Writing resources collection

[caffeinewitchcraft]

Writer Gothic

-You discover a new document in your “completed” folder. It’s 20k words of fantasy and adventure. You have no memory of writing it.

- You take a sip of your coffee and set it down to type. After a moment, you take another sip only to find the cup empty. You have written ten words.

- You go to take a shower and discover writing on your skin. Dialogue, character description, tips for edits. You don’t remember bringing pen to flesh.

- The cursor blinks at you. You blink back. Time stretches as you blink, back and forth, back and forth until, at last, you both stop blinking entirely. Nothing gets written.

- The same word appears three times in the same paragraph. You edit them out, only to find them, again, three paragraphs down. You close your laptop and decide to go shopping. You stare at the word flashing by on the way to the store. You feel followed.

- Your pen carves vicious corrections onto a printed copy of your story. Later, you will not remember the way you grit your teeth while editing or why calling a character effervescent is “superfluous.”

- There are words scrawled on receipts, on post its, on torn out scraps of paper all over your room. You recognize your handwriting on most of them and choose to ignore those bits in handwriting you do not.

- Your mom asks about your day. You do not know how to explain the exhaustion in your bones or the way your neck aches with the weight of eyes you’d tried to leave on the page  or the way your fingers are still typing phantom words against your thighs. You tell her nothing happened.

- Your roommates are concerned. You have not spoken in days. You wonder who it was you were whispering to last night as you scratched out another outline at the kitchen table.

- Your computer screen goes dark while you stare at your last sentence, trying to think of where to go next. You did not know that your lips could curl like that or your eyes could look so black.

[luna-azzurra]

Writing an Evil Mentor and Reluctant Apprentice 

okay so this dynamic has SO MUCH potential but also so many ways to go completely wrong and end up feeling like a bad Wattpad fic (no shade to Wattpad, I LOVE WATTPAD, but you know what I mean)

⤳ first of all: why is the apprentice even THERE

This is the thing everyone forgets. If your apprentice is SO reluctant, why haven't they just... left? You need a actual reason they're stuck in this situation that isn't just "well the plot needs them to be."

Maybe they're learning something they CAN'T learn anywhere else and they hate that they need this person. Maybe there's blackmail involved. Maybe they made a deal they can't break. Maybe leaving means something worse happens, to them, to someone they love, to the world, whatever. Maybe they're trapped physically or magically or socially.

Or, and this is interesting, maybe they're MORE reluctant about being reluctant than they are about the actual apprenticeship. Like they KNOW they should want to leave, they know this is bad, but there's a part of them that's curious or ambitious or hungry for power and they're disgusted with themselves for it. That internal conflict is WAY more interesting than just "I don't wanna be here" on repeat.

⤳ the mentor can't just be Evil they need layers

If your evil mentor is just cackling and monologuing about their Evil Plans, I'm gonna be honest, that's boring. Evil people don't think they're evil. They think they're RIGHT.

Your mentor should believe completely in what they're doing. They should have reasons. Maybe even good reasons that got twisted somewhere along the way. They're not teaching the apprentice to be evil, they're teaching them to be "realistic" or "strong" or "free from sentiment" or whatever rationalization they've built.

And they should genuinely CARE about the apprentice in their own twisted way. Not in a healthy way obviously, but they're invested. Maybe they see potential. Maybe they see themselves. Maybe the apprentice is their legacy project. Maybe they're lonely and don't even realize it.

The worst mentors are the ones who think they're HELPING. Who get genuinely hurt or frustrated when the apprentice resists. "I'm doing this FOR you, why can't you see that?" That's so much more unsettling than just "I'm evil deal with it."

⤳ the teaching scenes need to be actually uncomfortable

Don't just tell us the apprentice is reluctant, SHOW the grinding tension of every lesson. The apprentice should be trying to take what they need while maintaining their boundaries, and the mentor should be constantly pushing those boundaries in ways that feel invasive.

Maybe the mentor teaches through psychological manipulation, like giving praise and validation when the apprentice does something morally questionable, withdrawing affection when they resist. Classical conditioning but make it sinister.

Maybe the lessons start out seeming reasonable or even helpful and then there's this slow creep into darker territory. The apprentice doesn't even notice they've crossed a line until they're already on the other side of it. That gradual corruption is SO much more effective than dramatic heel-turn moments.

The apprentice should be learning things that are genuinely useful, because that's what makes it complicated. If everything the mentor taught was obviously bad, it'd be easy to reject. But what if some of it actually WORKS? What if the morally grey techniques are MORE effective than the "right" way? Now you've got a real dilemma.

⤳ the power dynamic is everything

This relationship is inherently unbalanced and you need to FEEL that in every interaction. The mentor holds all the cards (knowledge, power, resources) whatever. The apprentice is dependent and they hate it.

ANDlet the apprentice find small ways to resist or maintain agency. They comply on the surface but sabotage in tiny ways. They learn what the mentor teaches but refuse to internalize the philosophy. They're playing a long game, gathering what they need to eventually break free.

Or maybe they're TOO good at what the mentor teaches and that becomes its own problem. The mentor gets possessive or threatened. Or the apprentice starts to scare themselves with how easily this comes to them.

The push-pull is constant. The mentor pulls them closer, the apprentice pulls away. Sometimes the apprentice moves toward the mentor for strategic reasons and hates themselves for it. It's this exhausting dance and both of them are trying to lead.

⤳ dialogue that's like a chess game

Their conversations shouldn't be straightforward. The mentor is always teaching, always testing, always maneuvering. The apprentice is always defending, always trying to give nothing away.

Subtext is EVERYTHING. They're having two conversations, the surface one and the real one underneath.

"You're doing well." (You're becoming what I want you to be.) "Thank you." (I hate that your approval matters to me.)

"You hesitated." (You're still weak.) "I was being thorough." (I'm not like you.)

"You remind me of myself at your age." (You're mine.) "I'm nothing like you." (Please let that be true.)

Let the mentor ask questions that seem innocent but are actually traps. Let the apprentice give answers that seem compliant but have hidden barbs. Every conversation is a battle and someone's always losing ground.

⤳ the apprentice needs their own agenda

A reluctant apprentice who's JUST reluctant gets boring fast. They need to be DOING something with this situation beyond just enduring it.

Maybe they're gathering information to take the mentor down eventually. Maybe they're learning these skills for a completely different purpose than the mentor thinks. Maybe they're protecting someone and this is the price. Maybe they're playing double agent.

Give them secrets the mentor doesn't know about. Give them small victories. Let them be smart and strategic even while they're trapped. The best reluctant apprentices aren't passive victims, they're people in a bad situation making the best moves they can with limited options.

⤳ the corruption question (THIS IS THE BIG ONE)

Is your apprentice going to be corrupted or not? You need to decide this and commit.

If they ARE going to fall: make it gradual, make it believable, make it tragic. Show the small compromises that lead to bigger ones. Show them justifying things they would have been horrified by six months ago. Let them notice what's happening and be unable or unwilling to stop it. The best corruption arcs are the ones where the character SEES the cliff and walks off it anyway.

If they're NOT going to fall: you need to show what's keeping them anchored. What's their north star? What line won't they cross no matter what? And it can't just be abstract goodness, it needs to be concrete. A person they love. A promise they made. A memory they're protecting. Something SPECIFIC that they come back to when they're tempted.

Or secret third option, they come out of this changed in ways that aren't cleanly good or bad. They've learned things they can't unlearn. They've done things they can't undo. They survived but they're different now and they're not sure if that's okay.

⤳ the breaking point

At some point this relationship has to SHIFT. The apprentice can't just be reluctant forever, something has to give.

Maybe they finally escape and now the mentor becomes an antagonist actively hunting them. Maybe they turn the tables and trap the mentor somehow. Maybe the mentor does something that crosses a line even they didn't know they had. Maybe the apprentice does something that makes them realize they've already become what they feared.

Whatever happens, there needs to be a moment where the dynamic fundamentally changes. All that tension you've been building? It has to snap eventually.

⤳ the complicated feelings (because humans are messy)

Your apprentice can hate the mentor AND be attached to them. They can be grateful for what they learned AND horrified by the cost. They can miss the mentorship AND be glad it's over. They can love and loathe the same person.

Don't shy away from that complexity. Some of the most interesting reluctant apprentice characters are the ones who have big messy contradictory feelings about their evil mentor. Who dream about destroying them and also dream about making them proud. Who know intellectually that this person is terrible but emotionally are still seeking their approval.

Let your apprentice be angry that they care. Let them feel guilty for the moments when the reluctance fades and they're actually INTO what they're learning. Let them grieve the relationship even though it was toxic, because grief doesn't care about logic.

⤳ what NOT to do (please i'm begging)

Don't make the mentor comically evil for no reason. Don't make every interaction a dramatic confrontation. Don't have the apprentice constantly announcing how reluctant they are, SHOW it through their actions and choices and internal conflict.

Don't make the apprentice completely helpless and passive. Don't resolve the tension too quickly. Don't forget that learning (even dark things) would realistically be interesting and compelling sometimes.

And for the love of god don't do the "secretly they were good all along" twist with the mentor unless you've REALLY set it up well. That's almost always a cop-out that undermines the whole dynamic.

⤳ the real question you should be asking

What is this relationship DOING to your apprentice? How are they different because of it? What do they learn about themselves, not just about magic or fighting or whatever the mentor teaches, but about their own capacity for darkness, for survival, for compromise?

The evil mentor/reluctant apprentice dynamic is really about TESTING your character. It's about putting them in an impossible situation and seeing what they do. It's about the price of power and the cost of knowledge and how people maintain their sense of self when everything's working against it.

Make it MATTER.

okay i'm done now gonna go think about fictional toxic mentorships and feel things about them (and eat pizza after my apple juice)

REQUEST: @orderdchaosthings2 I hope it helps <3

[luna-azzurra]

Tips for Writing Comas!

Your character has been in a coma for three weeks and just woke up, said something profound, recognised everyone in the room, and will be walking by next chapter. i love you. i respect your commitment to the plot. but i need you to sit down because we have to talk about what the human body actually does when it's been unconscious for three weeks.

⊹ Waking from a coma is not waking up. it is a gradual, nonlinear process that can take days or weeks. there's no moment where the eyes open and the person is back. there are stages: responses to pain, then to voice, then to commands, then inconsistent awareness, then windows of consciousness that come and go. Your character might recognise someone they love and then have no memory of it an hour later. the people waiting at the bedside have to live in that uncertainty for a very long time.

⊹ Muscle atrophy is immediate and significant. after one week of immobility, you lose a measurable percentage of muscle mass. after three weeks? your character cannot sit up unaided. they cannot stand. their legs do not work the way they used to and getting them to work again involves weeks of painful physiotherapy. They will not be walking to the window to look meaningfully at the sky. They will be trying to hold a cup without dropping it.

⊹ Cognitive effects are real and unpredictable. memory gaps. difficulty concentrating. words disappearing mid-sentence. personality changes that might be temporary or might not be. your character waking up is the beginning of finding out who they are now, which parts came back intact and which parts are different in ways that can't be fixed by time or willpower. The person who walked in is not quite the same person who wakes up.

⊹ The psychological experience of the people who were waiting is also almost never written properly. you visited someone unconscious every day for three weeks and talked to them and held their hand and made decisions about their care and lived in a sustained state of grief and hope at the same time. and then they wake up. and you're supposed to be relieved. and you are relieved. but you're also exhausted in a way nobody is acknowledging, and slightly angry in a way you can't justify, and you've changed too while they were gone. the reunion is complicated. Write the complicated.

⊹ What the coma patient experiences, if anything, is genuinely unknown. some people report nothing. some report vivid dream-like states they can't distinguish from memory. some report hearing voices around them, including things said at the bedside that were never meant for them. Your character might have three weeks of false memories they believe are real. They might have heard something they weren't supposed to hear. they woke up knowing something about the people in that room that those people don't know they know.

[samcormac]

what’s the rush?

[rainwasheseverythingaway]

The time will pass anyway

[tahbhie]

How to Stop Hating Everything You Write

1. Don't be afraid of making mistakes.

Quit judging yourself for every mistake you make along the way. Whether you're writing fiction, fanfiction, or nonfiction, just write. If you can't correct your errors as you go, that's okay. When I don't have the brainpower to multitask, I focus on the writing stage one step at a time. Just write!

2. Don't aim for perfection.

"It's not ready if it's not perfect." That's a lie. When you're in the process of writing, it's best to concentrate on getting your thoughts on paper.

3. Seek feedback and learn to receive it.

Join lively communities with active writers or forums that host events inviting writers to share their work for critique. Not every critique is constructive; learn to discern which feedback to take on board and which to ignore.

4. Read, read, read.

You can't give what you don't have. You learn a lot from reading similar pieces in your chosen genre. Reading is also a source of inspiration that fuels your writing process.

5. Cut yourself some slack.

Writing is no small feat. It takes talent to formulate a story with your mind and skill to visualize it for others to see. Do you love writing? Then keep doing it because it takes practice.

Looking for a supportive community dedicated to helping you grow as a writer? Join the Writers Universe server and thrive!

[luna-azzurra]

Things to consider when writing a character!! --2

continuing--

⊹ How do they treat people who can't do anything for them? Waitstaff? strangers? people they'll never see again? this is the oldest trick in the book for a reason. It works. How someone behaves toward people with no social utility tells you everything about their actual values versus the values they perform for an audience.

⊹ What's their relationship with their own body? Are they comfortable in it or is it something they carry around like a problem? do they take up space or make themselves small? are they aware of how they look or completely indifferent? Physicality is psychology and most writers forget the body entirely until someone needs to throw a punch.

⊹ What do they lie about and why. Not dramatic plot lies necessarily. the small everyday ones. the things they exaggerate or omit or reframe. Because people don't lie randomly, they lie to protect something. Find what your character is protecting and you'll find what they're afraid of. That fear is the ENGINE!!

⊹ Who did they used to be? not their whole backstory. just: who were they before the thing that changed them. because that person is still in there somewhere, showing up in small ways, wanting things the current version of them would never admit to. The ghost of a former self is one of the most interesting things you can write into a character without ever stating it directly.

⊹ What would make them walk away?? from the goal. from the relationship. from the person they're trying to be. everyone has a breaking point and it should be specific to them, and please not a generic "too much" but the exact thing, the particular betrayal or loss or realisation that would finally be enough. know this even if the story never reaches it.

⊹ What do they love that has nothing to do with the plot?? a specific kind of light in the afternoon. the smell of old paperback books. bad television they watch without apology. something small that belongs only to them. details like this cost you nothing and they make the reader believe in a person completely. characters who only care about plot-relevant things are not people. they're chess pieces. sorry not sorry.

[writingwithfolklore]

Backstory is Revealed When You Need It, Not Before

                Recently I shared my first 30 pages with my writing mentor, and now I'm sharing her advice with all of you (This is part 2! Find part 1 here). She told me my beginning read very slowly because I was giving backstory before it was relevant in the story, rather than intertwining it with the action.

                What I mean by that is, I was giving a lot of exposition on my world just through my character noting it to herself. I worried that if I didn’t lay down the basics right away, when I did mention it later it would come as a bad shock to readers.

While that might have a logic to it, it's very slow to read just exposition on the world. To get these details through naturally and when they're relevant, while still conveying them in the beginning, we needed to create a conflict for my main character to react to right away.

This way, I could spend the first couple pages revealing the essentials of my world and main character without halting the pacing to a stop.

                Okay, consider these two examples:

Character A avoided the alleyways as they travelled to the store. The city was overrun by gangs who liked to lurk in their dark corners, jumping out at unaware passerby’s for coin or favours.

                Vs.

The back of Character A’s neck prickled as they passed an alleyway that swallowed all light. They were steps away when they heard a raspy voice, “don’t you know you gotta pay the fee to pass through our turf?”

                How this character resolves this conflict will betray who they are as a person. Do they cower? Do they fight back? Do they reveal they have connections to another gang, or the police?

                This little conflict, as well as establishing a vital part of your world and character, should in some small way connect to the bigger conflict up ahead, aka the inciting incident.

                In this example, this specific gang would probably be where the main antagonist is from—or the consequences of how they deal with this follow them into the inciting incident in some way.

                Backstory only when it’s most relevant, not to anticipate when it will be important later.

                Good luck!

[luna-azzurra]

Tips for Writing Small Towns!! PART TWO

⋆˙⟡ The economy of small towns is not quaint. It is precarious and everyone knows exactly how precarious. When the plant closed, or the mill shut down, or the highway got rerouted fifteen miles east, the whole town felt it in a specific and lasting way. There are towns that have been dying for forty years and the people in them know it and don't talk about it directly but it's in everything. The storefronts with plywood where glass used to be, the school that consolidated with the next town over, the young people who leave and the question of whether they're coming back that nobody asks out loud because everybody already knows the answer. Writing a small town without writing its economic reality is writing a set, not a place.

⋆˙⟡ There is a specific kind of person who runs everything and they are not elected. Every small town has someone. Sometimes a family, sometimes just an individual, who is not officially in charge of anything but whose opinion determines outcomes. The woman who's been on every committee for thirty years. The family that's owned the land since before living memory. They don't have to make demands. Everyone already knows where the edges are. A newcomer or outsider won't see this power structure at first because it isn't written down anywhere. It lives in who gets called first, who's consulted before decisions are made, whose silence means disapproval. Writing this type of character correctly means never letting them explain themselves. They don't need to.

⋆˙⟡ Leaving is a complicated moral act and coming back is even more complicated. The person who got out, who went to college, who moved to the city, who built a life somewhere else, occupies a strange position. There's pride in them, genuine pride, and also a kind of low resentment that nobody names. They think they're better than this. Maybe they do, maybe they don't, but the suspicion is there. And when they come back, for a funeral, because things fell apart, because they got sick, the town doesn't quite absorb them back in the way they expect. They're not who they were. But they're also not from away. They're in a third category that doesn't have a comfortable name and everyone, including them, is a little awkward about it.

⋆˙⟡ People maintain relationships for decades past the point where they would have ended anywhere else. Because the pool is small and leaving is a whole thing, people stay in friendships, in dynamics, in proximity to people they would have simply stopped seeing in a city. The woman who is still friends with her ex-husband's sister because their kids go to the same school and their mothers are in the same Bible study and it would be more work to be enemies than to just keep showing up. These relationships have layers and scar tissue. They are not warm exactly, but they are not cold either. They are maintained. Writers often write relationships as chosen. In small towns, a lot of relationships are simply continued.

⋆˙⟡ Local history is oral and it is everywhere and it is not neutral. The story of what happened to the Henderson property, why the Murphys and the Dales don't speak, what exactly went on the summer of the flood; this history lives in people, not in records. And it gets told selectively, with emphasis and with meaning. The version your family tells is not the version their family tells. History in a small town is a living argument. A character who grew up there absorbed a version of local history that shaped their understanding of who deserves what and why, and that version has gaps and biases they cannot fully see. A newcomer doesn't have access to this history at all and will keep misreading things because of it.

⋆˙⟡ The relationship between small towns and their nearest city is specific and loaded. It's not simply rural versus urban. It's a relationship of dependency and resentment. People drive to the city for the hospital, for the court, for the things the town can't support anymore. And they come back with the feeling that the city doesn't know they exist, doesn't factor them in, makes decisions that affect them without consulting them. This is not paranoia. It's largely accurate. A small town character's relationship to the nearest city (whether they go often or rarely, what they feel when they're there, what they feel when they come back) says a lot about who theey are and where they stand in their own community.

[luna-azzurra]

Tips for Writing Small Towns!!

⋆˙⟡ Everyone knows everyone and they have for forty years. The history is load-bearing. In a small town, the guy who runs the hardware store and the woman who teaches third grade went to prom together in 1987 and had a falling out over something no one talks about directly. The person behind the diner counter is the cousin of the person who sold you your house. Nothing is without CONTEXT. Every interaction carries a decade of subtext. Writers often write small-town characters like they just met each other. BUT Real small-town social life happens almost entirely in implication, in what you don't say, in who you happen to be standing next to when you say it.

⋆˙⟡ The gossip network is fast, imprecise, and almost impossible to correct. Information in small communities travels faster than in cities because the network is dense, EVERYONE has direct ties to almost everyone else. But it also distorts rapidly. By the time something gets around, it may be only vaguely related to what actually happened. And correcting a rumor is exponentially harder than spreading one, because corrections aren't interesting. If your character does something embarrassing on a Monday, by Thursday half the town has a version of it, and no version is quite right. The original fact may be less damaging than what it became. This is just how information behaves in a closed system.

⋆˙⟡ People who grew up there and people who moved there live in parallel versions of the same town. Longtime residents navigate the town through memory, that means every building has a history and every corner has a former version. The old pharmacy that's now a coffee shop is still "the old pharmacy" to someone who grew up there. New arrivals navigate the town as it exists now, without the palimpsest. These two groups see each other and don't quite connect, and there's a specific low-grade tension in it that isn't unfriendliness exactly, it's more like speaking slightly different dialects. The newcomer who thinks they've been accepted into the community is usually still a newcomer in the eyes of people who've been there for three generations.

⋆˙⟡ There is no anonymity, and some people are destroyed by that. Others thrive. Being known everywhere you go is experienced radically differently depending on who you are and what your history is. For someone who is liked, trusted, in good social standing, it's warm and a safety net. For someone who made a mistake, has a stigmatized identity, or just doesn't fit, it's a trap you cannot escape without physically leaving. The family with the father who was arrested. The person who had a public breakdown. They are permanently known as that thing. The smallness is indifferent to whether it's kind or cruel to you specifically.

⋆˙⟡ People who live rurally organize their lives around weather, seasons, and land in ways that urban writers often don't account for. A bad winter IS A FINANCIAL THREAT. The soil condition matters. What the river is doing matters. Whether the deer are bad this year matters. There's a literacy to the natural environment that rural people have and that outsiders don't (reading the sky, reading the fields, knowing what certain sounds mean, knowing when something is wrong with the land before you can articulate why.) Writing a rural character who doesn't have this relationship to their physical environment makes them feel like a city person who happened to move somewhere with a longer driveway.

⋆˙⟡ There are almost no strangers, which means crime and conflict work differently. When something bad happens in a small town (theft, assault, betrayal etc.) the suspect pool is tiny and largely known. Everyone is someone's cousin or former coworker or neighbor. The person who did the thing is someone whose name you know, whose mother you know, who you've been at the same table with. This is much more psychologically complicated than anonymous crime. It's not just WHO did it, it's the rearrangement of every relationship once you know. And there's immense social pressure to not pursue it, to not break the fabric, to let it go for the sake of everyone having to continue living next to each other.

[danielkanhai]

it would suck being a new immortal. like it’d be 2109 and people would go, “what was it like seeing ancient civilizations rise and fall like that? seeing the pyramids being built? watching the expansion and growth of the new world?” and i’d just be like, “no…no i was born in 1991. so like, wow i’m gonna see some cool stuff, but, i mean i’m not that much older than just a really, really old person, you know? phones were big back then. so big. but only for like ten years, then they got like, as good as they are now. uh. rhinos existed. don’t think i ever saw one in person. cool, good talk.”

[ayellowbirds]

even worse, imagine being an immortal who keeps missing stuff. “What was it like seeing the pyramids being built?” “Fuck if I know, I was in Madagascar.” “Oh, okay. Well, how was the Renaissance?” “I fell down a hole in Scotland and people thought I was an enchanted well for four hundred years, it was over by the time I convinced someone to get me out.”

[erkhyan]

And now, a lesson in biases:

We barely know anything about Madagascar pre-500CE. We don’t even know whether the island had a permanent population before then, despite finding a bunch of much older signs of temporary human presence.

Malagasy mythology makes mention of the vazimba, a “precursor” ethnic group that might or might not be distinct from Madagascar’s current population.

The point is, we do not know.

So you were in Madagascar when the pyramids were being built in Egypt, i.e. during one of the most obscure, most undocumented parts of Madagascar’s human history?

Oh, buddy, you better go and make a bunch of anthropologists and archeologists really happy RIGHT NOW instead of feeling bad about missing everyone else’s pet Major Event.

[ayellowbirds]

It’s been a decade since we left that comment and you have the best reply anyone’s left to it.

[augustwritingchallenge]

Dear diary this list came to me in my dream! Looks like AU-gust 2026 is here...

What is AU-gust? It stands for Alternate Universe August, and it is a creative challenge for everyone. Writers, artists, fans; anyone can join! Be sure to check out our FAQ for more answers! Join us on BlueSky, AO3, Discord and under the tags #au gust and #au gust 2026.

Special thanks to @yaoyorozoops for creating our wonderful graphics!

[ID] 31 days challenge prompt list as follows: 1 Steampunk, 2 Roommates, 3 Boogyman, 4 Hero, 5 Farmers and Markets, 6 Magic Realism, 7 Long Lost Relative, 8 Alternate Timeline, 9 Seamstress, 10 Arthurian Mythos, 11 Small Business, 12 Reality TV, 13 Cults, 14 Isekai/Reincarnation, 15 Fourth Wall Broken, 16 Only One Bed, 17 Time Travel Fix-It, 18 Sirens, 19 Animal Trainer, 20 Graveyard Keeper, 21 Glitch in the Matrix, 22 Technopunk, 23 Midlife Crisis, 24 Post, 25 Monster Hunter, 26 Soul-bound, 27 Virtual Reality, 28 Bad End, 29 Survival, 30 Earth Two/New Planet, 31 Two of the Above. You have four Jokers: Not Related, Daemons, Furry, TTRPG Players.

[transmasc-wizard]

i'm AWARE this is a stupid hill to die on, but like. trope vs theme vs cliché vs motif vs archetype MATTERS. it matters to Me and i will die on this hill no matter how much others decide it's pointless. words mean things

[transmasc-wizard]

trope: 1) the use of figurative language for artistic effect; includes allegories, analogies, hyperbole, & metaphors, among others. 2) commonly reoccurring literary devices, motifs, or clichés. Includes things like the medieval fantasy setting, the Dark Lord, enemies-to-lovers, and the Chosen One.

theme: the reoccurring idea or subject in a work of art. Death, life, rebirth, change, love, what it means to be human, the definition of family, the effects of war, etc.

cliché: an element of an artistic work that has been overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect, even becoming annoying or irritating. (Most clichés are tropes but not all tropes are clichés.)

motif: a distinctive repeating feature or idea, such as the green light in The Great Gatsby. May overlap with tropes and is often used to further explore the theme.

archetype: a constantly-recurring symbol or motif; it refers to the recurrence of characters or ideas sharing similar traits throughout various, seemingly unrelated cases in classic storytelling. E.g. rags to riches, the wise old mentor. Again may overlap with tropes, clichés, and motifs, but they're not the exact same thing.

[awesomebutunpractical]

The first draft philosophy that has finally gotten me writing for fun isn't "worst version of story" type framing, it's "tell the story to yourself."

Your story isn't ready for polished prose, you don't know what happens yet. This doesn't make it Bad Writing, it's a different type of writing. And this ties into why I think the plotter vs pantser debate misses the mark - both detailed outlines AND make-it-up-as-you-go first drafts are ways to make up the story. This part is for you, so how you do it should be whatever is the most fun or satisfying way to tell yourself the story.

[illesigns]

Pixars 22 Rules of Story Telling

[duamuteffe]

9 is worth the price of admission, holy crap.

[caprart1]

i DO believe that a good writer can make mischaracterization work. oh there's a character who doesn't normally cry? figure it out!! disect the character. make the situation cryable for them. make that character cry ugly tears even if it goes against their very nature. YOU CAN MAKE IT WORK!!!

[amyrosedefensesquad]

A great piece of advice I've seen is "Don't fixate about what the character would never do. Think about the circumstances that would drive them to do this, even if they wouldn't normally."

[ficsinhistory]

Best advice ever!

[writerswritecompany]

British vs American English: 63 Differences

[radioactive-earthshine]

Writing tips for long fics that helped me that no one asked for.

1.) Don't actually delete content from your WIP unless it is minor editing - instead cut it and put it in a secondary document. If you're omitting paragraphs of content, dialog, a whole scene you might find a better place for it later and having it readily available can really save time. Sometimes your idea was fantastic, but it just wasn't in the right spot.

2.) Stuck with wording the action? Just write the dialog then revisit it later.

3.) Stuck on the whole scene? Skip it and write the next one.

4.) Write on literally any other color than a white background. It just works. (I use black)

5.) If you have a beta, while they are beta-ing have them read your fic out loud. Yes, I know a lot of betas/writers do not have the luxury of face-timing or have the opportunity to do this due to time constraints etc but reading your fic out loud can catch some very awkward phrasing that otherwise might be missed. If you don't have a beta, you read it out loud to yourself. Throw some passion into your dialog, you might find a better way to word it if it sounds stuffy or weird.

6.) The moment you have an idea, write it down. If you don't have paper or a pen, EMAIL it to yourself or put it in a draft etc etc. I have sent myself dozens of ideas while laying down before sleep that I 10/10 forgot the next morning but had emailed them to myself and got to implement them.

7.) Remember - hits/likes/kudos/comments are not reflective of the quality of your fic or your ability to write. Most people just don't comment - even if they say they do, they don't, even if they preach all day about commenting, they don't, even if they are a very popular blog that passionately reminds people to comment - they don't comment (I know this personally). Even if your fic brought tears to their eyes and it haunted them for weeks and they printed it out and sent it to their friends they just don't comment. You just have to accept it. That being said - comment on the fic you're reading now, just do it, if you're 'shy' and that's why you don't comment the more you comment the better you'll get at it. Just do it.

8.) Remove unrealistic daily word count goals from your routine. I've seen people stress 1500 - 2000 words a day and if they don't reach that they feel like a failure and they get discouraged. This is ridiculous. Write when you can, but remove absurd goals. My average is 500 words a day in combination with a 40 hour a week job and I have written over 200k words from 2022-2023.

9.) There are dozens of ways to do an outline from precise analytical deconstruction that goes scene by scene to the minimalist bullet point list - it doesn't matter which one you use just have some sort of direction. A partial outline is better than no outline.

10.) Write for yourself, not for others. Write the fic you know no one is going to read. Write the fic that sounds ridiculous. You will be so happy you put it out in the world and there will be people who will be glad it exists.