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@writingrefsarah
people will look at a piece of media and say but what if it was bad instead. but what if the themes and motifs and foreshadowing set up throughout the entire story were meaningless and instead the story and characters were much less interesting and not at all related to said themes and motifs and foreshadowing
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i hate how they market alexa as a ‘member of the family’ like that’s SO fucking blatantly insidious and terrifying also if i wanted an untrustworthy/cold/emotionless machine in my life i’d just talk to my fuckin father
“Guys stop bullying my wiretap”
#did we all collectively forget why Big Brother was called that
Look, it’s a weird hill to die on, especially when I don’t really explain, but children deserve to experience fear, disgust, and discomfort in safe scenarios where they can process those sensations.
Media for children used to be scary and that’s important.
“Since it is so likely that (children) will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.” ― C.S. Lewis
"Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed."
-- G. K. Chesterton
-- Ted Chiang, from "Why A.I. Isn't Going to Make Art"
I'm so glad they got Ted Chiang -- a wonderful writer of science fiction and thinker about technology, in my opinion -- to write this essay. My favorite line was this:
Generative A.I. appeals to people who think they can express themselves in a medium without actually working in that medium.
“And yet, strangely, Americans are probably reading more words than ever before. What has changed is what they read, and how. People are bombarded with emails, text messages, X posts, Reddit threads, Instagram captions. This explosion of textual fragments has come at the expense of devoting sustained attention to longer written works that convey rich and complicated information. Maryanne Wolf, a cognitive neuroscientist at UCLA, argues that people are losing the ability to think deeply about writing. That doesn’t mean they are forgetting how to decode individual words. Rather, they are losing the higher-order abilities of comprehension and synthesis. America, in other words, isn’t illiterate. It’s postliterate.”
— The End of Reading Is Here
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Every kid deserves to grow up alongside a good book series.
ten years ago as part of my creative writing degree we had a class on professional development where we learned how the publishing process works for different mediums and how to choose an agent and what the role of a publishing house is and back then, the advice was "self-publishing has its advantages but a traditional publisher will provide editorial support and market your book and if your book sells well enough they want to invest in your future" and now basically none of that is true anymore. books make it to shelves with noticeable errors and structural issues that could be addressed with one or two more rounds of developmental editing, authors are expected to do more and more of the marketing themselves to the point that they are expected to be social media influencers in their own right, and publishers appear to be prioritising flashy debut novels with huge advances they don't outsell, which means the author is less likely to get a follow-up deal.
Obviously a publisher is a business and a business needs to make money, but the idea used to be that you'd have a couple of very successful authors who bring in so much cash that they subsidise the new kid who is building a back catalogue of books that sell okay until they get name recognition and pay for themselves. I was told back then that a couple thousand pounds was very reasonable for a debut novel because you want to get royalties for the sales exceeding your advance and that way the publisher sees you as a profitable investment. The last couple of years I keep hearing about six figure book deals for debut (!) literary fiction (!) novels, what on earth?
I'm not saying that the publishing industry is uniquely awful or that it's worse than it's ever been or whatever, but especially in a time when reading and talking about books is trendy and there is so much money in books, it feels very, I don't know, symbolic? Prioritising flashy one-time projects over sustained and sustainable growth. Investing only enough resources to make your product fit for sale but not enough to make it good because people will buy it anyway. It's frustrating to me as a reader and as an aspiring writer and as a person existing in a capitalist system.
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The real reason your sapient dragon character needs a "rider":
Dragons on the wing are vulnerable to being mobbed by smaller, more agile flyers, particularly in your large rear blind spot, like a bird of prey being mobbed by crows. Having a human armed with a long spear perched on your back helps to dissuade anyone from getting any funny ideas.
Breath weapons are impressive enough on the ground, but in flight they're really only good for strafing stationary targets; trying to use your breath weapon in an aerial dogfight is a good way to get fire up your nose. A real fight calls for sterner measures – and, concomitantly, a crew to aim and reload the cannons.
In today's competitive world, it's not enough to devour a flock of sheep and call it a day if you want to keep your edge. You're accompanied at all times by a qualified personal alchemist tasked with carefully regulating your internal furnace to ensure peak performance, and sometimes you even listen to them.
No dragon of any quality would be caught dead without their valet. It's not as though you can announce your numerous long-winded titles yourself when introductions are called for, can you? You suppose next you'll be expected to pick up the spoils of your conquests yourself, like a common brigand. Perish the thought!
Hey so that was a great date, yeah, but I don't think it's going to work out. Nono you didn't do anything wrong, and I have indeed had a crush on you since we started high school, it's just... well, I didn't want to bring it up at the time but we kinda got sucked into a portal fantasy midway through. We saved the kingdom over and over, relying on our knowledge of and trust in each other every time, throwing ourselves into the firing line to protect each other and using each others' conviction as a rock. We got married and lived a happy life together until the portal sucked us back mid-battle and you gave up all your memories of our journey in order to save my life right when we ended up back in the coffee shop. Yeah that was when I got a bit weird and went to the bathroom.
Anyway I thought we could push on and make the date work but I have all of these memories of secrets that this you never chose to share, decisions that this you never made, and intimacies that this you never experienced. And it's kind of screwing with the vibe yeah. Also on the date it was really, blatantly clear that you're sixteen whereas I have memories of ruling a fantasy kingdom for thirty years so like... that's a problem all on its own. Anyway this you just feels more like a daughter to me. A daughter with the woman I gave my heart and soul to over and over and received like in return, only to lose her forever on the journey home. On the plus side I can definitely help you with your math homework now.
#what the fuck#this one was actually really very short why is it still like that what
The shorter it is, the more concentrated the what the fuck can be.
I can help you with your math homework because the fantasy world's magic system was based on calculus and I was a gifted mage, stop nitpicking.
#this world's magic system is also based in calculus
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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sometimes you need dialogue tags and don't want to use the same four
i went at not writing island and saw all of you there
Me on not writing island, looking at you on not writing island knowing we’ll both be here tomorrow.
Chloé Zhao, who just won an Oscar for best director, writes fanfiction.
That's the kind of validation I needed in my life. Thank you, ma'am.
To all those that think there is an age limit to fanfiction or you “have to be this” to write fanfiction — fuck off.
I hope this reaches every author on this site. If they haven’t written a word in years, only are writing in their head and haven’t put it down yet, are hip deep in their own War and Peace wordcount fic.
If you're writing anything involving cons, scams, heists, or morally questionable characters who are very good at lying, here are some free resources I've been using for research. Saving you the "why is this in my search history" anxiety.
1. The FBI's Famous Cases & Criminals archive (fbi.gov/history/famous-cases) has detailed breakdowns of real fraud cases, Ponzi schemes, and confidence operations. The language they use is clinical and precise, which is perfect for getting the procedural details right.
2. The FTC Consumer Sentinel Network publishes annual reports on the most common fraud tactics in the US. Great for understanding how modern scams actually work and what makes people fall for them.
3. The Smithsonian's American Art Museum has a free digital collection of forgery case studies. If your character forges documents or art, this is gold.
4. Court Listener (courtlistener.com) is a free legal database where you can read actual court transcripts from fraud trials. Want to know how a real con artist talks under oath? This is where you find out.
5. The Internet Archive's collection of old newspaper crime sections. Search for "confidence man" or "swindle" in papers from the 1920s through 1960s and you'll find incredible real stories that would feel too dramatic for fiction.
Bonus: The Psychology of Fraud section on the Association for Psychological Science website has accessible articles about why people trust, how deception works cognitively, and what makes someone a convincing liar. Essential reading if you want your con artist characters to feel psychologically real.
Reblog to save for later. Your WIP will thank you.
hey there welcome to superpower school, where we teach you to use your dangerous superpowers in a school-like environment. here's your syllabus. as you can see, this class will consistent entirely of occasional world building lectures of no use to anyone who has actually lived in this world for more than a day, and unsupervised practical assignments that place your life and the lives of everyone near you at risk. also we have a tournament arc in around 50 chapters that will inevitably be rife with cheating and will be infiltrated by people who actually for real want to kill you. grading will be on a curve.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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i'm helping out at a creative writing workshop for uhhh i think 10-12s? 10-14s? idk. but that age range. and anyways
a) i forgot how fun this is
b) it's really hard not to like, re-write for them and stick to just "hey add descriptions here, change this grammar, really cool ideas!" bc i'm an adult and not trying to talk over/railroad these kids, but i'm just so excited for their ideas!!!
c) little boys write cool stuff like "what if we went to mars but it sucked so we left, but left behind all our technology and the technology rose up and created its own society and then went to war with us for abandoning them? what if transformers had 100x the war crimes? what if the earth blew up. what if we were the robots all along?"
d) little girls out here writing like "aunt melanie's skin was sloughing off the bones as her beloved dogs tore her apart, turning on her in blind animal instinct. the second she stopped providing food, she became food." and a lot of body horror and dark themes about group pacts and betrayals and ritualistic murder/sacrifices. like a lot
me, turning to the teacher who is also doing this: hey so, i'm personally really cool with the tone and direction these girls take, but is any of this? how you say... a red flag?
teacher: little girls have really rich inner lives to combat the way they're puppeted by society in real life. they'll learn to censor it out in a couple years, but it doesn't go away.
me, who was also a weird little girl who phased in and out of weirdness depending on social settings: nice.
Begging people to stop blindfolding their blind characters challenge
Genuine question, sorry if it sounds ignorant or missing the point of the post.
Im a writer with a fantasy human ethnicities that has powers extremely connected to sight. Stuff like levitation, illusions, mind reading. Blind characters arent able to use this magic on others, but it's possible for others to use it on them, as for example reading someone's mind by looking them in the eyes knowing that they cant do the same as they're blind. Obviously this absolutely changes based on the amount of vision a character as, but in this setting, it felt fitting for characters that have to interact with mind readers and cant use this ability to cover their eyes so that others cant instead use it on them. That means it wouldn't be all the blind people in the world, nor would it be a requirement/constant aspect of a blind person's life.
Would it fall under this trope? Am I misunderstanding why the trope is bad? I will absolutely do more research on it, but I wanted to know if this would come across as offensive as I hadnt considered it before while creating the world.
op has answered many questions about this topic and already indicated wishing people would stop asking them about it. they have a bunch of posts collected here about blindfolds specifically, and their pinned post has a lot of information and helpful linked posts as well.
it's also worth noting that, while op has stated that they'll answer questions for free, they are also a paid sensitivity reader. this seems like it would be a question that requires more in-depth understanding of the plot, setting, and characters to really determine how well you've handled blindness in your story/if you've fallen afoul of any harmful tropes or stereotypes? in which case, it may well be that this is something they'd consider more of a paid gig than a free quick question.
i see that you're a teenager, and i don't want to sound like i'm harping on you or anything. but it's really common for marginalized people who run resource blogs like op's to end up getting sort of bombarded with a lot of questions like this, that are highly specific, require a lot of context, and often feel like they expect the person running the blog to do all the work for them. i know you said at the end that you would also do your own research - i'd recommend doing the research first, and seeing if you can answer your question yourself with the resources provided. and sometimes you can't! and if that's the case, you can always ask later, and explain why the info you found didn't answer your question. but it helps if you can show that you've put in the work on your end, too, y'know?
