chillens

ttp!rp kids + inspo

[uroko]

‘Poland, Golden Hour in Oderwald’ by Arkadiusz Waloch ‘Yucatán, Mexico’ by Eduardo Reyes

[vivian-is-writing-deactivated20]

I don’t care how contrived it is. I will always enjoy two characters who don’t like each other somehow getting trapped in the same place, and having to work together to escape, while at the same time growing closer and learning that maybe, the other person isn’t so bad after all.

[ao3commentoftheday]

Do you have any tips on how to write fight scenes? I’m okay with most other types of writing, but for some reason I really struggle to describe action. Thank you! :)

I don’t write a lot of fight scenes, but I do write a lot of sex scenes and they’re very similar in a lot of ways. I’ll give you a few tips that work for me, and then hand it off to the blog to give more suggestions!

- remember that you don’t need your readers to have the same picture in your head that you do. They need to know the general contours of the fight, but when it comes down to details like right versus left hand and things like that, you only need to include them if they’re relevant. Does it matter which hand is doing the punching? No? Then skip it. 

- use verbs that include movement in them. Running and jumping are obvious, but you can mix it up with other words too. Just like up above, if you don’t have to explain how someone got from point A to B in detail, just say they moved and get back to the fight.

- you also don’t need to describe each individual hit or shot etc. Which ones lead to a change in who’s winning? Which ones lead to an injury or a loss of balance or something else that could tip the fight one way or the other. Those are the ones to focus on.

My writing style tends to skip the details in order to keep things moving, so these suggestions might not work for you, but if you check the notes I’m sure you’ll see more.

[kringsbebec-blog]

Very good advices.

Another thing important too (in my opinion) is the description of what the character feels- both physically and for the feelings.

Describe the adrenaline when he/she miss an opportunity to grab a weapon, for instance. How does it feel ? Does his/her heart skip a beat ? How does it feel when he punches the assaillant in the face, how blood tastes in his mouth, how pain feels first then grows ?

Details are important as much as how quick the fight goes. Not too much details, but just what's essential to feels as much anxious/angry than the characters.

[pir8grl]

A few things I’ve done:

Stage the fight with action figures. 

Draw the fight with stick figures.

Write a skeleton of super basic sentences, then dress them up. (’Villain kicks hero’ can evolve into something like ‘The villain moved towards the edge of the balcony, then suddenly whirled and landed a roundhouse kick.’)

Also agreeing with all of the above...the emotions of the moment will probably do more to drive the story for your readers, but if you’re like me, you might need to visualize it in your head clearly before you can write it.

[captaincaitastrophe]

I agree with everything above! I also tend to make my fighting paragraphs shorter to help push the speed of the reading, unless it's a large war fight scene.

Small fight scenes or 1v1 - short paragraphs, harsher verbs, hyphens, shorter sentences with speed, emotions tend to hit harder at the end, exhaustion slamming into them after the fact, healing and recognizing wounds afterwards.

War fight scenes or 1vMultiple - larger paragraphs, wear down the hero, more drama and feelings, because she has more time acknowledge them since the fight is longer, exhaustion wearing them down in the moment, since it's taking longer, and wounds being more important and significant in the fight.

[silverjirachi]

So when you’re writing, and if you’re like me, you might have heard how beneficial this whole “messy first draft” thing is, and I agree! It’s really true. But beginning to accept that mess and not self-edit and censor because it isn’t *perfect already* can be really hard. So here’s my strategy.

Let’s say you’re writing a scene of dialogue, and you know you eventually want to go into more detail about the characters’ expressions or the feelings and movements, but you’re really in the flow and don’t want fussing over the description to trip you up. Solution?

Brackets.

Character A says something to Character B that causes Character B to do a brief little bit of soul searching. You want this line to be important but can’t really figure out how to phrase it this instant. I might write something like,

“Oh,” Character B said. [He considers this, it’s important, soul-searching]. “I hadn’t thought of it like that before.”

I put brackets around my thoughts, what I’m trying to say but just don’t have the *perfect* way to say it right now. For me, it really helps because it allows me to be as messy as:

He walked into the room. [The curtains were blue or some shit idk]

in the middle of a scene and keep my flow moving the way it wants to at that point in time. It also makes for some hilarious moments to revisit when editing. Use brackets as notes for yourself to remember or things you want to go back and describe later. Use brackets when you’re stuck. Use brackets to give yourself permission to give up in the middle of sentences or entire paragraphs until you find the words later.

When you’re writing first drafts, it’s really just important to get the words and ideas out. If words are tripping you up, slowing you down, causing you to get “stuck” in a chapter or scene, use a bracket to write the gist of it. It will come to you later.

I think the brackets work for me because they visually help separate the *words on the page* from the “mistakes/obstacles/hiccups/road bumps/less than stellar phrasing.” And it helps to just keep me moving but in a way that I can still retain the concept for a scene which is the most important thing of all.

[show-dont-tell]

YES!! This is such a great idea!

It’s also good for things you need to research later:

The doctor set down the file in her desk, and her face was carefully neutral. “I’m sorry to say you have [a serious yet not life threatening condition EDIT].”

I like to put ‘EDIT’ in the brackets so I can do a ‘Find’ for the word later and make sure I didn’t miss fixing any bracket areas.

The draft should be written fast, just letting the words flow out and to get the core of the story out on paper or your screen. Just use brackets for anytime you get stuck on small stuff and keep going.

[demenior]

Every time I see a ‘modern au’ ft a character that has some sort of limb replacement like a metal arm or w/e and the ‘cool au version’ of it is a sleeve tattoo I literally want to reach through the screen and slap some sense into whoever posted it

They got a prosthetic in canon they gonna get a prosthetic in the au!!!! Because, I know this is a little far-fetched, but people who need prosthetics actually exist!!! In real life?! What a coincidence?!

[gostaks]

Also you want cool prosthetics??? They totally exist

Want your character to have a cool prosthetic in the modern day?

steampunk? check

#aesthetic? Floral?

avant garde?

cyberpunk?

there are no excuses for erasing canonical disabilities

[marvel-lous-things]

Me, in tears, halfway through writing a 300 word essay: I can’t do this anymore

Person on A03 who’s writing for fun:

[sanerontheinside]

Inconvenient Truth: these are the same person

[elfwreck]

Yeah, well, I can’t stretch out that review of 16th century economics by adding a gratuitous hand job.

[aryashi]

#not with that attitude you can’t

[sonofnjobu]

Nappy.co

[cantbaretoknowinnocence]

You know how long I've been looking for something like this!?

[kny111]

To any sketch artist out there too.

[amazonpoodle]

also seriously if a character isn’t white, i promise your only descriptive options aren’t food words and varying degrees of tan. it’s okay to say brown. pale brown! light brown! golden brown! medium brown! dark brown! deep brown! so many kinds of brown!

BROWN BROWN BROWN BROWN BROWN

[laffbending]

#brown is not a bad word #you do not need euphemisms #B R O W N

[lgbtqiafeminism]

This post by writingwithcolor might help in picking good words to use plus reading about why not to use food words! In general if you’re writing a character of color I highly recommend @writingwithcolor

[cukibola-deactivated20200917]

Thank you!

[dicaeopolis]

new alignment chart

[dicaeopolis]

some thoughts

[mlwangbooks]

The best writing teacher I ever had wasn’t the one who taught me grammar and spelling. He wasn’t the one who taught me outlining and paragraph structure, nor was he the one who taught me about themes, motifs, and symbolism.

He said, “Wiggle your pencil.

Put the tip of your pencil to the paper and keep the eraser end wiggling.

If you have nothing to write, write that: I have nothing to write, I have nothing to write, I have nothing to write, I have nothing to write, and eventually, by force of boredom, something else will come out.”

We would take 30 - 45 minutes every day to ‘wiggle our pencils’ in our wide-ruled notebooks, during which time, he was silent except to remind anyone who stopped to keep that pencil moving. 

I finished not one but two novel-length stories that year. It was fifth grade.

Wiggle your pencil.

[meiselr]

Archetype Inspirations | Prophet with a God complex

[valtsv]

ive never proofread a single thing ive written in my life as soon the words are outside my brain i no longer recognize them as mine and i want nothing more to do with them

[valtsv]

i write bastard sentences with my evil little hands and i make them everyone else's problem

[slothful-rabbit]

Well that’s a goddamn mood

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

there’s a quarantine going on… no pressure but i KNOW ya’ll have WIPs

[madtumbleson]

[cheaphalloweencostume]

[cogesque-deactivated20210410]

Top 10 Tips for Actually Writing

for the writer who can’t seem to write.

Buy a pencil and paper. Get a writing program and a keyboard.

Spill all your ideas into a notebook that will never see the light of day. Write down literally every idea you have that even sort of relates to the scene/chapter/book that you want to write until your thoughts converge on a pointed attack.

Quality vs. Quantity? No competition. Quantity all the way. The more you write, the better you will know your story. Worry about Quality LATER.

Think about where the idea came from. Go there. Set up a cardboard box and live there. This is your home now.

What is the coolest, most self-indulgent thing you can think of? That’s what you want to write at this point, until you get some steam.

Short-term goals, my friends. And by short-term, I mean a minute from now, ten seconds from now. What are you going to do to write RIGHT NOW? Stop thinking about an hour from now, stop thinking about a day from now.

This is not a book. This is not a book. You are not writing a book. You are writing a story. A story is much easier to take bites out of than a book. A book is a big, scary, colossal thing. Stories are fun and carefree.

Get yourself a writing friend. A cactus, an old bottle of nail polish, a fish in an appropriately sized tank, etc. Make them hold you accountable.

Set crazy low goals. Promise yourself you will write ten words today. Ten words and you will be the Best Writer in the Entire World to Ever Exist. Accomplishing things is a morale booster and will urge you to write more.

Just keep writing. I believe in you.

[the960writers]

Being creative isn’t always fun

I think this is one of the most difficult things to realize. Be it writing or drawing or making music or crafting – it’s not fun. Not always.

I think we all expect it to be, I mean, why do it if it isn’t fun? It looks so easy when others do it. And then we get discouraged when things inevitably turn out to be more difficult than we thought. And then we blame ourselves!

It should be easy! This should be fun! I’m such a hack, I’m doing this wrong, I will never be good at this because it isn’t fun and it’s supposed to be fun, else it’s just a stupid waste of time. 

We all feel this way sometimes. 

Allow yourself to accept this. It isn’t always fun, sometimes it’s really difficult and you have to push through to get to the other part that is more fun.

It’s not easy, it’s not always fun but that doesn’t mean that it’s wrong to do it. You’re not wrong, you’re not stupid, you’re not a hack. Keep doing your thing.

[alrauna]

Ksenija (@curly.perkele)