I Write I Guess?

Meg • minor • writer/artist • anxious • pan I need caffeine to cope Mostly just going to be random posts and excerpts from my books here ~ My ask is always open There may be curses on here but not a whole ton, if that offends you please click off ^^

[just-a-jumbled-writer]

Not all character development is positive. Characters can, and in my opinion, should, develop both negative and positive traits throughout the course of their story. As the story goes, they shouldn’t be perfected, they’re people, not artpieces, and so there shouldn’t be a stage where they’ve improved/changed exclusively for the better, to the point where they have no negative traits at all. 

[love4humanity]

Breonna was alive for at least 5 minutes after being shot, but none of these officers treated her or tried to help her.

Are these the type of people you want roaming the streets?

[tanoraqui]

it’s just hard not to think about the fact that in 1915, JRR Tolkien went to war not with but certainly in the same army and many of the same battles as his 3 best school friends, all nicely upper class young men who had never known much loss, and only he and one other came back alive - and a couple decades later, he wrote a book in which 3 nicely upper class young men (and one very excellent gardener) who have never known much loss go to war together, or at least they start out together, and they all come home alive. (Though one cannot bear it, and does not stay.)

[meerius]

What more it wasn’t just losing his friends, he was a commanding officer of a battalion of working class men. All farmers and miners from the same area of Lancashire. He felt affinity for them, but wasn’t allowed to socialize between the ranks due to military protocol and he hated it. 

 "The most improper job of any man … is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.“

I don’t think it was even 6 months later that he contracted trench fever and was sent home. 

His entire command was wiped out in one charge shortly after, the majority of a whole countryside’s youths slaughtered while he survived. Youths who were brave and steadfast, but thought of as lesser than their superior officers while still being the ones carrying the actual battle. Youths who deserved fellowship, respect, and above all to go home and dance with their own Rosie.

“My Sam Gamgee is indeed a reflection of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognised as so far superior to myself”. 

[seriousfic]

[themightyglamazon]

TRIES NOT TO CRY

[jenniferrpovey]

There is a reason Frodo, who represents the English gentry, in the end falls and is caught by Samwise, who represents the common man.

But there is a soldier in Lord of the Rings who does not come back, and I don’t mean Boromir.

I mean the being who was a common hobbit, but who became corrupted by darkness and poison, who’s face is described in ways reminiscent of a gas mask.

The soldier who doesn’t come home, who is poisoned by gas and stress and insanity.

Is Gollum.

[sniperct]

The Lord of the Rings repeatedly stresses the horrors of war. Eowyn’s entire arc is about the truth of warfare versus the way it’s glorified. She starts out glorifying war and combat and soldiers, even when her own brother is telling her war sucks and is terrible. And then in the end, she sees first hand what war does to people.

Aragorn’s entire arc isn’t to be the steadfast hero saving the day, it’s to hold the line in terror and horror and blood while the overlooked folk are the people who save the world. And then, what makes him a king, is not his skill in battle, but his healing hands.

Which then ties into both Eowyn and Faramir’s arcs. Eowyn goes into healing not because she’s a weak and meek woman, but because war is horrible and saving lives is better than taking them. Aragorn is glorified within the text for his healing, and so is Eowyn.

Also, tying into the common man thing, in the movies it’s Faramir but in the books it’s SAMWISE who questions what brings a man so far from home to fight in a war and if he is really so different.

LOTR is anti-war propaganda.

[lookashiny]

And this is why I don’t get people who find Eowyn’s fate to be anti-feminist. She doesn’t become a healer because she’s a woman, she does because it’s the right thing to do. Both her and Faramir’s futures are to renew the world. That’s a good thing.

[fullofbugs84uy894ujui9]

reminder that this blog, while not politically focused, supports BLM. bootlickers and racists aren’t welcome here, and never will be.

[susiephone]

sci-fi jobs that must exist that i find inexplicably amusing:

space customs

tow trucks except they’re towing illegally parked spaceships

for that matter, spaceship thieves, if only for how much more effort i imagine that would take

irs agents who have to find tax evaders who went 2 or 3 galaxies over

literally everything about the concept of the space version of the dmv

imagine being the person who teaches hapless 16 year olds how to fly a spaceship

people who analyze Old Earth media for a living the same way people now analyze shakespeare or beowulf, aka a bunch of scholarly and serious academics writing papers arguing the true meaning of Mean Girls and Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure and A Very Potter Musical

cruise spaceships. you’re taking a slow tour of saturn’s rings and people are still complaining about you running out of cocktail sauce

feel free to add more

[maramahan]

Space cartographer. Some poor sucker’s gotta literally count the stars in order to chart ‘em. Did you think computers made the maps??

Gas station attendant, but in space. You thought earth truck stops were liminal? Try pausing to refuel on an asteroid hurtling though the middle of inky-black nowhere. You’d see some interesting folks pass through, though

Imagine working at a space hotel, for that matter

Traveling Salesman

[susiephone]

op, back again, with more

IT workers who deal with tech that can communicate across the multiverse, rearrange people’s molecules, and communicate with ancient eldritch gods…….and 9 out of 10 problems can still be fixed with “read the instruction manual” or “did you turn it off and back on again”

let’s players. people’s love of video games and screaming profanity at said video games transcends galaxy and species lines

the post office. bravest people in ‘verse. though they did have to change their creed. it’s now: “neither snow nor rain nor heat nor black holes nor meteor showers nor solar flares stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds…”

also, food delivery peeps. all the above danger + dealing with more drunk aliens.

SPACE UBER

tourist traps. “welcome to the galaxy’s biggest ball of yarn. yes, it’s this one, not the one on mars. the martians are filthy liars and they’ve always been jealous of our superior attraction.”

science museum tour guides. the museums have gotten…….very big. it’s a very exhausting job, but it’s so worth it when the field trips full of kids from various galaxies get all excited

space drug dealers

[michaelbjorkwrites]

Unforgettable: How to write imagery your readers will always remember

A baby sleeps in a bundle of blankets on the step of number four, Privet Drive. He has black hair, and on his forehead is a lightning bolt scar.

Rain falls upon the streets of Derry, Maine – and in the darkness of a gurgling storm drain, there lurks a clown with a white-painted face and a toothy smile.

Just outside the village of Market Chipping (where a 17-year old hatter is having her youth cursed away), a large moving castle navigates the horizon.

A boy with a lightning bolt scar.

A killer clown in the gutter.

A castle that moves across the countryside.

These are some of the images that come to mind when we think about iconic stories like Harry Potter,  It,  Howl’s Moving Castle, and others. They’re locked into our memories, helping elevate their source material above the swirling sea of competing stories.

Your stories can stand out the same way.

If you learn to craft unforgettable imagery.

What makes an unforgettable image?

I don’t think anyone could identify every quality that makes an image memorable, but in my experience, such imagery is often:

Unique

Dissonant

Emotional

Prominent

Unique.

For an image to be unforgettable, it needs to stand out – and that means being unique in the context of the story’s genre and surrounding stories. For example, we’ve read about many boy wizards and chosen ones, but how many of them have had a lightning bolt scar?

Dissonant.

Part of what makes readers sit up and pay attention is when there’s something odd or wrong about an image. Scars, for example, are rarely a particular shape, let alone like a lightning bolt. Clowns most certainly do not belong in storm drains (killer clowns themselves are a dissonant mirror of what clowns are intended to be). And castles don’t roam freely across the countryside. That dissonance helps catch and hold the reader’s attention.

Emotional.

To be remembered, images need to create an emotional reaction, which helps solidify their place in the story and in the reader’s mind. Harry Potter’s scar, for example, calls up various emotions throughout the series, ranging from curiosity, to sadness, to a sense of foreboding; the clown in a gutter elicits terror; and Howl’s moving castle inspires a sense of wonder.

Prominent.

If an image appears briefly or holds no importance to the overarching story, it will be easily forgotten. Memorable images, in contrast, tend to be either repeatedly featured as set pieces (such as Harry’s scar or Howl’s moving castle), or pivotal enough to be remembered or called back to throughout the story (such as Georgie’s murder at the storm drain, which ignites the plot of It and becomes a fixation of guilt for his older brother, Bill).

Unique. Dissonant. Emotional. Prominent.

Check, check, check, and…. check.

Now how do you actually write this kind of imagery?

Tips for writing unforgettable imagery.

Trust your gut. The 4 qualities listed above are helpful to keep in mind, but in the end, these images will often arise naturally as you write, guided by moments of instinct and inspiration. So trust your gut, and go down rabbit holes – even if (especially if) it gets weird. Leave all doubting for later drafts.

Write with specificity. Vague language rarely yields memorable descriptions, so push yourself toward specific nouns and verbs. This will increase your chances of stumbling across a key detail to elevate your image.

Don’t give your image too many distracting bells and whistles. Give your image a clear focal point. For example, Harry’s Potter’s visual focal point is his scar. He has black hair (from his father) and green eyes (from his mother), which are important details, but they never compete with the scar. If Harry also had a glowing, magical aura, for example, it would dilute the memorability of the scar, because the aura would fight for our attention. (Think of your image’s focal point as the tent-pole detail I describe here.)

Don’t pin all your hopes on one image. As I said in Tip #1, memorable images will often arise organically rather than intentionally, so don’t be afraid to plant a lot of seeds. Pack your story with all the odd, surprising, memorable images that come to you! Then while revising, elevate the best of them and trim back the clutter.

In summary? When trying to write memorable imagery: get weird, be specific, give your best details room to breathe, and try to write a bunch of memorable images while drafting to increase your chances of finding one that sparks.

Now go write something unforgettable.

— — —

Hey there! My name’s Mike, and I’m a writer & copywriter with an MFA in fiction. For more tips on how to hone your craft and nurture meaningful stories, follow my blog.

[stay-close]

Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living.

— Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

[linkedsoul]

Some fav tropes (character tropes edition)

Character who wears a mask and barely ever takes it off but god they’re hot under that mask

shifty, silver-tongued character who is also a big dumbass once they’re not playing a role

best friends with benefits

aka “the fucking bros”

bonus point if they’re supporting each other mutually to woo their actual love interest, and have really no romantic interest in each other at all

sometimes a family is *proceeds to list a series of absolutely whack character tropes*

the Baby™ character who is very kind and soft and innocent and naive, but then you learn that they made the conscious decision to be that way because of something terrible that they did, purposely or not, in the past

and at ONE POINT they set aside their Baby side and just fuck shit up

non-human character that desperately tries to pass off as human and ends up being very weird and socially awkward

asshole character who never cries ends up breaking in tears That One Time And Just One Time through the whole story and it shreds your heart to pieces

the Villain with the most basic reason to be a Villain

“oh I was raised in a Villain family that’s all”

“Heroes run, and I don’t want to have to run except if I’m chased. Have you ever seen a Villain running?? No. Well. PE made me a Villain and you can’t blame me.”

“It’s for the fashion, of course! The Aesthetic!”

Dumbass earnest main characters who are genuinely nice and do their best

Scary looking characters with very soft hobbies

Or just… characters whose hobby/passion doesn’t match their profession or their skills

like Gronk the Barbarian being a talented harpist or the best baker in town

or the smol clumsy airheard of a cleric knowing how to make a bomb and the most efficient way to blow up a bridge

Character managing to first use their powers/coming to terms with their powers while in a dangerous fight and literally beaming with pure joy when they do, then winning the fight easily

Take-no-shit Medic

[itswritingtimebish]

do you want to write but just can’t seem to get into it?

Hello everyone! In this post I want to share some helpful excercises and things you can do when it’s hard to get into the mindset of writing.

Write fanfiction of your own characters. Take the tropiest trope - sharing one bed, hAnD hOlDiNg, idk whatever - and write about it with two characters in your story. It doesn’t have to be good. It just has to make you feel good. It doesn’t have to make sense within the story, this is not meant to move your plot forward, this is not meant to be a part of your book, it’s just made to put you in the right mindset, to make you excited for writing.

Find incorrect quotes that fit your characters. This might also help you get a better understanding of what types of characters they are. You might even get somewhere within the story with these.

This might be similar to the first one but, write fanfiction of your own story. I mean, take a concept, Doctor Who, for example, and write how it would be if your characters were the characters in Doctor Who! Again, it doesn’t have to be good, it doesn’t have to be useful in the story, it just has to get your creative juices going!

Reread stuff you’ve written that you really like. It might be stuff that is on the book you’re writing - maybe a fluffy scene between two lovers, maybe a fucking great fighting scene, maybe the death of your favorite character. If you haven’t writen anything for that book yet, or you don’t have a passage that moves you (YET), read something else you’ve written! Maybe a short story. It doesn’t need to be anything related to what you’re currently writing, it just has to be something that proves how fucking much you love writing!

Go back to what inspired to first, work the idea, think about what you wanted to write in the beginning and work with that.

Thinka bout a certain character’s background! That can be super helpful for whenever you need reasoning for that character’s actions! You don’t even need to put it in the story just like you’ve written it, but it will be super helpful for the characterization! And if you already have this background thought out, write a scene that happens then! Think about how the character was before the starting point.

These are mainly focused on writing fiction, because it’s mainly what I write. Feel free to add more things that help you!

[caffeineaddictedsociety]

Tag yourself as types of academia aesthetics I’ve seen

all songs can be found in my dark academia playlist here

Classic: ‘Instant Coffee’ by Bugs

organised desks glazed in a warm hue, chewing on the plastic cap on your pens, creating revision notes that look like art work, mugs of warm beverages embellishing your window sill, blanking out the world by a wall of study playlists, caramel glittered mornings or velvet wrapped nights

Dark: ‘Achilles Come Down’ by Gang of Youths

falling in love with the dark shadows that fall into the creases of the book shop, stinging liquid from opal bottles, adorning your body in shades of check and cream, desperate kisses exploding sparks in the obsidian, drowning nights spent scribbling your thoughts 

Light: ‘Rosie’ by The Kooks

wildflowers pressed between browned books, soaking in poetry under the lukewarm sunlight, sweet cups of tea comforting your throat, bathing in shades of pastel and neutral, oversized glasses and drowning sweaters, organising your studying time in floral planners 

Nature: ‘Freedom’ by Teddy Hyde

adorning your body in shades of the earth, completing essays encouraged by insects and birds, admiring the shades of the leaves and tree trunks, bedrooms drowning in ivy explorers, botanical posters converting your walls into a museum, naming every insect you meet

City: ‘Sugar’ by The Hails

losing your balance on the cobbled stones that line the streets, studying in public libraries surrounded by tiresome students, falling in love with the old fashioned building unloved along a back street, catching your reflection in the makeshift mirrors that embellish the pavement

Witchy: ‘Work Song’ by Hozier

working under the sprinkling of silver that dusts the midnight skies, absentmindedly stroking your cat as you work, splotches of obsidian ink creating abstract monsters on your page, working under the embers of candlelight, wisps of ghosts ballroom dancing in the smoke

[writing-and-nutmeg]

Template from @marvel-lous-things

[fihli]

[headspace-hotel]

types of writing sessions

got on computer, looked at document, was like “fuck this shit” and got off

wrote like 150 words that consist of bloating the existing useless conversation or scene even more

wrote SO MANY WORDS but it was because you were so desperate to escape the Bad Part

wrote SO MANY WORDS but it was because you were so desperate to get closer to the Good Part

got on your document, ran into research issue, spent like an hour on Wikipedia, ah shit

the somewhat satisfying “fixing everything I hated about the scene I wrote the day before” session

decent amount of progress that took like 3x longer than it should have because you were repeatedly distracted

In The Zone and completely absorbed, just BLAZING through a few thousand words, probably close to the ending, probably listening to playlist

Not actually a writing session, just listening to playlist

the session where you write like a paragraph, suddenly realize the unfixability of your current plot predicament, and cry

that weird session where you don’t have much time and you’re super tired and you write like a page but you reread it the next morning and holy shit these words came from the fingers of god why is it so good

that session that is purely just navigating the boring shit of getting from one scene to the next and it sucks but you leave off on the cusp of something interesting and it feels good

the satisfyingly exhausting session where you write the Good Part and you’re confident it came out pretty well and you’re full of thoughts and stuff about where things are going next but you need to let them rest

get on computer, write exactly one sentence, get off computer. Now you can say you wrote today

[luckystarchild]

i made a thing

"Me, give the ideas away to other writers who DO have time for them? Me, admit I will never actually work on any of these concepts? NEVER"

*hisses and breathes fire whilst protectively clutching the fic-idea-pile*

[writing-and-nutmeg]

When you write an amazing line and can’t tell if you’re a genius or just accidentally plagiarized it from a book you read seven years ago:

[comfypitbull]

Byrn Aftershade, Character introduction

An arsonist and nature sprite, who after getting caught in a fire he and his brother started, he was killed and brought back with fire powers.

Hes a shifter, and his brass armour is enchanted to stay on when shifting into his canine form.

He works as a mercenary, and a part time arsonist when he gets bored alongside his brother Orion. Though they have a touchy relationship, especially regarding a certain civilian

[promptdumpster]

An innocent soul on the Internet: "Oh, you write? What's your story about?"

Me, the writer, who has been waiting for this moment all my life: