Your character remembers something tiny. Maybe their partner always peels oranges but hates the stringy bits. So they do it for them, meticulously. No grand speech. Just peeled oranges on a napkin, handed over like, I got you. It’s not flowers. It’s better.
❥ The “You Matter More Than My Ego” Move
Apologies. Vulnerable, awkward, ugly ones. Not performative, not flowers-as-a-bandage. Just a raw, honest “I screwed up. And you didn’t deserve that.” That’s romance with guts.
❥ The “I Made This With My Clumsy, Lovesick Hands” Attempt
It’s not a five-star meal. It might be an overcooked mess. But they tried. They Googled recipes, burnt a pan, and still showed up with a crooked smile and a smoke-scented apology. Intimacy lives in the effort, not the execution.
❥ The “I’m Thinking of You Even When You’re Not Around” Habit
A voice memo left in the middle of the day. A text that says, “I saw this book and thought of you.” A saved pastry because “you love those stupid lemon ones.” It’s in the thought, the noticing. The I-carry-you-with-me-even-here of it.
❥ The “You’re Safe With Me” Moment
Middle of a panic attack. They don’t run, they don’t fix. They sit. Hold a hand. Count breaths. They become a lighthouse in the fog. That’s not just romance, it’s sanctuary.
❥ The “Make You Laugh When You Want to Cry” Trick
Silly voices. Bad dad jokes. A spontaneous dance in the kitchen just to make them smile. Love doesn’t always whisper—it cackles, snorts, belly-laughs until you can’t remember what the fight was about.
❥ The “I See the You Nobody Else Gets to See” Love
Noticing the nervous tic they try to hide. The quiet resilience. The softness behind the sarcasm. Your character sees it all and chooses to love them there. Not despite their mess, but because of it.
❥ The “I’ll Go to the Boring Thing Because You Care” Sacrifice
They hate art galleries. Or jazz. Or your character’s weird book club full of PhD students. But they show up. They try. They listen and maybe even ask a thoughtful question. Not because they suddenly love postmodern fiction, but because they love you.
❥ The “Let Me Take Care of You, Just This Once” Flip
Especially powerful when it comes from your fiercely independent character. When they finally let someone in. Accept help. Rest their head on a lap and let themselves be held. Or be the one doing the holding for someone who never asks.
❥ The “I Want to Remember This” Gesture
No, not just a scrapbook. Maybe it's saving movie stubs, or voice recording a partner’s laugh because it's perfect and might not last. Maybe it's writing a poem they'll never read. Romance often lives in what we keep sacred, quietly.
❥ Bonus — The Non-Obvious Public Gesture
Holding hands in public when your character usually doesn’t. Or kissing their partner’s temple in front of their disapproving parents. Or calling them “baby” when it makes their partner smile like a fool. Public affection isn’t about performance, it’s about pride. Claiming someone. Softly, fiercely.
Ways I Show a Character is In Love But Doesn't Know It Yet...
This one’s for the emotional masochists writing the slowest of burns, where your readers are screaming “just kiss already!” by chapter twenty... I Love and Hate you... ♥
They compare everyone else to the person… and everyone else comes up short. Even when they’re not consciously doing it. No one’s laugh is as warm. No one’s eyes crinkle that way.
They remember the weirdest little things about them. Birthdays? Whatever. But that time they snorted laughing at a dumb joke? Locked and loaded.
They feel weirdly guilty when flirting with someone else. Like they’re cheating… except they’re not even dating. Or are they? Or—ugh, feelings are the worst.
They notice every damn detail when the other person isn’t around. "They’d like this song." "This smells like their shampoo." "I wonder what they'd say about this weird squirrel."
They use weird, overly specific compliments. Not “You look good,” but “That color makes your eyes look like a storm in a novel I’d cry over.”
They get weirdly intense about that person being hurt or in danger. Like, irrationally intense. "He’s just a friend," they say while planning to murder anyone who makes them cry.
They feel safer around them than anyone else, and it freaks them out. Like: “I’m always on guard. Except with you. That’s... suspicious.”
Weirdly Healing Things to Do When You’re Feeling Creatively Burned Out...
Write a fake 5-star Goodreads review of your WIP—as if you didn’t write it. Go ahead. Pretend you're a giddy reader who just discovered this masterpiece. Bonus: add emojis, chaotic metaphors, and all-caps screaming. It’s self-indulgent. It’s delusional. It’s delicious.
Give your main character a Pinterest board titled “Mentally Unstable but Aesthetic.” Include outfits, quotes, memes, cursed objects, and that one painting that haunts their dreams. This is not about logic. This is about ✨vibes.✨
Make a “deleted scenes” folder and write something that would never make it into the book. A crackfic. A “what if they were roommates” AU. The group chat from hell. This is your WIP’s blooper reel. Let it be silly, chaotic, or wildly off-brand.
Interview your villain like you’re Oprah. Ask the hard-hitting questions. “When did you know you were the drama?” “Do you regret the murder, or just the way you did it?” Bonus points if they lie to your face.
Host a fake awards show for your characters. Categories like “Most Likely to Die for Vibes,” “Worst Emotional Regulation,” “Himbo Energy Supreme,” or “Best Use of a Dramatic Exit.” Write their acceptance speeches. Yes, this counts as writing.
Write a breakup letter… to your inner critic. Be petty. Be dramatic. “Dear Self-Doubt, this isn’t working for me anymore. You bring nothing to the table but anxiety and bad vibes.” Rip it up. Burn it. Tape it to your mirror. Your call.
Create a “writing comfort kit” like you’re a cozy witch.
A candle that smells like your WIP. A tea that your characters would drink. A playlist labeled “for writing when I’m one rejection email away from giving up.” This is a ritual now.
Design a fake movie poster or book cover like your story is already famous. Add star ratings, critic quotes, and some pretentious tagline like “One soul. One destiny. No chill.”
Write a scene you’re not ready to write—but just a rough, messy outline version. Not the polished thing. Just the raw emotion. The shape of it. Like sketching the bones of a future punch to the gut. You don’t have to make it perfect. Just open the door.
Let your story be bad on purpose for a day. Like, aggressively bad. Give everyone ridiculous names. Add an evil talking cat. Write a fight scene with laser swords and emotional damage. Just remind yourself that stories are meant to be played with, not feared.
i love when tragedies are like “the love was there. it didnt change anything. it didnt save anyone. there were just too many forces against it. but it still matters that the love was there”
narratively I am a fan of romances that don’t ever actually become romances
I don’t mean in an aromantic life partner way, I mean romantic tension that is never resolved or acted upon for whatever reason but by the end it’s clear that both characters experienced the love of their lives without ever acknowledging it as such. but they know. they know.
maybe the unbridgeable gulf between them is culture, or class, or religion, or maybe their chief commitment is to something other than each other. maybe they decide it’s more important to keep the peace than to risk the complications of a relationship. maybe they’re just weary of change and content with things the way there are because it’s simpler that way. for whatever reason nothing is ever consummated between them, emotionally or physically.
I have also learned this is great for [PICK A COOL NAME FOR A SHIP] and [LOOK UP THE FACTS ABOUT OXYGEN LEVELS] and [WHAT’S THE WORD] and [DOUBLECHECK CHARACTER’S EYE COLOR] and ALL KINDS OF THINGS.
Anything that isn’t critical in the moment, and could be filled in later while I’m currently trying to burn through writing pages that will be lost if I don’t get them out right now? Brackets.
This is seriously the best advice, and it really helps put it into perspective that the first draft is just that- a draft. There’s no reason to agonize over a particularly tricky bit of writing when you could just leave it in brackets and skip to the good parts, the parts you’ve visualized. I also use brackets for [fact-check this], [use a stronger verb], [is this in character?] and other notes as I write, just so I don’t forget what I want to work on when I go back and edit.
Actually, can we talk about how Garbage a lot of ubiquitous writing advice in the late 2000's was?
Like "you have to begin in the middle of the action! your first line has to be a 'hook' that draws the reader further into the story!"
This is the bullshit responsible for the amount of books that begin in the middle of some sort of pointless fucking action scene that I care nothing about because I just got here.
Like I guess this makes books easier to "sell" or whatever on some level of the process, but it's garbage storytelling advice because setup and establishment of the Way Things Are is almost always necessary.
On some level I don't think it's actually possible to begin a story right on top of the "inciting incident" because...you don't have the raw materials to "incite" anything with. If you have to set up basic things about the characters and world after the "inciting incident," it's not really the inciting incident anymore, is it?
The event that "launches" a character into their plot line is something that follows from the character's established situation, desires, traits etc. It's a follow-up to a situation that makes a Story of some kind inevitable.
It is, by definition, an event that makes no sense and does not matter to the reader at all unless the "setup" already exists.
If you try to begin right in the middle of the event that "sparks" the plot, you're going to end up including a second, "real" event that actually does the job, because you can't do the job if the character, the stakes, the rules, etc. are not there yet.
Now the action scene you stuck to the beginning of your story is probably dead weight that is getting in the way of the setup.
Hello! I'm a new writer. Would it be advised to work on another project when you are losing motivation + ideas for your main one?
New Writer Losing Motivation/Ideas for WIP
Writing is never easy, and it's rare to work on a project that is easy sailing from beginning to end. But one of the first, most important lessons you must learn as a new writer is how to complete a story, and that means learning to stick with a story even when you're losing ideas and motivation.
Before you set the project aside, try out the tips in the following posts to see if you can get going again:
Guide: How to Rekindle Your Motivation to Write
Feeling Unmotivated with WIP
Getting Unstuck: Motivation Beyond Mood Boards & Playlists
Getting Excited About Your Story Again
Writer’s Block
If that doesn't work, then you can certainly set the story aside to work on something else.
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Here is a little list of ways to show grief without having your characters proclaim I am going through grief right now, okay?:
sudden sadness
social withholding/normally social characters isolating themselves
tearing up at nothing
circumstances surrounding characters like those they’re grieving for making them cry, even if they’re happy (to clarify, an example would be for me, my mother’s death has made it so that when I see mother-daughter relationships in media, I cry almost every time. Things like that)
sudden bouts of anger for seemingly no reason
unexplainable bouts of emotionality of any kind
trying to laugh off circumstances but being unable to shake them
again, pursing of the lips (that’s a common show of a lot of different types of emotions)
furrowing of the brows while talking about the person or circumstance they are grieving
laughing at something said about the one they’re grieving but with tears in their eyes
being unable to talk about the person or even people with the relationship they had with them (for example: if they’re grieving their SO, being unable to talk about couples or if their aunt died, being unable to talk about aunts, etc)
starting to talk about them but their voice chokes off
voice is strained when trying to talk about them
holding strong about it but there’s a sadness in their eyes that they can’t help
disappearing for days on end after whatever happened to make them grieving
blowing up when people try to comfort them
almost any emotion, but having “no explanation” for it
talking about their regrets - especially those centered around the person they’re grieving
increased talk of death/what happens after death
Hopefully these can help you write your grieving characters. Obviously this list isn’t exhaustive, as people react to grief - and any other circumstance - differently. Truly consider your characters and how they respond to other emotions & situations before picking how your character responds to grief.
Thank you and if you have any questions, feel free to send them my way!
Happy writing.
Thank you to @ncoincidences for submitting this request.
Hey all, here’s a quick tip about showing the passage of short amounts of time in a scene. I see a lot of beats like this:
She hesitated
He paused
A few seconds later
There was a long silence
He waited for her to answer
She didn’t respond
Instead of telling us there’s a brief moment of silence or pause in your scene, try showing us by creating the feeling that time has passed through action, description, or inner monologue. Here are a few examples.
Before:
“Are you coming or not?”
He waited for her to answer, but she didn’t respond.
“Clare? Did you hear me?”
“Huh?”
After:
“Are you coming or not?”
Clare scrolled through her phone, her face illuminating with a eerie blue glow.
“Clare? Did you hear me?”
“Huh?”
Before:
Jared lingered at the suspect’s front gate. If this guy didn’t answer Jared’s questions, he was screwed.
“Hey you!” a voice shouted. “Get off my property!”
Jared hesitated. Finally, he turned to face the man. “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
After:
Jared lingered at the suspect’s front gate. If this guy didn’t answer Jared’s questions, he was screwed.
“Hey you!” a voice shouted. “Get off my property!”
Jared patted his holster. He had a gun, but he certainly didn’t want to use it. Taking a deep breath, he turned to face the man. “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
Not only does creating a pause instead of describing a pause allow your reader to feel the moment more vividly, it gives you a chance to explain what exactly that pause is about. People hesitate, pause, don’t respond, etc. for all kinds of reasons. Give us as much insight as you can into your weird quiet moment.
Of course, you don’t need to do this every single time. Sometimes it’s fine to say “he paused” or “the room was quiet for a moment”—it could be the best choice for that scene. But look back through your draft and see if you’ve used those “telling” descriptions more often than you needed to. If so, try to create the feeling of a pause—perhaps one that gives the reader a bit more information—using these techniques.
Hey btw, if you're doing worldbuilding on something, and you're scared of writing ~unrealistic~ things into it out of fear that it'll sound lazy and ripped-out-of-your-ass, but you also don't want to do all the back-breaking research on coming up with depressingly boring, but practical and ~realistic~ solutions, have a rule:
Just give the thing two layers of explanation. One to explain the specific problem, and another one explaining the explanation. Have an example:
Plot hole 1: If the vampires can't stand daylight, why couldn't they just move around underground?
Solution 1: They can't go underground, the sewer system of the city is full of giant alligators who would eat them.
Well, that's a very quick and simple explanation, which sure opens up additional questions.
Plot hole 2: How and why the fuck are there alligators in the sewers? How do they survive, what do they eat down there when there's no vampires?
Solution 2: The nuns of the Underground Monastery feed and take care of them as a part of their sacred duties.
It takes exactly two layers to create an illusion that every question has an answer - that it's just turtles all the way down. And if you're lucky, you might even find that the second question's answer loops right back into the first one, filling up the plot hole entirely:
Plot hole 3: Who the fuck are the sewer nuns and what's their point and purpose?
Solution 3: The sewer nuns live underground in order to feed the alligators, in order to make sure that the vampires don't try to move around via the sewer system.
When you're just making things up, you don't need to have an answer for everything - just two layers is enough to create the illusion of infinite depth. Answer the question that looms behind the answer of the first question, and a normal reader won't bother to dig around for a 3rd question.
Full offense but your writing style is for you and nobody else. Use the words you want to use; play with language, experiment, use said, use adverbs, use “unrealistic” writing patterns, slap words you don’t even know are words on the page. Language is a sandbox and you, as the author, are at liberty to shape it however you wish. Build castles. Build a hovel. Build a mountain on a mountain or make a tiny cottage on a hill. Whatever it is you want to do. Write.
ok i am terribly curious: what is a frankendraft. i saw that term multiple times in ur atdao tag and i am full of Wondering over what it means
oh hell yeah, the frankendraft! that's not a term I've used in a while!
anyway this is gonna be a super jumbled long ramble post, I'm so sorry, I have a lot of trouble explaining things concisely dhgdjkghd
okay, so, it was...... TECHNICALLY invented as my own personal "outlining" method for ATDAO, and you will see why that is in quotation marks as this post goes on :P
so the official name for the frankendrafting technique was "outline first draft frankendocument" but this is a mouthful so it got shortened to simply "frankendraft"!
in short, a frankendraft is basically a very very VERY bare bones shitty first draft, except I couldn't call it A First Draft at the time lest I intimidate myself out of working on it. a frankendraft is basically writing every single thing that happens in a story from start to finish in the form of like
X does this. Y says this. this happens. then this happens. which makes X feel this particular way. then this happens. which makes this happen. etc etc etc
I cannot emphasise enough that this is NOT in brief dot point summary form. this is in chapters. this is the Full Fucking Story. here is an excerpt from the frankendraft to illustrate my point:
"Noa is hesitant to leave Alice alone, and feels it would be inconsiderate. Plus, she's worried about how the rest of the DII will receive this, whether they will view her as reckless and irresponsible. She goes to her car to get a blanket for Alice, and then searches her back seat to see if she has anything in the way of spare clothes for herself. She locates one of Tris's hoodies she has been procrastinating giving back to him because it's huge and comfy, and puts it on."
the whole thing is basically just like. stage directions. me explaining the story to myself. lmao. it's literally all the same level of bland and undescriptive and bare bones from start to finish. I've won NaNoWriMos with how lengthy the frankendraft is
now, the whole thing may seem kind of dumb and you may be like "so what is the benefit of that?", but here, hear me out, I had my reasons, yeah. and it's actually a KILLER technique if you're not quite a plotter and not quite a pantser and you're also an over-anxious perfectionist stresshead with brain fog and a complicated plot you need to wrangle into cooperation
it functioned as an elaborate trap I could lure my anxious perfectionist writer brain into where I unwittingly spin together a coherent draft without realising
but mostly, like, in hindsight, I was SCARED of writing so I'd freeze up, and the frankendraft was excellent for helping with that! interestingly, the frankendraft was an approach I needed to use for ATDAO, but not one I've needed for Rental Car which means I've definitely made progress on the perfectionism and fear side of things! :D
now, here we fuckin go, The Longer Explanation Of Benefits Of Frankendrafting -
so, story time, there was like a five year period where I was getting NOWHERE with any of my work, and I was grumbling about it when I had the following realisations
pantsing wasn't working for me because I'd freeze up and find it super daunting, I struggled with just Throwing Myself Into a scene right off the bat with no guidance. even if my brain knew exactly where the scene needed to go, I hit blocks. no thoughts head empty. plus, the plot of ATDAO had so many different threads going at once that trying to keep track of everything While Writing A Genuine Engaging Story was too much for my confused little brain 2 handle lmao
and at the time, writing was an extremely anxious act for me! lots of perfectionism, lots of stress, in the midst of relearning how to Have Fun Writing again, blank pages are intimidating, blah blah, usually I'd psych myself out so bad that my brain stopped completely
so I thought to myself, "hey, if you're struggling to keep track of what you need to be doing and all the stress is too much at once, you probably need an outline!"
but traditional outlines don't work great for me either, see, 'cause I struggle to condense things and figure out what the Important Key Points are that I should be putting in my summaries and dot points. outlining that way feels restrictive, it doesn't express what I need it to, it doesn't help me at all when it comes to actually knowing what I need to do in a scene
'cause like, in my outline, the scene is just a brief description of what's happening, but there's so much OTHER stuff I need to keep track of, like. how does this scene progress, what are the feelings, what other plot elements are at play, where am I at with symbolism, characterisation, what's the dialogue like, what parts of the mystery are at play here
a lot needs to happen in a scene! and without having it ALL laid out for me I'd still hit blocks
so then I was like. "what if instead of either trying to write a full story right off the bat OR trying to fit the jumble of garbage inside my brain into a Nice Neat Outline while trying to make said outline resemble my plot in a way that actually helps me know what to write..... what if I just included literally as much detail as possible in my outline. what if I just included All Of It"
so I did!
I just started typing up descriptions of what happens in the scene line by line. here's an action! here's a symbolism! here's a dialogue! feelings! another action! telling the story without bothering to make it a Story, without descriptions and prose and whatever. just straight facts. not bothering to make it sound nice
Me Explaining The Story To Myself. me telling myself line by line what I need to do
and this worked FANTASTICALLY. I was coming up with fresh ideas, I wasn't scared, I was having important plot realisations, things were coming together and making sense in a way they hadn't for years c: I was finding ways to join scenes that were previously just floating and disconnected together into a coherent narrative, without the stress of "oh fuck I'm writing a story"
(and it WAS stress at the time, writing a story. I had a very dicey relationship with creative writing for several years)
but anyway yeah...... I could just trick myself into writing a first draft without ever acknowledging I'm writing a first draft
anyway this was also great for me because my two favourite parts of the writing process are 1. taking shitty words that already exist and transforming them and building on them to create something better, and 2. editing and revision. I realise now these are arguably the same thing at times
building and editing, these are my jams. I love taking some garbage and tweaking it and transforming it and finding better ways to describe things and swapping stuff round till it clicks
I could just go through an entire frankendraft like "I'm creating a hyperspecific outline, not a first draft" and then when I finished it I could be like "whew, a first draft, now the hard part is done and I get to do the fun stuff I love!" which is editing, revising, building, transforming this bare bones mess into something genuinely lovely
"but logan doesn't that take away from the mystery and fun of writing??? if you're so specific with your outline, isn't that boring??"
nope! it wasn't for me! I still got all the fun stuff, I just got it in a different way! I simply couldn't do the fun stuff and learning and discovery while I was ALSO trying to, like....... write a story, with style and description and finesse and drama and good words
plus, the most inspiring thing for me was not the Mystery and Adventure of writing (which, again, I still did get), it was my brain being free enough to just relax and write. which is why possessing a frankendraft that just directed me exactly EXACTLY where I needed to go was so freeing and wonderful!
anyway so that was The Frankendraft
long unnecessarily wordy explanation
it's a first draft! it's an outline! it saved my fuckin ass more times than I can count
it served its purpose and I haven't needed to use the technique recently! yeehaw
Oh my gosh. I just found this website that walks you though creating a believable society. It breaks each facet down into individual questions and makes it so simple! It seems really helpful for worldbuilding!
Heads up that this is a very extensive questionnaire and might be daunting to a lot of writers (myself included). That being said, it is also an amazing questionnaire and I will definitely be using it (or at the very least, some of it).
