Words = grains of worlds

I post things to do with writing. And reading. And anything remotely connected to words. It's going to be crazy. It's going to be fun.

[iiwordsmithapprenticeii]

delete your session in your account settings, remove every app on your account, turn on two-authentication and change your password. Cheers.

Yes, thank you for this heads up! I wouldn’t have checked the account if not for some of the asks people have sent me about this hack. I’ve fixed it now. Apologies to anyone who might have gotten tagged! I’ve deleted the posts from my feed and queue, but if they still show up on your feed, DONT CLICK ON THEM. I didn’t post them.  But what was weird for me was when I checked sessions, the only session that showed up was the currently active one... and I logged out of that, too, just in case.  

[iiwordsmithapprenticeii]

I think you’ve been hacked :T

Thank you for the heads up! Fixed it :)

[iiwordsmithapprenticeii]

Check your queue - looks like Rayband got to you too.

Fixed it! Thank you for the heads up!

[iiwordsmithapprenticeii]

you’ve been hacked :(

I’ve fixed it now, thank you.

[iiwordsmithapprenticeii]

THE SILENT PATIENT

Alex Michaelides

3/5

I'm a bit late to the party, but here it is.

The silent patient wants to be a thriller but its twists are predictable and unimpactful. Its characters are shallow. Their trauma is vague and unspecific to their personalities. This is surprising, considering the fact that the protagonist is a psychiatrist, who is very self-aware. His trauma becomes too generic, and is not explored beyond the fact that he had an abusive childhood.

The reasons and motivations behind character actions fall flat and as a reader I could not feel any empathy towards these characters.

The book deals with deep set fears and anxieties that shape the characters future adult personalities. But it does not give importance to the same anxieties beyond generic definitions and so comes across as thin and cursory.

[iiwordsmithapprenticeii]

UNTOLD NIGHT AND DAY

BAE SUAH

this was MIND-BLOWING

4.5/5

[iiwordsmithapprenticeii]

I googled myself

And this is what came of it

[iiwordsmithapprenticeii]

Look who made a book cover!

I'm not a photoshop expert (googled where the paint bucket was), but for a first time attempt, I guess I'm quite satisfied with this!

Also, this isnt a real book, but if you're getting creepy girl child vibes and a sticky, rotting kinda summer, you're reading my mind!

I was inspired by @coffeeandcalligraphy after watching her pareidolia book cover vid!

ALSO, if this had been a real book, what do you think the story might be?

CHEERS!

[iiwordsmithapprenticeii]

Heartwise Series | Novel revamp Update #1

Hello world!

I have a mega project on my hands this quarantine. And that's been the revamp of my novel Heartwise

Heres the story:

Set in an isolated island off world maps, Nighthash's only visitors are a trading group called the Traders (hehehe, expert wordplay, working on it). The whole economy of the island is dependent on this draconian contract between Nighthash's first inhabitants and the Traders to not trade to anyone except the Traders. That meant the island's contact with the rest of the world was almost negligible. This system is about to collapse and the whole island is teetering very precariously between violent rebellions and strained peace. In this setup, we have a 16 year old boy who discovers his foster parents had hidden him from his birth parents for over a year and is now having an existential crisis, which he attempts to overcome by hunting rumors. These rumours will supposedly lead to his birth parents who are part of a group of outlawed scientists.

Then, we have a 16 year old girl the boy meets in a rehab camp while trying to crack a rumor. She is supposedly hiding from the avengers of a girl she's killed, but when the boy finds her trying to kill herself, we know that's not the truth.

The story takes on a different turn when the boy and girl stumble across a new rumor of a woman called Pyrene, who died calling the island to rebellion.

The girl seems drawn inexplicably to this particular woman and promises to stay alive in return for being allowed to accompany the boy while he cracks this rumour.

Then follows a weird story of secrets, promises and some MAD action scenes.

NOW

I can find a million mistakes even in that brief skeletal plot.

SO

I'm gonna change a million things,possibly looking at a whole rewrite, which is just making my brain hurt a bit, but it's all good! I love this story and I really wanna write it better for a close friend 🙂

AND THIS

Is where I'll post updates for anyone on this planet to read and also for myself to just look back once in a while where I've been!

Bye!

[iiwordsmithapprenticeii]

I just finished 'The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake' by Aimee Bender. I can write a whole new post about that 🤭and ladies and gentlemen, this is my next read - Inland https://www.instagram.com/p/B-4f_qdjYoF/?igshid=16b3s6d8c4xyc

[iiwordsmithapprenticeii]

A Concise Dictionary Of Indian Hair — SOUP

A photo essay on the vast and varied language of hair in India. From men who sport '80s mullets paying homage to old Bollywood stars to young boys whose rebellion rises as surely as their spiky mohawks, from little old ladies in bobs and floral dresses to the man with the plastic bag on his head i

I loved this!

[iiwordsmithapprenticeii]

Random Journaling Tip (Because now we do Journaling posts?)

Introducing to you, BUTTONS!

Wouldn't it be amazing to have a button you can press just for the heck of it?

Like switches, but only electrocity-friendly!

Heres a button:

These are sketchable, zero-cost, SCARILY satisfying, and CUTE ass.

DONT YOU WANNA JUST PRESS YOUR THUMB ON IT? CUZ I DO.

Heres another, more *sophisticated* button:

ALSO, the best part is you can have a button for literally almost anything! Motivation? Too angry? Too sad? Too EXCITED??

Theres a button for everything!

(This post is beginning to sound more and more like an ad, but if this was merch, I'd make and make and make it... just saying)

Heres my button bag!

And lastly, but not the least

With cute ass instructions!

Hope you'll have a blast with your own buttons!! I'm excited just writing this postttt

CHEERS

[iiwordsmithapprenticeii]

Handling Info Dumping in your Writing

Hello!

I noticed a strange little pattern of info reveal in Stephen King’s novel Lisey’s Story. 

He’d give you information at the beginning of a chapter or passage - a one-liner that’s mostly cryptic. You won’t understand it without context, but it’s not really a problem, because it’s only one or two lines.

Then, he’d give you context for it through either a similar one-liner in narration or dialogue or character action, or even sometimes, a whole scene. 

Beneath this context, the information will repeat once more - smoothly slid into the natural narration so it doesn’t stand apart.

This kind of information reveal is sprinkled throughout the book. It’s way more interesting than info dumps or a uniform sprinkling of information through the story. 

Bye! 

[iiwordsmithapprenticeii]

When you accidentally discover a POV

DISCLAIMER: I'm not sure if this has already been done? I guess a lot of poems are written this way... but I've never come across this in novels... but if YOU have, I'd love to know more about this novel!

---

I'm calling it

The Nonexistent POV.

It's a mix between 1st, 2nd and 3rd person limited/omniscient

Like first person, it's the character who's narrating the story. Like 2nd person, its addressed to someone, so theres a 'you'. However, here's where things get crazy. Unlike the 1st person, the character doesnt narrate the story using 'I' but through a 3rd person pronoun like a he, she or they. They can even refer to themselves as an inanimate object/a hostile entity.

So what they're essentially doing is that they're removing themselves from their story, and inserting another entity in their place.

So they're narrating the story, but just not as themselves.

In effect, they nullify themselves. They become non-existent.

Here's a lil sample:

You watch the sunset from atop a cliff. Beside you, on the tip of a rock, your glass jar holds the butterflies you caught. It waits for you to open its lid, so it can watch you smile when the sun shines through their frail wings.

So here, the glass jar isn't an actual glass jar, but a PERSON who sees themselves as a glass jar.

So, there are two people here, or really just one, and that one is the girl who thinks she's the glass jar and herself as another girl, as the one who's watching the sunset.

If that doesn't make sense, it's probably because I'm BAD at explaining. Soo yeah.

---

What do you think about this lil strange POV? Do you think it still falls under the 2nd person POV? Or third? Or is it a completely new POV?

If you wanna know how and why I thought of this strangeness, comment or DM!

CHEERS

[iiwordsmithapprenticeii]

NINE REASONS to include TIME in your STORY

1. Improves plot - because you have a timeline now

2. Improves world-building because you know when the story is set.

3. Helps track character growth or the lack of it.

4. Helps create fancy timeline magic - so now you're exploring the story from different perspectives/POVs at 6:53 pm,Sunday.

5. Time, in itself, can be an interesting plot element - like in Interstellar, Inception, a Wrinkle in Time etc

6. The concept is malleable enough to fit in different genres.

7. Time freeze or leaps can be more efficient/ improve the scope of the story.

8. It gives context to character/mood - An artist who's been practicing their craft for 10 years vs. An experienced artist.

9. Helps in picking out interesting details in a setting, if you know the time of the day.

[iiwordsmithapprenticeii]

I wanna print out all your 10 reason posts and stick them on my wall for when I hit a hurdle or the editing and I can't figure it out, thanks for making them!

Aw, that's so sweet! It's amazing if anything I write helps anyone out there with their work. Thank you for telling me this, because it made my day a whole lot better 😊

[iiwordsmithapprenticeii]

TEN ways to LOVE your WRITING

In celebration of gaining 50 followers (!!!! Whattt!!!), I wanted to do a little soft post about tender things. So, here you go, to all of these wonderful people who follow me, and to everyone else.

1. Look back at your old writing and see how wonderfully you've improved

2. Forget publishing, readers, expectations and reviews for one minute and only think of your story, characters and why you want to write that book

3. Note down the words you love, the sound of it, (or read poems) and just look at it or say it out loud (to just love the written word as a boost to love yours, feel cozy as HECK)

4. DONT COMPARE WITHOUT ALSO NOTING THE GOOD THINGS ABOUT YOUR WRITING

5. Write with someone (a sprint, or write-ins)

6. Fuel the writer vibe you want - coffee cup, glasses, writer gloves, sticker, the whole thing

7. Change fonts (trust me)

8. Take a hiatus or a break

9. Print the manuscript out

10. Share your writing with someone who doesn't write, who doesnt know adverbs are bad or what a filter is (not to ignore improvement, but to remember the GOOD things about writing)

Bonus:

11. Avoid reading your writing immediately after finishing

Thank you so much for trusting me, 50 people!