PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
RMH
cherry valley forever
izzy's playlists!
Three Goblin Art
Jules of Nature
❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
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Xuebing Du
occasionally subtle
Product Placement
Not today Justin
oozey mess
Keni
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Show & Tell
Game of Thrones Daily
if i look back, i am lost
One Nice Bug Per Day
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@blossomvnk
Collaborative writing is a labor of love. What if it could be easier?
Think connected drafts, not disconnected files.
Think effortless version history and control.
Think in-document chat.
Far away from the prying eyes of AI and LLMs.
Ellipsus is a new writing tool for people who write together!
Two new features have arrived this week: Comments and Dark Mode! :D
We’re looking for feedback from folks who care a lot about writing.
Check us out, and join the Ellipsus beta.
Writer Beware makes posts on which publishing houses to avoid at all costs, which words to look for and which words to watch out for in contracts, and several other things that will keep you in control and knowledgeable about the publishing process. I’d suggest reading through the website if you want to avoid getting ripped off, cheated, or scammed.
I’m just going to reblog this every so often because it’s a site that every writer needs to see.
Here is the current URL.
How To Have a Good Beta Reading Experience (or: what I've learned from 3 years of beta reading)
So lately I've been having a lot of discussions about beta reading with my discord groups so I thought I would write it out here and also share some resources I've used over the years.
This is mostly by and for writers, however readers can learn from this post as well!
DISCLAIMER: I'm by no means a writing expert, but I have been either beta reading others' books, or having my own stories beta read consistently since 2020. THIS IS ALL PERSONAL EXPERIENCE/OPINION. Others may agree or disagree ❤️
Here are the main points I'm going to talk about in this post, and I'll do it under the cut to save your dash space:
Understanding Alpha vs. Beta Readers
Choosing Readers
Being Clear About Feedback
Swapping / Compensation
The Importance of Writing Community/Groups
Websites/Resources for Finding Beta Readers
fun exciting bits from the outline of my new wip 😇
The best advice really is to just write. Write badly - purple prose, stilted conversations, rambling descriptions. Don’t delete it, pass go, take your $200, save all your garbage in a big folder. Look at how much you’ve made - it doesn’t matter if it isn’t perfect, isn’t polished, it was practice. Every time you write you learn a little more, and find another piece of your voice.
“If you’re only going to write when you’re inspired, you may be a fairly decent poet, but you will never be a novelist — because you’re going to have to make your word count today, and those words aren’t going to wait for you, whether you’re inspired or not. So you have to write when you’re not “inspired.” … And the weird thing is that six months later, or a year later, you’re going to look back and you’re not going to remember which scenes you wrote when you were inspired and which scenes you wrote because they had to be written.”
- Neil Gaiman
this made me realize i was literally just using inspiration as an excuse to procrastinate
me sitting here today thinking how much i don’t want to finish off the kidfic sequel bc wehhhhhhhh getting slapped in the face with this post
‘WRITE IT BADLY. Write it badly, write it badly, write it badly, write it badly. Stop what you’re doing, open a Word document, put a pencil on some paper, just get the idea out of your head. Let it be good later. Write it down now. Otherwise it will die in there.’
— Brandon Sanderson on overcoming writer’s block to create a first draft as a professional author (quoted in this tumblr post here)
‘Writing tip of the day: it is perfectly acceptable, when working on a scene that vexes you, to write “DUMBEST VERSION” along the top of the page and start from there. As I, a human who has been writing professionally for 25 years, just did. Give yourself permission to suck.‘
— John Rogers (on his twitter here)
“It is perfectly okay to write garbage, as long as you edit brilliantly” - C. J Cherryh, 4 time Hugo winner.
Writing is rewriting. In no other endeavor do you expect to be perfect the first time. Artists sketch before they begin to paint. Athletes and dancers warm up before they compete or perform. And everyone practices for hours and hours, days and years, to hone their craft. It is constant. It never ends, not for any of us, and that’s the beauty of it, I suppose. Art is organic. It grows and it changes, and the reason is because the artists creating it are living things, and they grow and change. Anything that looks or sounds effortless is is the result of thousands of hours of training and practice, of writing and rewriting again and again and again.
How to write kids, if you don't remember being one or haven't lived with any
1. Kids never feel as small as you see them. A three year old thinks a one year old is a baby and a six year old is grown up. A six year old thinks a three year old is a baby and a twelve year old is an adult. Age is about perspective. One year is a huge age difference to a little kid.
2. Little kids might not be conscious of their physical limitations, but they can still be frustrated by them. A seven year old might see an adult do something relatively simple, like draw a straight line or perfectly crack an egg, and try to do the same thing, only to be frustrated when it doesn't work.
Imagine suddenly having an injury that makes a skill you use every day become difficult- you feel you should be able to do the thing, and you understand the thing should be easy for you, but it isn't. It can be immensely frustrating to have a brain that grasps a concept that language or fine motor skills haven't caught up to.
3. You know when you forget a word, and have to make something up on the fly to describe the word? That's pretty much exactly what learning your first language is like.
You know what you intend, but you don't have a way to express it, and it can move you to tears with frustration when everyone around you is suggesting the wrong thing, or seems completely certain they understand what you mean, and they don't.
You don't have a word for "Later"? You might try saying "next time", or, "after", or, "before tomorrow".
This might result in saying, "Are we going to the park next time?", "Are we going to the park before tomorrow?", or, "Are we going to the park after?", all of which can result in different answers.
4. Kids feel like adults are a different species. They don't get why we do certain things, and they don't understand why we don't want to run around with them all the time.
If sitting still is boring, coffee tastes bitter, and long conversations only happen with weird-smelling strangers who talk to them like they're stupid, then they truly will not understand why anyone would *want* to be left to have coffee with a friend without welcome distractions to make it bearable.
Aren't you bored? You aren't doing anything. How could you possibly be stimulated without any food or toys or music or anything? Why don't you just leave? Do you *have* to be there, the way you had to go to work? Adults are weird.
5. Children have complex social relationships that are just as varied as yours.
A room full of third graders might look like indiscriminate chaos to an adult, but pick a well connected kid, and they'll tell you that Megan is the fashion icon who can do hair really well, Thomas is the athlete, Gray gets mean when he has to share so nobody wants to play with him, Paisley can't read and the boys make fun of her for it so don't make her work in a group with Anthony, Dillon put a bug in their food once so they'll never trust him again, and Matthew's parents let him watch family guy so he says bad words and makes grown-up jokes that make other kids uncomfortable.
You don't see this stuff because you aren't inside the society. They are, and they do.
6. Time. Moves. So. Slow. Five minutes really does feel like half an hour. Sit still for five minutes? That's like you sitting in a waiting room at the DMV for an hour. Wouldn't you get annoyed and impatient? They haven't learned to hide their irritation yet. That's really the only difference.
7. "Reading in your head" requires understanding that you have a Voice, which people can hear, and Thoughts, which are audible only to yourself. This can be a difficult concept to grasp. If a kid is reading out loud, and you tell them to read quietly, there's a good chance they're going to whisper or mouth the words instead of going totally silent the way you might. Splitting the self into multiples like "Internal monologue VS public perception" or "What I look like VS how I think I look" is alien and bizarre. If a kid thinks they look like a Dragon and you laugh at them? Ouch. They might be mad for a while.
8. Repetitive chores make no sense when your awareness of time doesn't extend beyond a week or so. Why should I wash my blankets? They don't look dirty and I don't smell anything bad. Blankets don't get dirty unless you put dirt on them. If you put a blanket in a washer, you can't use that blanket AT ALL the ENTIRE TIME it's being cleaned. That might be an hour, but it will *feel* like a week. And you have to do that every two weeks?? That's overkill. Why even bother?
9. Kids have opinions about adults. They will have a sense about whether an adult is "real-kind" or "fake-kind". An adult who listens respectfully to what they have to say, asks thoughtful questions, and takes their concerns seriously? That's a good adult. An adult that oversimplifies their struggles, ignores their complex social rules, and gives bullshit advice like "just walk away from bullies" and "turn your chores into a fun game"? That's not a trustworthy adult. That's an Adult™. An Adult™ doesn't consider them to be a real human being with thoughts and emotions. An Adult™ sees them as an inferior, amusing pet. And they will actively sabotage An Adult™ like that.
10. Emotions are physical at a young age. Joy might make their body buzz until they can't help but wiggle or jump around. Sadness might be a huge physical pain in their throat and heart. Everything they experience is still relatively.New to.them, so there is very little frame of reference to decide if this is a "big hurt that will last forever and ever and never go away", or a "small hurt, that can be fixed easily and won't matter in five minutes". If someone lies to them about getting a cookie, that very well might be all the betrayal of your best friend sleeping with your husband.
Fortunately, a child probably won't be able to burn all your clothes in the yard without your notice.
all credits go to @katytastic (youtube/tiktok).
29.09.21 | outline your novel masterpost. this is currently helping me to write and I thought I'd share. sorry for the lame graphics. of course, you can write as many chapters as you wish, you don't have to stick with 3 per block. please use my ask if there's anything wrong or you have an opinion - happy to improve :)
im so cool and sexy for creating an entire pantheon of gods for this wip
for the love of god if you’re writing deaf/mute characters and they’re using sign language to talk PLEASE use quotation marks, don’t do just italics or brackets or whatever other thing it is people do. sign language is STILL A LANGUAGE. just because it’s not spoken doesn’t mean it’s not real dialogue. if you’re writing someone speaking spanish, do you write their dialogue like ‘[the flower district is down south,] she said in spanish’ like NO!!! IT DOESN’T WORK LIKE THAT, USE QUOTATIONS MARKS AND JUST SAY THEY SIGNED.
just know that you can describe their facial expressions! or how flowy their hand movements are, if they move excitedly or animatedly when happy, if they’re slamming their hands and moving aggressively when angry, how their brows scrunch or how rigid their hands get, you can still be creative and describe what they’re conveying even though they’re not using a spoken language. watch videos of people signing! look at how beautifully expressive it is! it is a LANGUAGE, treat and write it like one. use quotation marks
Fantasy Guide: Common battle wounds and how to fix them
Arrow wounds: Now if the lung, heart, kidney, other major organ is hit, there may be little to do. The kidney has a back up, so maybe a skilled surgeon could save him, not exactly sure however. If hit by an arrow and not hit dangerously in an organ or artery, we can help. Firstly, DO NOT REMOVE arrow by yanking. Arrow must be worked from the skin by skilled hands. Once arrow is out, wash would with clean water/alchohol/herbal remedies. To heal slow, sew up wound and wrap in bandages. To speed it up, cauterise the wound with fire. It will hurt and patient pay pass out but now the arrow wound can heal faster. This works for crossbow bolts as well. On the gross side, arrows may be smeared with dirt or shit, so sepsis is a danger. This is how the great Richard the Lionheart died. Sometimes the mighty lion is killed by a shit arrow. But hey, shit happens. Arrow wounds take a couple of weeks to heal.
Sword slashes: if shallow, wash and bind up. May require stitches. If deeper, repeat process with more stitches and more bandages. Even if shallow, the cut must be washed using alcohol or clean water. May take a few days to weeks to heal depending on wound depth and severity.
Stab wound: Again don’t remove knife or object. If already removed, wash would and sew it up. You may need to cauterise. If guts, organs, brain, is falling out, there is nothing to do. This may take a couple of weeks to months to heal depending on wound.
Broken Bones: A break must be splinted with a board of wood and bandages. Slings can support arms and wrists. If your character breaks a leg, it may be worse. Breaks don’t heal great without modern medicine. Your character may have a limp or leg pain. In you’re are living in a hot climate, you’re pretty much fucked because infection sets in fast. These may take months to heal.
For @maslovianwench
You've probably got a lot of questions rn but I'm gonna try my luck: how to introduce secondary characters? In my specific case: the friend group of the main character
Instead of going on a long tirade for this question, I decided to list a few tips that I’ve found helpful over the years and some things that are key when introducing secondary characters. I’ve also listed some helpful articles I’ve found from other blogs that elaborate more on this concept for your perusal.
Here are my tips:
Instead of introducing them all at once, phase them in using scenes that have a lot of revealing action and/or dialogue. This prevents info-dumping and allows you to focus on the more distinguishing characteristics of minor players so that the reader establishes them in their index for your story.
Only spend time truly integrating characters into the scenes if they impact the main character and move the story along. If it’s an old man they pass by once that is more of a metaphor than anything else, don’t spend a paragraph describing them. This will mislead the reader and mess up the flow of the scene.
Don’t forget to introduce the implications that come with supporting characters as well. If your main character’s mother-in-law lives with them, you’ll need to begin to describe how this impacts the character’s day-to-day life on top of just describing the supporting character’s appearance and general personality traits. Supporting characters make a main character more three-dimensional, but only if you can convince the reader that they’re people too, and not just accessories.
Introduce minor characters in a manner that corresponds with their importance to the story. By this, I mean don’t have a really minor character enter the story in a way that brings a lot of questions into the reader’s mind and then never mention them again, or worse, lead them to believe answers will come in future scenes with the character and then never deliver. If a character will only be in 2-3 scenes, give the reader as much information or room for future knowledge as needed. Don’t create intrigue and leave the audience hanging.
Other articles that I found interesting/helpful on this topic:
How to Introduce Secondary Characters
How to Write Effective Supporting Characters
How to Introduce Supporting Characters: Examples From Good Authors
I hope this was helpful. Happy writing!
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Show, Don’t Tell
“Show, don’t tell,” was what I was taught at school.
You, too?
Here’s a simple example of “show, don’t tell”:
Show: The skin resists the blunt knife, dimpling slightly before bursting open in a splatter of red liquid. All over my hands. All over the kitchen counter. What’s inside is worse: a viscous mess of seeds and soggy flesh that oozes across my plate, and turns to a fragrant mush in my mouth. It isn’t the taste, but the texture that makes me long to spit it out. Tell: I hate raw tomatoes.
In my example above, the difference between the two approaches is marked. However, in practice, it isn’t always so easy to distinguish between showing and telling.
In this article, I’d like to explore the techniques used by 3 famous authors to blend showing and telling in order to unfold the plot, the characters, and the world.
Here is a general comparison of showing and telling:
How vs. What – showing is more likely to explain and describe how something occurs, whereas telling can simply state what happened.
Detail vs. Overview – showing focuses on providing details in an effort to imitate the character’s experience, while telling is more useful for providing a broad overview or generalisation of the situation.
Verbose vs. Succinct – since showing requires more detail, it’s usually wordier than telling.
Slow vs. Fast – another consequence of providing more details is that the pace of the narration slows down. Telling, in contrast, usually speeds up the story.
Character vs. Narrator – because showing often relies on the way the action of the story is perceived, the character becomes more dominant. However, this character may be the narrator themselves.
Perception vs. Context – even if the perceptions are shown from the point of view of a disembodied narrator, they’re usually more focused. Telling, in contrast, is better suited to provide context.
Personal vs. Impersonal – because it foregrounds perceptions, showing can feel more personal, whereas telling can impart a universal quality as exemplified by the fairytale formula: “once upon a time, in a kingdom far away, there lived a…”
Writer vs. Reader – showing requires a writer to expend skill, time, and words. Although it can help to draw the reader in, I think it can be argued that telling a story demands more of the reader, who has to fill in the details through the work of their own imagination.
The aim of the “show, don’t tell,” rule is to encourage writers to describe the action of the story in a way that draws the reader to experience it alongside the character.
It’s a useful reminder to think about how you convey information.
However, as I think the examples in this article will demonstrate, showing and telling are more effective when used together.
The techniques of showing and telling are essential to fleshing out your plot structure.
✓ Telling can impart a lot of information very quickly, which is why it’s often a good choice for setting the scene.
✓ Showing, on the other hand, conveys story information slowly, but more in-depth. It’s more entertaining, so I recommend you use it in abundance for scenes that you want to linger in.
One of Ernest Hemingway’s writing tenets is to pare down story information as much as possible. His aim is to erase the narrator, and thereby the filter between the reader and the characters, but this doesn’t mean he shies away from telling. Quite the contrary!
For example, here is the very first sentence of THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA:
He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish.
This telling sentence brings the reader up to speed, introducing the character, the location, and the situation.
You might argue that the rest of the novella is Hemingway showing the first sentence and its consequences.
A writer can often give away a surprising amount of information about the plot, because the reader can still enjoy the pleasure of the details unfolded through showing the character’s journey.
After his first telling sentence, Hemingway continues to weave showing and telling throughout the novella, creating the oceanic rhythm of the old man’s monologue.
For example:
“Bad news for you, fish,” he said and shifted the line over the sacks that covered his shoulders. [showing]
He was comfortable but suffering, although he did not admit the suffering at all. [telling]
You can use this technique of alternating lines of showing and telling as a way to break up long sections of introspection.
Hemingway has another interesting trick that combines the functions of telling and showing.
Glossing over boring passages of time is one of the chief advantages of telling.
Throughout The Old Man and the Sea, Hemingway repeatedly tells how much time has passed, but simultaneously shows its effect on the character through the perceptions of the old man…
The sun was two hours higher now and it did not hurt his eyes so much to look into the east. There were only three boats in sight now and they showed very low and far inshore.
…
He rested for what he believed to be two hours. The moon did not rise now until late and he had no way of judging the time. Nor was he really resting except comparatively. He was still bearing the pull of the fish across his shoulders but he placed his left hand on the gunwale of the bow and confided more and more of the resistance to the fish to the skiff itself.
…
For an hour the old man had been seeing black spots before his eyes and the sweat salted his eyes and salted the cut over his eye and on his forehead. He was not afraid of the black spots. They were normal at the tension that he was pulling on the line. Twice, though, he had felt faint and dizzy and that had worried him.
…
He had sailed for two hours, resting in the stern and sometimes chewing a bit of the meat from the marlin, trying to rest and to be strong, when he saw the first of the two sharks.
To use this trick, look for descriptions in your story when your character is fairly still for a long period of time. Instead of mentioning the passage of time, and what your character does before and after, describe their sensations during that time period, and how they perceive time passing.
Notice how this technique doesn’t take up much space in the narrative. It seems to create contrast by speeding up the time it takes to tell the story, while slowing down time for the character.
lol attempted writing session did not go well. opened doc, played video game, closed doc. really wanted to write tho so closed game and reopened doc. edited the last paragraph i'd written. Hm. picked up tablet, went on tumblr. laptop battery died. going to play a different video game now. wrote nothing
A successful author once gave me this advice - open your document every day. Doesn't matter if you don't write anything, just get into the habit of opening it every day.
It really works. Even if you only edit a paragraph or write a sentence, that's still a step forward. Some days, you'll write loads.
Most important thing is to keep your writing space positive. Don't clutter it with guilt or shame over "not doing enough", that will only make it worse.
And on the days when Executive Dysfunction or Demand Avoidance kick in? Forgive yourself, move on, try again later, or accept that it's not happening for you that day. Trying to force it will just make you ill, and produce shitty writing.
Be kind to yourself 💕
reminder to myself about the process of drafting & revising:
first drafts are for making it exist
second drafts are for making it functional
third drafts are for making it effective
This is the most important thing I’ve learnt in writing my novel. Have fun the first time but know your first pass isn’t going to be perfect
i Don't draw but i wanted to doodle so i got a sketchbook app on my phone just to make camellia
ISLAND OF THE SUN. what kind of person is peter pan? she asks the question, but she only gets resounding silence in response. [quotes]
“what kind of person is peter pan?”
“look to the stars,” peter says. “for the wisher will not be far.”
a fae sound for a fae thing.
two months before the undoing, peter pan asks, “have you ever seen a dead body before?”
Keep reading
Here's something I don't see writers practicing enough: how big things can permanently change your character.
I see people putting their characters through war, abusive relationships, health disorders, and intense grief. Since popular writers often fail here, I hope you guys are also considering how these things will affect your character in the long run. I don't mean "Oh, they have bad dreams now and are jerks to everyone, but only for a little while." I mean has their entire outlook on life changed dramatically, and if so how? Does it show? Do they try to hide it and move on, or do they accept that this is who they are now? Does it take them a long time or a short time to realize things can never again be the way they were? How does that affect them? Do they choose to keep this new personality, or do they try to change it?
Not everyone wants to acknowledge this type of development in a character because it gets in the way of their plans or disrupts plot. Also, some characters are made of stern stuff or are just flexible enough to survive with their personality intact. Yet, major events in a story should leave a noticeable impact on a character, the more personal the event generally the bigger the personality change.
Just think about it if you haven't already, y'know?
The concept of ignoring the development of a character because it interferes with the plot is a completely foreign concept to me. Your character development should drive the plot as much as the opposite. Your character development is the plot.
