Welcome to this flaming pile of garbage

Enjoy your stay

[kiingocreative]

“How do you end a scene? Leaving early is one way. But the most common technique is to end the scene with a hit of visceral emotion, such as curiosity, anticipation, tension, or surprise. This automatically creates the desire to know what happens next, and propels the reader into the next scene. For example, you could end with a surprising reversal that sets back a character and forces him to make an important choice—a choice revealed in another scene. You could end with a question, which arouses curiosity and makes us read on to get the answer, or with an agreement or promise to meet later, which creates anticipation.” - Karl Iglesias in Writing For Emotional Impact

[sivsart]

hi hello, it’s from the greatest cinematic moment of all time, bye

[kiingocreative]

The problem must be unavoidable. The character must have no choice but to make a decision—no choice but to act. There must be a believable reason why the character can’t just run away or avoid the problem altogether. And there must be a believable reason why the crisis must be faced now, rather than just delayed. If a character faces a problem that can easily be avoided, the situation may strain our disbelief and cause us to feel frustrated. For example, if a family is staying the night at a hotel which turns out to be haunted and blood is dripping from the walls, why can’t they just leave? Make sure it’s a good reason. A lack of gas wouldn’t stop many people from running away from a death motel. Closely related to this is idea of unavoidability is urgency. Urgency is all about lack of time. Why doesn’t the character have time (to avoid the problem/conflict)?

[kiingocreative]

Sometimes dramatizing effects and causes can be more powerful in engaging the audience’s imagination than just outright telling. This is especially true in worldbuilding. Show how your world works through a character’s interaction with it in the pursuit of their desire. The depth of your world can be explored in drips of glimpses behind the curtain. Remember to respect your audience—they’re smarter than you think. You don’t actually have to *explain* how everything works. Just show the world being the world. Yes the audience won’t initially know what’s going on in every culture or piece of jargon but if you keep the story focused on drama (desire, conflict, stakes) and dramatization instead of outright exposition, the audience will *learn* how the world works through repeated exposure and different contexts. What’s important is that you know how it works and that it’s consistent so that the audience can begin to recognize patterns in what they don’t know. An overly simple example is a game in a world—if characters keep performing the same actions and end up winning, the audience will extrapolate the basic rules. There are other exposition techniques we can dive into later to explicitly explain complex world elements but just keep in mind that it’s always more powerful if you can dramatize actions, effects, causes, drama, and interaction. Can you express the information through consequential action? That’s the best way to do it.

[kiingocreative]

As a general rule: the lower the stakes, the faster the scene should pass. The higher the stakes, the slower the scene should pass. In this way, high stakes give the writer some time to play. Good pacing is also about avoiding habituation, however. Don’t think that just because you have ever-escalating stakes that all of your scenes can be long. Chuck Wendig tells us, “Constant tension can be trouble for a story: a story where pain and fear and conflict are piled endlessly atop one another may wear down the audience. Creating suspense works by contrast: you must relax and release the tension before ratcheting it back up again. Pressure builds, then you vent the steam. Then it builds again, and again you vent. This is pacing: the constant tightness and recoil of conflict into resolution and back into conflict. Think of Jenga: you remove a peace and, if the tower remains standing, everybody breathes a sigh of relief. Tension, release, tension, release.” We must allow for resolution to conflict! If the scenes before a major Climax are long and slow, the big scene in which we want the tension to hold will fall flat. Because we’ve dragged the energies of the audience through sluggish scenes of minor importance, events of great moment are greeted with a shrug. Escalate, but also pace yourself. Give the audience time to breathe.

[felderwin]

Good writing is showing and not telling. For example, instead of just writing “Henry Cheng is a bottom,” Stiefvater put him in a Madonna shirt and made him afraid of his own car

[kiingocreative]

The problem must be unavoidable. The character must have no choice but to make a decision—no choice but to act. There must be a believable reason why the character can’t just run away or avoid the problem altogether. And there must be a believable reason why the crisis must be faced now, rather than just delayed. If a character faces a problem that can easily be avoided, the situation may strain our disbelief and cause us to feel frustrated. For example, if a family is staying the night at a hotel which turns out to be haunted and blood is dripping from the walls, why can’t they just leave? Make sure it’s a good reason. A lack of gas wouldn’t stop many people from running away from a death motel. Closely related to this is idea of unavoidability is urgency. Urgency is all about lack of time. Why doesn’t the character have time (to avoid the problem/conflict)?

[sivsart]

hi hello, it’s from the greatest cinematic moment of all time, bye

[dicklessturdpusher-blog]

[thequantumqueer]

this is the first piece of mcelroy content i ever saw, and literally everything since then has lived up to it

[kiingocreative]

“How do you end a scene? Leaving early is one way. But the most common technique is to end the scene with a hit of visceral emotion, such as curiosity, anticipation, tension, or surprise. This automatically creates the desire to know what happens next, and propels the reader into the next scene. For example, you could end with a surprising reversal that sets back a character and forces him to make an important choice—a choice revealed in another scene. You could end with a question, which arouses curiosity and makes us read on to get the answer, or with an agreement or promise to meet later, which creates anticipation.” - Karl Iglesias in Writing For Emotional Impact

[dererumvita-art]

[The drawing is an entry for the Character Design Challenge of this month. He is an elf wizard, and I don’t have a name for him, so any suggestion is accepted]

My aesthetic for elves BEFORE entering the TAZ fandom

Tolkien-esque

blonde or red haired

pink skins 

athletic archers

mostly dressed in green and light leather armours

absolutely on point

wise and soft spoken

Lawful Good/Neutral

Distinguished Twink™ 

My aesthetic for elves AFTER entering the TAZ fandom:

blue hair? green skin? you name it

students of the arcane arts 

dressed in all the colours of the rainbow

either a fashion icon, an hobo or both at the same time

mostly chill and laid-back, but can be pretty mischevious

Chaotic Good/Neutral

Disaster Twink™. 

[yourplayersaidwhat]

Classic Bards

(Upon meeting the rest of the party) Tabaxi Bard: nice to meet ya! My name’s Light on the Water’s Edge, But you can just call me Edge. Except you. (Points to the sorceress) Sorceress: Uh, What? Why? Bard, with a wink: because I want you to call me tonight.

[yourplayersaidwhat]

We were joking about Roombas

DM: Get ready for the boss battle kiddos. *shows a picture of a Roomba with a giant gun on it* Meet the new and improved Doom-ba. Rouge: IM GONNA BATTLE IT *throws a plastic knife* HYA! DM: It’s critical. Doom-ba dies. Rouge: What loot was Doom-ba carrying? DM: A lot of dust and a wedding ring. Rouge: DOOM-BA WAS MARRIED?!?!

[yourplayersaidwhat]

"I Want This Shit Directed by Michael Bay"

My group of friends play what we call “Hillbilly D&D,” where we design characters with the shittiest stats ever (20 points to distribute to strength, intelligence, and constitution) and build our situation around that. On our most recent adventure, we were a group of plushies trying to escape a claw machine. Last one out had to buy everyone else milkshakes.

My character was an amorphous mango plushie named DJ Guango, with 16 constitution, 1 strength, and 3 intelligence. I was invincible.

But one of these characters was Mr. Cuddles, a very intelligent teddy bear made in Bangladesh and being held together by a singular thread. His turn came around, and this is what followed:

DM: Alright, what’s your move?

Mr. Cuddles: I’d like to break into the inner workings of the machine. 

DM: Roll for investigation.

(rolls a 14)

DM: Ok fine, you’re there. What’s your action?

Mr. Cuddles: I want to take the piece of lint out of my inventory and use it to blow up the machine.

DM: …really?

Mr. Cuddles: Oh, yes. The only way out of this machine is certain death. Now I’m going to blow it up. 

DM: (absolutely pissed off) Whatever. If you can roll a 20, I’ll let you blow it up.

(Mr. Cuddles rolls a 19. Everyone at the table is holding their breath.)

DM: The claw machine didn’t explode, but something even better happened. You shorted one of the wires, and now the claw machine has strobe lights flashing and “Despacito” playing at ear-bleeding levels. The song will change every turn from here on out.

We ended up going through twelve songs including beauties such as “Life After Love,” Cher’s “Believe,” “Bring Me to Life,” and “A Wallelujah Chorus.” Needless to say, our DM hasn’t spoken to us since.

[anxietyproblem]

[hawkspiral]

He had always been quiet. Even when he spoke his words were surface level. Something about saying things that mattered -- baring his soul -- scared him. He spent a lot of time alone. Sometimes this was good. Sometimes his solitude hurt so much he wasn’t sure he could handle it. But it never really left him. Occasionally people came up and talked to him. Sometimes that was nice. Sometimes it wasn’t. There was a girl who tried to talk to him every day. He assumed she did it out of something resembling pity. He kept up his mask of apathy. It was easier that way. Sometimes the girl made an effort to look nice. It wasn’t for him, so he pretended not to notice. She invited him to things, and over time he began to think that she might be lonely too. But she talked so much. She smiled as much as she talked. He dismissed the thought. Lonely people didn’t smile. One day they watched a movie. She would lean over and whisper things to him. Despite himself, he found he was smiling. She even got him to laugh once or twice. He didn’t lean close to her, however. He carefully kept the thought of putting his arm around her out of his mind. He kept his distance. He had read and seen enough to know how the story ended: with him hurt. So he stayed away and kept telling himself he didn’t care.

I have no clue where this came from

But enjoy I suppose

[1ightly]