react for worse or better, it needs to be in character. It’s amazing how much this little detail can help something feel real. You can have a character fail, but if they fail in a way that doesn’t ring true to what we know of them and their motivations, it’ll feel like unnecessary drama to me. Does that make sense? Likewise with the victories -which victories will mean much or little to them? Does it ring true as being fully what they’ve always worked for? And who are they working for? Their own happiness and success? Or do they find more satisfaction in aiding others to reach the summit? Anyway, watching and identifying types of people and keeping those traits consistent on paper is easier said than done, as I’m learning every day. 😂

Lastly, (I suppose) I’d credit any vocabulary, thematic potency and rich setting to the sheer amount of old books and songs I’ve grown up immersed in. My favorite authors are Stevenson, Dumas and Mitchell. All of them set their stories in the middle of massive, world-changing events, yet their stories remained personal. Culture and necessity shape a person as much as taste and upbringing or anything else, and it’s a delight to try to immerse myself in a world different from my own. Basic goodness and basic evil may always remain, but the shades of grey and the loved ones getting caught in events far more powerful than their own strengths and best intentions yet trying their utmost to do well in the times they have been placed in: those are the stories and themes I adore the most in songs and literature. And they’re starkly abundant in dear Elvis’ near mythic life arc. So, here I am weaving tales about what could have been. 🥹