#writing tricks

When you’re stumped and you don’t know what’s not working for your writing, or you don’t know where to go next, take out a rubber duck (or any equivalent friend/inanimate object, I like to use my dogs) and start explaining every single detail as if the rubber duck knows nothing about writing or about your story. Explain out loud what’s going on, what part you’re up to, why you’re stumped, and what you know you need to get to when you figure out how to get there

I have likely not added many that I've reblogged to this list. Please feel free to roam my blog and/or ask/message me to add something you'd like to see on this list!

Synonym Lists

Look by @writers-potion

Descriptors

Voices by @saraswritingtipps

Show, Don't Tell by @lyralit

Tips & Tricks

5 Tips for Creating Intimidating Antagonists by @writingwithfolklore

How To (Realistically) Make a Habit of Writing by @byoldervine

Let's Talk About Misdirection by @deception-united

Tips to Improve Character Voice by @tanaor

Stephen King's Top 20 Rules for Writers posted by @toocoolformedschool

Fun Things to Add to a Fight Scene (Hand to Hand Edition) by @illarian-rambling

Questions I Ask My Beta Readers by @burntoutdaydreamer

Skip Google for Research by @s-n-arly

Breaking Writing Rules Right: Don't Write Direct Dialogue by @septemberercfawkes

Databases/Resources

International Clothing

Advice/Uplifting

Too Ashamed of Writing To Write by @writingquestionsanswered

Underrated Tropes and Dynamics

Siblings and family drama (A gold mine for dynamics and character development)

Omega x Omega, Beta x Omega

Morally Grey bottom and Sunshine Top (love to see and write more of this)

Virgin Top (bottom teaches them everything!)

Men and Women actually breaking the gender roles without loosing their personality of femininity, gentleness, protectiveness, fatherly behavior. Like a woman can be 'strong' without holding a sword. And yes, women can be 'weak' while doing it. Same goes to men.

Actually good religion with good points.

Uncompirhendble (idk how to spell that) gods and divine beings but the demons (not devil) and angels are.

Weird ass fantasy with anything (give me recs)

Actually scary stuff in both horror and fantasy. I think Cosmic Horror with fantasy would be sick as hell along with the 7th point.

More parenting ones like taking care of an actually baby (I love those)

Couple years ago, I put a story down for two months because I was stuck on a scene. To get unstuck, I figured out this trick. The scene turned out great, the story got finished, and this trick has worked every single time I have used it since. The trick is to write out this little questionnaire for yourself and then spend some time writing long, detailed answers for each one.

The questions are:

Where are the characters right now? As in emotionally and situationally. What do they think? How do they feel? Why? Answer this question once for each character involved.

Where do the characters need to be? What's the end goal of the scene? What needs to be different from your answers in question one in order for the story to progress how you want it to? Again, do one for each of the characters.

What needs to happen to get them there? What could the characters learn or realize that would get them from point A to B? What kinds of things would make this happen?

Usually as I'm doing this exercise, ideas start to pop up, and by the time I'm finished I know exactly what needs to happen in a scene. I hope somebody else sees this and finds it as useful as I do!

THE POINT OF A PLOT TWIST IS TO ENRICH YOUR STORY, NOT OUTSMART YOUR READERS!!!! SPRINKLE IN YOUR FORESHADOWING!!!! LEAVE CLUES!!!

I'm so good at rp but starting my own work is so scary ??????!!!! I yearn to write fanfic TT

I ask cuz you're cool and write a decent bit and have ..knowledge on the ship I intend to writeGEMEGA

HSKDHKDDHDH omg omg omg! I think you've got the biggest barrier down. Just the fact that you want to write is half the battle! And I'm super excited that you want to write Gemega!! I'm sure if you've looked at AO3 you will see that over half the fics are written by me LOL, so Im super excited that another author wants to write for them! EEEEE!

Giving a shout out to my friends @scrapnikmecha @papaya-pasta and @snedgehogs who have provided me with food last year. I owe them my left kidney. Or something. XD

Seriously tag me in EVERYTHING Gemega you write or post if I don't see it in a day. I will come SPRINTING at you full speed ahead ready to receive the content. (My friends can confirm.)

As for tips on how to write, I do popcorn writing! If I have a sentence I want to write that would go in my fic, I just write it or put it where I think it might fit! Don't worry about beginning to end writing you can make it flow later. It's important to add what bits your mind wants to focus on at that current time or what ideas you have that could go into the fic.

Also writing the dialogue first is another tactic I use. Where I think about what I want all the characters to say during the fic and I start with that.

Another tactic I use is to bullshit the actions or write a script. If action phrases and description words are hard atm, put things in parenthesis or paraphrase so you can leave notes to yourself for later. Looking at your fic with fresh eyes helps A TON, so taking breaks and returning to it in a couple hours or a day can give you time to think and ruminate on what you wrote.

Also revisiting source material helps a lot too or looking at fanart for inspiration. You can do this with fanfiction to some degree! Motivation is the difficult part though I'll agree. Right now my motivation for writing Gemega is "I can see it! It needs to exist! I shall get it down on paper so it does!" I still have a plethora of ideas to write, but I'm currently bulk writing for Team Dark Week which means I can't write Gemega until Feb 8th. :(

One more thing! If you don't want to write a lot, write a drabble! The amount of wordage doesn't matter. If you want to write, then just do a few paragraphs for a slice of life and call it good! I do those for the Gemega Agenda group when I don't want to write a long fic but still want to provide content. People forget how valuable crumbs are. I've seen fans of series grasping at crumbs of content like starving animals. That's literally how I am with Gemega right now ahdgdhhdjgdjdh.