WriterGod

I'm going to try it.

First, let me preface this with something very important: you can treat all of this advice as SECOND-DRAFT ADVICE. It is so much easier to rewrite this kind of stuff once you have words on the page. Telling yourself the first draft is totally appropriate and acceptable.

What we’re talking about here are FILTER WORDS (and to some degree verbs of being). Yes, “thought” words are included. But so are “heard, saw, looked, tasted, smelled” etc.—most words having to do with the senses.

This isn’t black and white advice; sometimes you’ll use these words and that’s okay. They’re not WRONG. They’re just weaker. And they’re weaker because they create distance between the reader and the experience of the character.*

If you want your reader to feel like they’re experiencing the story right alongside the character, you want to cut down on filter words.

*This is particularly important with first person and close third POVs. The reader always knows whose eyes they’re seeing through and thoughts they’re privy to. So you don’t need to tell them “I saw X.” Or “I heard X.” Or “I thought Y.” You can just jump into the action/observation as it’s happening.

This is also where you want to pay attention to verbs of being.

you want to pay attention

to verbs of being.

academy

adventurer's guild

alchemist

apiary

apothecary

aquarium

armory

art gallery

bakery

bank

barber

barracks

bathhouse

blacksmith

boathouse

book store

bookbinder

botanical garden

brothel

butcher

carpenter

cartographer

casino

castle

cobbler

coffee shop

council chamber

court house

crypt for the noble family

For example:

For some people, the idea of someone redeeming a villain is a power fantasy.

For other people, the idea of a villain being defeated is a power fantasy.

And for other people, the idea of a character owning their villainy is a power fantasy.

Saving/Fixing the Problematic Love Interest is absolutely a power fantasy.

So is kicking them to the curb and saying that they are wrong, they were always wrong, and are not your responsibility.

Violence: A Writer’s Guide:  This is not about writing technique. It is an introduction to the world of violence. To the parts that people don’t understand. The parts that books and movies get wrong. Not just the mechanics, but how people who live in a violent world think and feel about what they do and what they see done.

Hurting Your Characters: HURTING YOUR CHARACTERS discusses the immediate effect of trauma on the body, its physiologic response, including the types of nerve fibers and the sensations they convey, and how injuries feel to the character. This book also presents a simplified overview of the expected recovery times for the injuries discussed in young, otherwise healthy individuals.

Body Trauma: A writer’s guide to wounds and injuries. Body Trauma explains what happens to body organs and bones maimed by accident or intent and the small window of opportunity for emergency treatment. Research what happens in a hospital operating room and the personnel who initiate treatment. Use these facts to bring added realism to your stories and novels.

10 B.S. Medical Tropes that Need to Die TODAY…and What to Do Instead: Written by a paramedic and writer with a decade of experience, 10 BS Medical Tropes covers exactly that: clichéd and inaccurate tropes that not only ruin books, they have the potential to hurt real people in the real world. 

Maim Your Characters: How Injuries Work in Fiction: Increase Realism. Raise the Stakes. Tell Better Stories. Maim Your Characters is the definitive guide to using wounds and injuries to their greatest effect in your story. Learn not only the six critical parts of an injury plot, but more importantly, how to make sure that the injury you’re inflicting matters. 

site for when you can only remember part of a word/its definition 

site that gives you words that rhyme with a word

You can get this banner back by going into your Preferences, scrolling down to the bottom section called Misc. and checking the box next to "Turn the new user help banner back on," and then hitting the Update button.

Or, if you just want to read the tips and tricks, you can find them here. (If you click the link in the banner, it'll give you a popup instead).

There's a lot of useful stuff in there, including things that people ask about pretty often.

Video description: an AO3 tutorial, narrated by a female voice and posted on tiktok.

The screen shows an AO3 news post titled Hidden search operators cheatsheet.

"Do you ever forget the title and author of a fic, but you remember the summary?"

The video scrolls down the page and highlights one bullet point on the cheatsheet.

summary: string for works with a particular word or phrase (in quotation marks) in the summary

"You can actually search for that."

The screen changes to show a closeup of the Search box embedded in the coloured bar at the top of the AO3 homepage. Inside the box are the words summary: love

"So you can search here using a keyword. Pro-tip, the word "love" is going to get you a million results."

The search changes to summary: conferences

"But the other day, I posted a fic with the word conferences in the summary, and I think that's probably pretty rare, so let's see."

The user presses the search button and the results page populates. The user zooms in to show 322 Found.

"Okay, 322 found. Out of 7 million, that's not bad!"

The screen returns to the search box. This time the text inside the box reads summary: "conferences kind of suck"

"But I used the phrase conferences kind of suck, so if I search for that and put that phrase in quotation marks-"

The user presses the search button again and the results page populates. This time there is one 1 story found.

"Look! It's the only result."

The screen changes to show the page containing all 32177 Works in the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. fandom.

"And the thing is, if I know the fandom that it's in, or the ship, or anything else, I can filter-"

The user taps on the Filter button to open up the sidebar. The screen changes to a zoomed in view of the lower portion of the sidebar with the Search Within Results box at the centre of the screen. An emoji of a hand points to it. Inside the box is the text summary: conferences

"And I can use that same search operator in the Search Within Results box" Note: This is instead of doing it in the search box at the top of the page.

The user presses the Sort & Filter button and the results page populates showing 2 works found within the fandom.

For anyone who hasn't seen them before, Hidden Search Operators are handy tricks you can use when you're either searching or filtering AO3.

summary: string is a generic way of explaining that you can search AO3 for a specific word that appears in a summary. You can do this from the search bar in the header, from the Any Field box at the top of the Advanced Search form, or from the Search Within Results box at the bottom of the filter menu.

Examples:

summary: Bruce

summary: "Bruce Banner"

summary: Bruce OR summary: Banner OR summary: Hulk

You need to put quotation marks around your search term if it is more than one word. The quotes make sure that the site searches for those two words together.

The other two operators listed work best in the Search Within Results box.

expected_number_of_chapters: 1 will return results where every fic has only 1 chapter currently posted.

You can use expected_number_of_chapters: -1 if you want results where every fic has more than 1 chapter currently posted.

This is a master post (it's that how they called it?) to help you with the ficlets that form this very f*ck up alternative timeline of the DSMP fanfic Rewind by a-non-ymouswriter.

This is an au within the fanfic. The “Exile arc” au is based around what would’ve happened if Tommy and Tubbo from a very bad future time traveled at the time Tommy was exiled.

TW: Just like that fanfic, these chapters can contain the mention of very dark themes, such as manipulation, physical and mental abuse, Stockholm and Lima syndrome, and some detailed descriptions of injuries.

I'll put TW (Trigger warning) whenever those themes are present. I know this is based on a game of blocks, and we may enjoy angst, but these topics should be treated carefully. Stay safe everyone.

—————

Don't worry if some chapters appear between others, I'll submit them in an order that is ok for you to read, and you can come back to this post if you're curious about previous events.

Questions 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6

Tommy meets Theo.

Tubbo’s Meeting

Tommy and Dream play chess.

Dream’s plan.

Dream thinks of Tommy.

Tommy finds Phil.

???????

—————

Now to answer some questions that you may have.

“Mother goes to your rooms every evening before she sleeps. She would not allow your old things to be moved from their places – no more than the few possessions we burned in the funeral boat in place of your body. The only concession to your absence she permitted was that the furniture in your chambers be covered with sheets to protect it from dust. But she lifts these away when she visits – I can hear the sweep and rustle of the cloth – and she sits and speaks to you for an hour every night. I can seldom hear what she says, but I perceive the tone: sometimes it is cheerful and conversational, as if she were simply asking you about your day, or discussing with you the books you have read lately; sometimes earnest and imploring, as if she is trying to make you understand the reasons for the lies that drove you away, to beg you vainly to stay. Sometimes it is quiet and broken, and then I know she is only telling you how much she loves and misses you, and how sorry she is, and then the words give way to weeping and then to silence.

“And as for me: most evenings at sunset I would walk to the broken edge of the Bifrost and look into the darkness below, and I could still see your tear-streaked, desperate face looking up at me. If only I had been faster, I would think, if only I had thought of the right thing to say… Heimdall would tell me news of the mortal woman Jane Foster, hoping, I think, to cheer me. He must have known what news I truly looked for, because there was sorrow and compassion in his gaze even as he spoke of Jane’s good health and fortune. Can you imagine our joy when at last he came to us with the news that you lived? How we wept and laughed and wondered that we had been given another chance to right our mistakes?

“Whatever anger you still bear toward us, Loki, do not vent it in violence upon innocents. Come home, speak your griefs and we will listen, we will try to make amends. Come home, and let our mourning be at an end.”

Well.

About that.

It doesn't technically exist? It's a spin off of an old ask about Dream/The Star Sanses finding Reader before Dust and the Bad Time Trio does.

Couldn’t be me

( requested by → @ellabsprincess )

I actually really like the motifs on these ! it was initially inspired by The Last of Us (one of the greatest games of all time), but I think it works for other contexts too.

feel free to use; please like, reblog, and credit 〜

When you see an arrow like this:

It means you click it to expand out a hidden section.

It’s an accordion section/menu! It’s useful in web design to hide information that may be overwhelming under specific headers so people can only see what they need.

Here I’m using it for people who need the content warnings to be able to check, but for those who don’t need them and don’t want to be spoiled to just move right past without accidentally reading anything.