Bren Writes Stuff

Writing blog for Bakufun1 GalaxyFeathers on ao3

[palant1r]

my biggest advice for fanfic writers is to just fucking start putting discussion questions in your end notes. like you'd see in an english class. ask your readers to comment on specific craft choices or analyze certain themes. i started doing that on this fic for a fairly small ship and the comments ive gotten as a result have been absolutely incredible

[bren-writes]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Chapters: 1/? Fandom: Death Note (Anime & Manga) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Matsuda Touta/Yagami Light Characters: Matsuda Touta, Yagami Light Additional Tags: Matsuda Touta-centric, Matsuda Touta Is Not an Idiot, Post-Canon, ghost!light, Haunting, Ghosts, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, The shipping isn't there yet but I want you to know the vibes are there, Implied/Referenced Character Death Summary:

Touta jolted, one hand yanking open the nightstand drawer for the gun he (illegally) kept there, and his other hand fumbling with the lamp for light. He pointed the handgun at the figure- and his heart stopped. Sat there, blood staining his clothing and partly transparent, was Light Yagami. The dead Light Yagami.

One year after Light died, Matsuda finds himself haunted by his ghost. With no choice but to cope with it, he tries to balance the ever-present reminder of his doubts, and moving forward with his life in a post-Kira world.

[yellowdaffodils-76]

I love villains that are the reverse of the idea that the absence of love makes you evil. Villains that love to the point of paranoia and obsession. Villains whose love for someone corrupts them. Love being used for awful, evil things. Using love to justify horrific actions. Anything that breaks down the toxic idea that people who don’t feel love are monsters and those who feel love are always pure and heroic and morally right.

[bren-writes]

What direction do you see " The line between you and I" going? Is Zanza going to get all attached to Flora and the rest of the party, or are we gonna see some sort of Shulk the Sociopathic God deal? Or both, or neither?

It's a very interesting concept, and I'm curious about how the idea came to you.

Okay ironically enough I saw this ask IMMEDIATELY after deciding I need to get back to writing stuff-

Anyways, I do have the endgame planned for how things are going to end up! I plan on exploring stuff about his sense of his current identity in comparison to his identity as Zanza, and how he's going to reconcile the actions done in his 'previous life' with the person he's grown into as Shulk. Lots of nature vs nurture stuff.

I got the idea while rewatching some cutscenes that had relevance to Shulk and Zanza, like the Dream Sequence and Mechonis Core and afterwards. Lines like Dickson's "There was never anybody called Shulk to begin with!", Zanza's "He appeared to live because I gave him life," dream!Zanza's "You're not here, not anymore," and Shulk himself "I was never truly alive! It was Zanza all along!" got me thinking. Hey, has anyone written a fic where it really was always just Zanza?

And, well, nope! So, here I am, subjecting these two(?) to a whole entire identity crisis.

[michaelbjorkwrites]

How to Write Better Descriptions using Negative Space

The Power of Negative Space

A late spring breeze drifts through the open window of your studio, carrying the scent of freshly cut grass and faint cigarette smoke. You reposition your easel to better catch the light. Then, looking at the canvas, you dip your brush into black paint, and you paint the silhouette of a vase.

You step back to see your handiwork.

On the canvas is a vase and two faces. You only painted the vase, but the untouched white canvas presses in on the edges of the black paint, appearing to form the profiles of two faces.

You’ve painted Rubin’s Vase, an illusion that uses negative space (the unpainted canvas) to imply shapes and images. It shows how with just a few brush strokes, you’re able to imply just as much as you explicitly create.

That’s the power of a line — and to harness it is an advantage, whether you’re painting a picture, or writing a description in a story.

Writing Descriptions like Brush Strokes

As writers, we’ll never perfectly convey the images in our heads, because our descriptions rely on the imaginations of our readers to come to life. We can try to fix this by packing a description with excessive details, but that often just bloats the image, which bores, rather than stimulates, the imagination.

That’s why you should try writing like an artist — in brush strokes.

And with negative space.

Instead of describing every painstaking detail of a scene or a character’s appearance, highlight instead a few key, unique details — building clear images, which in turn imply an entire scene in the negative space of your reader’s imagination.

Take, for example, my introduction above. The late spring breeze, drifting in through an open window, smelling of freshly cut grass and cigarette smoke. You, readjusting the easel to catch the natural lighting, dipping your brush into black paint.

I’m not describing everything in that scene. I’m just providing a few specific details and actions that activate your imagination and bring the scene to life. (That being said, if I were writing a full scene and not just a short blog intro, I’d probably provide a few more details, such as your paint-splattered jeans and boots; yesterday’s coffee, cold in a mug on the windowsill; your sheared fingernails and cuticles, shortened from a habit of nail biting.)

Writing better descriptions can be as simple as that. Here are a few tips for writing descriptions in this fashion:

Ignore commonplace details. Readers are able to fill in common, assumed details (like hair/eye color) on their own, so prioritize details that make the setting or character unique.

Write clear, descriptive actions. Above, I didn’t just write “you move to a better position,” I wrote, “You reposition your easel to better catch the light.” I said very little about the easel, but now you’re picturing it all the same, likely with your hands on its wooden leg and brace, and you’re seeing the canvas brighten with natural lighting as you move it closer to the window. But I didn’t say all those things: I only offered a few specific nouns and verbs, and your imagination filled in and extrapolated the rest. That’s what happens when you write actions with specificity.

Write as much (or as little) as space and style dictate. Like I wrote above, I kept this post’s intro description short, because I wanted to usher you into the body of the content. A longer description would have hindered that goal. In a full scene, you may take more time to really breathe life into the setting or character. Or you might not; never forget to factor in your personal aesthetic and narrative goals.

Feel free to go overboard in draft 1. When painting, you can’t easily take back a brush stroke — but in writing you can. So feel free to write excessively in draft one, to get a lot of details to choose from, and then trim things back in revision.

Good luck and good writing, everybody! Feel free to comment or reblog if you have any questions.

— — —

Your stories are worth telling. For tips on how to craft meaning, build character-driven plots, and grow as a writer, follow my blog.

[nomettesbizzareadventure]

Fanfic Writers: Director’s Cut

Reblog this if you want readers to come into your ask box and ask for the “director’s commentary” on a particular story, section of a story, or set of lines. 

Or, send in a ⭐star⭐  to have the author select a section they’ve been dying to talk about!

[maskedfangirl]

"Narrative distance"? Do tell!

Explain it in text? Without emphatic arm gestures or wine? Oh god. Okay. I’ll try.

All right, so narrative distance is all about the proximity between you the reader and the POV character in a story you’re reading. You might sometimes also hear it called “psychic distance.” It puts you right up close to that character or pulls you away, and the narrative distance an author chooses greatly affects how their story turns out, because it can drastically change the focus.

Here’s an illustration of narrative distance from far to close, from John Gardner’s The Art of Fiction (a book I yelled at a lot, because Gardner is a pretentious bastard, but he does say very smart things about craft):

It was winter of the year 1853. A large man stepped out of a doorway.

Henry J. Warburton had never much cared for snowstorms.

Henry hated snowstorms.

God how he hated these damn snowstorms.

Snow. Under your collar, down inside your shoes, freezing and plugging up your miserable soul

It feels a bit like zooming in with a camera, doesn’t it?  

I always hate making decisions about narrative distance, because I usually get it wrong on the first try and have to fix it in revision. When I was writing Lost Causes, the first thing I had to do in revision was go through and zoom in a little on the narrative distance, because it felt like it was sitting right on top of Bruce’s prickly skin and it needed to be underneath where the little biting comments and intrusive thoughts lived. 

Narrative distance is probably the simplest form of distance in POV, and there is where if I had two glasses of wine in me you would hit a vein of pure yelling. There are SO MANY forms of distance in POV. There’s the distance between the intended reader and the POV character, the distance between the POV character and the narrator (even if it’s 1st person!), the distance between the narrator and the author. There’s emotional distance, intellectual distance, psychological distance, experiential distance. If you look closely at a 3rd person POV story, you can tell things about the narrator as a person (and the narrator is an entity independent of the author) - like, for starters, you can tell if they’re sympathetic to the POV character by how they talk about their actions. Word choice and sentence structure can tell you a narrator’s level of education and where they’re from; you can sometimes even tell a narrator’s gender, class, and other less obvious identifying factors if you look closely enough. To find these details, ask: What does the narrator (or POV character, or author) understand?

I can’t put a name on the narrator of the Harry Potter books, but I can tell you he understands British culture intimately, what it’s like to be a teen boy with a crush, to not have money, to be lonely and abused, and to find and connect with people. There’s a lot he doesn’t understand (he doesn’t pick out little flags of queerness like I do, so he’s probably straight, for example), but he sympathizes with Harry and supports him. I like that narrator. I’m supposed to sympathize with him, and I do.

POV is made up of these little distances - countless small questions of proximity that, when stacked together, decide whether we’re going to root for or against a character, or whether we’ll put down a book 20 pages in, or whether a story will punch you in just the right place at just the right amount to make you bawl your eyes out.

There are so many different possible configurations of distance in this arena that there are literally infinite POVs. Fiction is magical and also intimidating as fuck.

[grimogretricks]

*stares blankly with a look of sudden realisation*

I.. have been writing on and off all my life (though not professionally), and I’ve never actually put a name to thinking about this specific issue. Interesting! I think sometimes I struggle with keeping narrative distance consistent in what I write- tending to go into close focus on a character’s feelings and thoughts at the start more than later on, and more often when they’re feeling emotions like fear and anger than when they’re just.. thinking. Now I know that ‘narrative distance’ is a thing helps me better be on the lookout for that. Not that I’m saying consistency is necessarily best, but.. it would pay for me to be more conscious of what I’m doing.

[animatedamerican]

We got this very quote about psychic distance in a story-writing course I took in college.  Gardner goes on to say that it’s very jarring when the narration goes from one level of psychic distance to another that isn’t immediately beside it.  Going from 2 to 3 is fine, but if you go from 4 to 2 without passing through 3 on the way, you don’t have a smooth narrative voice.   (There was an example given that I can’t recall exactly, but it was something along the lines of “Ms. Jane Smythe had always disliked cicadas.  Lord, she thought, they’ll drive me crazy!  The young woman had never personally encountered any cicadas, but she knew what they were like.”)

OP makes some excellent points about other kinds of psychic distance, and now I want to think about how they apply to Steven King’s increasingly present narrator-voice over the course of the Dark Tower series.

[polyshipprompts]

okay so, i said i’d do this and i am. nice. this is the Official post about polyamuary 2019. a while back it was suggested i come up with a 30 day polyship challenge with different prompts for every day and now, two years later, here the (heck) we are

though because this is for january, it’s 31 instead. whoops.

anyway, rules. you DON’T have to do every day. do as many or as few as you want. you also don’t have to use the prompts i’m putting here, you can use whichever ones you want from the blog. or you can do these prompts but in a different order, if you want! it’s your work, do what you want with it.

all i ask is you DO use prompts from the blog because, like polyship week, it’s a blog event. like i can’t stop you if you don’t but i’m only gonna reblog prompt fills to here. the other rule is if you post a long fic on tumblr, it should go under a read more

anyway, the tag is gonna be “polyamuary2019″. yes, no space. but also no quotes

prompts are under the cut to keep this post from being too huge a dash-stretcher

Keep reading

[polyshipprompts]

imagine person a of your polyship has wings that they go to great lengths to hide (either through magic or more mundane means)

they don’t plan on showing their wings to anyone, but somehow, accidentally, the rest of the polyship finds out

how does everyone react?

[bren-writes]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Fire Emblem Heroes Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Alfonse/Bruno | Zacharias/Summoner | Eclat | Kiran Characters: Alfonse (Fire Emblem), Bruno | Zacharias, Summoner | Eclat | Kiran Additional Tags: Sleepy Cuddles, Polyamory, zacharias loves his partners, Gender-Neutral Summoner | Eclat | Kiran Summary:

Sometimes, on nights like this, Zacharias feels like he belongs.

[studyingisfortheweekend-blog]

Alternatives for 25 overused words in writing

1. Interesting- note worthy; thought-provoking; fascinating; attracting; appealing; attention-grabbing; captivating; gripping; invigorating; engrossing; engaging; electrifying.  

2. Beautiful- striking; stunning; magnificent; lovely; charming; gorgeous; radiant; dazzling.

3. Good- acceptable, wonderful, exceptional; positive; brilliant; first-rate; notable; stellar; favorable; superb; marvellous; prime.

4. Bad- awful; lousy; poor; unacceptable; crummy; dreadful; rough; inferior; substandard; atrocious; appalling; dreadful; defective.

5. Look- glance; fixate; observe; stare; gaze; peer; scan; watch; study; browse; eye; glimpse; review; inspect.

6. Nice- lovely; superior; pleasant; satisfying; delightful; likeable; agreeable; correct; adequate; swell; fair; okay; approved.

7. Very- extremely; exceedingly; exceptionally; immensely; tremendously; abundantly; particularly; remarkably.

8. Fine- satisfactory; worthy; respectable; exquisite; suitable; well; imposing; decent; admirable; praise-worthy; decent.

9. Happy- cheerful; delighted; pleased; content; amused; thrilled; elated; thrilled; ecstatic; on cloud 9. 

10. Really- genuinely; truly; honestly; actually; undoubtedly; certainly; remarkably; incredibly; downright; unquestionably; extremely.

11. Sad- miserable; gloomy; devastated; down at heard; distraught; distressed; dispirited; sorrowful; downcast; feeling blue; desolate.

12. Big- massive; huge; giant; gigantic; enormous; large; colossal; immense; bulky; tremendous; hefty; sizable; extensive; great; substantial. 

13. Shocked- taken aback; lost for words; flabbergasted; staggered; outraged; astonished; astounded; stunned; speechless; appalled.

14. Small- tiny; petite; mini; miniature; microscopic; minuscule; compact; pocket-sized; cramped; puny; undersized; limited; meager; modest; minute; pint-sized. 

15. Angry- irate; enraged; touchy; cross; resentful; indignant; infuriated; wound-up; worked-up; seething; raging; heated; bitter; bad-tempered; offended; frustrated. 

16. Know- understand; comprehend; realize; learn; perceive; recognize; grasp; sense.

17. Change- alter; transform; replace; diversify; adjust; adapt; modify; remodel; vary; evolve; transfigure; redesign; refashion; advance; transition; shift; adjustment.

18. Old- aged; ancient; matured; elderly; senior; veteran; decrepit; seasoned; venerable; past one’s prime; doddering; senile.

19. Think- ponder; reflect; conceive; imagine; contemplate; consider; determine; realize; visualize; guess/assume; conclude; envision. 

20. Funny- comical; ludicrous; amusing; droll; entertaining; absurd; hilarious; silly; whimsical; hysterical; joking; witty; facetious; slapstick; side-splitting; knee-slapping.

21. Go- move; proceed; advance; progress; travel; walk; journey; depart; exit; flee; make one’s way; clear out; get underway.

22. Give- grant; donate; hand-out; present; provide; deliver; hand over; offer; award; bestow; supply with; contribute to; send; entrust.

23. Get- acquire; obtain; receive; gain; earn; gather; collect; buy; purchase; attain; score; secure; take possession of; grab.

24. Easy- effortless; simple; clear; smooth; straightforward; uncomplicated; painless; accessible; apparent; basic; plain; child’s play; facile; elementary; cinch. 

25. Fast- agile; brisk; rapid; nimble; swift; accelerated; fleeting; high-speed; active; dashing; winged; hurried; turbo. 

[writing-prompt-s]

You work as a barista in your towns local coffee shop, and aside from the occasional cranky customer or lazy stoner coworker, your life is average. Really average. BORINGLY average. You spend all your time wishing life was more exciting when one day, three portals open inside the shop, and out step three different people: One is a battle hardened warrior from a fantasy world, one is part android from a futuristic spaceship, and one is a century old vampire in a love triangle with a werewolf and a monster hunter. They are all alternate versions of you from different universes, and they all want the same thing: to trade places with you

[bren-writes]

Bren’s writing fandoms list!

As the title says, here’s my list of fandoms/things in general I’m up for writing fanfiction of! Please feel free to send me character prompts for these!

Pokemon

Any of the games really

Mystery Dungeon would be cool though

And gens 4-5

Fire Emblem 

Heroes

Awakening

Shadows of Valentia

Legend of Zelda

Breath of the Wild

Spirit Tracks

Windwaker

Phantom Hourglass

The X-Files

Yugioh (Original series, anime and manga)

Warriors (yes, the one with cats)

The Unwanteds 

The World Ends With You

NiGHTS

[writingbox]

Here’s an invaluable writing resource for you.

[i-penna]

Was looking for this information just yesterday. Thanks so much.

[albatris]

hey. hey. I have a confession

I fuckin LOVE dialogue as a first line. I adore it. whenever I flip open a book and the first line is dialogue I’m like hell YES this is my SHIT

there’s lists of, uh, TOP TEN WAYS YOU SHOULD NEVER START YOUR NOVEL EVER and “opening with dialogue” is always on them

the gist being that it’s bad bc the reader doesn’t care about this character yet so why are they gonna care about this dialogue, right, they don’t have any context for it, you should start with something that gets the reader invested and emotionally pulled in, so on, so forth

(and I’m not here to argue or call bullshit on these lists or anything…… 99% of the time, the reasons listed of why you should Maybe Not Do The Thing are perfectly valid concerns and dangers that should be taken into consideration)

(this post is more a ramble about personal preference with a nice moral at the end)

(and definitely not a TOP TEN REASONS “TOP TEN WAYS YOU SHOULD NEVER START YOUR NOVEL EVER” LISTS ARE LIES AND SLANDER post god could you imagine)

but yeah, for me, dialogue opening lines pull me right the fuck in emotionally. for real. nine times out of ten they’ll yank me in and have me engaged instantaneously. always have, probably always will

(like come on. have y’all never just started eavesdropping right in the middle of some total strangers’ conversation on the bus. especially if it’s somethin weird. it’s so good)

but ANYWAY, the moral is uhhhh

whatever Mortal Writing Sin you wanna commit, there’s probably at least one weirdo out there possibly named logan who digs it

do whatever the fuck you want, honestly

you can write an opening scene that does everything every advice page tells you to do with an opening scene and it can still be shit

you can write an opening scene doing everything every advice page tells you NEVER to do with your opening scene and it can still be fabulous and engaging

if you can pull it off, literally who cares

[heywriters]

“if you can pull it off, literally who cares“ is the only real writing rule

[themerrywriter-deactivated20200]

I agree - the only thing that will put a reader off when you start with dialogue, is if it’s bad dialogue. 

[bren-writes]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Chapters: 1/? Fandom: Fire Emblem Heroes Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Alfonse/Bruno | Zacharias Characters: Alfonse (Fire Emblem), Bruno | Zacharias, King Gustav (Fire Emblem), Sharon | Sharena Additional Tags: Trans Male Character, Coming of Age, Gender Identity, Gender Dysphoria, Sexuality, the boys explore gender and sexuality, Alternate Universe - Arranged Marriage, except they run from it together accidentally, Transphobia, but not overwhelmingly so, Slow Romance, Romance, just saying that i'm ignoring the embla curse, trans alfonse, Other Additional Tags to Be Added Summary:

Alfonse is not a woman. On some level, he's always known that, but it takes until mere days before an unwanted marriage to the prince of Embla to realize it. It's then that he realizes he has two options: continue trying to be a woman to satisfy his father and live a life pretending to be someone else, or embrace himself and sneak away in the night. His choice to be true to his heart and leave sends him on a journey of self discovery, accompanied by the mysterious Zacharias, who seems to be hiding a few things as well. Together, Alfonse and Zacharias strive to learn about themselves, and if luck will have it, about each other.

(Note: Alfonse will be using his deadname and pronouns until about chapters 3-4. For reading comfort, please keep this in mind c: )

[connormurphweed-deactivated2018]

people who don't wear glasses who are writing characters who wear glasses;

they get fogged up when we drink hot beverages. they get smudged for no reason. we will push them up using anything in our area (i.e shoulder, whatever is in my hand, scrunching my nose up so they get pushed up, etc.). they get knocked off our faces all. the. fucking. time. when we change clothes we either take them off or they fall off when we pull our shirts off. we have to clean them after being in the rain. we own multiple pairs of them, not just one lone pair for our whole lives. most people don’t wear them in the pool, but some have extra old pairs for the pool (like me). some people take them off during sex, that’s fine! but some people keep them on. they don’t get squished into your face when you kiss (most of the time. at least from what i’ve experienced and i’ve got some mf big glasses). if we look down and look back up while you talk/to peek up at something, we will just peek blindly over the top of them. we clean them on whatever item of clothing is closest. some of us have prescription sunglasses and some of us wear contacts when we need to wear sunglasses. please keep some of these in mind when you write characters with glasses cause y'all who have 20/20 vision keep telling me all characters sleep in their glasses and own the same singular pair from age 6-25 and they never clean them.

[rainysuggestion]

( there’s this but you missed a few iconic glasses traits - “where’d I put my glasses” (is wearing them) - new glasses getting scratched on basically nothing. where’d the nick come from? we just don’t know. - forgetting you’re wearing synthetic material and just smudge the junk on your glasses around - after doing so, proceeding to hunt down any friend who is wearing a more cottony material - getting eyelashes on your glasses - stabbing yourself in the face with the arm of your glasses - “woah are you blind?” - “how many fingers am I holding up??” - walking into a warm room from the cold and suddenly being unable to see because your glasses fogged up - going outside and everything is Super Crisp 1080p - having three pairs of glasses and putting all of them at once - “aw dude you have transition lenses? lucky.” - the non-glasses scrutinising squint - taking off your glasses and suddenly you’re a different entity entirely - if you’re too good for taking off your glasses when dressing/undressing, realising you didn’t pull the collar of a shirt out enough and subjecting to your fate )

[pigeonacademic]

-For female characters wearing eye makeup is pretty much useless

[writerinhighheels]

- the reason why is because no matter what we do, the mascara will smear on our glasses

- thinking “Oh, there’s a little smudge. I’ll just clean it quickly”, then taking the glasses off and wondering how the hell you could see with what looks like three layers of dirt on them

- giving your loved one a little kiss but in the wrong angle so their nose touches your glasses

- the look™ when you’re in your bed lying on the side with your glasses on (aka the glasses are skewed)

[raevenlywrites]

More romance focused, but I’m the non-glasses partner so that’s my focus I guess:

*taking their glasses off for them before bed/showers/sexy fun times/etc.

*KNOWING YOU ARE ENTRUSTED WITH THE LOCATION OF THEIR SIGHT. VERY HONOR. SO TRUST.

* Offering your shirt cause you know its cottony/always knowing where a glasses wipe is

*going with them to try on new pairs because you can actually see what they look like

*playing the “can you read that” game/trying to relate to each other this experience that you dont share

*trying to figure out if you like them better in glasses or contacts (trick question, you dont have a preference, its just familiar vs not)

*3D movies are a concious desicion, made well before said date, so contacts can be put in before leaving the house

* the I CANT FIND MY GLASSES PANIC and being just as scared as they are, being a brave mountain dog on the hunt for precious treasure, because only you can save her now

[firelight-memories]

Oh my goodness I’d love a human like that to help me find my glasses

[seafoam-aliens]

@chasingstarlightz @hypernovarewind

Y’all are writers i know without glasses go nuts