cherry valley forever
2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
Claire Keane
bliss lane
#extradirty
Mike Driver
hello vonnie
d e v o n
titsay
Jar Jar Binks Fan Club
Cosmic Funnies
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ojovivo
Product Placement
ellievsbear
❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
if i look back, i am lost
I'd rather be in outer space 🛸
🩵 avery cochrane 🩵
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
seen from Switzerland
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@ialwaysgottabeonsomeemoshit
jokes to make after failure that aren’t self-deprecating:
I’m the best to ever do it
Nobody saw that (best if said loudly)
No one’s ever done it like me
I could be President/they should make me President
Behold, a mere fraction of my power!
The public wants to be me soooooo bad
I’m an expert in (thing you just failed at)
How could this have happened to god’s favorite princess?
Nothing ibuprofen and a glass of water cant fix
I’m being sabotaged
apparently my boss who is a professor at my school doesn’t have a cell phone and his coworkers were upset by this so they bought him a childs toy phone and labeled it “David’s jitterbug” (for those of you that don’t know jitterbugs are phones made for old people that have like massive buttons and shit) so the other day I walked into his office to ask him a question and he pressed a button on it which made it start loudly playing the ABCs and he said “excuse me I have to take this” and then started singing along to the ABCs while shooing me out of his office
this is the phone. he apparently was in the middle of a meeting with the department the other day and got annoyed so he pressed a button, said “I have to take this” and left
David’s co-workers probably: “This is a valid tactic to embarrass him into buying a mobile phone, right?”
David: “Bold of you to assume that I get embarrassed.”
Acing pacing in your writing
I’ve read too many books and watched too many shows where pacing has ruined a good story. So, here are some of my tips for getting pacing right:
1. Don’t take too long to get to the inciting incident
Look, showing the ordinary life of your protagonist might be interesting if there’s something strange about their life, but readers want stuff to happen.
At least with genre fiction, you shouldn’t take too long to get to the action - the event that gets the story going.
If you can do it well and have readers invested from the start, you can start with the inciting incident. However, for most works I would recommend having it in the second chapter.
Your readers want to know what the story is about, not what the character thinks of his English teacher
2. Keep it moving, but don’t rush
Action is important. It drives the story and it’s interesting. You should make sure to put enough action in your work. Things should be happening.
BUT a novel is not a play or a movie or a comic. What makes reading a full-length novel so entertaining is the detail. The in-depth characterisation and description. The emotion and thought processes.
So, keep it moving, but don’t sacrifice the juicy details. Don’t skip from one action or dialogue scene to the next without taking your readers deeper into the intricacies of the story and characters.
It’s a delicate balance that can only truly be found by reading a lot and practicing.
3. Avoid a sagging middle
Your beginning is solid. Your end is exciting. But the middle is a chaotic mess that bores the reader. Trust me, it happens more than you might believe.
Sagging middle syndrome is a thing, and the only way to avoid it is to plan.
Look, I like pantsing, but planning the middle of your novel will help your pacing exponentially.
Make a rough outline of what needs to happen to get your characters to the climax. Add a few lighter/character-driven scenes where there are too many action scenes in the sequence. Remove events which are unnecessary. And make sure that everything makes sense!
This counts for second books in series as well. It should be good on its own, not just as a filler.
4. Don’t fast forward to the end
I’m looking at you, Game of Thrones.
If you’ve built up the story and set up everything for the final big bang, you have to deliver.
Keep the pacing somewhat similar to that of the rest of the story. Your readers have gotten used to it. And if they’re still reading at that point, they probably like that pace. Don’t write a relatively slow book and then have the climax be over in three pages.
I know you want the climax to be exciting. So, yes, make it a little more fast-paced than the middle. But not massively different.
5. Trust your characters
As with every aspect of creative writing, character is most important.
Is your character experiencing the scene quickly and choppily? Or are they slowing down and taking in everything?
If you stick with what your characters are feeling, you will get it right.
Look, exams have fried my brain. So, this isn’t the most well-formulated post I’ve made. But I hope that it can be helpful.
Reblog if you found these tips useful. Comment with your own pacing tips. Follow me for similar content.
“I want you to do this with me for one month. One month. Write 10 observations a week and by the end of four weeks, you will have an answer. Because when someone writes about the rustic gutter and the water pouring through it onto the muddy grass, the real pours into the room. And it’s thrilling. We’re all enlivened by it. We don’t have to find more than the rustic gutter and the muddy grass and the pouring cold water.”
— Marie Howe, Boston University’s 2016 Theopoetics Conference (via mothersofmyheart)
Marie Howe:
I ask my students every week to write 10 observations of the actual world. It’s very hard for them.
Ms. Tippett:
Really?
Ms. Howe:
They really find it hard.
Ms. Tippett:
What do you mean? What is the assignment? 10 observations of their actual world?
Ms. Howe:
Just tell me what you saw this morning like in two lines. I saw a water glass on a brown tablecloth, and the light came through it in three places. No metaphor. And to resist metaphor is very difficult because you have to actually endure the thing itself, which hurts us for some reason.
Ms. Tippett:
It does.
Ms. Howe:
It hurts us.
Ms. Tippett:
You naming something.
Ms. Howe:
We want to say, “It was like this; it was like that.” We want to look away. And to be with a glass of water or to be with anything — and then they say, “Well, there’s nothing important enough.” And that’s whole thing. It’s the point.
Ms. Howe:
It’s the this, right?
Ms. Howe:
Right, the this, whatever. And then they say, “Oh, I saw a lot of people who really want” — and, “No, no, no. No abstractions, no interpretations.” But then this amazing thing happens, Krista. The fourth week or so, they come in and clinkety, clank, clank, clank, onto the table pours all this stuff. And it so thrilling. I mean, it is thrilling. Everybody can feel it. Everyone is just like, “Wow.” The slice of apple, and then that gleam of the knife, and the sound of the trashcan closing, and the maple tree outside, and the blue jay. I mean, it almost comes clanking into the room. And it’s just amazing.
Ms. Tippett:
In some basic level, what they’ve done is just engage with their senses.
Ms. Howe:
Yeah, and have been present out of their minds and just noticing what’s around them, which is — we don’t do. And again, not to compare it to anything. They’re not allowed. And that’s very hard for them. And then on the fifth or sixth week, I say, “OK, use metaphors.” And they don’t want to. They don’t know how. They’re like, “Why would I? Why would I compare that to anything when it’s itself?” Exactly. Good question.
So then you think, why the necessity of a metaphor? Why do you have to use a metaphor now? Not just to do it to avoid it, but to do it to make it more there. And it’s very interesting.
The words and silences we live by. The rituals that sustain us. The poetry of ordinary time.
things have changed. it is different
Are you still a fish?
yeah,
yeah I am.
some peace can be found in that
I love this so so much
weird how no one ever comments on the absence of smells unprompted. the nose just isn't a topic of conversation unless it's urgent huh
"it's dark in here" normal regular observation
"finally some quiet" relatable exclamation
"doesn't smell like anything in here" absolutely deranged sentence
#why is the animorphs here#I mean id reblog it by itself#2 for 1 post#idk I never read animorphs#fear has a new name… yeerk#yeeeeerk#laugh rule
In this book, two child soldiers discover the existence of alien androids who have been hiding among humans for thousands of years using hologram technology, and nearly die working to keep the androids' sophisticated technology our of the hands of the invading body snatcher aliens.
They discover this because they turn into dogs to sneak into an outdoor concert for free and run into a "normal teenager" who doesn't smell like anything.
What the hell is happening in Animorphs.
Intergalactic war, severe PTSD and missing homework deadlines mostly.
My writing has been compared to Stephen King, Thomas Harris, Dean Koontz, and Peter Straub. Why? Because I'm unafraid to go there when it comes to disturbing imagery. Gory details don't scare me, though they will likely scare my readers. Sort of the point, really. lol
Mermay 2025 (11-20) by Christophe Young
22.05.25
two of the nastiest assignements (and subjects) of this semester are now done!!!
or actually, not really, i still have to submit the final-final work for one of those, but it's not due until the beginning of june, which means i'm going to pretend it does not exist til the end of next week 😇
"we teach kids about sex at 13-16, any earlier and it can actually scare them" protestant american spotted!! We learned in grade 5 (age 10) and I knew what it was for years prior uwu
When I was 8 I fully knew what sex was and the sum total of my thoughts was "that sounds gross. Hey can I play Pokemon now"
Any kid who has unfixed pets or lives in the general vicinity of a farm knows what sex is by the time they're five or six. I knew about it at four because I have a little sister and my parents were normal about explaining what the hell was going on with my mom's abdomen, why we were prepping the house for a baby and when she'd be arriving.
My thoughts on the matter were mostly "Oh yeah, like on PBS Nature. Cool. I'm gonna go dig a hole for fun now."
À la Campagne (In the Countryside) (ca. 1895)
Ludovic Alleaume (1859 - 1941)
saw this today
"The coffin only has room for one" fucking shot me
[image text:] (all caps) Your life is yours !!! Yoursss!!! (/end all caps) Not anybody else's!! Not the ones disappointed not the ones talking shit not the ones that never sent an apology not the ones snickering or judging not the ones w stake in the game. (all caps) The coffin only has room for one. You. (/end all caps) Live. Fuck it. [/end image text]
i think it is important to recognize the ways in which your favorite thing sucks. i think it keeps u normal
prev im so sorry to put you on blast like this but please know this had me in hysterics
I am never deleting this app
Update:
the way he quantities friendship like it's a quarterly review of profits is very telling. I don't think the man himself has ever had 3 real friends, because one of them would've knocked the weirdo shit out of him by now???? right????
"The average american has 3 friends but has demand for 15" the fucking wording here. I am asking for every tech CEO to publicly die in a morbid and grotesque fashion immediately
“average american has 3 friends” factoid actualy just statistical error. Friendless Mark, who lives in cave & makes -10,000 friends each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted
as much as I love portrayals of the sun and moon as a (lesbian) couple, the greeks were really on to something when they said "actually they're siblings who disapprove of each other's life choices"
