NASA
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@theartofmadeline
AnasAbdin
Not today Justin
styofa doing anything
ellievsbear
❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
Aqua Utopia｜海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
macklin celebrini has autism
Kaledo Art
Janaina Medeiros
Sweet Seals For You, Always
Stranger Things
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2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year
Show & Tell
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Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
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@inspireyourwriting
i wish i could remember who made the recommendation to "make a list of all the different ways someone could feel about a topic in your fictional setting and then make each of them a character" because it is a great technique and is also extremely fun
“WRITE IT BADLY. Write it badly, write it badly, write it badly, write it badly. Stop what you’re doing, open a Word document, put a pencil on some paper, just get the idea out of your head. Let it be good later. Write it down now. Otherwise it will die in there.”
— Brandon Sanderson on overcoming writer’s block to create a first draft as a professional author (via almost-always-eventually-right)
The most important writing lesson I ever learned was not in a screenwriting class, but a fiction class.
This was senior year of college. Most of us had already been accepted into grad school of some sort. We felt powerful, we felt talented, and most of all, we felt artistic.
It was the advanced fiction workshop, and we did an entire round of workshops with everyone’s best stories, their most advanced work, their most polished pieces. It was very technical and, most of all, very artistic.
IE: They were boring pieces of pretentious crap.
Now the teacher was either a genius OR was tired of our shit, and decided to give us a challenge. Flash fiction, he said. Write something as quickly as possible. Make it stupid. Make it not mean a thing, just be a quick little blast of words.
And, of course, we all got stupid. Little one and two pages of prose without the barriers that it must be good. Little flashes of characters, little bits of scenarios.
And they were electric. All of them. So interesting, so vivid, not held back by the need to write important things or artistic things.
One sticks in my mind even today. The guys original piece was a thinky, thoughtful piece relating the breaking up of threesomes to volcanoes and uncontrolled eruptions that was just annoying to read. But his flash fiction was this three page bit about a homeless man who stole a truck full of coca cola and had to bribe people to drink the soda so he could return the cans to recycling so he could afford one night with the prostitute he loved.
It was funny, it was heartfelt, and it was so, so, so well written.
And just that one little bit of advice, the write something short and stupid, changed a ton of people’s writing styles for the better.
It was amazing. So go. Go write something small. Go write something that’s not artistic. Go write something stupid. Go have fun.
Stupidity is, on occasion, a true thing of beauty
Write something stupid
tricky words I always see misspelled in fics: a guide
Viscous/vicious – Viscous is generally used to describe the consistency of blood or other thick liquids. Vicious is used to describe something or someone who is violent.
Piqued/Peaked/Peeked – To pique someone’s interest is to catch or tease their attention. When something peaks, it reaches its total height or intensity. To peek (at) something is to look briefly, or glance.
Discrete/Discreet – this is a tough one. Discrete means to be separate, or distinct, i.e., two discrete theories. Conversely, when someone is discreet, they are being secretive or cautious to avoid attention.
Segue/Segway – one is a transition between things, the other is a thing you can ride at the park and definitely fall off of.
Conscious/Conscience/Conscientious – to be conscious is to be awake, i.e., not unconscious, or to be aware of something. Your conscience is the little voice in your head telling you not to eat the entire pint of ice cream. Finally, to be conscientious is to be good, to do things thoroughly, to be ruled by an inner moral code.
Hope this helped! Please add more if you think of them!
Counsel/Council - counsel is advice, the advice giver, or the verb form of giving said advice. Council is the group of people who come together to discuss and/or make decisions.
Desert/Desert/Dessert - desert is a barren landscape where little precipitation occurs. desert - abandon (a person, cause, or organization) in a way considered disloyal or treacherous. dessert - a usually sweet course or dish (as of pastry or ice cream) usually served at the end of a meal.
OH MY TIME IS HERE! I HAVE MADE A POST I KEEP FOR THIS EXACTLY
Taunt/Taut - Taunt is a jeer or provocation, taut means to be pulled tight, or not slack
Weary/Wary - weary means tired and wary means cautious
Rogue/Rouge - rogue is a person who has unaffiliated themselves from what they were before (is the general understanding); a person or thing that behaves in an aberrant, faulty, or unpredictable way - rouge is red
Wonton/Wanton - a wonton is a dumpling, wanton is (of a cruel or violent action) deliberate and unprovoked and/or sexually unrestrained
Haphazard/Halfhazard - haphazard means to have a lack of plan, order, or direction - the other isn’t a word
Corporal/Corporeal - corporal is a lack of plan, order, or direction and corporeal is to have a physical existence: to be tangible: of a person’s body
Peck/Pec - the first is a kiss (peck) and the second is the shortened version of pectoral (pec)
Virile/Viral - to be virile is to have strength, energy, and a strong sex drive (typically said about men) and then this last year (2020) has personally taught us, is how viral a plague can really be, so of the nature of, caused by, or relating to a virus or viruses
Vulnerable/Venerable - vulnerable means being susceptible to physical or emotional attack or harm, and if a person is venerable they’re accorded a great deal of respect, especially because of age, wisdom, or character (or if you’re religious, holy)
Dyed is something that is colored, and died is deceased
Chalk (it up to something) ; chock (-full of something); choked (to cutoff air).
to affect is the action, the effect is the end result
If something doesn’t bother you then you weren’t fazed by it. If you are between two states of being that is a phase.
Canon is the established facts or practices of a literary or religious thing; a cannon can sink your ship, too, but only in the most literal of ways.
Writer's Guide: Writing about Alcoholic Drinks and Cocktails
Or how to write believable bar and nightclub scenes. I often find myself helping friends with their WIPs and often it as a bartender, I find myself having to correct them on bar and mixology terminology. So here's my quick guide to keeping your lingo on the straight and narrow.
Terminology
DASH/SPLASH: a drop of a mixer such as juice or flavouring.
MIXER: non alcholic beveraged served with the measure of alcohol in the same glass.
NEAT: Plain, without any addition of ice or a mixture. Just the alcohol.
ON THE ROCKS: Served over Ice.
STRAIGHT UP: The cocktail is chilled with ice and strained into a glass with no ice
DIRTY – if somebody asks for a dirty martini, you add olive juice, the more juice the dirtier it is
DRY- A dry martini includes a drop of vermouth and an extra dry martini contains a drop of scotch swirled in the glass and drained before adding the gin
BACK – a ‘back’ is a drink that accompanies an alcholic beverage such as water or Coke, but isn't mixed.
GARNISH – something added to a drink such as a lime or lemon or orange.
TWIST - a twist is literally a twist of fruit skin in the drink.
BITTERS – a herbal alcoholic blend added to cocktails.
RIMMED - the glass is coated in salt or sugar to enhance the taste.
VIRGIN- non alcoholic
MOCKTAIL- a virgin cocktail
DOUBLE - Two measures of the same alcohol in the same glass. A bartender can only legally serve a double in the same glass. They cannot serve you a triple.
Equipment
COCKTAIL SHAKER - it is a metal cup that fits into a glass, used to shake the components of your drink together with ice to chill it.
STRAINER- used to seperate ice in the shaker from the liquid within as you pour it into the glass.
MEASURES- these are little metal cylinders meant to measure out the pours of the alcohol. You pour the alcohol from the bottle into the measure and then put it into the glass. It's imperative that the right measure goes into the glass or the drink will taste of shit.
BAR SPOON – a long spoon meant to mix the drink.
OPTIC- it is a mechanism that attaches a bottle to an automatic pourer. The bartender usually fits the glass under the spout and pushes up to release the amount which cuts off at the single measure.
SHOT GLASS- a shot glass is a small glass to contain one measure
PINT GLASS- a glass used for serving pints of lager or ale
HALF PINT GLASS - a tulip shaped glass half the measure of a pint glass
SPEEDWELL/TAPS/DRAFT: are the taps used to pour beer from kegs stored under the bar floor.
SLIM JIM/HIGH BALL GLASS- It is a tall straight holding 8 to 12 ounces and used for cocktails served on the rocks such as a Gin and Tonic.
ROCKS GLASS - or an old fashioned glass, it is short and round. These glasses are used for drinks such as Old Fashioneds or Sazerac
COUPE GLASS- Are broad round stemmed glasses used for cocktails that are chill and served without ice such as a Manhattan, Boulevardier or a Gimlet
MARTINI GLASS - a martini glass is that classic stemmed "v" shaped glass, used to serve drinks without mixers such as Martini and Cosmopolitans
MARGARITA GLASS - is a large, round bowl like glass with a broad and a tall stem used for Margaritas and Daiquiris
HURRICANE GLASS- a tall tulip-like shaped glass with a flared rim and short stem. It holds 20 ounces which means it is the perfect glass to serve iced cocktails in such as Pina Colada, Singapore Sling, Hurricane
Alcoholic Drinks
Vodka- Vodka is made from potatoes or fermented cereal grains. It has a strong taste and scent. It is usually consumed neat with a mixer such as Coke or Orange juice or cranberry juice or in cocktails like Martini, Bloody Mary and Cosmopolitan.
Whisky/Whiskey- Whiskey is a distilled alcoholic beverage, made from fermented grain mash such as barley, corn, rye, and wheat. It gets its flavour form being fermented in casks for long period of time. When serving a whiskey, one asks whether they want ice or a mixer. Everyone has their own preference. I prefer mine like myself, strong and Irish. Scotch is Scottish Brewed whisky.
Rum- Rum is made by fermenting and distilling sugarcane molasses/juice. It is aged in oak barrels. It has a sweet taste.
Beer: is made out of cereal grains and served chilled in bottles or pulled from taps/speedwells.
Ale: Ale in the middle ages referred to beer brewed without hops (a kind of flowering plant that gives beer its bitter taste). It is sweeter and would typically have a fruity aftertaste.
Stout- is a darker beer sometimes brewed from roasted malt, coming in a sweet version and dry version, the most famous stout being Guinness.
Poitín- (pronounced as pot-cheen) is made from cereals, grain, whey, sugar beet, molasses and potatoes. It is a Dangerous Drink (honestly i still don't know how I ended up in that field with a traffic cone and a Shetland pony) and technically illegal. Country folk in Ireland used to brew it in secrets in stills hidden on their land.
Vermouth: Is made from infused with roots, barks, flowers, seeds, herbs, spices, brandy but vermouth is classed aromatized wine. It comes sweet or dry
Gin- is made from juniper, coriander, citrus peel, cinnamon, almond or liquorice and grain alcohol. Gin has a strong scent and taste and is usually served in a martini or a tonic water.
Schnapps- refers to any strong, clear alcoholic beverage. It is considered one of the best types of spirits because of its pure and delicate aroma. Lesson: never drink peach schnapps.
Cocktails and Drinks
Irish Coffee: an Irish coffee is adding whiskey to coffee and sugar and topping it with cream. As a bartender, I would honestly rather cut my arm off than make one of these.
Baby Guinness: Is a shot made by pouting Tia Maria or Kaluah into a shot glass and spreading Baileys on the top so it looks like a small pint of Guinness.
Silver Bullet: a shot of mixed tequila and sambuca.
Long Island Iced Tea: The Long Island contains vodka, gin, tequila, light rum, lemon juice, triple sec and cola. It has a real kick.
Mai Tai: is made with light and dark rum, lime juice, orange curacao, orgeat syrup and rock candy syrup and served with a mint garnish.
Manhattan: The Manhattan is made with rye whiskey, sweet vermouth and bitters.
Margarita: The margarita is made with tequila, cointreau and lime juice.
Mojito: a mojito is made with muddled mint, white rum, lime juice, simple syrup and soda.
Martini: a martini is made of gin, dry vermouth and garnished with a lemon twist or olives.
Mimosa: a mimosa is a made with sparkling wine and orange juice.
Mint Julep: Made with Kentucky bourbon, simple syrup, mint leaves and crushed ice
Pina Colada: is made with white rum, dark rum, pineapple juice and coconut cream
Screwdriver: Vodka and Orange juice
Tequila Sunrise: tequila, orange juice and grenadine
Tom Collins: made with spiked lemonade, sparkling water, lemon juice, simple syrup and gin
Whiskey Sour: is made with powdered sugar, seltzer, lemon juice and whiskey.
White Russian: made with vodka, coffee liqueur and cream.
Black Russian: made with two parts coffee liqueur and five parts vodka.
Gin and Tonic: gin served with tonic water
Bloody Mary: made with vodka and tomato juice mixed with lemon juice, hot sauce, Worcestershire sauce, horseradish, fresh herbs, brown sugar and cracked black pepper.
Brandy Alexander: served straight up and made with brandy, cognac, creme de cacao and cream
Cosmopolitan: Made with citrus vodka, Cointreau, cranberry juice and fresh lime juice
Daiquiri: made with rum, lime juice and sugar.
Gimlet: gin and lime juice
My Top 10 Bartending Rules and Responsibilities
Overpouring is never an option. You can seriously hurt somebody by overpouring, not to mention spoil the drink and ruin your sales. You only serve people what they ask and never more.
When somebody has had enough, you stop serving them. After a while, you know when to cut somebody off.
Never leave bottles on the counter or in reach of customers. Your expensive spirits should never be in reach of anybody but you.
If you tell somebody your selling them premium and top shelf alcohol, you cannot substitute with cheaper licqor. It's illegal.
As a bartender, your eyes always have to be scanning a crowd. You can't leave people hanging.
The golden rule - if you see somebody messing with someone's drink, you chuck it if you can or warn the person. And you get that son of a bitch out of your pub.
50% of the job is cleaning. You have to clean your tools constantly. You cannot reuse measures and spouts, you have to wash everything. Beer traps are clean out every night, rubber mats are washed and anything you have used has to be clean.
You have to hand dry your glasses. You never polish a pint glass as it fucks up the pint. You polish your cocktail glasses, shot glasses and straight glasses.
If someone seems down or on their own, you try make conversation. Often you'll hear some disturbing stuff but always try lend an ear or make everyone feel included.
If you break a glass in the ice bucket, you got to get rid of the ice.
Hey, to you sci-fi/fantasy writers out there (and maybe some others, but this is mainly for things that can’t really be researched irl), if you want to write a character who is a driven, passionate expert on something, don’t write about them rambling indifferently about some boring, mundane part of it. Give them a deep, intense hatred of some oddly specific wow-I-did-not-even-know-that-was-a-thing-and-it-would-have-never-occurred-to-me-that-it’s-a-bad-thing thing they’ll gladly rant about.
Write a dragon rider who really fucking hates it when a dragon is trained to bow while being reined. A space ship engineer who is pissed off when perfectly good antimatter ship has been adapted to run on neutral matter. A historian who is still not over the massive failures of a general who lost a specific battle 300 years before she was born.
The guy currently giving us a series of lectures on the restoration of historical buildings really, really hates polymer paint. At the artisan school our stained glass teacher really hated this one specific Belgian artist - we never really figured out what did that guy even do, but he’s been dead for over 200 years and our teacher was glad that at least he’s dead.
Experts don’t just know things you’ve never thought about. They’ve got strong opinions about it.
reminder to myself about the process of drafting & revising:
first drafts are for making it exist
second drafts are for making it functional
third drafts are for making it effective
This is the most important thing I’ve learnt in writing my novel. Have fun the first time but know your first pass isn’t going to be perfect
hey writers! OneLook Thesaurus lets you find that word you can’t think of but can describe! go check it out!
I can’t convey how happy I am to learn of this resource!!!
People will say “write what you know!” But I know so little
“Bad books on writing tell you to ‘write what you know’, a solemn and totally false adage that is the reason there exist so many mediocre novels about English professors contemplating adultery.”
—Joe Haldeman
What a perfectly brutal comment.
Write, amigos
how does being punched in the face feel like
literally i just wanna know
It depends on where you get hit
Cheek: a round dull pain that clocks your entire head in a different direction. It’s painful and throbs but the main effect of a punch to the cheek is how jarring it is. You feel it in your mouth, your teeth. And no matter how you position that punch the knuckles will always hit the jaw and cheek bones adding a frame of sharp pain in which the redness will be painted.
Temple: getting hit on the temple pushes your head to the side rather than turning it. It’s disorienting because it leaves you very off balance. It essentially feels like a bad pressure headache, like when you have a sinus infection on a plane, but in one spot and on the outside. It’s sharp in the middle and radiates outward and even after the initial impact it pulses like an earthquake epicenter. It easily causes long lasting headaches and is the most likely of these examples to cause a concussion.
Eye: this is a weird one. The fist doesn’t fit within the eye socket so either the knuckles on the brow and cheeks bones protect the actual eye or they don’t. The former option gives a full spreading pain below the eye which results in the classic black eye look and a sharp pain on your brow similar to hitting your shin on the couch. The latter option, well bad things can happen when a hard fast object makes direct contact with your eye but for the sake of this it feels like a vacuum bc the concave shape is being covered and pressurized. The eye feels pushed back and pulled forward all at once. It doesn’t necessarily hurt that bad for that long unless the punch was meant to do damage. I’m fortunate to say I don’t know what it would feel like then.
Nose: remember that prank kids used to pull where they’d line up their hands with their nose, push them in one direction and crack a knuckle at the same time to pretend to break their nose? Yeah that’s what it looks like when someone punches you from the side in the nose, except it’s someone else’s hand and your nose makes the sound instead of their knuckle. It’s just like breaking any bone where you hear it and feel the action if it being done but that moment of shock blankets you for a split second until all the pain comes rushing back. It’s sharp and needlelike and can give you black eyes just to add insult to injury. If you get hit in the nose from the front it’s like the uncomfortableness of when you have to sneeze but can’t. Except that feeling took all the steroids and is now using your face as a punching bag to express its roid rage. It crackles outward like static electricity under your skin, your eyesight gets fuzzy and you can’t tell if it’s because you’re tearing up, it’s hard to open your eyes, or you’re momentarily stunned and blinded. Just know it’s all three. I find that this one knocks the wind out of you the most. Gotta remind yourself to breathe just don’t try to do it through your nose.
If you really want to know what this feels like I’d suggest joining a mixed martial arts because they’ll teach you correct form and power distribution and you can spar with pads and actually hit each other.
I’d also recommend learning what it feels like to punch someone in the face. It’s much more fun and pretty damn cathartic when they deserve it.
i was just being stupid but these descriptions are actually so well written i could feel them lmao bless
Well, thanks for “being stupid,” because this is a great ref for writers.
some fucking resources for all ur writing fuckin needs
body language masterlist
a translator that doesn’t eat ass like google translate does
a reverse dictionary for when ur brain freezes
550 words to say instead of fuckin said
638 character traits for when ur brain freezes again
some more body language help
Thank you ill just be borrowing these for a bit
a special fuck you to the english teacher who told me i couldn’t start sentences with ‘and’ or ‘but’ or ‘because’ like. slhntslhksnltn imagine following the rules of grammar. couldn’t be me.
this post was brought to you by the Writers Who Write Fascinating Sentences Gang
Alison was such a popular name in medieval England that authors would name women characters Alison to indicate that she was supposed to be a very normal kind of person
People in northern England in medieval times used to refer to themselves as I while people from the south referred to themselves as ich so you can tell when a northern character is imitating a southern accent when they start saying “ich will” instead of “I will” or vice versa
Friars/traveling priests these days are remembered as very holy figures. Not necessarily so in medieval times! They had a reputation for going from town to town and boinking random unmarried women.
Yes beer was given to children but the beer that was given to children or consumed at most meals was really low in alcohol content. Think modern day kombucha. High alcohol stuff was for adults.
Medieval peasants grew a lot of stuff in personal gardens like onions, garlic, and rosemary so even though they were limited in what they were allowed to hunt or grow legally they probably had some very tasty meals.
In the very early middle ages even the nobility were illiterate. Pretty much only monks knew how to read and write. William the conqueror? Was most likely illiterate.
I’m losing my mind, please tell us more
After the Normans conquered England and nobility started to learn how to read, there’s a period between about 1066 and 1200-ish where all “English” literature in the sense that it was from England, was written in French. When things were written in English again it had already merged with French somewhat so what happened in between Old English and Middle English? idk.
These days the stereotype is that men are very horny and women are reserved and aren’t as concerned with sex. For most of European history that stereotype was actually reversed! It was still the same amount of sexist though.
People in the British isles have been continuously making some version of oat cakes since at least the time of the Roman conquest. The definition of an oat cake though, varies from region to region even today. In some regions they are similar to oatmeal cookies while in other regions they are more like pancakes.
Medieval historians weren’t terribly concerned with accuracy. More likely they were concerned with entertainment. So in order to rid themselves of criticism when they were found out for making stuff up they often cite other people or books that may or may not exist or say that they heard it from this other guy so it’s not them making stuff up oh no it was that other guy. So that’s why we often have to depend on archeology to understand what actually happened and medieval “historical” texts are more often the study of literary experts rather than historians.
controversial writing tip
open a document and start writing
unrealistic. blocked,
Hey, to you sci-fi/fantasy writers out there (and maybe some others, but this is mainly for things that can’t really be researched irl), if you want to write a character who is a driven, passionate expert on something, don’t write about them rambling indifferently about some boring, mundane part of it. Give them a deep, intense hatred of some oddly specific wow-I-did-not-even-know-that-was-a-thing-and-it-would-have-never-occurred-to-me-that-it’s-a-bad-thing thing they’ll gladly rant about.
Write a dragon rider who really fucking hates it when a dragon is trained to bow while being reined. A space ship engineer who is pissed off when perfectly good antimatter ship has been adapted to run on neutral matter. A historian who is still not over the massive failures of a general who lost a specific battle 300 years before she was born.
The guy currently giving us a series of lectures on the restoration of historical buildings really, really hates polymer paint. At the artisan school our stained glass teacher really hated this one specific Belgian artist - we never really figured out what did that guy even do, but he’s been dead for over 200 years and our teacher was glad that at least he’s dead.
Experts don’t just know things you’ve never thought about. They’ve got strong opinions about it.
Throwback thursday to when I was like 12 and I was putting out new writing DAILY...... Like entire Chapters of my then-current wips just, over an afternoon. What the fuck was I on
Nobody:
Me, age 12, just started drinking coffee:
I drew 14 pictures during the day, and wrote 32 pages a night. Now I can’t do shit.
A huge part of this is because you've gotten better! And now, when you're drawing/writing/doing whatever creative task, you're not just mindlessly throwing thoughts at your paper, you're thinking as you do it. Children can churn out a lot more work because it's not yet refined, but when you're older and have more practice, you work with all these thoughts running through your head about form and shape, color palettes or word choice. Now, you're making a dozen decisions with every moment of work, and you're also questioning the decisions you've just made, wondering if you can do it better. Don't beat yourself up about producing less work now than you did back then, because every sentence or shape involves a lot more effort for you now, than it did when you were ten and brand new to this hobby.
You also probably have a lot more responsibilities and stress now than you did then, and a lot more going on with your life just in general. You had a lot more time when you were younger than you do now.
THIS.
