for Inspiration, Fascination or Procrastination

Sideblog. Currently under construction. Planning to use this space for writing prompts, images that can inspire a story, writing tips, and anything to help a writer on their quest. Icon by @bookmrk

[tanoraqui]

basically I think that if your protagonist doesn’t want to fuck someone so bad it makes them look stupid, then there probably isn’t enough energy in your story. “Fuck someone” isn’t literal btw—they can want to uncover the secrets of their parent’s death, they can want to prove their worth, they can want a donut from one particular bakery—it can be anything so long as they want it so bad that they’ll make decisions that make any sane person go “are you a moron??”, with little to no forethought, or even tons of forethought and this is still the option they chose. Because they want to fuck that thing so bad.

[bigfan1811]

wait isn’t that just giving your characters a motivation???

[tanoraqui]

You’d be surprised at how many people fail to give their characters motivation, and so write a story that’s less good than it could be.

It’s surprisingly easy to come up with an incredibly cool plot and characters without giving the characters enough motivation to make it actually compelling enough to read or even write. If you have a cool af idea that you somehow just can’t bring yourself to write, ask yourself what the main character wants, and how is that driving their decisions?

They need to want it so bad that it makes them look stupid. They need to impulse-buy a half-broken spaceship by mortgaging radioactive land, because they’re just that desperate to prove themselves more than a discarded scrap of a far greater history. They need to want their home and their people safe so much that they’ll risk their own soul to march across hundreds of miles of unknown and terrible danger to throw a cursed ring into a volcano. They need to love someone so much, and need them to know it, that they’ll blurt it out in the middle of a press conference or royal ball, or surrounded by enemies with a garrote at their throat or about to be frozen in carbonite or in the middle of a storm-tossed sea battle between pirates, British Navy, and the undead—or, they need to love someone so much that they’ll swear fealty to an evil emperor and kill a bunch of friends and children for the power to save them. They need to be so balls-to-the-wall insane in at least one regard that the plot isn’t just happening to them, they are in some way causing the plot.

Also keep in mind! When it comes to character development, “WANT” is NOT the same as “NEED”! Sometimes a character knows what’s good for them, what will truly often make them happy, but more often they don’t. They want the acclaim and adoration of the crowds, but really they need the recognition, acceptance or love of one particular person—and maybe that person is their own self. They want to avenge the loss of their loved one, but really they need to accept the loss and move on. A refusal to accept what they need is usually going to get in the way of what they want—and sometimes they figure it out just in time to go forward and climactically achieve their goal, or maybe they double down on their character flaws in a classic display of Greek tragedy!

[mysteryteacup]

"Fuck someone” isn’t literal btw

As an Aro-Ace who was very uncomfortable with your post until this point: THANK YOU!

Also, one caveat: there is one rare type of story where the protagonist cannot become stupid over what they're after. This is the detective story where their character is in many ways a placeholder for the audience to try to solve the puzzle (as opposed to more thrilery types of detective story) and the detective's internal motivations are basically irrelevant because they are in many ways a framing device.

Ironically, ACD Sherlock Holmes, who most people would immediatley think of for this sort of always detached detective, does not always fit this caveat protag type. He can and has done stupid.

[sunderwight]

This is because a lot of detective stories have the detective as a sort of framing device, examining the motives of everyone else in the story. The absence of the main character's fuck-stupid-drive is more than compensated for in terms of everyone else having an outsized one.

Same rule also applies to things like video game stories where the protagonist is more of a proxy character & lens for the player to examine the world, while the rest of the cast has motivation to spare. Basically, you can have a protagonist who is relatively normal about things if you make up for it by having everyone else pick up the slack (and then some).

Also you don't need to start out with your protagonist's motivation being at 11, you can start a bit sooner and then use whatever event dials it up and breaks off the knob as your opening climax. For instance, at the start of Star Wars, Luke's motivation to go travel and rescue Leia is pretty strong but it's not strong enough to override his loyalty to his aunt and uncle. It's only when they are dramatically killed that his drive becomes powerful enough for him to follow some old guy he barely knows to booking a shady smuggler's ship off-planet and go try and punch an interstellar empire in the nuts.

[homunculus-argument]

Reading fantasy again, I've started thinking about how odd it is how in books like that, the non-human races invariably scoff at human frailty and vulnerability, even those that they'll call friends. Like that's mean?? Why would you be a dick to your friend who you know is not capable of as much as you are, and it's not their fault they were born like that. That's mean.

Like consider the opposite: Characters of non-human races treating their human companions like frail little old dogs. Worrying about small wounds being fatal - humans die of small injuries all the time - or being surprised that humans can actually eat salt, even if they can't stomach other spicy rocks. Being amazed that a human friend they haven't seen in 10 years still looks so young, they've hardly aged at all! And when the human tries to explain that they weren't going to just unexpectedly shrivel into a raisin in 10 years, the longer-lifespan friend dismisses this like no, he's seen it happen, you don't see a human for 10 or 20 years and they've shriveled in a blink.

Elves arguing with each other like "you can't take her out there, she will die!" and when the human gets there to ask what they're talking about, they explain to her that the journey will take them through a passage where it's going to be sunny out there. Humans burn in the sun. And she will have to clarify that no, actually, she'll be fine. They fight her about it, until she manages to convince them that it's not like vampires - humans only burn a little bit in the sun, not all the way through. She'll be fine if she just wears a hat.

Meanwhile dwarves are reluctant to allow humans in their mines and cities, not just out of being secretive, but because they know that you cannot bring humans underground, they will go insane if they go too long without seeing the sun. Nobody is entirely sure how long that is, but the general consensus is three days. One time a human tries to explain their dwarf companion that this is not true, there are humans that endure much longer darkness than that. As a matter of fact, in the furthest habited corners of the lands of the Northmen, the winter sun barely rises at all. Humans can survive three weeks of darkness, and not just once, but every single year.

"Then how do they sane?" Asks the dwarf, and just as he does, the conversation gets interrupted by the northland human, who had been eavesdropping, and turns to look at them with an unnerving glint in her colourless grey eyes, grinning while saying

"That's the neat part, we don't."

[homunculus-argument]

Tags of @from-the-coffee-shop-in-edoras

"Hello, I am a human. I was born 15 minutes ago, my expected lifespan is about 30 minutes, and I am going to spend that time trying to fight god."

[roach-works]

have you ever seen a pet squirrel. they do that. ive seen a pet squirrel fly into a killing rage because it was trying to bury a tennis ball underneath a human's ass and the human stood up. this quivering scrap of fluff was born six months ago and as far as it's concerned it can end you right now.

[isfjmel-phleg]

So you want to describe a room? I'm not claiming to be any kind of expert, and of course everybody has to find out what works for them, but here are some things that I personally have found helpful when writing descriptions for interiors. You may or may not find it useful, but I thought I'd share in case it could help.

The key question to ask is: What do you want the room to say about something?

Is it a character's personal space? Is it a room that serves a particular purpose? Do you need the setting to convey a particular mood or feeling? Rooms aren't just backdrop; they're an opportunity to build your world, set your scene, and/or develop your characters.

My OC who is an enthusiastic, scattered, impulsive fifteen-year-old girl who lives in a poorly-upkept country castle is going to have a dramatically different bedroom from, say, the OC who is a serious, driven, artistic twelve-year-old girl who lives in a middle-class townhouse in the city. The cluttered antique shop that's the setting of one of my weird short stories needs to convey a very different impression from the hospital waiting room in another such story. Even if your setting isn't anything visually impressive, even if it's the blandest office, that still says something about your world and characters.

Every room is saying something.

For practice, observe rooms in the real world and think about them.

What do these rooms contain? What does the design of a room and its contents say about the people who live there or who use it? How are public spaces different in appearance from private ones? How would a person whose room this is see it? What about a friend of that person? Or a stranger? How does perception of it change at different times of the day or in different states of upkeep?

Take my living room. Most of the mismatched furniture is secondhand, except for a few pieces, like the umbrella stand shaped like an umbrella, or the coffee table that resembles a trunk edged in metal and rivets. The coffee table is piled with papers and books and miscellaneous objects (including a never-used crossword puzzle mug, a turtle hand puppet, and a stray block). More piles of books and papers and comics crowd any flat surfaces. There are three tall bookshelves, crowded with books, sorted by genre and author, and a cabinet of DVDs, sorted by title. Throw blankets lie wadded on the couch until I bother to neatly fold them over the back of the armchair. Displays of decorative objects appear on top of the desk, the cabinet, and a side table. The walls are covered in art prints, mostly of my OCs, but also botanical designs, a poster of the entire text of a Shakespeare play, a couple of wreaths featuring berries, and a Bouguereau painting. The area rug badly needs vacuuming. Sometimes I let boxes pile up by the door instead of taking them out to the trash. There's a good-sized window, but not much natural light. The walls are painted a green-gray color that darkens the space--I didn't choose it. What could you infer about this room? My impression would be home and comfort, but you, who have (probably) never been there, might come to some other conclusions about the person who lives there and her tastes and habits.

The rooms that you write about may be nothing like ones you see in real life in terms of design and detail, but you can bring principles you've observed into just about any kind of setting.

Once you know what you want to convey through the description of the room, the next question is: How can you use imagery to craft this impression?

Sure, you can tell your readers that a room is messy or fancy or boring, but for a description that will pack a punch and stick out in your readers' minds, using imagery is helpful.

So try things like playing with color symbolism. Conside the condition of the room and the objects in it: old, new, tidy, messy, well-kept, neglected, etc. Notice the distinctive objects in it--or even lack of distinctive objects--and call attention to this. Things like the size of the space or the lighting (or lack thereof) can also be striking.

Make the details sensory for a stronger impression. Textures, smells, sounds, etc. But don't feel like you have to go overboard. Zero in on a few specific, impactful images and details. You don't need to describe everything in the room. Just what gets your point across and anything in the room that your characters will interact with or that will serve a purpose in the story. Keep your description proportionate to the room's significance in the story. You should aim for quality over quantity.

This is a description that I'm fairly satisfied with. It's the study of a king, as seen for the first time by a boy who is there because he is in trouble. I wanted to give an impression of wealth and splendor but also of coldness, distance, power, obsession with an appearance of flawlessness. I wanted the room to feel a bit off, a bit ominous. So I chose imagery that suggested the lifeness of a museum, with some classical influences. "White marble" is repeated for emphasis on uniformity. The textures are cold and hard, with an absence of the warmth and softness of textiles. And the final chess image positions the protagonist as a seemingly powerless player in a game he doesn't know the rules of.

It's a lengthier description because I needed to establish just how terrifying the room and the man in it are for the protagonist so that the reader, who is just meeting him, understands what kind of world he lives in and whom he's up against as he's about to have a difficult conversation.

He stood in a room of white marble beneath a high domed ceiling. Bookcases lined the walls, displaying books all the same size, bound identically in the deep blue and silver of the Liennese flag. White marble busts on Ionic pedestals peeked out from corners with pupilless stares. Tamett shuddered, half expecting them to quiz him in Greek with the voice of HRH’s tutor. A forest of blindingly white columns stretched toward the far end of the room. There, before a white marble fireplace, were chairs upholstered in studded navy leather, their unsociable slipperiness unrelieved by any cushion or rug. And beside the chairs, behind a fortress of a desk, awaited exactly the sort of man who would own such a room. The king glanced up from his papers and said, “Come in,” in a low voice that seemed to shake the very dome. Tamett inched across the rugless floor, studying its checkered pattern and wondering if the king had ever considered acquiring giant chessmen to match it.

A further way to describe a room is to let your characters interact with the space. What effect does it have on them? How do they move within it? Are they comfortable there or reluctant to engage and why? How do the contents of the room inform what the characters are doing and thinking about? If there's a couch and an armchair at a distance from it, and there are three people present, who gets the couch and who gets to be physically distanced from the others? How does a character deal with a room that's set up for someone else's convenience but doesn't work for them? If there's a mirror in the room, how does a character respond to it?--can't keep their eyes off it? ignores it? punches it? Etc. etc.

I don't know if this makes any sense, but these are the kinds of things I try to keep in mind for room descriptions. If I ever actually write.

[ghostofcinders]

Really can't go wrong in fantasy with a giant skeleton being part of the environment. I'm talking colossal, part of the scenery bones.

Oh yes, let me wonder what the hell it is, how it died, how long it has been there. Let me walk on its ribs pathways, climb inside an eyesocket, look at where it fused with the nature around it.

[otherwindow]

I loveee fantasy settings doing magical exhaustion:

burnt out pyromancers emitting steam and smoke

tired cryomancers shivering with visible foggy breath

weary necromancers looking ill and hearing voices

frazzled healers receiving the same cuts, bruises, and injuries of their patients

[otherwindow]

Druid, low on magic: I'm [coughs up flowers] fine.

[quietwingsinthesky]

im a fucking sucker for the “character gets so badly injured that they can’t think clearly and start calling for help in a distressingly vulnerable way.” characters who start using nicknames for their friends they haven’t used since they were kids. characters who start begging for their brother they haven’t seen in years to be there. characters who would usually use their parents’ names or call them mother/father/etc crying out mama when they go down. u understand.

[mylordshesacactus]

Hot take: Actual literary analysis requires at least as much skill as writing itself, with less obvious measures of whether or not you’re shit at it, and nobody is allowed to do any more god damn litcrit until they learn what the terms “show, don’t tell” and “pacing” mean.

[mylordshesacactus]

Pacing

The “pacing” of a piece of media comes down to one thing, and one thing only, and it has nothing to do with your personal level of interest. It comes down to this question alone: Is the piece of media making effective use of the time it has?

That’s it.

So, for example, things which are NOT a example of bad pacing include a piece of media that is:

A slow burn

Episodic

Fast-paced

Prioritizing character interaction over intricate plot

Opening in medias res without immediate context

Incorporating a large number of subplots

Incorporating very few subplots

Bad pacing IS when a piece of media has

“Wasted” time, ie, screentime or page space dedicated to plotlines or characters that are ultimately irrelevant to the plot or thematic resolution at the cost of properly developing that resolution. Pour one out for the SW:TCW fans.

The presence of a sidestory or giving secondary characters a separate resolution of their personal arc is not “bad writing,” and only becomes a pacing issue if it falls into one of the other two categories.

Not enough time, ie, a story attempts to involve more plotlines than it has time or space to give satisfying resolutions to, resulting in all of them being “rushed” even though the writer(s) made scrupulous use of every second of page/screentime and made sure every single section advanced those storylines.

Padding for time, ie, Open-World Game Syndrome. Essentially, you have ten hours of genuinely satisfying story….but “short games don’t sell,” so you insert vast swathes of empty landscape to traverse, a bunch of nonsense fetch quests to complete, or take one really satisfying questline and repeat it ten times with different names/macguffins, to create 40 hours of “gameplay” that have stopped being fun because the same thing happens over and over. If you think this doesn’t happen in novels, you have never read Oliver Twist.

Another note on pacing: There are, except arguably in standalone movies, at least two levels of pacing going on at any given time. There’s the pacing within the installment, and the pacing within the series. Generally, there’s three levels of pacing–within the installment (a chapter, an episode, a level), within the volume (a season, a novel, a game), and within the series as a whole. Sometimes, in fact FREQUENTLY, a piece of media will work on one of these levels but not on all of them. (Usually the ideal is that it works on all three, but that’s not always important! Not every individual chapter of a novel needs to be actively relevant to the entire overarching series.)

Honestly, the best possible masterclass in how to recognize good, bad, and “they tried their best but needed more space” pacing? If you want to learn this skill, and get better at recognizing it?

Doctor Who.

ESPECIALLY Classic Who, which has clearly-delineated “serials” within their seasons. You can pretty much pick any serial at random, and once you’ve seen a few of them, you get a REALLY good feel for things like, for example…

Wow, that serial did not need to be twelve episodes long; they got captured and escaped at least three different times and made like four different plans that they ended up not being able to execute, and maybe once or twice they would have ramped up the tension, but it really didn’t contribute anything–this could have been a normal four-episode serial and been much stronger.

Holy shit there were WAY too many balls being juggled in this, this would have been better with the concepts split into two separate serials, as it stands they only had four episodes and they just couldn’t develop anything fully

Oh my god that was AMAZING I want to watch it again and take notes on how they divided up the individual episodes and what plot beats they chose to break on each week

Eh, structurally that was good, but even as a 90-minute special that nuwho episode feels like it would have worked a lot better as a Classic serial with a little more room to breathe.

How in the actual name of god did they stretch like twenty minutes of actual story into a four-episode serial (derogatory)

How in the actual name of god did they stretch like twenty minutes of actual story into a four-episode serial (awestruck)

If you’re not actively trying to learn pacing, either for literary analysis or your own writing…honestly? Just learn to differentiate between whether the pacing is bad or if it just doesn’t appeal to you. There’s a WORLD of difference between “The pacing is too slow” and “the pacing is too slow for me.” 

“I really prefer a slower build into a universe; the fact that it opens in medias res and you piece together where you are and how the magic system works over the next several chapters from context is way too fast-paced for me and makes me feel lost, so I bounced off it” is, usually, a much more constructive commentary than “the pacing is bad”. 

And when the pacing really is bad, you’ll be doing everyone a favor by being able to actually articulate why.

[mylordshesacactus]

Show, Don’t Tell

This is a very specific rule that has been taken dramatically out of context and is almost always used incorrectly.

“Show, don’t tell” applies to character traits and worldbuilding, not information in the plot.

It may be easier to “get” this rule if you forget the specific phrasing for a minute. This is a mnemonic device to avoid Informed Attributes, nothing more and nothing less. 

Character traits like a character being funny, smart, kind, annoying, badass, etc, should be established by their behavior in-universe and the reactions of others to them–if you just SAY they’re X thing but never show it, then you’re just telling the audience these things. Similarly you can’t just tell the audience that a setting has brutal winters and expect to be believed, when the clothing, architecture, preparations, etc shown as common in that setting do not match those that brutal winters would necessitate. 

To recap:

Violations of Show Don’t Tell:

A viewpoint character describing themselves as having a trait (being a loner, easily distractable, clumsy, etc) but not actually shown to possess it (lacking friends, getting distracted from anything important, or dropping/tripping over things at inopportune moments.)

The narration declaring an emotional state (”Character A was furious”) rather than demonstrating the emotion through dialogue or depicting it onscreen.

A fourth-wall-breaking narrator; ie, Kuzco in The Emperor’s New Groove directly addressing the audience to explain that he’s a llama and also the protagonist, is NOT the same! This actually serves as a flawless example of showing rather than telling–we are SHOWN that Kuzco is immature and egotistical, even though that’s not what he’s saying.

A fictional society or setting being declared by the narrative to be free of a negative trait–bigotry, for example–but that negative trait being clearly present, where this discrepancy is not narratively engaged with. 

(For example: There is officially no sexism in Thedas and yet female characters are subject to gendered slurs and expectations; the world of Honor Harrington is supposedly societally opposed to eugenics, yet “cures” for disability and constant mentions of a nebulous genetic “advantage” from certain characters’ ancestry are regular plot points that are viewed positively by the characters and are not narratively questioned.)

A character declaring that their society has no bigotry, when that character is clearly wrong, is not the same thing.

The narrative voice declaring objective correctness; everyone who agrees with the protagonist is portrayed as correct and anyone who questions them is portrayed as evil, or else there is no questioning whatsoever. For example: in Star Trek: Enterprise, Jonathan Archer tortures an unarmed prisoner. What follows is a multi-episode arc in which every person he respects along with Starfleet Command goes out of their way to dismiss the idea that he should bear any guilt, or that his actions were anything but completely necessary and objectively morally correct. No narrative space is allowed for disagreement, or for the audience to come to its own conclusion.

NOT Violations of Show Don’t Tell:

A character explaining a concept to another character who would logically, within that universe/situation, be the recipient of such an explanation.

An in-universe explanation BECOMES a SdT violation if the explanation fails to play out in reality, such as a spaceship being described as slow or flawed in some way but never actually having those weaknesses. Imagine if the Millennium Falcon was constantly described as a broken-down piece of junk…and never had any mechanical failures, AND Han and Chewie weren’t constantly shown repairing it!

Information being revealed through dialogue, period. Having your hacker in a heist movie describe the enemy security system isn’t “telling” and thus bad writing. Having information revealed organically through dialogue is what “show” means.

The “as you know” trope is technically a Show Don’t Tell violation, despite being dialogue, because it’s unnatural within the universe and serves solely to let the writer deliver information directly, ie, telling.

Characters discussing their own actions and expressing their motivations and/or decision-making process at the time.

The existence of an omnipotent narrator, or the narration itself confirming something. Narration saying “there was no way anyone could make it in time” is delivering contextual information, not breaking Show Don’t Tell. 

Keep in mind that “Show, don’t tell” is meant to be advice for beginning authors. Because “telling” is easier and requires less skill than “showing,” inexperienced authors need to focus on getting as much “show” in as possible. 

However, “telling” is also extremely important. Sometimes, especially in written formats, the most appropriate way to deliver information to the audience is to just say it and move on.

Keep in mind that a viewpoint character in anything but…a portal fantasy, essentially…is going to be familiar with the world they’re in. Not every protagonist needs to be a raw newcomer with zero knowledge of their new world! In most cases, a viewpoint character is going to know things that the audience doesn’t. Generally, the ONLY natural way to introduce worldbuilding in this situation is to just have the narration point them out. (It makes sense for Obi-Wan to have to explain the Force; it would make no sense for Han to explain the concept of space travel to Luke, who grew up in this universe and knows what the hell a starship is. So, if you’re writing the novelization of A New Hope, you need to just say “and so they jumped into hyperspace, the strange blue-white plane that allowed faster-than-light travel” and move the hell on.)

For that matter, in some media (ie, children’s cartoons) where teaching a moral lesson is the clear intent, a certain level of “telling” is not only appropriate but necessary!

The actual goal of “showing” and “telling” is to maintain a balance, and make sure everything feels natural. Show things that need to be shown, and…don’t waste everyone’s time showing things that would feel much more natural if they were just told.

But that’s not nearly as pithy a slogan.

[mylordshesacactus]

(Reblog this version y’all I fixed some really serious typos)

[raevenlywrites]

Quick addition: When you Show, you Slow.

Taking the time to Show something rather than simply Telling it slows the moment down–and that can be a good thing! When you want a moment to have real emotional impact, when you want the audience to linger and really connect with the scene, use Show to slow them down and really make them live in it. Use descriptive language, engage the senses, and make your audience spend some time with it.

This is Not always desirable. If you’re heavily Showing in moments that aren’t truly important, your audience will disengage and get impatient and then bored. I always err on the side of over showing in a first draft, over trimming to lots of telling in a second draft, then marrying them together in a third once I’ve gotten a better understanding of the pacing with the second Telling draft.

[ouroborosmotifs]

lycanthropy is the best metaphor for the constant tug between “i’m not monstrous all the time so maybe i’m redeemable” and the cruel reminder that “just because my monstrosity isn’t visible doesn’t mean it’s not there”

[writing-prompt-s]

Your friend always said “I’ll rest when I’m dead,” so much that it became his catchphrase. He says it again today when he came into work, going about his daily routine. This normally wouldn’t be concerning, if not for the fact that you attended his funeral two weeks ago.

[writing-prompt-s]

What are some chronic illnesses that can only occur in a fantasy setting?

[beleester]

Partial transformation - mummy rot is slowly turning you to sand, a near miss from a medusa left you with partially stoned body parts, etc.

Hypnotic suggestions from being mind controlled persist after the controller’s death, causing the victim to occasionally take actions to support the cause of a mind flayer cult that no longer exists.

Repeated demonic possession has left the patient with permanent gaps in their soul’s defenses, causing them to immediately get re-possessed if they go outside a consecrated area.

Post-resurrection trauma as the revived soul remembers an unpleasant afterlife.

Magical healing can get very weird if something is stuck in the wound. It’ll get you back on your feet, but you can get outcomes like “there’s a chunk of wood fused into your chest because the magic couldn’t figure out how to get the arrow out of your chest and just healed it in place,” and this can cause mobility issues or infection vectors down the line.

[luna-azzurra]

Good Traits Gone Bad

Exploring good traits gone bad in a novel can add depth and complexity to your characters. Here are a few examples of good traits that can take a negative turn:

1. Empathy turning into manipulation: A character with a strong sense of empathy may use it to manipulate others' emotions and gain an advantage.

2. Confidence becoming arrogance: Excessive confidence can lead to arrogance, where a character belittles others and dismisses their opinions.

3. Ambition turning into obsession: A character's ambition can transform into an unhealthy obsession, causing them to prioritize success at any cost, including sacrificing relationships and moral values.

4. Loyalty becoming blind devotion: Initially loyal, a character may become blindly devoted to a cause or person, disregarding their own well-being and critical thinking.

5. Courage turning into recklessness: A character's courage can morph into reckless behavior, endangering themselves and others due to an overestimation of their abilities.

6. Determination becoming stubbornness: Excessive determination can lead to stubbornness, where a character refuses to consider alternative perspectives or change their course of action, even when it's detrimental.

7. Optimism becoming naivety: Unwavering optimism can transform into naivety, causing a character to overlook dangers or be easily deceived.

8. Protectiveness turning into possessiveness: A character's protective nature can evolve into possessiveness, where they become overly controlling and jealous in relationships.

9. Altruism becoming self-neglect: A character's selflessness may lead to neglecting their own needs and well-being, to the point of self-sacrifice and burnout.

10. Honesty becoming brutal bluntness: A character's commitment to honesty can turn into brutal bluntness, hurting others with harsh and tactless remarks.

These examples demonstrate how even admirable traits can have negative consequences when taken to extremes or used improperly. By exploring the complexities of these traits, you can create compelling and multi-dimensional characters in your novel.

Happy writing!

[necessary-glitter]

18th Century Writing Resources

Because I’ve had these in my bookmarks for a while and I thought it was high time I get a little more organized.

Makeup

Historically Accurate Marie Antoinette Makeup Tutorial

Hairstyles and Makeup

The “Toilette” in 18th Century England

Makeup and Lead Poisoning

Makeup in the 18th Century

Fashion

Glorious Historical Costuming Blog

Men’s Hats

18 Century Undergarments

More Clothes (Includes sections for men, women, and children)

Clothing of the Upper Class

Accessories

Wigs and Hats

Crime

Highly frequented locations

Highwaymen

Organized Crime

Rising Crime Rates

Pick-pocketing and Petty Theft

Counterfeiting

Smuggling

Gambling

Prostitution 

Punishments for Various Crimes

Crime and Punishment

Crime in Popular Culture

Children

Children’s Toys, Dolls, and Games

Children’s Education

Children’s Literature

Upper-class children: Girls, Boys

Lower-class children: Girls, Boys

Women

Female Journalism

Women Writers

Women’s Emotions

Life as a Woman Interactive Quiz

More on Life as a Woman

Gender Expectations

Motherhood

Rebellious Women (Info on pirates, entrepreneurs, writers, promiscuity, and the lives of black women)

Entertainment

Mass Entertainment

Tea Ceremonies and Porcelain

Blood Sports

Violence in 18th Century Entertainment (Public execution, cockfighting, boxing, etc.)

Masquerade Balls

Leisure Activities

Fairs

Theater Culture

More on Theater

Print Culture

Shopping

Food and Drink

Alcohol

Cultural Rules for Dining in England

A Three Course Dinner for Ten (Comes with recipes!)

1700s Food

Romance

Courtship

More on Courtship

Marriage (And Married Life)

England’s Gay Community (Site’s color scheme is pretty hideous; prepare for some eye bleeding)

The Gay Underworld (Molly houses and pickups)

Lesbianism

The Lower Class

Servant Life:

Female

Male

The Lady’s Maid Position

A Day in the Life of a Lady’s Maid

The Servant Hierarchy

Poverty and Crime

Vagabonds and Beggars

Misc.

18th Century Etiquette (Contains brief sections on behavior, fashion, theater, military, social hierarchy, and marriage)

English Social Structure

Mid 17th to Early 18th Century Aristocrats and Self Defense

Colonial Occupations

Hospitals

18th Century Language (Greetings, forms of address, etc)

Finances in England

Home Remedies

London’s Coffehouse Culture

More on Coffehouse Culture (Much more comprehensive)

18th Century Slang

The British Army

Carriages/Coaches

The East India Trading Company

Architecture

Money/Currency

Slavery

More on Slavery

Commerce

18th Century Duels

Morality in the 18th Century

Religious Satire

[shadowravensspirit]

A huntress sculpture in the forest woven from willow branches

[bramblesand]

People, especially games, get eldritch madness wrong a lot and it’s really such a shame.

An ant doesn’t start babbling when they see a circuit board. They find it strange, to them it is a landscape of strange angles and humming monoliths. They may be scared, but that is not madness.

Madness comes when the ant, for a moment, can see as a human does.

It understands those markings are words, symbols with meaning, like a pheromone but infinitely more complex. It can travel unimaginable distances, to lands unlike anything it has seen before. It knows of mirth, embarrassment, love, concepts unimaginable before this moment, and then…

It’s an ant again.

Echoes of things it cannot comprehend swirl around its mind. It cannot make use of this knowledge, but it still remembers. How is it supposed to return to its life? The more the ant saw the harder it is for it to forget. It needs to see it again, understand again. It will do anything to show others, to show itself, nothing else in this tiny world matters.

This is madness.

[bogleech]

Thank you for this good PSA because I’m still seeing sincere, published, professional writers doing “ahhhhh oh no this monster was SO UGLY i’m mentally ill now!”

[brunhiddensmusings]

forms of eldritch horror include but are not limited to - nobody will ever believe you, you must live alone with this knowledge - you will never feel safe again, and you realize you were never safe before - everything that was familiar is now strange and abhorrent to the point anything that now seems normal should be held in utmost suspicion - having this new knowledge has opened doors that will continually reveal new equally cursed knowledge without end - death and madness are no longer escapes

[darkersoul]

I’ve always felt that the idea of madness or sanity in an eldritch horror sense were misnomers. If anything, I feel a better term is a change of perspective. There is nothing inherent in seeing a greater being that “drives you insane”, it’s that this being doesn’t fit into your previous worldview at all and you have to wrestle that. Every character can and should react differently, changing in ways that “make sense” for them. It’s either a change in worldview or attempting to fit the greater being into your preexisting one. Both will have negative results, but will be interesting as hell to explore.

[bramblesand]

You know what? Unironically, I think this is the best comment I’ve seen on this post.

[awesomebutunpractical]

I really don’t dig the “a good ruler hates kingly pomp and would rather be laboring simply among the dirt and the chickens” trope. I don’t hate it as a character trait, but when every. single. sympathetic. ruler. in a work of fiction has it, my eyes start glazing over a touch.

Like you can have a good (even a humble) monarch whose comfortable with pomp and formality. It doesn’t have to be an ego trip, it can be a matter of accepting the dignity inherit in the office.

[miss-bubles]

#and you can make the case that the best leaders don’t crave power and are reluctant to be in charge#well tough beans#There comes a point where they ARE in charge and whining about is a selfish and immature thing to do 

Like seriously, I think this goes hand in hand with Anti-monarchist and republican themes I see in fan fiction a lot these day. Mentally I pair the “good ruler comes in and gets rid of the pomp and ceremony” with “the good true king abolishes monarchy in favour of a republic” together.

The Ceremony is there for a reason and  usually has developed over the course of centuries, changing ceremony should be done very intentionally and with recognition of why that element was previously included and replaced with some new ceremonial thing that will be oved by the public but not in a fashion that comes and goes type of way.

A Good Monarch will act intentionally when instituting new law or policy and taking the cultural and historic context into account is part of that.

For example maybe the king is lazy and for that reason they choose to hand over a large number of responsibilities to a specific lord and his son is even lazier and just has all the other lords elect witch of them gets that role.

Perhaps the king is coronated on a wooden chair instead of on the more elaborate golden throne with luscious velvet cushions that he also owns because the wooden Throne is older and symbolically links his reign to the 1st ever king who earned his position by saving the country from foreign invaders thus giving his position more legitimacy.

Perhaps the royal funeral includes a procession of barges travling down the main river of the capital city so it could be brought there easily if the king dies far away from home, whilst also being visible for the greater public to easily watch and feel like they are part of the funeral. Maybe because of this there is a very special decoration saved only for barges carrying royal dead bodies

none of this is just ceremony and monarchy bad Modern lack formality and democratic republics good.

end of rant. (for now)

[catie-does-things]

Above all, you must be rid of the hideous idea, fruit of a widespread inferiority complex, that pomp, on the proper occasions, has any connexion with vanity or self-conceit. A celebrant approaching the altar, a princess led out by a king to dance a minuet, a general officer on a ceremonial parade, a major-domo preceding the boar’s head at a Christmas feast all these wear unusual clothes and move with calculated dignity. This does not mean that they are vain, but that they are obedient; they are obeying the hoc age which presides over every solemnity. The modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of humility; rather it proves the offender’s inability to forget himself in the rite, and his readiness to spoil for every one else the proper pleasure of ritual.

- C.S. Lewis, Preface to Paradise Lost

[alex-wrtng]

Dialogue tips that actually work:

You are not writing a movie (ignore this if you are). The reader doesn't need to know every word the characters say for the duration of the story. Less is more.

Dialogue can happen within the prose. "And they awkwardky discussed the weather for five minutes" is way better than actually writing five pages of dialogue about the weather.

Balance your dialogues. Surprise yourself with a monosyllabic answe to a dialogue that's ten sentences long. Don't be afraid of letting your character use half a page for a reply or nothing at all!

Don't write accents phonetically, use slang and colloquialisms if needed.

Comma before "said" and no caps after "!?" unless it's an action tag. Study dialogue punctuation.

Learn the difference between action tags and dialogue tags. Then, use them interchangeably (or none at all).

Don't be afraid to use said. Use said if characters are just saying things, use another word if not. Simple. There's no need to use fancy synonyms unless absolutely necessary.

Not everyone talks the same way so it makes sense for your characters to use certain words more often than others. Think of someone who says "like" to start every sentence or someone who talks really slow. Be creative.

Use prose to slow down the pace during a conversation.

Skip prose to speed up the pace during a conversation.

[zmwrites]

thinkin about the chosen one story told from the pov of the person standing next to them again. thinkin about the one who has to stand by and watch the chosen one become a weapon, a sacrifice, an offering to the machinations of plot and can do nothing but make sure they’re fed and rested and soothe them when they wake up screaming from nightmares. thinkin about the fierce devotion that has to exist to follow someone to the end of the world just so they don’t have to die alone. thinkin about the terror they’d feel every step of the journey knowing it’s not their place to change how the story plays out. thinkin thinkin thinkin.