For the love of dreams and dreamers

Great dialogue can come from radical emotional honesty. But in most real conversations, people

dodge questions

answer indirectly

lie (badly)

change the subject

crack jokes to avoid serious answers

lie (convincingly)

say half of what they mean

tell the truth but get so anxious/angry/defensive others now think they're lying

If your dialogue feels unnatural, it might be because everyone is saying exactly what they think, or articulating their thoughts too well. Try letting characters hide things instead.

people don’t always speak in full sentences,

slang can change depending on age range, demographic, etc. &

its fun

i can do literally whatever I want

cons of writing

Under what odds is your character able to win? What is their greatest strength?

Now take that strength away.

How do they account for that? Is it possible to still win, or is that strength all they have?

An acrobatic fighter who is shot through the leg. A knight whose trusty sword shatters. A sorceror who runs out of spells and elixers. A dragonrider whose steed is felled.

Cool illustration, dig the color palette

*Begins scrolling onward*

Wait, what's that blob beneath the harpoon?

...Is that a boom mic??

Is that a penguin holding the boom mic???

OH. I get it.

Something like Breaking Bad, for example, has low squiggability (that’s what I’m calling this quality). It’s tightly written, the characters are consistent, there’s little left to interpolate or extrapolate. Obviously, people DO write fanfic of Breaking Bad, but it still has a low squiggability score. Whereas something like Supernatural has a high squiggability score. Fantasy and science fiction often have high squiggability scores. This suggests squiggability could also be related to worldbuilding and potential for people to borrow a premise or setting.

it kinda goes like this

basically, as a person or community writes a kinky story for longer, they will kind of inevitably move up a chain of 'paradigms of justification' required to make the kink continue to make sense.

the pace will vary depending on the kink, but motion is inevitable.

---

so say you decide to write some rope bondage kink. as you continue to write, you are likely to progress through the stages as follows:

Stage 0 - Baseline: i am writing A tying up B, because i want to, A wants to, and B is into it (or isn't, depending on what kinda freak you are). Regular fic goes here.

Stage 1 - Psychological: Why is does A like tying up B? Why does B like being tied up? Normal character stuff. Not yet weird. You're still normal. If you mom found out you were writing this, she'd probably still love you.

Stage 2 - Logistical: How does A afford all those rope? Why hasn't B's hands fallen off from lack of circulation? Getting odd you'd write about this, but fair enough, real kinksters deal with this. You just like to pay attention to details.

Stage 3 - Sociological: You have written the kink long enough that you need it to be normalized in-universe in order to push the envelope. You need a Federal Department of Kinky Shit Why has nobody called the cops when B goes missing for three days due to the suspension bondage setup you researched for two hours last night? Did you just invent a law so its okay for A to tie up the pizza delivery guy? Why is it not a violation of the labour code that B spends all her time literally tied to her desk? This is where the descent into madness begins. You have total freedom now to introduce new characters, but they will probably end up being A-like and B-like because that's your kink and why you started writing in the first place. People laugh when they see the premise, but keep reading.

Stage 4 - Biological: Oh, now you fucked up. See, eventually, you're going to start wondering why the world is filled with people like A and B. You're going to need to answer definitively why B didn't fucking die when you accidentally wrote a poorly conceived stress position in chapter 2. You gotta answer why there's only like 1 A for every 10 Bs. You realize with horror you accidentally implied that shibari harnesses is literally a biological requirement for human reproduction. It's over for you. This is ABO with extra steps. Get thee to a nunnery.

Stage 5 - Synthesis: "Oh fuck, it all makes sense now." Terminal brain stoppage. Death would be a mercy. ---

The thing is, once you have progressed through these stages, you are going to skip ahead in future stories because, let's face it, its incredibly convenient to have these structures laid out for you. If you've gotten to Stage 3 in a previous fic and then start a new one, well, you could fuck around justifying what's going on, or you could simply bring back the Federal Department of Kinky Shit and jump straight to the silk cord. It's efficient and we're all busy people.

I ended up following this trajectory with my first set of Porn On Phone stories pretty closely:

Hot lady am sexy kidnaps!

But why am hot lady sexy kidnap?

How am hot lady afford lavish lifestyle for sexy kidnapee?

Why am nobody arrest hot lady for sexy kidnap?

am reason related to why am no men in stories?

characters am now exclaim 'judith christ!' when stub toe.

Terminal. Put me down like the dog I am.

But the dark realization I had, right about now, is that all the normie fics out there, all the boring straight stuff?

... yeah they're already at Stage 5. The straights are living at stage 5, patriarchy is their Federal Department of Kinky Shit, they believe in alphas and omegas already.

So, put that way, it's actually totally normal and okay to do this progression, right? Like, it's subversive. This is feminist! This is feminist! I scream, as I'm dragged into the van and driven down to the river to be drowned like an unwanted kitten. I'm the normal one! You're all mad!

You always learn and discover your story and your world as you write. Sometimes you are just the first reader.

Toastystats: The sizes of fandoms on AO3

When I share data about fanworks on AO3, I often limit my analyses to the biggest fandoms. I generally do that because it's quicker to collect data about and analyze just the biggest fandoms -- not because those are the ones that matter most, and also not because most fanworks are in big fandoms. But I wanted to take a moment now to visualize the sizes of different fandoms on AO3 in a couple different ways -- and to highlight just how many of the fandoms on AO3 are smaller fandoms.

I love this way of looking at it! :)