Iris Shadow

writer | overthinker | fan of morally gray characters currently lost in a story about soft boys in dangerous worlds, found family, and secrets that don’t stay buried. I love emotional tension, quiet betrayals, and characters who pretend not to care (but absolutely do). ✨ here for storytelling, aesthetics, and late-night plotting ✨

[irisshadow3939]

📚 My Webnovel is LIVE!

Soft boys. Dangerous worlds. Found family and secrets that don’t stay buried.

If you like: ✨ emotional tension ✨ morally g(r)ay characters ✨ a university student stumbling into a criminal underworld he wasn’t supposed to see …then this story might be for you.

🖤 Read it here: Tapas, Inkitt (I’d love if you checked it out, reblogged, or screamed in my inbox 💌)

[animentality]

[ashen-crest]

I can do it. I can write a chapter. I am capable of putting sentences together. I know what a comma is. I am Aware of the Character.

[oysters-aint-for-me]

i’m obsessed with this

and then, two months later....

🥺

[very-gay-alkyrion]

[virtualcarrot]

Lovely story but ngl, scrolling down to the last picture, took me a while to understand that the head was not, in fact, turned to the left with an open beaked expression.

[theclonewriter-blog]

“This is your daily, friendly reminder to use commas instead of periods during the dialogue of your story,” she said with a smile.

[onewordtest]

“Unless you are following the dialogue with an action and not a dialogue tag.” He took a deep breath and sat back down after making the clarifying statement. 

[joehywheelah]

“However,” she added, shifting in her seat, “it’s appropriate to use a comma if there’s action in the middle of a sentence.”

[tenoko1]

“True.” She glanced at the others. “You can also end with a period if you include an action between two separate statements.”

[cj-amused]

Things I didn’t know

[prismatic-bell]

“And–” she waved a pen as though to underline her statement–“if you’re interrupting a sentence with an action, you need to type two hyphens to make an en-dash.”

[jawnwats-deactivated20160713]

You guys have no idea how many students in my advanced fiction workshop didn’t know any of this when writing their stories.

[notesoftruth]

Okay, but someone please explain question marks when followed by a dialogue tag. How do?

[flootzavut]

“The speech tag is still part of the previous sentence,” she explained, ‘so it isn’t capitalised.“

“What do you mean?” he asked. “But there’s a full stop as part of the question mark!”

She nodded gravely. “I know!” she said. “A lot of people find this confusing. But the speech tag belongs to the line of dialogue, it’s still part of the sentence, so it’s wrong to capitalise it.”

She reblogged the post again, because she had recently read far too many potentially enjoyable stories marred by poor dialogue punctuation.

[dechart]

I’ve only seen this post in screenshots till now..

[eddiestarchild]

NOICE. Can’t wait to use this

[magpiefngrl]

“There are two more ways"—she pointed to the blackboard—“to punctuate interruptions. One is with the em dashes outside the quotations marks to indicate continuous speech. The action occurs at the same time as speech. The other—” she sipped from a glass of water “—is em dashes within the quotation marks to indicate interrupted speech.”

[tearsanctuary]

“why are you getting frustrated with your characters? you write them, they can do whatever you want”

NO THEY CAN’T. this little fuckers have some psychological power over me i CANNOT MAKE THEM DO SHIT

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

yes, I’m a writer. yes, I write whatever I want for myself and my own enjoyment. yes, I am my own primary target audience. yes, I am a greedy little gremlin who feeds on positive comments. yes, I deeply appreciate everyone who comments nice things on my works.

[nondelphic]

i keep telling people i’m a writer but all i do is open google docs, scroll for 45 minutes, sigh dramatically, and close it like i just gave birth

[tokkibean]

TRUE writers suddenly get writing urges at 1am mid-doomscroll and proceed to ramble out the most incoherent plot into a new doc and wake up and then just. stare at it.

[vintxgemiseries]

March 2 2026. My beloved wife (AO3) has been severely ill (not loading) for what feels like an eternity (since yesterday). I have nearly lost all hope. The future looks bleak without her radiant image… I pray for her recovery (reload the site) every Sunday (every five minutes) and still… she will not wake (start working again). I trust that God has a plan for her (there’s a bug and it’ll be fine soon), but still, I worry greatly.

[its-elementary]

[armandgender]

writing is so fun

[armandgender]

writing is impossible why does anyone do this

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

if you leave a long and kind comment on my fanfiction, I’m afraid I will have to ask for your hand in marriage

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

ao3 turns 16 today.

reblog if you’re older than archive of our own

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

fanfiction is a rare gem and a solid, living proof that, in a world of tiktok, influencers and content posting, not everything is about money and going viral. art can still be art just for the sake of the artists’ pure love, joy and passion for the art they create. fanfic writers write 100k words and more about the characters they love for free. just because they love these characters and the art of writing so much. art is not dead and the world is still beautiful.

shoutout to fanfiction and fanfic writers

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]