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art blog(derogatory)
if i look back, i am lost
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@farmersadiek
I usually hate seeing people being stiffed for their labor but I think itās very funny ICE agents have not been getting their $50k sign on bonus, many are still waiting for their healthcare benefits to kick in and some are complaining they havenāt been getting their paychecks. You sold your soul to the Exploiting and Abusing People Agency and they started exploiting you too? Wow. Crazy.
Facial Expressions & Micro-Expressions List!!
šā.Ė The smile that doesn't reach the eyes (dead giveaway)
šā.Ė The nostril flare of barely contained rage
šā.Ė Pressing lips together to keep from laughing
šā.Ė The eyebrow raise of "seriously?"
šā.Ė Eyes widening for just a fraction of a second at bad news
šā.Ė The jaw clench of holding back words
šā.Ė One corner of the mouth quirking up (the smirk)
šā.Ė The rapid blinking when processing something shocking
šā.Ė Tongue poking the inside of cheek when annoyed
šā.Ė The eye roll that's more of an eye drift
šā.Ė Scrunching nose at something distasteful
šā.Ė That face people make when they're trying not to cry (you know the one)
šā.Ė The silent laugh where shoulders shake but no sound comes out
šā.Ė Raising both eyebrows in surprise vs. one in skepticism
šā.Ė The thousand-yard stare when dissociating
šā.Ė The head shake that means "I can't believe this"
šā.Ė Squinting when suspicious
šā.Ė The fake smile for customer service/politeness
šā.Ė Eyes darting to the side when lying or uncomfortable
šā.ĖĀ The visible gulp when nervous
šā.Ė Wrinkling forehead in concern
šā.Ė That specific look of dawning realization
šā.Ė The mouth twitch when fighting a smile
šā.Ė Going slightly pale or flushed (visible even on different skin tones through context)
Writing Description Notes:
Updated 19th October 2025 More writing tips, review tips & writing description notes
Dialogue Tags
Facial Expressions
Masking Emotions
Smiles/Smirks/Grins
Eye Contact/Eye Movements
Blushing
Voice/Tone
Body Language/Idle Movement
Thoughts/Thinking/Focusing/Distracted
Silence
Memories
Happy/Content/Comforted
Love/Romance
Sadness/Crying/Hurt
Confidence/Determination/Hopeful
Surprised/Shocked
Guilt/Regret
Disgusted/Jealous
Uncertain/Doubtful/Worried
Anger/Rage
Laughter
Confused
Speechless/Tongue Tied
Fear/Terrified
Mental Pain
Physical Pain
Tired/Drowsy/Exhausted
Eating
Drinking
Warm/Hot
Cold/Freezing
This!!! This is what I've been looking for š„³ thank you all who contributed
Writing help
When I was in college, my Creative Nonfiction professor would regularly have us do something she called "hotspotting" (she didn't know that this was already a term tbc) with our rough drafts. Basically, hotspotting is when you look at your draft and pick out your favorite sentence, or one of your favorite sentences--one that you're really proud of--and write it down in a blank sheet in a notebook. Not a new document, a physical notebook. (You are not allowed to use technology for hotspotting.) And then you set a timer for however long--like maybe ten to twenty minutes--and you elaborate. You treat that one sentence as if it's the opening sentence to a new draft, and you write from there, until the timer is up.
It sounds like a gimmick, but honestly, some of my best writing in that class came from hotspotting. Usually, the sentence you consider the "best" is the one that really gets to the heart of something you're trying to convey. In a rough draft, it tends to be that you're fumbling around a bit before you really hit on the heart of things. So with hotspotting, you're starting from a less fumbly place, which means you're able to dig into your subject in a much deeper and more precise way. It makes you feel like a surgeon, a little bit.
So I do recommend trying it, even just for fun, even if you think the rough draft you have is already good. You might surprise yourself with what you come up with! :)
V.E. Schwab's advice for creating memorable characters - works for both protagonists and villains
source post: X
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 resonanceāthe throb of tension between the two occurrences, like the vibration of a plucked stringāand 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.
Jeremy Von Neuschwanstein and Shuli Von Neuschwanstein || On the quiet, all-consuming loves that toe between companionship and romance, grief and simple happiness, with the tragedy hanging over their heads and the need to be better, and thus shouldn't be acted upon.
How do I start writing if I've never written anything, ever?
There's lots of ways to get started! Prompt generators can help you generate some ideas. Writing exercises can help you get a start on flexing those muscles. Trying out poetry is a fun way to work out how to fit words together. Fanfiction's also a great way to dip your toes into storytelling. It doesn't have to be good! You don't ever have to share it with anyone! Just getting into the habit of writing can really help you figure out where to go with it.
Some solid classic books I recommend are:
Anne Lamott's BIRD BY BIRD (read this book if you want to write anything, it's a staple for a reason.)
Natalie Goldberg's WRITING DOWN THE BONES (also a classic, well worth reading)
Austin Kleon's SHOW YOUR WORK (great for getting out of your head)
Some other recommendations I have are Lisa Cron's STORY GENIUS (great for working out character-focused stories), and Stephen King's ON WRITING has some of the best examples of how to approach editing that I've ever read. However, don't go all in from the beginning. Pick one book that appeals from you or whatever your local library has, and go from there.
On that note, prompt generators can also get overwhelming, so while I'll list a couple, try to tackle them one at a time. Writing prompts, much like writing advice, are highly subjective, so what works for someone else might not be what you need.
Creative Prompts for Writing
Prompts-For-Every-Need
Daily-Prompts
Writing Exercises
Magetsu Generator
Spinny Spinning Thing
Your library might have some writing prompt books too, so feel free to check that out as a resource. Once you're comfortable, I'd check out writing groups in your local area. You might find some good ones, or you might just want to show up at readings to get the feel for what other people are doing. There's no wrong way to go about it!
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Forget about torturing your blorbos, putting them through the wringer. I'm putting my blorbo in perfectly ordinary, pleasant situations. Their tortured personality will cause them anguish anyway, making an absolutely mundane scene into the most dramatic, agony filled affair as though the world is ending and it's all their fault
people are so mean about horror movie victims like. sorry but if i had gone to a cabin in the woods with my friends as a teenager you couldn't have stopped us from reading aloud from the evil tome. how were they supposed to know the ancient curse was real they're like 17
Iām writing scenes which are good, and I donāt know where they are going to fit in the book. But itās what I call āThe Valley Filled With Cloudsā technique. Youāre at the edge of the valley, and there is a church steeple, and there is a tree, and there is a rocky outcrop, but the rest of it is mist. But you know that because they exist, there must be ways of getting from one to the other that you cannot see. And so you start the journey. And when I write, I write a draft entirely for myself, just to walk the valley and find out what the book is going to be all about.
-- Terry Pratchett - A Slip Of The Keyboard: Collected Non-fiction
You really need to make non-tragic past for your characters, significant people and events that impacted their lives, non-dramatic mundane moments that shaped them, happy memories, bitter memories, embarrassing memories.
Like yes the space princess lost her whole civilization, but did she have friends before that? Favorite place? Does she miss the sound of her favorite music she use to listen to?
You need to show us the flowers for us to be sad when you write that they ripped the garden out
Gothic fiction is characterized by an environment of fear, the threat ofĀ supernaturalĀ events, and the intrusion of the past upon the present. . . . From the castles, dungeons, forests, and hidden passages of the Gothic novel genre emerged female Gothic. . . . Female Gothic narratives focus on such topics as a persecuted heroine fleeing from a villainous father and searching for an absent mother.
When the female Gothic coincides with the explained supernatural the natural cause of terror is not the supernatural, but female disability and societal horrors: rape, incest, and the threatening control of a male antagonist. Female Gothic novels also address women's discontent with patriarchal society, their difficult and unsatisfying maternal position, and their role within that society. Women's fears of entrapment in the domestic, their bodies, marriage, childbirth, or domestic abuse commonly appear in the genre.
After the characteristic GothicĀ Bildungsroman-like plot sequence, female Gothic allowed readers to grow from "adolescence to maturity"Ā in the face of the realized impossibilities of the supernatural. As protagonists such as Adeline inĀ The Romance of the ForestĀ learn that their superstitious fantasies and terrors are replaced by natural cause and reasonable doubt, the reader may grasp the heroine's true position: "The heroine possesses the romantic temperament that perceives strangeness where others see none. Her sensibility, therefore, prevents her from knowing that her true plight is her condition, the disability of being female."
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10 Non-Lethal Injuries to Add Pain to Your Writing
While lethal injuries often take center stage, non-lethal injuries can create lasting effects on characters, shaping their journeys in unique ways. If you need a simple way to make your characters feel pain during a scene, here are some ideas:Ā
Sprained Ankle
A common injury that can severely limit mobility, forcing characters to adapt their plans and experience frustration as they navigate their environment.
Rib Contusion
A painful bruise on the ribs can make breathing difficult and create tension, especially during action scenes, where every breath becomes a reminder of vulnerability.
Concussion
This brain injury can lead to confusion, dizziness, and mood swings, affecting a characterās judgment and creating a sense of unpredictability in their actions.
Fractured Finger
A broken finger can complicate tasks that require fine motor skills, causing frustration and emphasizing a characterās dependence on their hands.
Road Rash
The raw, painful skin resulting from a fall can symbolize struggle and endurance, highlighting a character's resilience in the face of physical hardship.
Shoulder Dislocation
This injury can be excruciating and often leads to an inability to use one arm, forcing characters to confront their limitations while adding urgency to their situation.
Deep Laceration
A cut that requires stitches can evoke visceral imagery and tension, especially if the character has to navigate their surroundings while in pain.
Burns
Whether from fire, chemicals, or hot surfaces, burns can cause intense suffering and lingering trauma, serving as a physical reminder of a characterās past mistakes or battles.
Pulled Muscle
This can create ongoing pain and restrict movement, providing an opportunity for characters to experience frustration or the need to lean on others for support.
Tendonitis
Inflammation of a tendon can cause chronic pain and limit a character's ability to perform tasks they usually take for granted, highlighting their struggle to adapt and overcome.
Looking For More Writing Tips And Tricks?Ā
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I just think people write out of obligation too often.
"How do I motivate myself to write through the boring part of my story?"
"How do I make this boring scene not boring?"
Don't write it.
Don't write boring things just because you think the structure of the story demands it. I promise it doesn't need to be there.
If your characters need to have gone shopping for a later part of the story to make sense you can just have a sentence about how they went shopping and move on.
You are not obligated to write the boring parts. No matter what those parts are.
You are not obligated to make the parts of your story that you're not excited to write interesting somehow.
You can just write the fun and interesting parts and gloss over and summarize boring things.
Your audience will thank you and you will thank yourself.
reblog to save a liFE
Up to now, I have been drawing random generic suit jackets.
Never again.
cc: @petermorwood
