Hey! This blog is run by one person from rural USA who writes fanfiction and mainblogs fandom stuff. I started this blog in 2013 to collect writing advice for myself, and it ended up helping others as well 😀
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INBOX OPEN FOR WRITING QUESTIONS
and average tumblr communications such as "hey, did you know your post is on fire?" or "can you come get your mutual out of my yard? they're eating the rosebushes again."
“HEY, Writers!” Ask Policy
I do not answer research questions. Research is the responsibility of the author.
What counts as a research question?
Portrayal questions (“How do I write a character who is x?” where “x” is referring to a life experience, physical/mental condition, gender, culture, occupation, etc.)
Specialist/Non-Writing Encyclopedia questions (“Where should my character break their leg to heal within a few months?”, “What technical terms are used in designer fashion?”, “How does child support work?”, etc.)
Whether an idea is offensive/insensitive or not
Location, historical era, or other setting-specific questions
Check these blogs for answers to questions about…
ethnicity/race @writingwithcolor
fight scenes/combat @howtofightwrite
medical/injury @scriptmedic
disabilities @cripplecharacters
psychology/mental health @scriptshrink
various other research topics—The Script Family, @wordsnstuff
ASKS I MAY DELETE!
Requests for my opinion of your work or ideas.
Requests that I read, review, or edit your work
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Asks about writer’s block and self-doubt. Please check #writers block #motivation on my blog!
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Whiny and/or argumentative asks.
“Signal boost” or promo requests.
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Check #answer on this blog
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Do yourselves a massive favor: practice asking for help BEFORE it's an emergency.
I am a social worker. I have worked in community mental health and in home-based healthcare. And it is much, much easier for me to help you when the situation you're in is not yet a full-blown crisis.
"I'm out of money and have been for a while and now I haven't eaten for three days." This is a crisis. A crisis where I'm likely going to have to put you in the car and take you to the nearest food bank--except food banks require appointments now, and the next opening is in four days, so you're staring down the barrel of a week with no food. That's obviously not going to work, so, let's call eight different food banks until we've found one that has an appointment the next day...except it's in the neighboring county and you can't drive. So now I'm calling your doctor to try and brow beat an emergency plan of care update out of him so I can come back the next day and drive you to the food bank. And we haven't even started on the "constantly broke" part of the problem.
"I don't think I have enough food to make it to my next paycheck. I have (xyz) in my house and that will only last until (date)." This is bad, but not a crisis. We have a few days. We make you an appointment at the food bank and contact your brother to make sure you have a ride there. Now we can spend our visit talking about what bills are causing you the most problems and make a jump on a long-term solution, like looping in a community action agency to cover your utilities and getting you an OTC card from Medicaid to cover some of your groceries every month.
"I'm ten months behind on rent, and my landlord said I have a week to get out, or the cops will throw me out. I don't have the money, and if I get evicted, I have nowhere to go." This is a crisis. Every single thing we do here is going to be some version of a Hail Mary. In Michigan, we have the state emergency relief fund for rent issues, but process time is well over one week. There are community action agencies that we can call to assist you with payment, but they are unlikely to have sufficient funds to cover nearly a year of back rent. We can contact legal aid clinics to try and prevent your landlord from evicting you, but they may look at your case and determine that too much "fault" lies with you. Most likely, I'm going to have to put you in touch with homeless shelters and the public housing office.
"I'm two months behind on rent and I don't think I'll be able to pay next month either." This is bad, but not a crisis. This is solvable. We have time to apply for SER, or put you in contact with community action agencies. We have time to review your finances and see if you qualify for a public housing wait list or other forms of ongoing rental assistance. We have time to talk about a million possible adjustments to try and ease the burden of your rent.
"I am the sole caregiver for my elderly parent who has dementia and is emotionally volatile and fully dependent on me. I have not slept through the night in weeks and I have not had an actual break for over a year. I am having screaming meltdowns multiple times a week and I am threatening self-harm unless someone comes to collect my parent and take over all caregiver duties." This is a crisis. This is a crisis where the ethical code of my profession demands that I call 911 and report the conversation to them. They will likely come to the house and interview you. If they determine your threats were serious, they will have you forcibly committed to a psych ward. Your parent will either be dumped into a random hospital or rehab center, or left in the house on their own. Upon release from your psych hold, you will be expected to resume caregiving duties as though nothing happened. Except, now, adult protective services is actively investigating you, because it was determined you may be an ongoing danger to your parent.
"I am the sole caregiver for my demented parent, and I have not had a break in a couple of weeks, and I feel angry and weepy most of the time." This is bad, but not a crisis. We can get you in touch with volunteer groups for respite, and apply for state funded programs to get more day-to-day help, and talk about long-term planning for when the dementia symptoms get worse. We can get you the phone numbers for crisis lines and enroll you in a support group.
Obviously, you can ask for help at any point. Don't use this an excuse to never ask for help. If you always wait until it's a crisis, fine, you have free will. But you are ALLOWED to ask for help BEFORE you're in a blind panic, and it is always easier to get help when you aren't screaming and sobbing because you think your life is over.
How do I make a calm and collected character in a very overwhelming situation?
Writing a character who remains composed when everything around them is falling apart is a hard thing to do, especially since I’m sure a lot of us don’t feel that way when we’re in tricky situations. My significant other is cool as a cucumber when something is genuinely stressful, and I’m in constant awe of his ability to just be calm and take charge.
When it comes to writing a calm character in an overwhelming situation, the balancing act comes when you want them to feel grounded and in control, but not so detached that they seem robotic or unfeeling. The trick is understanding that being calm isn’t an absence of emotion; it’s managing those emotions in a way that serves the situation they’re in.
Understand where their calm comes from
Before you can write a calm character convincingly, you need to understand why they’re calm. Their composure ought to have a source. Does their calm come from:
Training or experience? Military personnel, emergency responders, or anyone who has faced repeated crises may have learned to compartmentalise and therefore find it easier to remain calm in situations outside of their normal experiences.
Personality? Some people are naturally less reactive and process their emotions internally rather than externally.
A coping mechanism? Their calm might be a learned defence against trauma or chaos in their past.
Responsibility? They may stay calm for others because someone has to, and they’ve taken on that role.
Neurodivergence? Many neurodivergent people may panic or stress at the little things in their lives, but when something genuinely big and dramatic happens, they’re suddenly calm and collected as adrenaline and dopamine flood their systems.
Understanding the root of why they are calm will help you write it authentically because those reasons will feed into their entire characterisation. It will feel genuine in the moment because you really know your characters.
Separate internal experiences from external behaviour
What a character shows and what they feel are not always the same thing. Even the most composed person experiences physiological stress responses that might not be visible to others. Their bodies react even if their behaviour doesn’t.
You can show this through:
Physical sensations like a racing heart, a tight chest, or icy hands.
Controlled breathing to ensure they have a strong and calm voice when they speak.
Micro-reactions like a brief pause, tightening their jaw, or a moment where their eyes flicker before they respond.
An internal monologue that lets readers into their head where the storm is happening, even as they appear calm externally.
Duality helps to create tension and makes characters feel three-dimensional rather than emotionless. Just because other characters can’t see the emotions doesn’t mean that someone doesn’t experience them. It can also make a good revelation later on down the line if someone misinterprets a calm character as cold and distant.
Use their actions to show competence
Calm characters often show their composure by doing rather than feeling. When chaos erupts, they act. They do things deliberately and with calculation. You can show them:
Assessing the situation methodically.
Prioritising what needs to happen first.
Giving clear, steady instructions to others.
Focusing on solutions rather than dwelling on the problem.
Stepping up to take charge, whether it is reluctantly or unasked.
Use strategic cracks in their facade
To make your composed character feel real, build in moments where their control slips, even just a little. This might look like:
A sharp edge to their voice that they quickly smooth over.
Hands that stay calm but finally start to tremble when the crisis is over.
A private moment where they come close to a breakdown.
Delayed emotional reactions that surface later.
Moments of vulnerability make a character’s composure more impressive. Readers will understand that their calm is earned and doesn’t come without effort.
I just love the super realistic historical shows where they show how filthy and disease ridden the era is by having every nameless peasant look like they rolled in mud right before filming while every noble has three layers of painstaking makeup on to create the illusion that they’re just naturally flawless. Sure we know what it was really like, but clearly only the filthy poors ever had to deal with that kind of thing while the elites of society have always been pictures of beauty and health. No one ever used urine in beauty treatments or got the pox or had a particularly unflattering jaw from years of inbreeding cause everyone would rather fuck their cousins than anyone even slightly below their “station”. Because hey, being realistic is great, praise us for our gritty realism in showing how disgusting the poor are- I mean were, but it’s just too much to ask our viewers to consider them actual people. That’s why we focus on nobles, who definitely all fit into modern beauty standards at all times and in all places.
I love how varied and universally weird the circumstances for making lifelong friendships are. Here's this guy I accidentally messaged once and I could not imagine my life without them now. Here's this girl I was so scared of when I met her, I would kill for her and remind her to rest on the regular. Here's this other guy we have so much in common we used to joke we were the same person in different timelines. It took us years to meet in person and I attended his wedding. There are also people who entered my life in absolutely unremarkable ways but changed it forever for the better. It's wonderful how easy it is to find people to love.
"character deserved better" (but they were never going to get it that's the stuff great tragedies are made of) vs "character deserved better" (but the writers really blew it)
Trying to figure out how to draw armour.
These are some of my notes I uploaded on patreon. A lot more to come since I really want to figure this one out.
This is a great reference for mid-15th-century plate armor. I'm going to add a few things that aren't meant as corrections but rather, like, additional info.
That type of bevor seen in the first picture wouldn't usually go with an armet-style helmet, but rather with a helmet without its own built-in neck protection, such as (what is neologically called) a sallet or kettle helm.
If you wanted to get more neck protection out of an armet, you'd use what is usually called a "wrapper plate" which is kind of similar to a bevor but shaped to fit armets.
Arming jackets/doublets (usually also called gambesons - the thing about the Middle Ages is that they didn't actually have a lot of standardized words for things at all and many words we use today to refer to specific pieces of equipment are either completely new, or they refer to something specific today but a medieval person would have used the same word to refer to many different things) have strings all over them not just to keep them tied together but because that's how you attach the plate armor to the body. Their padding also not only acts as padding, but also offers some basic resistance to blades in the event that a blade gets between the plates and through the maille (chainmail) armor that usually fills the gaps between the plates. There is almost no chance at all of a blade penetrating the plates themselves.
Bigger thicker gambesons were worn as a form of armor themselves for poorer soldiers who couldn't afford anything better. They are surprisingly cut-resistant and cushion the body against blunt force as well. Stabbing weapons will go straight through them, but even then it's better to have it than not, because if you're wearing 2 inches of padding and get stabbed by a 5-inch blade in the heat of battle when everyone is constantly moving around and your opponent has no time (or desire) to drive it all the way in, that's only 3 inches deep into your actual flesh instead of 5.
Oh one tip I will give that technically is a correction is that that belt in the bottom-left picture is anachronistic. It's hard to describe how 15th century belts buckle but it usually looks something like this.
ID: A screenshot of tags left on the tumblr post. They read "#it's actually kind of a reverse Chekhov's Gun #Chekhov's Gun says "If there is setup there must be payoff" #Asimov's Tail says "if there is payoff there must be setup" #and I think the tail is also important #a tail is not something you'd expect to see on a character unless explicitly pointed out #someone stepping on the tail not only reveals its existence but also tells us things about it #eg it's floor length sensitive and the character either can't or won't keep it out of the way of foot traffic #the upshot seems to be "acclimatise your audience to things they don't understand before you use them" #you don't need to explain how a gun on the mantelpiece works in the same way you need to explain how your protagonist's tail does" End ID.
If someone is doing things that don't make Sense, try to understand that it is entirely possible that their brain is probably under an enormous weight and fracturing under the pressure. People who have been stabbed will sometimes talk a circle around the fact that they've been stabbed because stress and shock prevent you from recognizing the distress you are in and what you need to do to seek help for it. PTSD will do this also. You will find yourself repeatedly jamming a bag of frozen fruit into the same spot in the freezer where it doesn't fit and keeps falling, over and over and over, focused on nothing but that bag. You will decide that a beanbag chair is 10000% necessary to your life. You will lose your entire shit because you stubbed your toe on a table and that means the whole setup of your furniture is wrong. These are largely harmless examples. People under strain will also hurt themselves and others. Cornered animals bite. And it doesn't heal the bite to go "Hey, are you okay?" But it might get you to an animal that stops biting, so you can start to heal. And before you had an animal that bit, you probably had an animal that kept doing shit you didn't understand as stress signals
#we dont use honorifics in my first language so whenever i have to select options (usually for flights) im always so confused#like what is actually the difference between miss and ms#i like miss bc it sounds more historical and im a historian so
"Miss" means an unmarried woman. "Mrs." means a married woman. (both of these have origins in the word "mistress" as in "mistress of the house".)
"Ms." - prounounced MIZ, btw - is a third option popularized by gloria steinem in the 70s - mainly through her feminist magazine Ms. - which is meant to be a neutral term, usable for any and all women regardless of marital status (hence the soul destroying irony of the tags above). it gained wider general acceptance when geraldine ferraro, the first woman to be nominated as VP on a national major party ticket, started using it widely to avoid confusion, since she was married but used her maiden name professionally. eventually over the years it came into common use though i do think the brits are a little more critical of it than americans (as far as i'm aware lol)
"obscure facts only a tumblr user would know" and it's one of the most influential institutions of second wave american feminism. PLEASE open the schools
Hi. I'm an unmarried woman in her forties. I use Ms. and pronounce it "miz", though I don't correct people who accidentally use a soft S. I use Ms. because it's no one's business but my own whether I'm married, to a man or anyone else, and that's what Ms. means. It means fuck off, my marital status is irrelevant, just as it is for every man who uses Mr.
I've had people (usually children) ask me at work if I'm a missus or a miss. I have replied that I am a miz, full stop. And when they pressed for which one I was REALLY, I have replied, "Why? Are you going to treat me differently depending on whether there's a ring somewhere?"
That's what Ms. is for. That is its linguistic function. It says, "This is an adult woman," and nothing else. Nothing else is necessary, and in my case, nothing else is desired.
I also use miz for other women unless and until they express a preference for something else because I don't magically know everyone else's marital status when I meet them. That's a courtesy—I'm declining to assume marital status and allowing them to decide whether they wish to declare it.
Also, I've taught English and worked as an editor for twenty years. I am quite literally the grammar police. This use of Ms. is a standard construction. If you didn't learn it in school, someone failed you.
to be fair even children’s media that goes out of its way to establish characters as using Ms. still mispronounce it half the time. Ms. Frizzle gets called Miss Frizzle as often as “mizz” even though it’s supposed to rhyme with her surname
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Is it okay to use the same word twice in the same paragraph? Because I literally can't think of another way to say 'mouth.'
Yes. Please use nouns and pronouns as often as you need to.
The best way to use a word less is not to replace it with another word, but to just find reasons not to use it again. If you introduce the subject noun at the right time, readers can assume you're still talking about the same thing within the same paragraph.
Fear of using normal words too often is how we end up with eyes being renamed "orbs."
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"The magic system is never fully explained" yeah that's how life works. Imagine having a story set in modern day America and the characters have several pages of exposition on combustion engines and telecommunication networks before we get to the plot
i think this is absolutely correct and good writing advice but also victor hugo would like to have a word with you about the parisian sewer system circa 1832
