words hard

my writing blog... which contains almost zero writing

[afriendstolovers]

!!!!!!!

[corseque]

romance 101 — it’s not enough to hinge the whole thing on ‘will they or won’t they’ the real interest is the lack the characters have within them, and how they fill that lack with the help of/because of the other person. We’re not looking at two people kissing, we’re looking at the characters getting assistance, guidance, emotional completion, maturation, transformation, spiritual apogee, building new foundations, physical/emotional safety, old wounds healing, becoming a stronger and braver person because they met their love.

[heywriters]

Exactly! Because otherwise we could switch out the love interests with anybody else and it would still be the same story.

[ghostwriterofthemachine]

Goddddddd thinking about that narrative moment when something horrible is happening and the character who has been frantically trying to come up with a way to fix it and getting more and more frantic and panicky just—stops. Because. Oh. There’s the solution. They’re not getting out of this alive but like. It’s a solution for everyone else. Okay. Okay.

[antimony-medusa]

Why would you do this to me.

[ghostwriterofthemachine]

and!!!! like!!!! obviously this is delicious when you hit your Self Sacrifice Archetype with it, but honestly I think it's even chewier when you give it to, like. someone with a selfish streak. The one with some arrogance who's maybe not quite a team player. leans more towards loner. Give this moment to the one party member who has been shown to prioritize their own survival over everything else.

And then the eye-of-the-storm realization of "Oh. Huh. I am not making it to the end of the story. but everyone else is going to. Isn't it strange, that I'm not more upset?"

[sickficbay]

when a character is so badly hurt/sick that their demeanour switches up entirely

chatty characters pale-faced and silent

quiet and reserved characters rambling deliriously

character who always resorts to humour clearly trying to think of a quip but coming up empty

no-nonsense character so loopy that they can’t stop giggling

a stoic character’s hands trembling in panic

an easily frightened character so far out of it that they aren’t aware of what’s happening to them, much less afraid

intelligent characters who can’t think straight

protective (self-sacrificial) characters letting someone else take the fall for them because they’re too weak to object

patient characters snapping at whoever comes near

affectionate character who wants to be alone

lone wolf who begs you to stay a minute longer.

[yellowpoet]

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.

[feralkwe]

give your characters exes.

give them a variety of exes. give them relationships that shaped who they are but did not last. give them people they tried very hard to love but it didn't work out. give them situationships that taught them things. give them something deep that was real but could not endure. things that hurt. things that ended amicably. people with whom hot passion cooled to warm affection and became undying friendship.

no more first and only. give me the context of what made them know the next or one after was final and right.

[kimabutch]

One of my favourite questions for figuring out a character’s motivations is which qualities they most fear being assigned to them. Are they afraid (consciously or unconsciously) of being seen as stupid? Ungrateful? Weak? Incompetent? Lazy? Cowardly? Intimidating? Like they actually care? etc.

It’s such a fun way to explore into who they are, why they do what they do, what they don’t do out of fear, and how they might be affected by the events of the story. And I love when characters have negative motivations—trying to avoid something (in this case, being seen a particular way) as much as they’re trying to achieve a goal.

[elbiotipo]

👀

[elbiotipo]

👀👀👀

[butchlinkle]

really helpful technique ^ once you know how to divide by halves and thirds it makes drawing evenly spaced things in perspective waaay easier:

[mjgauthor]

Writing advice that changed my sentence

When I was a young writer, I was told that I often started my sentences with "there is/there was/there are." I was told to eliminate those as much as possible.

I couldn't believe how often I used them. My first novel was completely littered with them.

I learned to diversify and grow my use of verbs. Instead of the state-of-being verbs, like "is" which isn't very descriptive at all, I started using stronger verbs.

Instead of writing "There were a bunch of trees on the hill" I wrote "A cluster of trees towered over the hill."

"Towered" is a much stronger verb than "Is"

Use the state-of-being words, but if you can, try replacing them with more active verbs. You might be surprised how much your writing improves.

[writingwithfolklore]

My creative writing prof pointed out that I use 'so' a lot and since then I haven't been able to stop seeing it. Every writer relies on certain words and phrases--knowing yours is the first step to writing better sentences and becoming a more intentional writer. Good luck!

[daisywords]

I personally know there are multiple types of editing but I've never seen anyone explain it in a way that actually made me understand what the types of editing actually were (yeah cool that you say {}editing is different from []editing but *how*). So if you wanna explain, feel free to.

Your handy-dandy guide to different types of editing

disclaimer: writers, you can literally edit however works for you. these distinction can be useful to your process, or just if you're looking to hire an editor. Not all editors make distinctions in this way; there are various ways of dividing. But no matter what vocabulary you use, it's best practice to start with broad, big-picture stuff and move towards narrower issues. Some editors do all levels of editing, while some specialize.

Developmental Editing (Is it a good story?)

Developmental editing has to do with the content. For a novel, that means working on the bones of the story. The plot. The pacing. The characters. Do their motivations make sense? Can the reader understand why things are happening? Does the story drag in places, or seem to brush past important elements? Do all of the subplots get resolved? etc. etc. (At this stage an editor is mostly going to be offering suggestions, pointing out issues, and throwing out potential solutions. Beta readers can also be very helpful at this stage to get a reader's perspective on the story beats and characters.)

Line Editing (is it well written?)

Sometimes called substantive editing, line editing is zooming in a little bit more to focus on scenes, paragraphs and sentences. Once we've decided that a scene is going to stay, lets look at the mechanics of how it plays out. Does the scene start to early or too late? Does the writing style communicate the emotions we want the reader to feel? Does the dialogue match the characters' voices? do any of the sentences sound awkward or ugly? Is the movement being bogged down by too much purple prose anywhere, or is there not enough detail? (This can get pretty subjective, so it's important that the writer and the editor are on the same page with taste, style goals, etc.)

Copy Editing (is is correct?)

Copy editing is all about the details. Think grammar and punctuation. Do the sentences make sense? are they grammatically correct? Is the dialogue punctuated correctly? Any misspellings? Should this be hyphenated? Should this be capitalized? Should we use a numeral, or write out the number? etc etc. A significant part of copy editing is matching everything to a style manual (like Chicago or AP) a house style guide (individualized preferences from a publisher, for example), and a project's own internal style sheet (are the character's names spelled the same every time? if we used "leaped" in chapter 4, we shouldn't use "leapt" in chapter 7) Copy editing is still subjective, but less so than the earlier levels, so a copyeditor will be more likely to just go in and make a bunch of (tracked!) changes without consulting the author for everything.

Bonus: Proofreading (did the copyeditor catch everything? are there typos? formatting issues? have any errors been introduced?)

Lots of people say editing when they really mean proofreading. Proofreading is the absolute last thing to get done. It's the one last pass just before something is published. It's important, but as you can see, there's a whole lot more to editing than just checking for typos.

[mamoru]

stop using hospitals as horror settings

[mamoru]

fun alternative: cruise ships. cruise ships exploit workers and can pollute as much as a million cars on a daily basis while dumping endless shit into the ocean and endangering all passengers on board because the on board air quality rivals some of the most polluted cities in the world while being a breeding ground for disease. cruise ships deserve to have negativity associated with them

[catparazzi]

also all crimes commited aboard a cruise ship is under the juristiction of whichever country they’re registered to once they’re a certain distance away from land so you have the added bonus of the crimes being very unlikely to be properly investigated (due to usually being physically so very far from the actual police whose juristiction they’re under)

[mamoru]

terrifying!

[xcekait]

On top of THAT cruise ships tend to have their own morgue, as people tend to die on ships all the time. Good for those spooky scenes.

[bananonbinary]

plus u can just like…leave a hospital. good luck escaping a killer or a monster or a curse or w/e in the middle of the fucking ocean

[sketchyfletch]

As an ex cruise ship employee, let me give you some stuff to work with!

Water tight doors! You get a special training video on interacting with these correctly because they will literally cut you in half if you try and go through them while they’re closing!

Freezer vaults for food in the sub decks - you can only get into these with the correct code and they have very thick walls. Good luck if you get shut in one of these just after the last round of checks bucko

There are cameras everywhere…except in the crew cabin corridors. Also there are no windows down there because unless you’re an officer, you live below the waterline. Day and night have no meaning because everything is in the same slightly unsettling yellow light.

Don’t piss off the guys who deal with the rubbish. They have machines down there that can crush metal barrels

As well as morgues, cruise ships usually have one basic operating theatre with all the attendant horrifying equipment in it

One cigarette thrown carelessly in the wrong place WILL start a fire that will gut half the ship.

When we’re pitching side to side, the anchor swings out and then back in, striking the metal outer shell with a noise that shakes half the ship

People disappear overboard more often than you’d really want to be a thing

A lot of cruise ships now have theatres on board (usually towards the front) with all the potential for dark corners, creepy costumes and electrical calamities you could want.

And as op says, you can’t really escape a ship in the middle of the ocean. Particularly during a storm, as then you can’t even evacuate to lifeboats unless the whole ship is going down. On the upside being on board during a storm means most guests hide in their cabins and the staff walk around like drunks, which would likely throw off a skilled murderer’s plans.

[shenaniginstigations]

Takes notes

You also have the bonus of a corporate overlord who doesn’t give a shit about anything but profits and can be reliably counted on to downplay any disaster in an attempt to avoid publicity.

[ofthefog-deactivated20241127]

[maybeiwasserious]

[trappedinavelociraptor]

#if you can't get homemade weird horniness then store bought is fine

[the-haiku-bot]

#if you can’t

get homemade weird horniness

then store bought is fine

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[cacodaemonia]

Haha, I love this! Drawing smut in general is SUPER helpful for getting better at human anatomy, but anyway, the nail thing! I'm gonna turn this delightfully silly post into a mini tutorial, so—apologies. 😅

The reason nails often help hands look better is because they curve around the cylinder of the finger. If the viewer can see the curve of the nail, they can better understand the foreshortening and such going on with the finger and the hand in general.

For example, I quickly sketched what are essentially two cylinders, and on the right one, I put a nail and some knuckle wrinkles. As you can see, the blob on the left could be facing in any direction, but the finger on the right is very clearly pointing somewhat toward the viewer and is foreshortened.

*Keep in mind, you probably shouldn't be heavy-handed (haha) with fingernails. If you work with line art, the lines for nails should generally be very soft and thin, and often not continuous—you're more suggesting the nail. Thick lines around nails usually make people look like they have dirt under and around them, which is fine, but not something that fits most styles.

[spageddy]

some anatomy tips for drawing cat legs - works for big cats too

[tlbodine]

Pro Tip: The Way You End a Sentence Matters

Here is a quick and dirty writing tip that will strengthen your writing.

In English, the word at the end of a sentence carries more weight or emphasis than the rest of the sentence. You can use that to your advantage in modifying tone.

Consider:

In the end, what you said didn't matter.

It didn't matter what you said in the end.

In the end, it didn't matter what you said.

Do you pick up the subtle differences in meaning between these three sentences?

The first one feels a little angry, doesn't it? And the third one feels a little softer? There's a gulf of meaning between "what you said didn't matter" (it's not important!) and "it didn't matter what you said" (the end result would've never changed).

Let's try it again:

When her mother died, she couldn't even cry.

She couldn't even cry when her mother died.

That first example seems to kind of side with her, right? Whereas the second example seems to hold a little bit of judgment or accusation? The first phrase kind of seems to suggest that she was so sad she couldn't cry, whereas the second kind of seems to suggest that she's not sad and that's the problem.

The effect is super subtle and very hard to put into words, but you'll feel it when you're reading something. Changing up the order of your sentences to shift the focus can have a huge effect on tone even when the exact same words are used.

In linguistics, this is referred to as "end focus," and it's a nightmare for ESL students because it's so subtle and hard to explain. But a lot goes into it, and it's a tool worth keeping in your pocket if you're a creative writer or someone otherwise trying to create a specific effect with your words :)

[iwhumpyou]

One of the best tips for writing descriptions of pain is actually a snippet I remember from a story where a character is given a host of colored pencils and asked to draw an egg.

The character says that there’s no white pencil.  But you don’t need a white pencil to draw a white egg.  We already know the egg is white.  What we need to draw is the luminance of the yellow lamp and the reflection of the blue cloth and the shadows and the shading.

We know a broken bone hurts.  We know a knife wound hurts.  We know grief hurts.  Show us what else it does.

You don’t need to describe the character in pain.  You need to describe how the pain affects the character - how they’re unable to move, how they’re sweating, how they’re cold, how their muscles ache and their fingers tremble and their eyes prickle.

Draw around the egg.  Write around the pain.  And we will all be able to see the finished product.

[whatagrump]

Apparently a lot of people get dialogue punctuation wrong despite having an otherwise solid grasp of grammar, possibly because they’re used to writing essays rather than prose. I don’t wanna be the asshole who complains about writing errors and then doesn’t offer to help, so here are the basics summarized as simply as I could manage on my phone (“dialogue tag” just refers to phrases like “he said,” “she whispered,” “they asked”):

“For most dialogue, use a comma after the sentence and don’t capitalize the next word after the quotation mark,” she said.

“But what if you’re using a question mark rather than a period?” they asked.

“When using a dialogue tag, you never capitalize the word after the quotation mark unless it’s a proper noun!” she snapped.

“When breaking up a single sentence with a dialogue tag,” she said, “use commas.”

“This is a single sentence,” she said. “Now, this is a second stand-alone sentence, so there’s no comma after ‘she said.’”

“There’s no dialogue tag after this sentence, so end it with a period rather than a comma.” She frowned, suddenly concerned that the entire post was as unasked for as it was sanctimonious.

[thewritinggrindstone]

And!

“If you’re breaking dialogue up with an action tag”—she waves her hands back and forth—”the dashes go outside the quotation marks.”

[writing-is-a-martial-art]

Reblog to save a writer’s life.