writing resources

It makes no sense whatsoever and I do not care one bit.

Imagine person 1 being super forgetful so they scribble down all the places their appointments are and person 2 tries to decipher them and figure out where they’re at and they meet and they see their writing on their hand from across the waiting room/ coffee shop/ etc. and they scramble to find a pen and write ‘found you’ on the back of their hand and person 1 sees it and they lock eyes and

The light from the window was striped. It made stripes on my cigarette smoke. The end of my cigarette crumbled into ash. My marriage had also crumbled into ash.

Me, remembering everything I thought of when I sit down to type:

OR ‘PEAKED’

BUT PIQUED

‘PIQUED MY INTEREST’

YOU ARE NOT ‘PHASED’. YOU ARE ‘FAZED.’

IF IT HAS BEEN A VERY LONG DAY, YOU ARE ‘WEARY’. IF SOMEONE IS ACTING IN A WAY THAT MAKES YOU SUSPICIOUS, YOU ARE ‘WARY’.

ALL IN ‘DUE’ TIME, NOT ‘DO’ TIME

‘PER SE’ NOT ‘PER SAY’

BREATH - THE NOUN FORM

THEY ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE

WANDER - TO WALK ABOUT AIMLESSLY

WONDER - TO THINK OF IN A DREAMLIKE AND/OR WISTFUL MANNER

BALL- A FUCKING BALL

IT’S SNEAK PEEK

NOT SNEAK PEAK

A SNEAK PEAK WOULD BE A MOUNTAIN ENGAGED IN ESPIONAGE

THEY ARE VERY LARGE AND WOULD FIND THIS GENERALLY DIFFICULT 

THANK

(OH AND ONE OTHER THING

BULLION = PRECIOUS METAL

SHUTTER:

Does your character have siblings or family members in their age group? Which one are they closest with?

What is/was your character’s relationship with their mother like?

What is/was your character’s relationship with their father like?

Has your character ever witnessed something that fundamentally changed them? If so, does anyone else know?

On an average day, what can be found in your character’s pockets?

Does your character have recurring themes in their dreams?

Does your character have recurring themes in their nightmares?

Has your character ever fired a gun? If so, what was their first target?

Is your character’s current socioeconomic status different than it was when they were growing up?

Does your character feel more comfortable with more clothing, or with less clothing?

In what situation was your character the most afraid they’ve ever been?

In what situation was your character the most calm they’ve ever been?

Is your character bothered by the sight of blood? If so, in what way?

Does your character remember names or faces easier?

Is your character preoccupied with money or material possession? Why or why not?

Which does your character idealize most: happiness or success?

What was your character’s favorite toy as a child?

Is your character more likely to admire wisdom, or ambition in others?

What is your character’s biggest relationship flaw? Has this flaw destroyed relationships for them before?

In what ways does your character compare themselves to others? Do they do this for the sake of self-validation, or self-criticism?

If something tragic or negative happens to your character, do they believe they may have caused or deserved it, or are they quick to blame others?

What does your character like in other people?

What does your character dislike in other people?

How quick is your character to trust someone else?

How quick is your character to suspect someone else? Does this change if they are close with that person?

How does your character behave around children?

How does your character normally deal with confrontation?

How quick or slow is your character to resort to physical violence in a confrontation?

What did your character dream of being or doing as a child? Did that dream come true?

What does your character find repulsive or disgusting?

Describe a scenario in which your character feels most comfortable.

Describe a scenario in which your character feels most uncomfortable.

In the face of criticism, is your character defensive, self-deprecating, or willing to improve?

Is your character more likely to keep trying a solution/method that didn’t work the first time, or immediately move on to a different solution/method?

How does your character behave around people they like?

How does your character behave around people they dislike?

Is your character more concerned with defending their honor, or protecting their status?

Is your character more likely to remove a problem/threat, or remove themselves from a problem/threat?

Has your character ever been bitten by an animal? How were they affected (or unaffected)?

How does your character treat people in service jobs?

Does your character feel that they deserve to have what they want, whether it be material or abstract, or do they feel they must earn it first?

Has your character ever had a parental figure who was not related to them?

Has your character ever had a dependent figure who was not related to them?

How easy or difficult is it for your character to say “I love you?” Can they say it without meaning it?

Not necessarily. I guess the distinction I’d make is that if you really love writing in and of itself, you shouldn’t feel bad about not being popular, or work super hard to adapt to make yourself more popular. But if you want to make people happy, and writing is the way you are best able to make people happy, then it absolutely makes sense to adapt a bit to the audience to do better.

But!

Always remember that skills are developed over time, and that making mistakes doesn’t mean you should give up, it means you should keep working and improving. If you enjoy making people happy, and then one day you write a thing and a lot of people seem unhappy, that doesn’t mean you should stop writing. It means this is a good time to think whether you’d rather write things like that anyway, or rather adapt a bit more to what seems to make people happy. And you don’t have to make the same decision every time, or for everything you produce. Some writers, for instance, will write things for pay where they try to adapt to make writing that will be successful, and write other things for the joy of expression.

In the long run, you will probably benefit from not being too reliant on warm fuzzy feelings, but there’s nothing wrong with them or with pursuing them in and of itself. The reason people talk negatively about it is that it can be risky, because there can be a lot of pressure to make things you don’t like or enjoy in order to keep people happy. Especially because the people who are loudest are often the ones who are whiniest.

Also, sometimes if people get really sucked into pursuing warm fuzzy feelings, they can be pretty horrible to other people as a result. The thing to watch out for is: If you are pursuing warm fuzzy feelings, and you want to avoid unpleasant feelings, what happens if you do something that hurts someone and that feels unpleasant? One very popular answer is to declare that the person you hurt doesn’t count, because they’re bad. And that answer, I think, is a very bad one because it can just keep going and expanding until it includes a whole lot of people. So, don’t do that. Don’t ignore or write off people who are getting hurt, even if you are pretty sure they are bad people. You might decide that you really are okay with that, because the things you’re doing are that important to you, or you think the people could easily avoid being hurt by not doing bad things. But never, ever, pretend that someone doesn’t count or that it doesn’t matter that they get hurt, because once you can do that to someone, you can do that to anyone. Keep your eyes open and make the decisions you think are best.

and the results were:

it’s all fanfiction

which reminds me that i’ve only ever seen the phrase “carding fingers through his hair” and people describing things like “he’s tall, all lean muscle and long fingers,” like that formula of “they’re ____, all ___ and ____” or whatever in fic

idk i just find it interesting that there are certain phrases that just sort of evolve in fandom and become prevalent in fic bc everyone reads each other’s works and then writes their own and certain phrases stick

One of my fave authors from ages ago used the phrase “a little helplessly” (like “he reached his arms out, a little helplessly”) in EVERY fic she wrote. She never pointed it out—there just came a point where I noticed it like an Easter egg. So I literally *just* wrote it into my in-progress fic this weekend as an homage only I would notice. <3

I think so much of it has to do with how fanfiction is written in a way that feels real. conversations carry in a way that doesn’t feel forced and is like actual interactions. Thoughts stop in the middle of sentences.

and it poses an intellectual question of whether the value we assign to fanfic conversational prose would translate at all to someone who reads predominantly contemporary literature. as writers who grew up on the internet find their way into publishing houses, what does this mean for the future of contemporary literature? how much bleed over will there be?

we’ve already seen this phenomenon begin with hot garbage like 50 shades, and the mainstream public took to its shitty overuse of conversational prose like it was a refreshing drink of water. what will this mean for more wide-reaching fiction?

One thing that we do know is that written English has gotten less formal over the past few centuries, and in particular that the word “the” has gotten much less frequent over time.

In an earlier discussion, Is French fanfic more like written or spoken French?, people mentioned that French fanfic is a bit more literary than one might expect (it generally uses the written-only tense called the passé simple, rather than the spoken-only tense called the passé composé). So it’s not clear to what extent the same would hold for English fic as well – is it just a couple phrases, like “toeing out of his shoes”? Are the google results influenced by the fact that most published books aren’t available in full text online? Or is there broader stuff going on? Sounds like a good thesis project for someone! 

Do you (or anyone else reading this, for that matter) have any methods for getting over artistic jealousy? One of the things I’ve figured is “do things you’re proud of yourself, so you don’t have to look over the fence”, but depression’s making that a lot more difficult than it should be. It’s possible I just need to take a break, but writing and so on is how I take breaks, and when I try to sideline with something else I wind up feeling resentful that bad brain weather is depriving me of that.

Lemme tell you a thing.

A friend of mine is one of the most dedicated artists I’ve ever known, and has an unreasonable degree of raw talent. I once saw her sit down, put a pencil to paper, and start drawing a squiggly line. When she lifted the pencil, she had an anatomically-correct, correctly proportioned, outline of a horse. Seriously. No reference, either.

So one day, she did some art, and I really liked it because it reminded me of some of Dave Trampier’s art in the 1st edition D&D books. And I showed her that art. And she started crying because she felt like I was trying to shame her by showing how much better other people were.

my executive function problems continue; i’ve been mildly nonverbal (as in, making mouth noises is a lot of work, parsing other people’s mouth noises is hit-or-miss) for weeks, and will probably continue to be so for at least another month, due to Too Many Appointments. having help keeping a schedule is being super useful, and is probably the only reason i haven’t gone full chernobyl, but my body’s not cooperating – it wants to do cardio at sleeptime, and nap during physical therapy – and most of my day is still free-floating. and insert more whining here, basically there’s a lot going on in my world that makes words hard.

i’ve been keeping my hand in with rp and social media; i have absolutely no idea whether that drains my reserves or keeps the flow going or what. i just know that even when putting one word in front of another is like dragging a tractor up a ski slope in bunny slippers, a day when i write nothing at all didn’t really happen and my whole world glitches because there was no tuesday.

now, i really really want to be working on bowerbird. i’ve refused to plot it out beforehand except for the vaguest sketchiest ideas. i’m writing to find out what happens. that’s the funnest way to do it, imo. problem is, that means a lot of my plot comes from happy accidents in the first draft phase.

and i’m so nonverbal that my attempt to work on the first draft these past few days has turned up stuff like “they went home and dropped the stuff off. then they went back. dave was tired. he yawned.”

that would serve to bridge the gap between outline elements if i’d outlined it, and i could go back and fix it later. but when i’m freestyling it like this, it takes me nowhere. i could force myself to keep doing it to fulfill my daily word quota, but it’d just make it harder to go back to it the next day, and the next. i become ashamed to look at what i’ve written, and i get avoidant, and the story ends up collecting cobwebs because i just don’t feel up to figuring out how to extract the actual story from fifteen pages of a toddler hitting a chair with a plastic hammer. klunk. klunk. klunk.

earlier today i reblogged that ‘word boys’ article, and it was very motivating. but i’m not sure rolling a rock up a hill for a set number of words per day is a great idea. on the other hand, the longer i go without working on it, the more it fades out of my mind.

Years ago, some peeps I knew were working on a way to use tarot decks to take the place of dice for story-focused DM-less tabletop rpg funtimes. It was far from polished, but added a really fun interpretive element for everyone to get into - no one had to be God Of Plot in order for us to play. I haven’t touched it as a game in what feels like a lifetime, but it remains a much beloved way for my spouse and I to get writing flowing, and to deliberately work in the ability for our own stories and characters to surprise the hell out of us.

I bring this up because my spouse and I are both autistic, and it really turns the way our brains work into a MASSIVE advantage - we are turbocharged pattern recognition engines, and this is a system for shoving a rough basis and a fuckton of archetypes into our faceholes all at once and DISCOVERING connections/explanations/new data, not deciding it. The writing is in the “what-ifs”, and the making it all make sense.

I’ll spare you the stats and combat system and get right to the saw and hammer of the “story” spreads. Depending on your skill reading tarot cards, you can use this with or without reversed meanings (when cards are upside down.)

Lovingly called a “three card spread”, this can be used for information about a person or situation, or to inform the content of dialogue. It builds from left to right, but allowing for relatively free interpretation of how the cards/their meanings interact. That Page of Cups could be a young person, one of your existing characters, or a pleasant surprise, or… on and on. You can add a second line of two cards, which is meant to either elaborate on the top line, or (if you’re doing this as a dialogue to which you know one side - or have a spread for the other side!) to be a response. Ditto the final card, which is also optional. Away from you is upright, if you’re doing reversals. This spread can pull duty for SO MANY THINGS. Any time I want to scrunch my brow up at a thing and go “explain,” this is what we hit up.

This is the wheel spread, which we’d usually use if there is a large situation to get a handle on, or we want more in depth backstory on a person/place/thing/conundrum. The cards are paired here, with the topmost cards (put down after the first four) directly influencing the cards they’re on, and the pairs meant to be interpreted into an interconnected whole. Upright for the first four is away from you, for the second four upright is when the top of the card faces to your right. Making sense out of this kind of hot mess is a game in and of itself, though if you hit “no, really, WTF” on something you can always 3 card spread that sucker.

We’ll also do single card and triple card checks (for more complicated things) on yes/no answers (”is this even going to work?” “is my character absolutely the most absolute full of shit right now?”), which depending on how feisty you are feeling can either just go by generalized positive/negative meanings of the cards, OR judge them in the context of the situation at hand. If a character is trying to figure out an ancient manuscript, The Fool is pretty much a critical faceplant, but if you’re traveling somewhere? Oh the places you’ll go. Likewise, the other cards follow their elements and archetypes to determine outcome. The King of Swords might mean a successful bit of logic, but the Knight of Wands probably flipped a table in frustration. The Tower could be an absolute catastrophe, or someone deciding like a lightning from the blue that they are leaving this abusive relationship rightnow. 5 of Cups? Someone’s gonna go home and cry about it. If you hit a “tell me more!” feeling, you can always turn a single card spread into a three card spread (full or just the first line) to elaborate.

So, uh, that’s the basics! Basically dumping out the lego blocks motherload for your brain and letting it start finding patterns in the chaos. It’s something that can be highly personalized according to how it works for you/your story (and tailored to how well/quickly you can play off the gist of the card meanings), and takes some of the decisions-decisions weight off while letting you flex your mighty writer biceps and draw connections between ALL THE THINGS.

After my teacher introduced us to this theory, she asked us, “is love a feeling? Or is it a choice?” We were all a bunch of teenagers. Naturally we said it was a feeling. She said that if we clung to that belief, we’d never have a lasting relationship of any sort.

She made us interview a dozen adults who were or had been married and we asked them about their marriages and why it lasted or why it failed. At the end, I asked every single person if love was an emotion or a choice.

Everybody said that it was a choice. It was a conscious commitment. It was something you choose to make work every day with a person who has chosen the same thing. They all said that at one point in their marriage, the “feeling of love” had vanished or faded and they weren’t happy. They said feelings are always changing and you cannot build something that will last on such a shaky foundation.

The married ones said that when things were bad, they chose to open the communication, chose to identify what broke and how to fix it, and chose to recreate something worth falling in love with.

The divorced ones said they chose to walk away.

Ever since that class, since that project, I never looked at relationships the same way. I understood why arranged marriages were successful. I discovered the difference in feelings and commitments. I’ve never gone for the person who makes my heart flutter or my head spin. I’ve chosen the people who were committed to choosing me, dedicated to finding something to adore even on the ugliest days.

i literally can’t sleep alone anymore so i’ve shown up at your door in my pyjamas, can we have one more nap together, please? 

we promised to stay friends but we’re doing the same stuff we did when we were a couple and i don’t wanna point it out because i don’t want it to stop

listen i know i can’t just show up at your apartment at six in the morning but i need coffee and no one makes it like you do 

we broke up after i left and moved away and months later i find out you rushed to the airport to stop me but you were too late 

you keep calling me over to get rid of spiders from your apartment and i’m pretending i don’t know you’re not afraid of them at all because i miss you too

we keep showing up at all the same places separately because we’ve always had similar interests 

cop!au i’ve been undercover for months/years and i know i told you not to wait for me but i’m still in love with you and it’s killing me

or, i fell in love with you while i was undercover and i know you’re mad at me for lying but i have to go back to my old life (and i want you to be in it)

i know we’ve been broken up for a while but i still have those concert tickets and you’re the only person i want to share this with

i found the ring when i was moving my stuff out of your apartment and now everything makes sense

are you?? sabotaging?? my dates?!?!?

i’ve seen you hanging around my apartment and i thought it was because you missed me, turns out you’ve been using my wifi you asshole

i know you can’t cook for shit so i’ve been bringing you dinner every night, just, y’know, to keep you alive

i kissed you goodbye by accident - old habits die hard okay?!?!

roadtrip au where we need to save gas money so we take a long, awkward, tension-filled car ride 

instead of dividing up the CD’s, let’s play a drinking game to determine who gets what (it may or may not end in sex)

i was so sleep-deprived after the night shift that i climbed into bed with you (and you just rolled with it) 

you’re my emergency contact and i’ve been in an accident so you drop everything to come to the hospital 

soon to be divorced couple obnoxiously painting the walls wacky colours every time the other paints over it 

you’re pretending we’re still together because my relatives will disprove of the break up so you’re being all sweet it’s reminding me of why i fell in love with you in the first place