For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.

[robotslenderman]

Source

[tributary]

teetotailer

[judygemstone]

first incidence of good writing advice i've seen in 10+ years on this platform and it's in the notes of a mustelid wreaking absolute havoc in a german grocery store

[freddkong]

@virgo-dicks

[fixyourwritinghabits]

Fuck it, I'm reblogging this because it's right.

[trek-daily]

Listen to you. You sound like a captain.

STAR TREK: PICARD (2020-) “Hide and Seek” (2.09)

[xbcaptain]

[homunculus-argument]

I fucking love context clue worldbuilding, that talks as if the reader knows what you're talking about, and to keep up they'll just have to nod along like "okay, alright, so this is a thing", where like you descirbe shit like

"The globe was as large as an egg" - okay so they're usually smaller than an egg? or if you'd have said "as small as an egg", it's still the same fucking size but now we know they're usually larger than an egg?

"She owned both of the two tallest hats in the county", okay so this is a place where the height of a woman's hat is something people generally care about? Looking at the way this character otherwise behaves, this is clearly a flex.

"His scowl was as frightening and beautiful as those of gilded temple dragons" okay so there are temples in this setting, and they have scary-looking gilded dragons in them, and also the narrator finds red flags sexy.

[captaincrusher]

All of Tom's children and his grandson Andrew. He not only had children with 75 % of the female cast but also successfully incorporated Harry into his family tree as well.

[vintagegeekculture]

oooh have you ever done a post about the ridiculous mandatory twist endings in old sci-fi and horror comics? Like when the guy at the end would be like "I saved the Earth from Martians because I am in fact a Vensuvian who has sworn to protect our sister planet!" with no build up whatsoever.

Yeah, that is a good question - why do some scifi twist endings fail?

As a teenager obsessed with Rod Serling and the Twilight Zone, I bought every single one of Rod Serling’s guides to writing. I wanted to know what he knew.

The reason that Rod Serling’s twist endings work is because they “answer the question” that the story raised in the first place. They are connected to the very clear reason to even tell the story at all. Rod’s story structures were all about starting off with a question, the way he did in his script for Planet of the Apes (yes, Rod Serling wrote the script for Planet of the Apes, which makes sense, since it feels like a Twilight Zone episode): “is mankind inherently violent and self-destructive?” The plot of Planet of the Apes argues the point back and forth, and finally, we get an answer to the question: the Planet of the Apes was earth, after we destroyed ourselves. The reason the ending has “oomph” is because it answers the question that the story asked. 

My friend and fellow Rod Serling fan Brian McDonald wrote an article about this where he explains everything beautifully. Check it out. His articles are all worth reading and he’s one of the most intelligent guys I’ve run into if you want to know how to be a better writer.

According to Rod Serling, every story has three parts: proposal, argument, and conclusion. Proposal is where you express the idea the story will go over, like, “are humans violent and self destructive?” Argument is where the characters go back and forth on this, and conclusion is where you answer the question the story raised in a definitive and clear fashion. 

The reason that a lot of twist endings like those of M. Night Shyamalan’s and a lot of the 1950s horror comics fail is that they’re just a thing that happens instead of being connected to the theme of the story. 

One of the most effective and memorable “final panels” in old scifi comics is EC Comics’ “Judgment Day,” where an astronaut from an enlightened earth visits a backward planet divided between orange and blue robots, where one group has more rights than the other. The point of the story is “is prejudice permanent, and will things ever get better?” And in the final panel, the astronaut from earth takes his helmet off and reveals he is a black man, answering the question the story raised. 

[airyairyquitecontrary-deactivat]

IIRC “Judgment Day” was part of the inspiration for the excellent Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode “Far Beyond the Stars.”

[may-shepard]

This whole post is liquid gold for writers.

[neil-gaiman]

What do you think of this Ursula k le guin quote about how, under capitalism, 'fantasy becomes a commodity, an industry. commodified fantasy takes no risks: it invents nothing, but imitates and trivializes. it proceeds by depriving the old stories of their intellectual and ethical complexity, turning their action to violence, their actors to dolls, and their truth- telling to sentimental platitude. heroes brandish their swords, lasers, wands, as mechanically as combine harvesters, reaping profits. profoundly disturbing moral choices are sanitized, made cute, made safe.' ?

I think Ursula was a genius, honest and wise.

I also think that sometimes, especially when they are the first things of that kind you've read, even the most hackneyed ideas can astonish, enlighten and inspire you. We bring ourselves to what we read.

So I wouldn't ever write off bad fiction, or cheap fiction, or commoditised fiction of whatever kind, because for someone somewhere it could have been the magical door for which they had always been waiting.

[loveletter2you]

“once upon a time” in other languages

korean: “back when tigers used to smoke” (호랑이 담배 피우던 시절에) [x]

czech: “beyond seven mountain ranges, beyond seven rivers” (za sedmero horami a sedmero řekami)

georgian: “there was, and there was not, there was…” (იყო და არა იყო რა, იყო…)

hausa: “a story, a story. let it go, let it come.” [x]

romanian: “there once was, (as never before)… because if there wasn’t, it wouldn’t have been to told” (A fost odată, ca niciodată că dacă n-ar fi fost, nu s-ar mai povesti…)

lithuanian: “beyond nine seas, beyond nine lagoons: (už devynių jūrų, už devynių marių)

catalan: “see it here that in that time in which beasts spoke and people were silent…” (vet aquí que en aquell temps que les bèsties parlaven i les persones callaven…) [x]

turkish: “Once there was, and once there wasn’t. In the long-distant days of yore, when haystacks winnowed sieves, when genies played jereed in the old bathhouse, [when] fleas were barbers, [when] camels were town criers, [and when] I softly rocked my baby grandmother to sleep in her creaking cradle, there was/lived, in an exotic land, far, far away, a/an…* (Bir varmış, bir yokmuş. Evvel zaman içinde, kalbur saman içinde, cinler cirit oynar iken eski hamam içinde, pireler berber [iken], develer tellal [iken], ben ninemin beşiğini tıngır mıngır sallar iken, uzak diyarların birinde…)

[waywren]

japanese: “long and long ago…” (昔々mukashi mukashi)

[spacelizardswhopassedthreshold]

Just wanted to let you know that I'm italian and I'm currently rewatching "scorpion" and I find this hilarious:

This is the very first scene with Leonardo Da Vinci and THIS is one of his first lines... just for your interest "che cazzo" means "what the fuck", it is a slur, it is absolutely not family friendly and you should most definitely not use it formal situations ever, cazzo literally means dick (as in penis) and it is one of our countless slurs...

So if anyone ever complains about Discovery characters swearing from time to time, tell them that Voyager did it first (and in the dumbest situation possible)...

Also fun fact: in italian is is translated as "per l'inferno" which is a very old and harmless way to say "what the hell" :)

[sleepcities-deactivated20230306]

no but the same way that phones and laptops are guilty of scheduled obsolescence, entertainment conglomerates, and to some extent even regular writers just trying to ‘make it big’, are treating stories as though they’re meant to have a built-in expiration date. it’s the obsession with plot twists that ultimately mean nothing, it’s shock for shock’s sake, it’s the way spoilers are treated as inherently experience-ruining. stories are written for the first viewing and the first viewing only, because after you’ve seen something once, why would you want to see it again? so it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t hold up on a second viewing or if the entire plot is ruined if you go into it knowing a single detail. you’re only going to care once, aren’t you?

but like. is that really true? is it really true that an experience with a piece of art is only worth having once? is it really not worth it to create something that will be loved enough that its lovers come back to it? that’s so much

[watchingds9forbashir]

The Voyager writers really looked at Tom Paris and said here’s what we’re gonna do: make this guy deliver at least one baby a season 

[captacorn-deactivated20230731]

I have never thought of this but yes, this is weirdly true. The man delivers a lot of babies. (We’ll assume he delivered the salamanders triplets) 

He also got every major female character pregnant except Seven of Nine!

[delwin47]

...and, intriguingly, not a single one of Tom’s children is fully human... (except maybe the salamanders, I guess?) That’s some impressive odds-beating there...

[missdibley]

[modernsuperhero]

the rubber duck

[arsonistblue]

For anyone curious what they mean by the rubber duck, rubber duck debugging is a tactic used by programmers to figure out bugs in the code. To do it, they explain the code, verbally, line by line, to the rubber duck until they find it. 

It’s also very useful for writers, and I’ve used it multiple times with rubber ducks, stuffed animals, and my friends.

[quadraphonictypewriter]

behold

[ruffboi-mags]

So apparently, over the summer, Quibi (the shortest-lasting streaming service ever lmao) did a quarantine project called “Home Movie: The Princess Bride” where a bunch of celebrities recreated The Princess Bride in tiny chunks at home.

And like there was no permanent cast, all these celebrities seem to have gotten a scene or part of a scene to do (i’m not sure exactly, I did not ever watch Quibi and thus haven’t seen this yet), and then they just… recreated it as best they could. At home. Under quarantine.

So like, you had Jennifer Garner in a blanket cape playing Princess Buttercup AND the Booing Old Woman with a crowd comprised entirely of stuffed animals:

Or Taika Waititi paying Westley off a badly-drawn Inigo on a piece of cardboard held in front of someone’s face:

And it’s all just delightful.

But my absolute favorite part of this thing that I’ve sadly never seen but assume is probably absolutely hilarious and a treasure and I want to find it some day and watch the whole thing… is that Carey Elwes is in it.

As Prince Fucking Humperdink.

[movebackintime]

https://youtu.be/lR8pA_WV9QI

Here ya go

[radiojamming]

[gaysidneycrosby]

look i get that sometimes characters dying is like good for the story or whatever but consider. i want them all to be alive and have family dinners together. check and mate

[delwin47]

And a Star to Steer Her By (ST:VOY Fic)

…episode one of the Voyager Space Pirate! saga, wherein our piratical heroes are flung into unexpected and dire circumstances…

On AO3 Here and FFN Here

Preview below the break…

Keep reading

[delwin47]

Reblogging one more time for the weekend with many, many thanks for all of the kudos, likes, reblogs and kind comments for the space pirates!

[setyourphaserstoslutty]

i know i know that voyager was very professional (severe props to janeway for that) because if you have ever been on a fucking roadtrip you know people do not get along for long periods of time

where are my squabbles where are the people that just said fuck it and stopped wearing makeup and who was first to come to work in their pjs cause what are you gonna do tell them to change is Chakotay going to dress code B’Elanna because she wanted to wear cute long wrench pj pants 

[captaincarriekathryncoffee]

OHMIGOSH NOW I NEED TO WRITE THIS

[captacorn-deactivated20230731]

They could have taken it a lot further than they did, but one of the things I love about Voyager is how they are clearly FED UP with each other a lot of the time. But I would not say no to a fic that dug deeper into this!

[delwin47]

And a Star to Steer Her By (ST:VOY Fic)

…episode one of the Voyager Space Pirate! saga, wherein our piratical heroes are flung into unexpected and dire circumstances…

On AO3 Here and FFN Here

Preview below the break...

Chapter One, in which the pirate ship Val Jean expands her crew

 Eons ago, when the Great Rings were still in their bright infancy, reflecting and intensifying all light that came their way, tall ships skimmed their glittering surface, bearing the races of the Twin Planets and their many moons across the vast reaches of space…

 “We need a pilot.”

“We have a pilot.  He’s standing in front of you.”

“A real pilot, Chakotay.” B’Elanna doesn’t bother to scowl, her captain notices.  Probably a bad sign.

“We’re not a merchant ship.  We can’t just pick up some ex-Fleeter.”

Now she does scowl: the ‘Fleet is a sore point. “No, we’re a pirate ship.  Can’t we just pick up a pirate pilot…or ex-pirate pilot…or whatever?”

Chakotay’s eyebrows climb. “You’d trust a space pirate to fly your ship?”

“It’s your ship, not mine,” she returns, less than pleased with his banter. “And isn’t it currently being flown by a space pirate pilot?”

“Not a real one apparently.”

“Chakotay…”

“My point,” and he holds up his hands in a peace offering, “is that ‘real’ pilots don’t grow on trees. And,” he adds, “they usually don’t come cheap.”

“Still, we need one.”

Chakotay scratches his salt and peppered hair. “You really think I won’t cut it?”

“In atmosphere, sure. But we’re heading back out to the Rings.”

“Bendera?” The captain twists back to the man lounging amidst the small mountain of supply crates littering the ship’s main deck, his ostensive focus on feeding crackers to the ship’s parrot, Neelix. “A little help here?” Tossing Neelix a final offering, Bendera reluctantly turns toward where his captain and the ship’s engineer continue to face off.  “Sorry, Captain.  For one,” he grimaces, “she’s right.  And for two,” the grimace morphs into a lopsided grin, “she’s scarier.”

The engineer snorts but crosses her arms and raises a brow in challenge to her captain.  Standing on the Val Jean’s deck in her pirate leathers and with her ridged Klingon profile, Chakotay admits that Bendera likely has a point: she is scarier.

He concedes defeat. “There is one possibility that has been mentioned to me.”

“One is all we need.”

“You’re not going to like him.”

“I don’t need to like him.  I just need him to…”

“…fly the ship,” Chakotay finishes as, satisfied that she has won her point, his engineer turns to head back below decks to her engine room.  He stands watching her go, his teeth gritted.

Bendera rises from his crates and moves to his captain’s shoulder. “What is it?” Chakotay shrugs, then sighs. “I’m not going to like him either.”