cursedcuriosities | killian's writing zone

hi, I'm Killian, and this is my writing journal! I recently graduated with a degree in a creative writing, and I'm mostly using it for evil (fanfiction) ;D Real talk, I write mostly fanfiction but I'm working...slowly....on actually doing some original fiction. School forced me me to get out of my comfort zone, tho most original stuff is centered around my gayass OCs- for now~ I am welcome to constructive criticism! feel free to drop me an ask here or on my main. I'm always trying to improve and I'd love some good feedback. thanks! :D sidebar image deets: pen: Waldmann Tango Imagination, Dark Teal, Medium 18k nib ink: Vinta Inks Jewel Green [Parol 1908] notebook: paperblanks Azure Midi camera: Nikon D3000 + 50 mm f/1.8 lens

[bookwyrminspiration]

sometimes a theme recurs in your work without your permission. and sometimes it reaches a threshold where you're like. well now i think this is saying something about me against my will. don't know what though

[cursedcuriosities]

50 A Softer World Prompts

Inspired by this prompt list by @sleepy-skittles that is fantastic and well-curated!

Send an ask with a number + character or ship.

I really like my friends and I probably wouldn't last very long on the lam, but sometimes you're cutting your food and laughing and you think, adventure is just one mistake away. (those with 'something to fall back on' invariably fall back on it.)

I love you like crazy. If anything ever happened to you, I wouldn't know what to do. Turn myself in, I guess. (love, love me do)

Maybe the Earth would be better off without us. Safe and clean and perfect, like a toy nobody ever played with. (Pretty and pointless)

You aren't really a good person, but god damn you make bad look awesome. (no one could steer me right, but mama tried.)

Do not be ashamed of your secrets. I can't imagine a lion who thinks starving is better than someone watching them kill. (You shouldn't be afraid they will see the real you. They should be.)

Who says life can't be an adventure? Because whoever said that is probably the villain. (I can be more than just me.)

I know I want love, but I have no idea who will make me happy. Emptiness doesn't know its own shape. (I miss something I've never known.)

Those who can, do. Those who can't, apparently run this fucking place. (the best revenge is bitter sarcasm and unhappiness)

He knows he's good in bed is the problem, so once in a while after I've come I'll say something like "aw frig." (I used to say this when we had oatmeal, too.)

I'll be late again tonight. So when you finish yourself off, be extra passionate, like I'm making it up to you. (take a pic with your phone if anything exciting happens.)

When I figure out how to do this all by myself your planet is doomed. (tell me, where is evil bred, in the heart or in the head?)

If poetry could describe the way you make me feel, poetry would be illegal. (Or anyway I might get arrested.)

It matters how we treat the people we love. But I'm starting to worry it matters how we treat the people we nail, too. (I'm screwed.)

Everybody dies. Every single person. So, style counts. (Is that what you're wearing?)

I wish there was a word that meant "goodbye" for someone who was already gone. (I wish I didn't need to know.)

Smart people play chess in their heads. Geniuses play chess in bed. (Strip chess!)

They say when you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves. They underestimate me. (mr. state trooper. please don't stop me. please don't stop me.)

If you died, I would go through hell to bring you back. That would be easy. I'm not sure how to deal with us just drifting apart. (yhtapa drol krad ruo)

It turns out that sometimes the future actually belongs to someone else. (It's mathematics)

I know that love isn't about possession. I'm just saying, maybe we could pretend it is? In bed? (then we'll go back to real life)

When you smile at me my heart races. I thought you were dead! (Did you used to have so many teeth?)

I can't remember our first kiss. Was this really all it was? (The past is a foreign country.)

There are no sweeter words than this. Nothing lasts forever. (Sure, play another song. I've got nothing better to do.)

Happiness is not a house where you can live. (but it is a house you can build.)

Life is essentially a chess game. You have to plan and calculate and I am so lonely. (If you play the opening wrong, the game is already lost.)

I wish being a good person could erase the bad things I've done. (I guess that'd be incentivizing decency though.)

I found a spell to make you love me in my mom's room. Now I don't know what to believe. (That's it. I'm moving out.)

If I could be an expert in just one arcane and madness-induced field of study, it would be you. (at the mountains of madness… if you know what I mean.)

You have me right where I want me. (finish me quick! before the ice cream melts!)

I'm glad that you're doing well these days. I'm doing well too. Probably even better than you are. (Anyway, I have TWO new boyfriends. So.)

I am not good enough for you. But if I were, would I still feel this way? (You can't always want what you get.)

I'm tied to the tracks. But I don't need you to rescue me. I need you to be the train. (wicked dastardly)

Will you still love me when I am a spooky ghost? (Yes. Yes, always, yes.)

When people say our love won't last forever, it sounds like they think anything will. (I just smile and say 'compared to what?')

You make me want to pretend to be a better man. (I promise, I'm going to seem to do right by you.)

Waking up next to you is like when other people get to sleep in and keep dreaming. (I have my own sexy Freddy Krueger.)

Some people are so good at disappearing that you start to doubt your memories that they were ever there. (How do you say goodbye to someone who was never there?)

I am terrified I will never find another love like ours. (chasing the dragon.)

Everyone wants someone they can bring home to mom. I need someone to distract my mom while I raid the medicine cabinet. (someone who thinks suggested dosages are quaint.)

I wish being in love was enough. I wish it counted for anything at all. (I wish I knew what you were missing.)

Life is never so bleak that you can't turn things around with a crime spree. (There is always hope! Everybody on the floor!)

Marriage isn't just between a man and a woman. It's between any two people who love each other and want to ruin their lives. (in front of jesus and everybody.)

Live every day like the cops have no idea. (They probably don't!)

If I could have just one wish, I would probably screw it up. (here. you might as well have it.)

Don't get weird, but I'm not really from the gas company. I just want to see what your house was like inside. It's nice! (it does kind of smell like gas though)

I wish there was a better word than 'sorry.' But then I'd probably need a better word than that. (cunnilingus? a…analingus?)

Maybe I would be better of without you, but let's be honest. Not drastically better off. (The Earth is better of without humans, too, but here we are.)

It would be easier to deal with falling out of love if it hadn't somehow made the sex exciting again. (Now we can do all the things I felt bad about doing when I loved you.)

There are some secrets I will take to my grave. But I don't want loving you to be one of them. (this, at least, is up to me.)

Sometimes two people can love each other, even though one is a wrist and the other is a razor. (open sesame)

[muirmarie]

something i find really interesting about (some) people who don't write is the way they'll elevate plot over execution? it's the way you'll sometimes see people who think they have a best-selling book idea, and they want someone to write it for them while thinking they should get the lion's share of the imaginary profits, because it's their idea. and don't get me wrong, ideas are important! plots are important!

but there are so many stories i've read over the years that could be summarized into a few sentences of bland-sounding plot, and it's the execution that matters. it's the writing. it's the writing!

a talented writer can turn a bland plot into a story you want to devour. and someone who only cares about ideas can take the most interesting idea ever conceived and make it unreadable/unwatchable.

like it does feel like there are a Lot of people in this world who don't view writing as a skill that deserves respect, and who think that really it's all about coming up with shiny ideas. and it does feel like that's uhhh infected a LOT of different things in the modern world. tbh.

[cherribalm-deactivated20140609]

site that you can type in the definition of a word and get the word

site for when you can only remember part of a word/its definition 

site that gives you words that rhyme with a word

site that gives you synonyms and antonyms

[bumblebeebabie]

THAT FIRST SITE IS EVERY WRITER’S DREAM DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY TIMES I’VE TRIED WRITING SOMETHING AND THOUGHT GOD DAMN IS THERE A SPECIFIC WORD FOR WHAT I’M USING TWO SENTENCES TO DESCRIBE AND JUST GETTING A BUNCH OF SHIT GOOGLE RESULTS

[archivestorystuff006]

OMG

[dduane]

This one’s an always-reblog, because who knows who needs it and hasn’t seen it yet?

[geryone]

Spells of My Name, I.S. Jones

[wormsdyke]

i know the standard practice in original fiction is sparing use of italics but i just can’t stand by that i really can’t it’s too good of a way to give emphasis. this word or phrase is so important i’m gonna squarsh it

[aedearly]

✎ㅤ. . .ㅤ𝑯𝑬𝑨𝑫𝑪𝑨𝑵𝑶𝑵 𝑸𝑼𝑬𝑺𝑻𝑰𝑶𝑵𝑺.

₊˚⊹ ㅤa collection of character analysis/headcanon questions to learn more about your character and your partners'! writing/headcanon prompts requested by anonymous. feel free to edit these as you see fit.

[ 🖐️ ]ㅤ.ㅤwhat do their hands feel like: soft, calloused, trembling ? [ ☂️ ]ㅤ.ㅤdo they crave touch or fear it ? [ 🎐 ]ㅤ.ㅤdo they have a sound, like a song or voice, that they associate with peace ? [ 🕊️ ]ㅤ.ㅤwhen did they feel the safest ? [ 💤 ]ㅤ.ㅤhow do they sleep ? curled up, sprawled, holding onto something ? [ 🦇 ]ㅤ.ㅤwhat is a fear they never talk about ? [ 🔒 ]ㅤ.ㅤwhat is a secret they’ve sworn never to tell ? [ 🪢 ]ㅤ.ㅤwhen was the last time they broke a promise ? [ 🫳 ]ㅤ.ㅤwho do they feel they owe, but never paid back ? [ 💼 ]ㅤ.ㅤwhat do they always carry with them ? [ 🧨 ]ㅤ.ㅤwhat’s the quickest way to set them off, even if they hide it well ? [ ⛓️ ]ㅤ.ㅤwhat does guilt feel like to them ? [ 💢 ]ㅤ.ㅤwho have they never forgiven and never will ? [ 🩸 ]ㅤ.ㅤis there something or someone that, if lost, would break them ? [ 🌧️ ]ㅤ.ㅤis there a pain they refuse to heal from ? [ 🪞 ]ㅤ.ㅤwhen have they looked at their reflection and hated what they saw ? [ 📿 ]ㅤ.ㅤwhat superstition or ritual do they cling to ? [ 🌊 ]ㅤ.ㅤwhen was the last time they cried ? [ 🐾 ]ㅤ.ㅤdo animals like them instinctively ? [ 🪶 ]ㅤ.ㅤhow do they laugh ? [ 🫀 ]ㅤ.ㅤwho taught them what love is ? did it hurt ? [ 💭 ]ㅤ.ㅤdo they believe they’re worthy of being loved ? [ 🎀 ]ㅤ.ㅤwhat is their main love language ? [ 🔦 ]ㅤ.ㅤwho do they search for ? [ 📜 ]ㅤ.ㅤis there a story they love sharing with others ? [ 🌒 ]ㅤ.ㅤdo they have a dream or goal they have given up on ? [ 🕯️ ]ㅤ.ㅤwhat memory do they replay when they’re alone ? [ 🌪️ ]ㅤ.ㅤwhat’s the one choice they regret (not) making ? [ 🧩 ]ㅤ.ㅤwhat’s a truth about themselves they refuse to admit ? [ 🍻 ]ㅤ.ㅤwhat kind of drunk are they ? [ ✉️ ]ㅤ.ㅤwhat kind of letter would they write but never send ? [ 🗡️ ]ㅤ.ㅤwhat is a scar that they have but never talk about ? [ 🕸️ ]ㅤ.ㅤdo they have a favourite lie they like to hear ? [ 🪦 ]ㅤ.ㅤwhat would they want on their gravestone but never admit aloud ? [ 🎱 ]ㅤ.ㅤwhat kind of future do they crave, and who’s in it ? [ 🌀 ]ㅤ.ㅤdo they have a recurring dream or nightmare ? [ 🍃 ]ㅤ.ㅤdo they feel like they belong ? [ ⚓ ]ㅤ.ㅤwhat does “home” mean to them ? [ 🧭 ]ㅤ.ㅤwhere would they go if they could disappear tomorrow ?

[mymistakewriting]

While I'm busy with classes and thus slow on finishing any of the million things I'm writing, I figure I might as well do something. Gimme whatever character(s) you want and some emojis! Any fandom

[wildgeese98]

Trying to write sex scenes is so aggravating because honestly describing sex is pretty boring. It's mostly just people putting bits of themselves on or inside other people's bits so you run into a lot of "they walked to another room" type problems where you can get caught up in just describing where everyone's limbs and shit are. What really makes smut interesting and hot, in my opinion at least, is sensory description but that's also hard because you'll be sitting there trying to find a new way to say "they were feeling sexual pleasure and it felt pretty good". Then you also have to figure out how to write dialogue that doesn't sound completely ridiculous and hackneyed. Really makes you want to just write "they boned down real good and it was totally hot trust me, it was definitely the kind of thing you'd want to jerk your shit to," and have done with it.

[neoyorzapoteca]

Recently, I began a weekend creative writing workshop with this exercise: write your sexual life story in five sentences. Short of gratuitous usage of semicolons, there was no wrong way to do this; the five-sentence story could be as abstract or as concrete as my students wanted. It could be a chronological list of the five most high-topography sexual events in their lives, or it could be a list of images more akin to a surrealist poem. After the allotted five minutes, they all set their pens down with a touch of weary accomplishment. Then I asked them to do it again. This request was met with stares, some uncomprehending, some with a touch of contempt. I pressed on. The only requirement was that they not reiterate any of the previous five sentences—they could zoom in to a single event, zoom out to a philosophical summary, make it silly, make it emotionally opposite, make it more honest, make it less or more abstract. After they’d finished, I asked them to do it for a third time. A fourth. At this point, many of their stares implied that I was unhinged, sadistic, or simply ridiculous. Eventually they stopped staring and started writing faster. Here’s the point: Their writing got better. It became truer. It became more theirs. I told them, We could do this all day. I meant: and not run out of ways to tell that story. More importantly, they would bear witness to something greater than mere improvement. Over the years, I’ve come to look forward to the point in my own writing at which continuing seems both incomprehensible and loathsome. That resistance, rather than marking the dead end of the day’s words, marks the beginning of the truly interesting part. That resistance is a kind of imaginative prophylactic, a barrier between me and a new idea. It is the end of the ideas that I already had when I came to the page—the exhaustion of narrative threads that were previously sewn into me by sources of varying nefariousness or innocuity. It is on the other side of that threshold that the truly creative awaits me, where I might make something that did not already exist. I just have to punch through that false wall.

==========

Body Work (Melissa Febos)

[havingapoemwithyou]

Wound by Larry Levis

[textid]

Text ID: I've loved you like a man loves an old wound picked up in a razor fight

on a street nobody remembers. Look at him: even in the dark he touches it gently.

[animentality]

[selfship-quotes]

I love soulmates but also this-

[qilingxiong]

[11thsense]

Those fanfic type stories people write where the plot is like “I picked up a stray cat off the street and it turned into a sexy man?!” R so funny cause if I found a cute cat and spent a week taking care of it and being like aw ur my baby now just for that cat to turn into a man that shit would piss me clean off…I might even kill him

[valtsv]

voted most likely to stumble out of the woods onto the highway 10 years after i went missing covered in blood that isn't my own with no memory of how i ended up like that

[valtsv]

and then you almost hit me with your car but you manage to swerve at the last second so you honk your horn yell at me to watch where i'm going but i just keep staring blankly at you and the blood on my face and in my hair and on my hands isn't quite dry and your words trail off and die in your throat and you start to feel just a little bit afraid but you offer me a ride into town anyway because you feel bad for shouting at me

[valtsv]

and then i'm in the car and you put down some plastic bags so i don't get blood on your upholstery but you can smell it thick and metallic in the air and i still don't say a word and you try to make small talk and ask me if i want to charge the radio station but i just keep staring straight ahead expressionlessly with no sign of stopping and you soon run out of small talk and so we drive on in silence in the dark and you keep your eyes on the road but you can feel when my own turn to look at you instead

[hearthouses]

type of kisses prompt meme

send me a ship + a number corresponding any of the below and I will write you a short fic depicting that prompt

Cheek Kiss

Nose Kiss

Forehead Kiss

Butterfly Kiss

Eyelid Kiss

Jawline Kiss

Neck Kiss

Collarbone Kiss

Chest Kiss

Stomach Kiss

Inner Thigh Kiss

Kiss Along the Hips

Palm Kiss

Finger Kiss

Spine Kiss

Shoulder Kiss

Kiss in the Rain

Underwater Kiss

Drunk Kiss

Reunion Kiss

Goodnight Kiss

Goodbye Kiss

Doomed Kiss

Frightened Kiss

Angry Kiss

Distracting Kiss

Surprised Kiss

Sad Kiss

Jealous Kiss

Happy Kiss

First Kiss

Last Kiss

It’s-the-end-of-the-world Kiss

We Survived Kiss

Forbidden Kiss

Sated Kiss

Tender Kiss

Passionate Kiss

Long Kiss

Quick Kiss

Morning Kiss

Before Bed Kiss

In Secret Kiss

Public Kiss

Accidentally Witnessed Kiss

Against a wall Kiss

True Love’s Kiss

Caught off-guard Kiss

Writer’s Choice

[Your Choice] Kiss

[mckitterick]

V.E. Schwab's advice for creating memorable characters - works for both protagonists and villains

source post: X

[dduane]

This is really good advice.

It also ties neatly into the simplest version of the formula for getting people emotionally engaged with your characters: or how to build the moment in which your character starts moving from their initial state to the state in which they'll start changing their own lives.

First, you figure out the one important thing the character believes that they're wrong about. There's usually a core misperception that they haven't examined. Once they're forced to engage with it, it'll start to change everything about their perception of the world they're inhabiting and/or the people in it.

Then, as V.E. says, you identify the character's great desire and their great fear: the thing that character wants more than anything, and the thing or situation that terrifies them, and that they'll go to any lengths to avoid.

And having identified these two objects or situations, you build a situation in which the two forces will be in close, direct opposition to one another... then drop the character down in between them, and squeeze. Those two opposing forces become the jaws of a vise... and you crank the vise more and more tightly closed until the character has no choice but to acknowledge those opposing forces, and start (even in a small way) to deal with the pressure being exerted and push their way through.

This does not have to be, initially, a great climactic moment. In fact, it works better if it's not. It's more effective if your character has a brief low-intensity brush with these conditions-in-conflict early on. That way, when your big resolution scene comes along about two-thirds or three-quarters of the way along through the story arc, you'll have set up a resonance between that earlier hint or intimation of what's to come, and the really big blowoff. Your readers will recognize the resonance—the throb of tension between the two occurrences, like the vibration of a plucked string—and will find satisfaction both in the true resolution having been partially telegraphed earlier, and in how it's now being experienced and resolved in full.

This approach also allows you to set up more minor resonances between the realization of the conflict and its final resolution. These can serve to bind the structure of the work more closely together: to make it look (and be) less like a series of loosely strung-together plot events, and more like a unified whole, in which ripples of story business flow backwards and forwards, interpenetrating and influencing one another, and hinting at the big one to come.

But none of this can happen until the paired and opposing what-do-they-most-desire, what-do-they-most-fear axes have been defined. So that's a subject it's smart to spend some while thinking about (and for all your characters, not just the major ones), to be sure you're getting it right.

It's not unusual to get the wrong answers, or merely superficial ones, while you're still working out what's actually going on with the characters. So take your time. Eventually you'll find a set of answers that feel unquestionably right... and you can then nail those down in your notes and get on with making the kind of "good trouble" for your characters that will see them made complete.

[thewriteadviceforwriters]

💥 Small Writing Habits That Genuinely Changed How I Write 💥

listen. i’m not here to sell you a productivity system or convince you that waking up at 5am will make you a novelist. i am deeply Not That Girl. HOWEVER, here are 5 chaotic little writing habits that quietly rearranged my brain chemistry:

✏️ typing BEFORE i know what happens i used to think i had to outline everything before writing. wrong. i get more done when i let the scene surprise me. just start with vibes and a line of dialogue. the rest shows up once you start moving.

🗣️ saying the scene out loud like a play no joke. talking my scenes out like a script?? life-changing. the pacing, the emotion, the rhythm of it all makes more sense when i act like i’m gossiping about my blorbos in a voice memo.

⌛ 20-minute timers (not for productivity, just to start) i tell myself “just 20 minutes.” sometimes i stop. sometimes i blink and it’s 2 hours later and someone’s been emotionally eviscerated in chapter 12. this one’s black magic. use wisely.

🕯️ re-reading my WIP like a book no editing, no judging, just reading through with snacks like it’s already published. changes how i see the pacing and emotional arcs. also reminds me it doesn’t completely suck.

🧂 leaving in the messy parts i used to delete scenes that felt “off.” now i just write a little comment like “THIS IS BAD BUT KEEP GOING.” turns out momentum matters more than vibes. shocking, i know.

anyway. tiny habits. huge mental rewiring. 10/10. highly recommend.